I’ve been faffing about trying to get a video to show up in cinescopio’s webpage. It’s the demo for the company. Here’s the dilemma: you need quicktime 7 installed which is a pain to download (cos they try to foist iTunes on you too), but it’s much better quality. I thought about using Flash but you still need the latest version to get decent video. There’s always the .AVI option with wide compatibility but crappy compression. My question, por favor, is when you click on this link and wait 30 seconds or so, are you presented with a state-of-the-art company demo, or just a bunch of error messages. Many many thanks in advance.
We’ve already bought our flights, so hopefully won’t need these: State-of-the-art shoes aid migrants 125 quid’s a bit steep for your average border crosser though… but great idea all the same… via boingboing.net
American Visa is about a Bolivian English teacher who’s trying to get to the US but faces no end of troubles getting his visa at the INS. He eventually turns to crime to get enough money to bribe his way through the red tape. It didn’t quite come to that in my case, but very nearly… Anyroad, the film ain’t bad, it has some very nice shots of La Paz, especially by night, and it’s fast moving enough. Where it falls down (heavily) is the ‘love’ story between the main bloke, Mario and lap dancer Blanca (Nefertiti) which beggars belief. Once again, corruption and crime is the main theme for the film which sits in firmly in the Latin American school of cinema. Nice to see the US getting the same treatment too, though. Unfortunately there were no subtitles and I had a fair bit of trouble with the accent, especially Blanca’s who sounds like a Bonaerensian with a speech defect. So maybe that’s my fault. Overall, to use local newspaper, El Público’s rating system, dominguera (Sundayish) but with some nice cinematographic flourishes.
This will take about 10 minutes if you fancy it yourself… fill in the blanks for 80s lyrics. Slightly US-centric but i’m not bitter. Can you beat 79.5? … Matt, I throw down the gauntlet…
just watched a bolivian film called American Visa review coming shortly in the right hand column… It might be time to move this computer upstairs, i’m writing far too many entries of late…
Afterwards we went to Home Depot to pick up woodstain and stuff, which was like being back in Downey. talking of which, I think we’ve worked out when we’re going back for a week or so to help with the move and to renew visas. No Pink Panther this evening, I’m pleased to report. So it’s pizza and either Capote or American Visa…
This morning I played around with the fantastic mosaic program (website here) and knocked up a few mosaics, they’ll be on flickr soon enough, but are taking forever to upload. While we have a decent DSL connection for downloading, the upload limit seems to be around 5k per second. Not something they advertise, the cabrones at telmex…
Here’s a few photos me dad’s put up on teh intarwebs from their iberian travels. Dad- you’re missing out by not using flickr. Use the Flickr Uploadr and bob’s yer father’s brother. People can leave comments and stuff then. Just an idea… yer username’s john_f for the record 🙂 Today’s additions include a few new car/surrounding and railway pix…
Oh and T, thanks v. much for the comment. 1006 isn’t an actual scrabble score though, it’s a rating calculated by how much you win/lose by against other rated opponents. I think my highest online score was around 550 pts… if you ever download the game (it’s free) let us know and go easy on me 😉 Hope it’s all sorted out with your jardinero, too.
More cantinas last night, El Rincon de la Doa (specialising in sangrita to go with your tequila) and then bar calavera with young Jose, his sister and Helena. We hung around at the house for a bit afterwards and then after they left I watched The Daily Show with Rob Cordry standing in for Jon Stewart (10/10 for effort, but it’s not the real thing) and Episode 5 of The IT Crowd, which was fantastic. I’ll be putting that DVD on my Amazon wish list, but only if the stuff I ordered in Jan gets here OK… Another noteworthy thing happened last night, i got my scrabble rating to 1006. Now I’m afraid to play another game cos I know i’ll lose. I’ll try to shut up about the whole subject until I get to 1100…
This morning was a little sketchy but I managed to pick up my beautiful business cards and go on a wander with me camera. I was just starting to get into taking photos of the rolling stock on the railway off of Avenida Inglaterra, when a security bloke came up and asked me what I was doing and told me to leave. I’m increasingly realising, though, that if you don’t get told to stop taking pictures you’re doing something wrong. Same with driving, if you don’t get honked at or use your horn round here it’s a wasted journey. Anyroad, I got the cards and made my way home listening to the latest Top of the Pods and Total Pod Catastrophe (see spanking new PodCasts sidebar to the right). I stopped for a torta ahogada and ambled home and sita arrived too. She had to have an ahogada too so we went to the little torta shop 20 yards from our house. There Sita befriended a dulux dog puppy (pastor ingles), who was pretty cute, but no Atticus. Then a quick skype with me mum and dad who are back from sunny spain with all kinds of tales.
This afternoon? you ask, well we’re going to get supplies from CostCo then off round Victor and Jana’s again for more sophistimicated dinner party type stuff. It’s looking like the Pink Panther’s on for tomorrow. God help us. In my defence I’ve got a Buuel DVD waiting to be seen too. Isn’t it time for another police academy?
My scrabble rating’s at 995 after a quick succession of blinding games. Maybe this weekend will be the watershed millenial game, or i may just plunge back to the 800s. It depends how late I’m out tonight with the usual crowd. Last night Sarah, her sister Betsy, Sita and me went to a few cantinas. La Fuente, (de rigeur on any cantina trip), La Maestranza, (for all your bull fighting memorabilia and 90s indie pop needs) and Los Molachos (named after the original owner who was indeed molacho , or missing lots of teeth). Still managed to make it to another productive day at work. They finally read over what I’ve been doing and are suitably impressed. Go me! (he wrote in a fit of self-congratulation). Business cards tomorrow and next week there’s going to be a sales person on the case, as they’re hiring a pushy young lady to go out and rain make or whatever they call it in marketing parlance. That would be good… Other plans: Tonight, more cantinas. Tomorrow, Tlaquepaque craft & photography, possible fiesta in the evening, Sunday, Laid back philosophical discussion, gauloises and strong coffees or maybe The Pink Panther remake. Whatever it is, you’ll read it here first. And last.
Remember way back in January the photos from Chapala with Ed, Monica, Daniel and Pat. Well I’ve been virtually wandering the planet on Google Earth again and zoomed in on Chapala. Here’s how it looked when you had to walk 1500 yds from the end of the pier to get to the water:
Still a bit too quiet on the web design front, although I think I could probably do a series of lectures on the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro. Were it not for my crushing fear of public speaking… Anyway, I just sent off my business card to the printers. 100 will be ready on Saturday. So don’t tell me about any spelling mistakes please. On the actual card, my phone and address aren’t blurred. Both sides are shown in the pic. Hopefully I can drum up some interest, but 10% commission to anyone who finds me a client 😉
Had a nice little ‘Dia de amistad y amor’ yesterday. I cooked belgian endives au gratin. Which aren’t cheap becaue they’re grown hydroponically round here. Probably cheaper than roses mind. Just. Anyroad, it turned out well nice and Sita provided the postre. Obdulio made an appearence in the evening on the way back from his sisters’ with more ideas for the propaganda multimedia experience. No word from my folks of late. I think they’re in Spain, but they keep making an appearence on Skype. So it’s either cyberghosts or one of those burglars who checks their email while going through the family heirlooms.
Many congrats, Ms. Butler on the Davis thing. We’re v. happy for you- nice one! Plenty of black sheep round that way, I’m sure. Sita’s told me also about Atticus’s latest escapades in Downey via her mum. He’s got them running around after him at 4 am which can’t be something to encourage. If you’re reading, Asparagus, cut it out.
The photo above is the humming bird one with the moon shopped into the background to give it some depth. Is it convincing? Comment away as per usual. Cheers- g
Un par de jours sans bloguer- toujours rien a declarer. Still having nowt to write never stopped me before. Sita told me off for writing ‘me and jose went’ instead of ‘jose and I’ a couple of posts ago, so here we go with some of my writing tics. I got an A in my GCSE English Language and I was a TEFL teacher for long enough to know which rules I’m breaking on a daily basis. For what it’s worth, it helps to read this blog with a slight somerset burr. Top 10 Grammatical Rules I give short shrift to:
10. Subject/ Object pronoun difference. Bert’n’me couldn’t be arsed.
9. Using the subjunctive in conditional clauses. If I was you I’d use more sugar.
8. Ending sentences with prepositions. Hot, sticky climes are summink I’ll not put up with.
7. Capitalisation. some days not. Other days yes.
6. Spelling. Some words I can’t spell first time with and not having a spell checker to hand, I’ll just shove in more letters until it looks right. N.B. doesn’t necccasserilly always work.
5. Overcompensation for Americanisms. It’s been an ongoing battle against MS Word for it to recognise English spelling as default. Not just things like colour, centre and Yours Sincerely (instead of Sincerely), but the subtler ones like travellers (with 2 Ls) and realise (with an S). For me, no words end in -ize.
4. Sentence fragments. Quote from the Simpsons. Lisa has made a grammar robot:
Lisa: Almost done. Just lay still. Linguo: Lie still. Lisa: I knew that. Just testing. Linguo: Sentence fragment. Lisa: ‘Sentence fragment’ is also a sentence fragment. Linguo: Must conserve battery power.
3. Overuse of ‘…’ … Not antigrammatical, but surely bad grammar… Just how my brain works I’m afraid… In conversation I’ll do the same… trail off each sentence into mumbling. So that’s what they’re there for…
2. The Jean Teasdale school of parenthetical asides (and consequently where to put the punctuation.). ?
1. Starting every other sentence with I. Well, it is a personal blog called self-absorbtion central, and I know not everyone wants there actions engraved forever in hypertext on teh internets.
So there you go. If you notice any others, feel free to comment them if you find yourself with nowt better to do today. Happy birthday Ms Butler and Valentine’s to the rest of you. Happy B-day Guadalajara too, 464 today!
Friday Jose and me went round his pseudo-uncle’s office for his music sharing group thing. I brought a mix CD made with low qualityish MP3s which was frankly a bit embarassing to follow J.S.Bach’s organ music with, but hey ho. It’s impressive how listening to high quality organ music drags me back to Taunton School and the enforced chapel in the morning. And pretty far removed from Wellspring’s wurlitzer. Anyroad, made for a nice change and afterwards I watched Kill Bill 2 into the early hours. Yesterday I rambled into town snapping any cars that looked like where they were parked. And the occasional anatomically correct cow pinata. Grabbed some ‘new’ DVDs, Capote, Requiem for a Dream, American Visa and (just to get the bargain price of 4 for 100 pesos) The Wedding Crashers (I think Monica said it was a laugh…). Back to the house for a nap then Jose appeared and we went scouting for a location to do some more poetry/filming stuff. There’s a modern art museum I hadn’t even heard of in La Plaza del Arte, with lots of sculptures and suchlike outside which should be perfect. I used one of the pictures to update pinguino frog’s propaganda 10 page a bit. I don’t know if it works in Explorer though, as i mentioned earlier… afterwards, off to Jana and Victors for a meal that included such treats as mandarin, fennel and baby spinach leaves salad, couscous garlic and chicken. And brownies. House prices weren’t mentioned which is an excellent sign for any dinner party. Avian flu, requiem for a dream, scrabble and suduko kept us chatting mind.
Today lazy as you like. This site was down for some reason earlier. Hope that’s not a recurring thing. We’re off to Sarah’s for her birthday later. she’s cooking summink for us. Which should be grand. I’ve been listening to a few new podcasts of late. For webdesign, there’s this english nerd and his mate talking about design issues at boagworld.com that’s really informative, then NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me is now available for download, rather than streaming which is tidy, and then there’s a fledgling podcast, Total Pod Catastrophe which is v. promising. I think I’ll shove one on now and do the dishes, before a starbucks coffee and off round young Sarah’s. Happy 28th, if you’re reading, Sarah 🙂 . Aquarius?…
You’ll be ecstatic to hear that the hard drive’s fine. It’s still something of a mystery what happened there. The reinstall is far from perfect but I think it’s cos I installed the beta version of IE7 and that wrought all manner of unholy things upon the registry. I’m not the only one on teh intarwebs that can’t use Explorer anymore. So that’s quite a shot in the foot for Microsoft. I’m a Firefox user because I have no choice… Maybe one day they’ll get round to writing a patch so i can reinstall IE. At least I have some DVD backups to show for all my troubles… Ah whatever, enough tech-ery.
Do you live in the Unaitid Esteits de Gringolandia? If so you can see what your house is worth and your neighbours’, have a look at this site here: www.zillow.com. Walking the line between the entertaining and the downright scarey. While it’s spot on for the greater L.A. region, it’s a bit more hazy in the Pioneer Valley…
Erm what else? Sita’s doing the tequila thing, i’m on page 10 of my camino real essay, erm, went out with gringos, koreans and a mexican for an italian last night, possible music club thing with jose and co tonight, sarah’s for a meal on sunday… that’ll do for now. I’m reticent to post entries when there’s no photos to go with them. so that’s yer lot for now. Thanks for the comments- Spam free for 16 days!
The good thing about working in an office with tech savvy folk is that they understand when you phone in saying your computer is sick and you have to nurse it back to health. ‘Llevalo al doctor’ they said, ‘es tu bebe’… So i went to the doctor to check on their prices and they said it would cost around 50 bucks to back up the hard drive, then whatever to replace it. Now, my computer was refusing to start in safe mode even, so i did a scan in command prompt and sometimes it found errors, sometimes not. So I tried a reinstall of XP. It kept saying it could’t find key files on the install CD so I just skipped them. Now it appears to be working fine, but to be on the safe side, I’m backing up my important files (5 DVDs so far…), doing a thorough virus check, and then I’m going to try a reinstall again. Then maybe go to work this afternoon… ah PCs. This evening up to 16 people from Sita’s old Spanish course may be coming round so while I watched progress bars snail across the screen i did a bit of a spring clean… last night was the Grammies and scrabble, for anyone interested… Cross yer fingers everyone for the little hard drive that could…
We’ve already bought our flights, so hopefully won’t need these: 
