and Geoff… Give us a skype when you get the chance, eh?

So my first night in Mexico alone passed without incident. I was back from work well late in the evening because I had to finish off the political campaign propaganda and we were waiting on the scanning company to provide us with the pictures from the photoshoot in 3m x 2m format (300dpi, about 500 meg each, 1 per CD…). They wanted to charge us US$300 per photo but when we told them we’d do it ourselves the price fell to 3 dollars. Makes you wonder… Anyroad, I tried loading it into my computer and it more or less glared narkily at me and then disappeared into a desert-like heat haze. Even the G5 mac was struggling with that filesize. Anyway it’s done. They’re happy and it’s my first successful foray into Mexican graphic design. Yay! If he gets the candidateship there’ll be a web site in the offing too…

On Tuesday we managed 4 episodes of Lost in a row. I was chomping at the bit to watch some more episodes last night, but since Sita wasn’t around and this is a voyage for the pair of us, I made do with the methadone equivalent of watching Episode 8 with the Commentary on, the English bloke from Driveshaft and one of the writers rambling away. Quite entertaining but I still need a real Lost hit… and I’ve seen all my Phoenix Nights series one episodes too. Might have to get UK Novaing and see how Flash is doing on Deal or No Deal.

Today it’s going to be Camino Real research, accessibilityfying my web design site and that’s about it. If Jose’s feeling better there’s a chance we’ll go off filming, though Sita’s got my (still) camera. She’ll get better usage out of it that I would. One of these days I want to spend a while in Tequila taking B&W shots of agave fields. I’ve a feeling it will come to pass…

Click for Oscar Bingo cards from The Wave
With a week’s notice, you can probably print them out in colour at work… My favourite: “Winner thanks agent before God” then “reference to anyone as ‘genius'”. Enjoy 🙂

well after discovering that any colour but blue is okay for the party political propaganda. Back to square one… (It’s like designing for The Socialist Workers Party in Royal Blue… except in reverse. D’oh). But I got something made and it’s been approved for the candidate. Huzzah. Should mean a bit of beer money coming my way in the near future. I might put the winning design up in a few weeks time… I’m still not sure how separate this blog is from the corporate site in terms of search engines…

Brace yourself for some reviews. I’m going to be extremely busy these next few days but hopefully I’ll manage to fit in some reviews of: Manu Chao (and the Radio Bemba riots) live in Gwod (Chingón), Two for the Money (middling), and The King (A curate’s egg). Buying the first season DVD of Lost yesterday is not going to help my time management neither… And did I mention Sita’s off on a three day tequila course in Tequila on Wednesday? Alrighty, 9:41am now am off to get the 39A bus to Plaza Bonita…

Went out for a fantastic fondue meal last night. Two parts cheesy bread to one part steak washed down with Casillero del Diablo. I felt a little sketchy afterwards though. I blame the cheese… anyway thanks to a relatively early night I’ve been very productive today working out a pricing schedule for the website. I’m trying to get my head round which reseller hosting service to use, any ideas? I’m hoping Flash might be able to help on this one… I’m also working on a logo for a local political candidate to put on t-shirts, mugs, business cards, etc… to run past him on Monday. Sita’s been v. helpful with nods and shakes of the head. She hasn’t seen this one yet cos she’s at the gym… never mind…

I’m in two minds as to whether to go off photoing stuff in the fading light this afternoon. Jose hasn’t rung- last night he turned up to tell us he was feeling very ill. And contagious. So we packed him off back to his flat and went out on our own. Me and him were going to go off filming in a barrio across town but that’s looking unlikely. I think we’re staying in this evening for Capote and wine. Not too much though cos we’re going to see Manu Chao in concert tomorrow evening. I’m more than a little excited about this… I hope they let me take my camera. It’s in the bull ring and should be fantastic. He’s one of the few acts I still own a T-shirt of… My Suicidal Tendencies ones have disintegrated since I got them at Clash of the Titans 15 years ago… Jose had a photo from ’98 he showed me where I’m proudly wearing my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shirt. Wish i still had it. Anyroad… Busy busy busy and all that might post more stuff in the near future. NB. Designing political propaganda does not mean I neccesarily endorse the party…

Fancy checking out the beta phase of my latest creation? Well in that case, hie thee hence to Sinescopio- Diseño Web y Traducción desde Guadalajara, Mexico. And tell your spanish-speaking web-site-needing friends 😉

DevilDucky – Fatboy Slim: The Joker
Via Cute Overload
What’s not to like?

Another late night. Sarah came round for a meal and sociomological debate and we ended up watching the Daily Show late, hence another tired day and it’s only 10:30… Just blogging about the new google beta product, google homepages or somesuch. It’s a wysiwyg AJAX interface thing and seems fairly user-friendly, I made myself a page in 5 minutes with a template so anyone can do it. Providing they have a gmail account, of course… I don’t feel too threatened just yet. If they introduced a text html editor then I’d start to panic… more news if and when it happens…

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

Bus buster

I get RSS notifications whenever anyone uploads a photo tagged with guadalajara, or taunton and various other things. I’m glad I didn’t miss this one, of the 629 which passes not far from here… Ivan’s photoblog, by the way, is at lensations.com and has some great (old school non digital) b&w shots. As I point out in the Flickr, comments, at least 629 reads the same upside down… Todo se puede en Mexico.

Need sleep. Can’t…read…any….more… mainly cos Sr. Frog came round for a bit more recording of his propagandas last night. The first takes are hidden Easter Egg/Strongbad style somewhere on the pinguino frog page if you’d like a sneak peak of the raw material. we’re going to do a bit of filming this weekend to go with them and see what occurs.

Sita had some good news yesterday in terms of grants and stuff. She loves emails, ask her all about it…

Normal service tomorrow, etc. etc…

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…

Click the photo or here for the photos from today’s excursion to Iztépete. I’d never heard of the place until I flicked through Sarah’s Guide to Gwod book and it sounded interesting. It’s no Chichen Itza or Maccu Pichu but it’s pleasant enough. Hell, it ain’t even stone burrows on the Quantocks. It’s not far away, just off the corner of the huge streets Mariano Otero and el Periferico and though not really signposted, it’s easy to see. It probably looks better in the rainy season but is still worth a visit. It was discovered in 1954 and dates from around 650 AD, so not as old as the roman ruins mum and dad were wandering around in Cartagena…

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?

See what I’m reduced to whilst waiting for Sita to get home from her tequila class?