Stuff

I’m doing my latest online poll on my telly habits and I get to tell them what I think about US TV. Eventually I get a 10 bucks Target voucher or summink. Here’s some highlights, starting with 60 minutes, dire US pseudonews:

Please indicate what you don’t like about 60 Minutes:

Its patronising presenters. Its dated look. Its holier than thou themes. And for the love of all things holy, the segment at the end, Curmudgeon’s Corner or whatever it’s called with Andy Rooney waxing geriatric on topics he knows nothing about. God I hate this program.

Please indicate what you don’t like about Extreme Makeover: Home Edition:

Can’t help feeling emotionally manipulated by it. Also throughout, there’s the nagging feeling that it’s just one big advertising-fest for companies providing the materials. And the presenter gets on my nerves no end. At the end of the episode I feel somehow tainted.

Despite eight questions about 80s Mexican football… I can’t take too much credit myself though. The only question I got that no one else knew was “What was the title of Kiss’s first album with no make-up”. Comment if you’d like to know the answer… We met Memo who has an encyclopaedic knowledge of music. And a musical encyclopaedia in his backpack. “We’re going to win, even if we have to use PRI tactics” I was informed. Anyroad we raffled off the prizes between us: A DVD player, T-shirt, beer glass and baseball cap. And we kept their biro. We got the t-shirt which is what we wanted. Go us… It was a very different beast to your usual UK pub quiz, which is invariably held on a quiet night to try and drag people out. First off, multiple choice. Kid you not. 2ndly cheating is not frowned upon. 3rdly, the questions aren’t read out, you have a 2 page, Times New Roman, 12pt badly formatted question sheet and fill it in while the music blares out around you. 4thly, the 80s were a very different beast in Mexico / the US, the 80s I remember were all about one-hit wonders and pop tunes, last night we were tested on our knowledge of: Heart, Ratt, Asia, Rush, Kiss, Styx, Foreigner, Journey and any other powerchord obsessed hair band. A fun night all the same even if I was a little out of my league.

Also the date has been announced for the next Pocilga Beat Fest party thing. Invite only I’m afraid. Looking forward to that one.

We didn’t make it to the Da Vinci Code the other night, more’s the pity . But it’s still looming, maybe tonight… Lots of design stuff on at the minute and a weekend getaway with horses, nature and jacuzzis is planned so we shall see. Latest project? ViveAjijic- click for the (pointless) flash header.

Hopefully I’m in good enough shape now to prove a valuable member of the team in tonight’s music pub quiz. They’re not that common round here and this here quiz is something of a yearly event apparently. I’ll be taking it easy all the same cos tomorrow I’m driving round for all kinds of meetings from 9 till 7. Have I mentioned it’s quite hot this week? Well it is and so I was inspired to finally take the car to mechanics to get the air conditioning sorted out. It’s always been working but had the inconvenient feature of howling like some demented banshee on helium, which attracts more attention that I’d care for when driving round town. Anyroad, 4 quid or 80 pesos later and it’s sorted, a loose belt or screw or summink. Nice one, Sr. Mecánico.

Mazamitla this weekend for Sita’s second to the power of five birthday. Apparently it’s going to bucket down on Saturday. That would be most welcome. And tomorrow, I’m told, is Towel Day. Not really a Mexican festival, indeed I think this bloke just made it up, it’s to celebrate Douglas Adams’s life or indeed liff.

Here’s me blog on bert’s phone. Which admittedly looks more like a prototype teleportation/microwave device than a humble mobile. If he sends me a pic of this entry i’ll put it in the blog and before we know it we’ll have an infinite cat project type thing on our hands… Tonight: bbqing the steak before it goes off… mine’s going to be very well done, for a change. Then Da Vinci code at the cine. If it’s even twice as good as the book. It’ll still be complete pants…

It doesn’t half take it out of you, being ill. I’m way past the worst of it but still have a slightly green tinge to my complexion and all the abdominal muscles I used recreating scenes from The Exorcist on Saturday night are aching like buggery right now. Still that’s one more strain of gastroenteritis to which I’m now immune, and one more torta ahogada vendor to strike off my list of suppliers… I made it to work this morning and got a fair bit done but when the internet disappeared I came home to carry on working.
Anyway I’ll try to stay clear of the subject just in case you’re eating, or thinking of eating.

Friday night we went out to Polibio again with an increasingly drunken band of folks. Had the same dish as last time and t’was delicious. Saturday was spend on web designery and paying bills in TelMex and Oxxo. TelMex have a handy machine that puts your balance on the screen and then you feed it bank notes/bills until you’ve covered your debt and then it spits out a receipt. If you’d like to collect Mexican swearwords, hang out in that area for half an hour with a notebook and you’ll hear more variations on chingar than in your average cantina, as everyone from business types to little old ladies try to get the machine to accept their money… Jose came round early evening for a photo trip to El Retiro and other barrios. I’m not sure how I’ve managed to be here without seeing this really old part of town. Definitely worth a visit. The light wasn’t perfect for the photos but there’s a few nice shots I’ll publish to flickr presently. Then we had a swift pint in La Fuente, then the aforementioned torta ahogada and tostada de lomo in La Alemana. We headed back and Sita had made cookies. I’d complained to Jose that there are no bars in Santa Teresita (the barrio next to where we live) nor El Retiro so he set out to prove us wrong by taking us to a bar called El Oso not far from our house. There was a football play-off going on there and one of the clients at the bar’s son/nephew/summink was the goal keeper and the atmosphere was grand. Unfortunately at this point I started to feel ill, and after demanding to go home things got worse. We watched the Eurovision Song Contest on telly on the Spanish Channel, TVE, I already knew who was going to win because of Flash’s blog, but Sita didn’t so there was some tension. It’s not the same without Wogan prattling on, but the fact a Finnish glam/death/metal group walked away with the prize was fantastic. Ireland’s entry “Every song is a cry for love” coincided with my first bout of gastric unpleasantness though. Coincidence?

I’ve been a bit poorly of late. Nothing serious, but nothing pleasant neither. Normal service to return tomorrow hopefully… And who knew Pedialyte actually tastes OK?

The title’s a Father Ted reference, just for the record… Anyroad, another lovely meal at Goa last night, Guadalajara’s only, premier Indian restaurant. The menus there on Flickr if you click the picture and go a few slides forward or back… No Kingfisher lager, but the Chilean Red’s very drinkable. And there’s a chance I’m doing their website in a few weeks time… César, si se te antoja un curry apúntame a la lista y vamos. Te invito unas samosas vegetarianas.

Through skype’s pixie magic I phoned me grandma this morning, we hadn’t spoken in months and it was lovely to chat. 8 minutes, no less, which is probably the longest call I’ve ever had with her on the blower. Bless her, she’s not been out of the house in 3 weeks and sounded a bit out of sorts but I think the call cheered us both up. Email me with your phone number if you fancy a chat, anyone. Or as I’ve mentioned, download skype and live the free internet telephony dream.

Tango’s remade that balls-bouncing-down-a-San-Francisco-street ad with fruit. In Swansea no less, and if the website mentioned below isn’t some kind of viral marketing scam, then they’re more upset about it than the usual goings on round Town Hill, like joy-riding, drug-dealing and armed assaults…

The Community At Large » Tango Bravia Commercial

Ok after reading this paragraph the Swansea site’s a hoax:

Meetings

Our next meeting will be happening on Sunday, April 9.

The main topic will be the launch of the Swansea North Yodelling Club. We’ll be taking on our friends from our twin city Güttstag Nord, Austria. We hope this is the start of an annual event celebrating two nations with great choral heritage.

We hope to see-oo-ee-oo-ee-ooooo all there!

Everyone is welcome to come. If you’d like to attend a meeting but haven’t done so before please read the Contact Us section of our site to find out how to get to St. Martha’s Parish and what’s expected of those who want to participate.

Why not learn how to yodel before you come?

Blimey I on bert’s phone. Might explain later, just testing the system… RSS…

*edit* OK, I shall explain just had a long chat with bert and he mentioned his mobile phone could handle RSS feeds and now he’s got my blog on his phone. It’s one of those days for technological firsts.

So César, Sita and I are off to the Indian place again this evening- see you there? And while I’m at it, thanks for all your comments. I’m indebted for you for noticing those broken links. Much obliged and it’s nice to have it all delivered with the perfect english of a graduate of the Red Dwarf Academy of Language.

But I bought skypeout credits and can now call UK landlines for 2p a minute and the States for 1p from my computer. How cool is that? Victims today: Chris in Bristol, Bert in London, Beth in Taunton and apparently (sarita’s signed in on my account right now chatting away to) Tanya in SC, CA.

More websitery: www.borke.com.mx is more or less ready to have the text shoved into it and stocked up with products. Then they’d like some huge banners designed to decorate their Puerto Vallarta lot.

I’m doing a bilingual Wedding planning site for someone from San Jose, CA. Details soon and hopefully I’ll find out tomorrow some details about a place that needs a site that does hair extensions and paints nails and suchlike. I’m dusting off the pastel palette in photoshop as I write…

Further to comments in the post below, does anyone know how to say touchpad in Spanish? Fernando? César? Cuquis? José? or Arturo? It’s the thing laptops have that you push your finger round to move the mouse. You know where to write…

To the right, one of dad’s photos that just popped up on Flickr presumably of their walk with Jed, Mum, JG and the Russlings. Más bucólico no hay…

Speak Spanish? Looking for affordable, quality daycare / primary education for your offspring. …and live near Plaza del Sol in Guadalajara? Well you may want to check out Centro Educativa Nueva Era’s spanking new site. Another fine product from the offices of plaza bonita.

If you thought getting domain names and hosting sorted out is easy, you’d be right. However, just you try it if your domain ends with .MX (the mexican .uk). I’ve made more phonecalls in the last 2 days than in all my time here… You can either pay with PayPal (I hate PayPal) or in a bank and then fax the receipts in to the hosting service. Sometimes Mexico is right up there at the cutting edge of it all, and other times it’s like some Kafkaesque third-world state. Mind you, so’s the UK. Still all appears to be v.well now.

Came across an interesting (somewhat subjective, but hey ho) site this morning with animal noises in different languages (on the University of Adelaide’s Engineering page (¿?)) This bloke didn’t get all the English noises right, “lap lap” is the noise a drinking dog makes apparently, so there may be a fair few mistakes. But it features the classic Cock-a-doodle-doo versus ki-kiri-ki cockeral noise conundrum so I’m happy. Neither really do justice to what is self-evidently “rackalackaooey”, to coin a word.

Alright back to work. My mouse forgot itself at me at home I forgot to bring my mouse to work and now I have to spend 7 hours fiddling around with a touchpad. Arse. NOT good for graphic design, even with the nimblest of fingers…

It’s like they know me…

Your horoscope for May 16th 2006: Taurus

Long lost relatives in Mexico will be trying to get in touch. A canine friend will want to be fed and will be unable to contain his excitement upon seeing you. Cards figure in the day. Italy beckons. Someone with a three letter name will make you a hot beverage. Cats related to Postman Pat with one letter off and he who summoned Mephistopheles will make brief appearences but appear indifferent. Stroke them and they will wish you well. Upper middle class children will continue to request bassoon scores. Humour them. And finally, cider will bring you good luck today and every day. Cheers!

Have a grand day, Beff, and muy feliz cumpleaos from Guadalajara.

Free calls to all landlines and mobile phones within the US and Canada – Skype Blogs

So if you live in the US or Canada you can call normal landline phones through your computer free gratis and for nothing. Tres cool.

So on Saturday we went to an Indian restaurant called Goa or somesuch with Victor, Jana and Sarah and it lived up to expectations. It’s only been open a few days but I fully expect it to do well. Tell your friends, it’s on Lopez Cotilla and on the Minerva side of Chapultepec … Apparently it’s nigh on impossible to import curry powder into the country so they have to get visiting friends and family to supply the restaurant. The owner also runs an Indian goods shop (clothes with little mirrors and that kind of thing) so there’s fairly frequent visits. Presumably curry powder would put drug sniffing dogs at the airport completely out of action for a few weeks so the dishes were lightly flavoured but very tasty. The wine’s a bargain too. I asked to ramp my dish up to vindaloo which they did using chilis instead of the powder but it was very effective. Afterwards onto La Bodeguita del Medio for Bertha’s birthday. Bertha’s a spanish / French teacher and Sita might be taking classes with her soonish, anyroad she had a nice bunch of friends and we had a grand old time singing along to Chan Chan and other cuban clasicos.

Sunday started off very dubiously. Some translation and then (cos our cable tv came back after 4 days) surfing whatever was on while my headache receded. I watched El Santo in Operación 67 which outbonds bond with a fraction of the budget (3.5 lulus). Little Nicky, if you like talking dogs, you’re in luck (2.5 Lulus) and Misery (5 Lulus), no review required… Towards the end of the afternoon we headed off to Victor and Jana’s where we were plied once again with fine wine and fine food before heading to a free concert in Zapopan where no less than Lila Downs was playing. I can’t say I was overly familiar with her music beforehand, but now I’m a convert. Photos of the event flow like wine over at Flickr. She does updated versions of Mexican classics and is something of a feminist icon round these parts. And france apparently. I’m getting to work on her back catalogue today.

Click for non-distorted bigger version.

Me dad just sent me a picture of the view from the attic in our house in Somerset. The neighbours have a new “sun house” it appears. And they should probably shut the boot of the car before it rains… Nice panoramic shot. The lawns looking a lot greener than ours right now.

Another late night last night… I’m off for a nap. If I forget to post about the curry next time, remind me…

Potassium was as far as we got in GCSE chemistry under Nigel Magg’s tutelage… Brainiac goes one step beyond:

Thanks to Mark Wilton-Jones‘s handy little guide and coding, I’ve put a new section on the right for you to swap between stylesheets. I’m not sure how it affects the loading time of the page and if there’s an public uproar, I’ll remove it. Also the new title picture:

is not perfect, and I’ve realised that IE users (Why, oh why?) can’t deal with the PNG transparency. Another quirk I just noticed with explorer is that if your screen resolution is less than 800 wide, the sidebar disappears south. So I’ll be rejigging all that soon enough. Sita’s not keen on the font for G and W neither, so it simply has to go… enjoy it while it lasts… Them buttons are made for clicking…

Last night Sita made ‘plans’ to go to the cinema with her mates, but the advertised film they wanted to see wasn’t there so they ended up in a bar in Zapopan. Jose, victor and me went straight to La Barba Negra for beers and blues, since we don’t excuses to hit the bars. Jose’s had one hell of a week, he’s another one who should blog. Well, he does have one for his excellent poems but I reckon the world would like to know more about a week that ended with someone cycling away from his block of flats firing gunshots in the air and shouting “Arriba, Sinaloa”. Comment below to petition Jose to set up mividaesunatelenovelamalaybarata.blogspot.com …

Today we’re going to an Indian restaurant. Yep, in Guadalajara. It’s brand new and supposedly has curry… it’s been 9 long, curryless months and expectations are high… Shall reveal all manana…