Adios mamá y papá

The latest on the move:
Not sure whether we can do the trip up North- funds and other stuff are making things tricky. We had planned to head up on Thursday. May not happen after all…
Atticus is staying with his grandparents who are reluctant to let him go. Which frankly beggars belief. Sally & I installed a “Doggy Door” in the garage so he now has free range with Martin’s tools and HAM radio.

The latest on consumption of media:
First off- Serenity is the best Sci-Fi film evah. I’m fixin’ to do a fully-fledged review. But in the meantime, see it.
Am nearing the end of Pratchett’s latest paperback- Going Postal, and is something of a return to form for him. Thoroughly enjoyable.

The latest on boring tech stuff (seriously, skip this):
I was more than happy to get my PDA working again and even had a 1GB SD card full of episodes of QI on it which I’d started to watch. I was starting to remember my American dictionary two-letter Scrabble word s better too. Anyroad, the screen suddenly went blank, the controls sluggish, next thing I knew it was powering off and refusing to come back to life. It’s going back to Texas today hopefully for a replacement and not another sub-par repair. If it happens again I’m going to angle for a new Treo.

Sally’s laptop- the saga continues. First off, it wasn’t connecting to the interweb and wouldn’t let me reinstall ME to fix it. Its internal floppy and CD-ROM don’t work, but i have an external CD-ROM so I managed to install XP on it. Then I partitioned off another section to install ME back on it, planning to remove the XP part later.., it rebooted with the (blank) ME partition in DOS, and now i can’t do nowt ‘cos it can’t use the USB CDROM nor the internal, nor the floppy. It’s now in pieces on the table and I’m going to take it to Downey Computer Repairs to see if they can fish the (impossible to find) hard drive out of it then give me a 44-40 pin adapter to install ME on it with my desktop. It’s frustrating stuff.

Sorry ’bout all that. Still aiming to get round to emails but there’s tons to do (and more webdesignery in the offing- I’m learning about Online Shopping Carts…) and until our plans coalesce there’s nowt much to say. Hang on in there, and in the absence of postings on this blog, have a gander’s at James Shaw’s blog which is extremely well written when it’s not about sport, which is, however you dress it, sport.

Also, coming soon to these pages: Anecdotes. I don’t have nearly enough anecdotes and need to work on some. It’s not enough to travel the world and come back with pretty photos and a blanket description of yer travels. So I’m going to work on some tales. This is partially inspired by Adam and Joe’s XFM radio show and the incredible oral history tradition that runs through the Cambell family.

ASCII Font Generator

                            ______  _  _____.__. ____  

                           / ___\ \/ \/
                          / /_/  >     / \___  |   |  \

                          \___  / \/\_/  / ____|___|  /

                         /_____/         \/         \/ 

                          .__  .__        .__  __             .___

              __ __  ____ |  | |__| _____ |__|/  |_  ____   __| _/

             |  |  \/    \|  | |  |/     \|  \   __\/ __ \ / __ | 

             |  |  /   |  \  |_|  |  Y Y  \  ||  | \  ___// /_/ | 

             |____/|___|  /____/__|__|_|  /__||__|  \___  >____ | 

                        \/              \/              \/     \/ 

I’m getting there slowly, still no reviews yet though. So this is just a quick entry to wish y’all happy pancake day. We got through 3 episodes of TV smack ‘Lost’ last night along with homemade chicken tacos. I’ve rescheduled the launch of agave web cos there’s lots to be written & proof read about web design to get the google love going. Also I’ll need to shove it through a few validation services cos the HTML is sloppy in places. Then there’s the meta tags… I’m very happy with my first PHP script, now you can put in a word count and it tells you how much a translation will cost you. It’s probably impossible to write a simpler script but I’m happy.

10 input “How many words”;words
20 print “That’ll be “;words*.5;” please”
30 rem Who’da’man?

Oh yes… I’ve still got it… If you fancy seeing what real programmers can do have a look at the pointless but fun javascript at Cesar’s blog.

I’ve been mightily impressed by the efficiency of TelMex’s DSL service. Ordered it Monday morning, modem arrived Tuesday and plumbed in by Thursday. I’d’ve had it going two hours earlier too but I had to ring the help desk as it didn’t like my password (beautiful renditions of ‘Octopus’s Garden’ and ‘Oh, Darling’ on hold though).

The phases have been pretty much: travel 1700 miles, find a house, meet up with old friends, fill house with furniture, get DSL & cable, get studying/working. We’re entering the last stage there. But over the last week or so have really got to know the city well just from running errands. Last time we were here (2 years ago) and it was all public transport, and when I was here in 1998, even moreso. Driving is a lot easier than it was made out to be. The only real challenge is from the whole tope (speed bump) vs traffic lights thing. One obviously on the ground and ready to put your steering and suspension out if hit at over 10 mph and the other hanging stupidly high and keeping your vision off the ground. If you’re looking for street signs as well, that puts another hazard in yer way. Yet I managed to drive with a flat pack office desk, 4 plastic chairs and a table from Plaza del Sol to our house in rush hour yesterday, so all’s well. Maybe I’ll add ‘Guided Tours’ to my already eclectic business card.

Plenty of room for visitors, book your flights to Guadalajara now and we’ll pick you up at the airport… It’s still gorgeous weather too.

Skyped me folks yesterday, and was informed that Dad had made another foray into photoshopping. I’ve got this creation of his as my wallpaper for now.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | The meticulously planned operation behind Britain’s biggest cash robbery
So whose side are you on?…

But I can’t find a satisfactory gallery program to put them on. I downloaded a free trial of one, but this is the result and it can only deal with 12 pictures. It’s a little “de trop”, non? So pix’ll be along soon in their usual form by the looks of it, but enjoy the flying pumpkins in the meantime… cheers