Stuff

With Sita’s vast intellect and my, er, camera we’ve gone and got ourselves published!

Article from Gastronomica (1700k PDF)

While I’m typing this I’m processing the photos of the jimadores from Monday into a slide show DVD thing. It’s taking forever and I’m fairly sure it’s crashed, but I think it’s going to be worth it. I edited the sound with audacity and the result is very pleasing. It’s basically me asking the jimadores stupid questions and promising them I’ll deliver copies of the photos to them today. Which is still the plan as long as Farmacias Guadalajara, GDL’s ubercatholic chemists deliver the pix before 3pm. If not it’ll be tomorrow… I’ll shove a low quality version up to YouTube once I get a chance.

I started another photography class yesterday. It was great fun. 2 hours long, with a break in the middle and a bloke with a fantastic sense of humour teaching us the basics of contemporary photography. I’m really looking forward to the next one. I met a nice bunch of people there and we went for a few drinks afterwards as all good students should. Also, Sita’s made another shortlist for a professorship in the States so all in all a very good day all round.

…funny James Bond related cartoon.

… that peanuts grow underground? And in agave fields no less…

Am a bit knackered now, I also took about 200 photos of jimadores, if I gather up the energy I´ll write about them, I also recorded the conversations I had with them hopefully for a video spectacular coming soon!

On Friday the carpenters finally came round with all the bits and pieces they´d measured to repair our waterlogged kitchen panelling. It was all going great guns and I was ready to find out where the mice were hiding when they removed the oven. Turns out they were living in the fibre glass insulation material INSIDE the oven and had horded Atticus´s biscuits and FSM knows what else and it smelled rank. So we had a sterilise-the-oven session and i took a couple of photos of the carnage. I´m not posting them though, because it makes me queasy just thinking about it. After all that we needed a stiff drink so we went to the Famosos Equipales where Jana serenaded us with unique versions of Johnny Cash songs and we put the world to rights.

Saturday was Flickr Tour #7 to Tequila. And although the turnout was less than usual (9 of us) the planets aligned and along with the planned stuff (centre, museum, Columpio, Cofradia) we also stumbled upon a traditional dance presentation and saw people chucking agave piñas into a truck. Afterwards Mario recommended a beer and botanas place (you drink and the food comes along with it, tapas style, but less delicate) where we snacked, played pool and stuff. All me photos here, all photos from everyone here.

By Sunday I was knackered, but got a fair bit done on the chamba front despite my laptop being back in overheat-and-turn-off-with-no-warning-after-15-to-20-minutes mode. Luckily I have Ana´s slow, but reliable desktop as a back up… Sterilised the rest of the kitchen then went to see The Killers do their stuff at the spanking new Auditorio Telmex. We were up in the nosebleed seats, but they put on a good show. Basically songs from the first album were fantastic, and songs from the second were Springsteen.

Via BoingBoing

The Halen’s synth track was played back a semitone and half out for some reason… This is the resulting trainwreck. I’m fond of the track cos it’s in one of my favourite films, Herbie– Fully Loaded (2005).

que corra la voz…

www.sit2007.org for more details…

Loved one of the latest searches that arrived at this site: “Spanish word for a stew made from hominy with pork (or other meat) chile and other seasonings and garnish such as cabbage lettuce oregano cilantro avocado radish lime juice” Some people have just not got the hang of google… It’s pozole, for the record.

When I’m not manufacturing press passes, I’m going to the dentist’s with alarming regularity making the most of the cheap and cheerful Mexican service before having to hightail it out of here in December… There’ve been some horror stories lately of British folks and their Do It Yourself dentistry, which makes me squirm just to think about it. The BBC has replied with a report on the pitfalls.… I’ve been there with the chewing gum missing crown solution before…

Anything to avoid making it into the Big Book of British Smiles…

There’s a lesson for us all here. Scrub yer fingernails before taking pictures of your grubby mitts holding your freshly minted press pass… I won’t get a chance to try it out till next Tuesday at the lucha, cos today is the last day of the photojournalism seminars, tomorrow we’re off to Tequila, and on Saturday… and then on Sunday we’re off to see The Killers in concert. So fingers crossed for the lucha on Tuesday… actually I wonder if I can use it at the Killers concert… Oh the possibilities.

Improve your photography in 60 seconds. Or slightly more if English isn’t your first language. They range from the obvious to the spurious to the useful (The composition bit was handy). Anyway, just sharing the joy.

Sita’s back and a bit jet/sociology lagged, we went out to Coscafe in Chapultepec last night, which was a novelty. Nice food, youngish crowd, gabachos aplenty.

Also started the sign up for possibly my penultimate Flickr PhotoTour, to Tequila. Ah the possibilities. Talking of which, someone used a photo of mine in their blog. Always makes me happy that.

Am deciding between the following films while Sita has a nap, London to Brighton, El Guardaespaldas 2, Madeinusa, and Venganza de una dama, having made my weekly pilgrimage to Santa Tere market… If you subscribe to my RSS feed, are at your computer right this minute and possess lightning fast typing skills you may just influence my decision in the comments 😀

I can only see her spinning clockwise, anyone see her going the other way?

It’s been a busy few days, what with dining out in Providencia, Scrabble, Bar Scratch, Zapopan and a fair amount of webdesignery (San Diego Furniture, a bilingual Belgian shopping centre, that Ultrasound thing I mentioned, and updates to a site I did last year for a waterjet cutting company. Photography of a shampoo box too. And also, possible PHPery for a new Mexican design company on the horizon, something to do with virtual wedding present lists…

Today I think I’m going to be stuck at the computer right through till I pick up young Sita from the airport. Which is fine and mean I can catch up on me facebook scrabbling too. Might nip out for tacos though…

…Roberto Madrazo makes headlines in Germany.

Off t’ airport…

… if you’ve not checked out my web portfolio in a while, I heartily encourage you to do so, Spanish speaking or not, tell your friends… It’s cheap as chips for now (prices double once I hit California’s Bay Area). It now boasts the latest site to go live, www.ultrasonido4d.com with more pictures of weird golden babies and extreme womb close ups than any site I’ve designed before…

So today I thought I´d hired someone to turf the garden where Atticus had dug his trench, turns out I just bought the turf, well it was only 175 pesos, what did I expect… anyway, I used to do this kind of thing when I was a landscape gardener back in the day. Turns out I´ve lost the knack, but lets see how it goes. At this stage of the year things grow out of concrete. If all else fails we´ll spend another 8 quid getting the pros in the day before the house inspection…

Antes:                      Después

There´s a whole US-UK mismatch in language for turfing. Possibly because of the confusion around the word “sod”.