People tend to arrive on this page to see if there are problems with http://isc.ro, your best bet is downforeveryoneorjustme.com/isc.ro to see if it’s down for everyone or just you.

EDIT: 1/12/08

When I logged into scrabble today I saw this message, thought it might help the folks who got here via google for ISC server status…

EDIT: 2/Nov/08: The isc.ro site’s been down for me (and everyone else according to http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/)  for a week or so. I can still log in and play though… Doesn’t bode well.

Internet Scrabble Club

EDIT: 1/June/08 : Just noticed a spike in traffic for hardcore scrabble addicts wondering what’s up with the ISC server. On their site it’s saying:

The main server is currently experiencing an outage. We do not have an estimated time to repair at present. ISC backup server is running, to connect select from the ‘Open Connection’ window ‘ISC backup server’
We apologize for the inconvenience.

I can’t connect to the backup server though… Hey ho. Looks like it’s back to Scrabulous on Facebook

Just testing a new button I’ve got on me browser that I can press when I want to blog a page I like… My scrabble rating’s presently at 915, highest ever. This year I intend to get past 1000. Sita’s moving over to the dark side though, with her Su Doku, so fat chance of any real world practice…

Just ask Mrs. Lisk

Did he even study for this exam? (c) Gwyn’s History School Report, 1988

The sad thing is I did. Anyroad, I’ve been all over the interweb and in and out of books researching the history of the Royal Inland Road and also listening to the Top of the Pods podcast (I even got me name read out on it the other day. And it has upwards of 1600 listeners…). So here is the natural conjunction of those two pasttimes: my
Top 10 historical things I’ve learnt about El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro:

10. The whole thing about Moctezuma thinking (Conquistador) Cortes was Quetzalcoatl- their lightning god- returning was probably a convenient myth made up by the priests to showcase once again that God was a Spaniard.

9 Guadalajara was founded in 4 separate places. Injuns was the usual excuse for upping camp and starting again down the road.

8 Guadalajara is named after renowned sadist/explorer Nuo de Guzmán’s home town in Spain.

7 Nomadic Indians were a lot harder to fight than the settled ones, hence the 40+ year Chichimeca War from 1550 to 1590ish. ‘Chichimeca’ is what the Aztecs (not the most peace-loving of nations) named them. It means, depending on which source you use, ‘of dog lineage’, ‘language of dogs’, ‘dog people’. Basically sons of bitches…

6 The camino was originally used for sucking all the mineral wealth out of Zacatecas and surrounding area and supplying them with vittles from Guadalajara. Cos the land round them parts weren’t none too fertile.

5 The Chichimecas found it very easy to attack these convoys and used their impressive bow and arrow skills to take out the muleteers and who they reckoned were atrespassin’ on their land. Hence the swift change of route to go via San Miguel de Allende to Mexico City and stay well away from Gwod.

4 The Chichmecas only started playing nicely when the Spanish/Mestizos stopped attacking and enslaving them and started trading trinkets and baubles instead. Half Chichimeca/ half Spanish Miguel Caldera spearheaded the operation of ‘Paz por compra’ (peace by purchase) which replaced the previous tactics of ‘Guerra a sangre y fuego’ (War of blood and fire, or more roughly, shock and awe…)

3 Juan de Oate extended the route from Zacatecas up to Santa Fe, New Mexico once the Chichimecas had calmed down a bit. But he still had troubles when he had to finance the whole thing and there wasn’t much in the way of gold/ silver/ docile natives to find. His brutal reprisals in Acoma at his mutinous men and indignant indigenous peeps by cutting off feet and suchlike made him few friends, even the Spanish Virreyes stripped him of all kinds of titles and fined him.

2 The Camino Real was later important for all kinds of historic events. Which I’m still getting to… Independence, Revolution, Cristero War. And ting.

1 Wikipedia is more useful than any other site on the interweb for historical research. If I earned a living wage, I’d donate… I read the founder’s personal appeal, and he says it’s there for ‘the child in Africa who is going to use free textbooks and reference works produced by our community and find a solution to the crushing poverty that surrounds him.” And I’m sure if he’d pondered it further, he’d have continued ‘and impoverished Brits trying to research background material for a documentary of trinational importance in Mexico”.

And also, thanks, Amy, the latest Guestmappee who’s no longer in manateeville but NYC with a predilectation for audience participation in Comedy Central satirical news shows.

Ajijic en español
Ajijic in English

Does blogging about blogging constitute metablogging? Here are some popular metablog themes of which I’ve been guilty:

• (bloody) Comment Spam
• “Sorry I haven’t updated this in a while, but…”
• Memes (questionnaires, etc that get forwarded from blog to blog like ‘mind viruses’) You are a Capricorn! type thing
• How to use my RSS (Richard Sutherland-Smith, I’m reliably informed) feed
• Sign my Guestmap
• Search terms that got people to the site. Michael Jackson Dance Moves is a regular one for Gwynunlimited, they get to the film review of 13 going on 30…
• Google Pagerank

Righty, I’m giving it a week and Gwyn’s blog is moving addresses and all because of the Russians and their underhand phentermine flogging tactics. What they give with www.allofmp3.com they take away with this stuff. The archive will stay here but I’ll turn off comments and shove a bit red CLICK HERE TO GO TO NEW BLOG button in the first entry, then I’m afraid you’ll have to update your bookmarks, links or aggregators and hie thee hence to agaveweb.com/blog. I meanwhile will have to notify feedburner, technorati, google, bloggingbrits, and a ‘sinfin‘ of other sites to try to nudge the pagerank up a bit.

Cesar was true to form and didn’t take us to the Lucha Libre last night, el muy cabron. But we’ll get there eventually especially after Ed’s glowing recommendation in the comments in the entry below, somewhere after online casino, but before Viagra. We went out for pozole and tacos instead and I watched another DVD- Zatoichi, the Blind Swordsman. Review coming soon to the IFRAME on the right… Breakfast and work beckon… hasta pronto, gwyn

WELCOME! Thanks for clicking through. I’ll continue with the entries about my life in Guadalajara, Mexico as often as I can, with the occasional link to new photos here and in the Flickr Photos bit on the right. Stuff I read/watch ends up reviewed in the IFRAME to the right as well, with the occasional link to longer posts. Because of WordPress’s easy integration with Flickr and other stuff, expect more links to sites I like and better annotated photos.

Archives from 2004-2006 from the old blog are available here and might even be available in a PDF one of these days… Of course there’s still a wealth of rubbish to read here too.

Un Inglés en Guanatos is Spanish for An English bloke in Guadalajara. Although there’s a fair amount of the Welsh in my ethnic makeup English will have to do for the tagline for the time being. Guanatos, is what locals call Guadalajara, like Brum for Birmingham, Bridgey for Bridgwater, Chilangolandia for Mexico City, etc…. Self-Apsorption Central is the English version of the title, ‘cos it’s pretty much all about me, by me and for people who know me. It took me about 15 months to realise that absorption isn’t spelt with a ‘b’ too… Anyroad, if you have any suggestions for a better tagline, feel free to comment it. Talking of which… Comments can be sent via the comment thing at the bottom of each entry, this time though, you’ll have to type the letters/numbers combo in before it will let you add anything, this (as I’ve gone into in too much depth already) is to banish the spam once and for all…

You’ll still find the usual introspection and apercus about the goings on round my way (often interupted with the gratuitous use of parentheses, ellipsises and the word ‘anyroad’…) and I’m more than happy to enter into correspondance about anything I’ve mentioned. I’m still up for recording mp3s of me playing acoustic guitar versions of any songs you’d care to mention too, so far: Here comes the Sun, Land of my fathers, and an as yet unidentified Name That Tune.

What else is new?

• Well if you wanted to find the article where I went into depth about how to hypnotise rabbits you can now search for it with box down there on the right.
• The Blogroll is a growing list of people’s blog I myself read. I’d be glad to add you if you’re not there yet. Unless your name is Phentermine.
• RSS is now an option if you’re into that kind of thing, you’ll find a wealth of options for that.
• You can Skype me at most hours of the day.
• If you’ve never added yerself to the guestmap, that’s something else that further brightens up me days.

So that’ll be all for now, can’t spend all my lunchtime blogging now can I? Arse, I just did… Shall have to have a quick walk around the block and have a Milky Way so I feel the benefit. Thanks for stopping by and feel free to make your presence known. Looking forward to your continued support and readership. Salud!

Cesar lent me a load of photos from 1998 when we went to visit Lake Chapala, I’ve just scanned some of them in. I’ve put on weight since then, but not as much as Cesar. ja ja. The lake’s put on weight too, mind. Best year evah.

Have to go to work in 5 mins, so a quick post about the weeked. Saturday: Sita had her tequila class and I changed the oil in the car. Well I took it to an oil change place, there’s no quickilube so it had to be a garage. i thought I’d show some brand loyalty and took it to Multiservicios Gaytan first, but they were closing and somewhat brusque so i went elsewhere and got to watch the entire mysterious process which you don’t usually get to see. Jose came round in the evening and we never got round to the podcast cos he’d forgotten his notebook (the paper sort). Good night all the same, though. Yesterday I went to the baratillo (pictured) the huge sprawling market that takes over Oblatos on Sundays and picked up Aeon Flux, which has had terrible reviews but what the hey… since I was in the barrio i checked in on Cesar at his house, he was there and i caught up on 2 yrs worth of news. He might be up for going to see Lucha Libre (Mexican Wrestling) on Tuesday evening, but I’ll not hold my breath. Watched Shaolin Soccer in the evening which was grand, then flicked through the channels and got hooked on a fantastic film about drug addiction, i didn’t know what i was watching till the end, but it was Requiem for a Dream. Bloody brilliant film, i foresee a lot of nightmares. It’s by the same director as PI, which is another great film… anyroad, off to work. Wish me luck, I’m meant to have come up with some kind of unifying theme for the Camino Real documentary and to be honest, I haven’t. it’s hard to summarize the history of a 2000 mile stretch of road over 500 years. In Spanish. Ah, we’ll see how it goes, i’ve got a few ideas…

When grooming rabbits, make sure you ground them first.

Frankenschipperke:

I’m following a load (or ‘bunch’ for you Americans out there) of tutorials from watchandlearnphotoshop.com. Every now and again they send me a link to a new one in the hope I’ll shell out for the full course one day. It might happen yet. In the mean time it’s like having a new craft project come through the letterbox. I enjoyed the ‘add rain to a picture‘ one and this one was how to make an ancient map. So this is what an OS map of Gwod would look like after one of sita’s gas explosions. Probably. Making it reminded me of a stand out English class in Taunton School (16 years ago?), in the 5th year, or whatever it’s called these days. It was Mr. Hughes and we were reading Fahrenheit 451, a book about the near future with firemen being in charge of burning books and the totalitarian police, etc. Anyway, one inspired day, our homework (Jesus, we had to call it ‘Prep’ in those days) was for each of us to memorise a page in one particular chapter to recite. The next class, we had to rip that page out and put it in a bin in the middle of the room and then he set light to the lot, in the classroom… then we’d go around the class reciting the chapter in the acrid smoke of burnt paper and remnants of chewing gum, biros etc in the bin. Thrilling stuff actually, and doubtless illegal nowadays. As with most books that year, we never got around to finishing it and ended up watching the video. Even Hamlet. You know, the one with Mel Gibson.

Thanks Mum, the book you posted on Dec 12 2005 arrived yesterday intact. There’s hope yet. Don’t suppose the beautifully crafted DVD tour of our house has turned up your end yet though? Sita and I spent Beth and Ali’s Amazon voucher last night, fingers crossed, is should arrive end of Feb at present speeds.

Sita’s learning about Tequila and China right now in her diploma class. I’m about to cook me turkey bacon (and made Shepherd’s Pie last night). Jose’s probably coming round this evening and we’re going to Podcast some of his poetry with minor chords acoustic guitar accompaniment. Viva Bohemia. Cheers

I’ve spent more and more time deleting comment spam and blocking IP addresses of late than I’d care to. The program I use to make this blog is called GreyMatter and it’s starting to creak of late. However, because it was old it was fairly easy to customise…
Since I got a WordPress blog with my agaveweb site, I’ve been trying to customise that too and I think I’ve got it more or less how I want it. No more online craps for me, hopefully… However, I’m still not quite ready to update all the links to this blog to go to agaveweb.com/blog yet. Also, it’s taken me the best part of 3 years to earn my 4/10 google page rank and I’m loathe to leave it behind and start from scratch. When I change over there’ll be all kinds of warnings first. Have a look at how it is now. I’ve tried to make it look like this page does now (how’d you like the new Viva Mexico colours?, by the way), but it’s got a few extra features like search, tags and all kinds of RSS. And writing entries should be a lot more straightforward…

Stay tuned…

If I understand this correctly, I’ve been tagged by Kristen and should fill out the following: (edit) and since this post needs some kind of decoration, here’s my transparent laptop again

Four jobs I’ve had in my life:
Daffodil Picker (Taunton, Somerset)
Scrumpy Bottler (Monkton Heathfield, Somerset) That would be a great name for this blog… maybe not…
TEFL Teacher (Seville, Spain)
Itinerant Web Designer (Santa Cruz, California to Guadalajara, Mexico and beyond)

Four movies I could watch over and over:
The Big Lebowski,
Serenity,
Ghostbusters,
Withnail & I

Four places I have lived:
Swansea, Wales
Amherst, MA, USA
Aranjuez, Spain
Taunton, UK

Four TV shows I love to watch:
Peep Show
Family Guy
People Like Us
The Daily Show

Four places I have been on vacation:
Donegal, Ireland
Prague, Czech Republic
Provence, France
Llangynidir, Brecon, Wales
and that was just this summer…

Four websites I visit daily:
boingboing.net
flickr.com
guardian.co.uk
bbc.co.uk

Four of my favorite foods
Chips as in Fish’n’chips. But without the fish. And with proper vinegar. And from the Kowloon House opposite Sainsbury’s at 12:30am on a Friday ideally.
Tacos al pastor– like mini doner kebabs (actually starting to salivate now…)
Filet mignon… or any rare steak. God, it’s like an addiction. I’m making up for those vegetarian years…
Milk chocolate hobnobs.

Four places I would rather be right now:
down the pub,
at the cinema,
in a 3rd rate seaside amusement arcade playing on the fruit machines,
back in La Matera awaiting the main course…

Four bloggers I am tagging:
Ed, just to see if he does anything with this, since he’s got a travel blog and isn’t into memes of any description. And he’s just scored a ticket to Brazil.
Flash, who’s another one for self-absorption in her posts. In the good way, natch.
Annelise, who’s always working extremely hard in paediatric wards in Rugby. At nighttime too probably.
Chris, whose film reviews I always wish I’d written.

Blimey, quite a few links in there. Am definitely changing to a better blog engine if I have to write a href=”http://www.w.w.w.w.w…gergerg.er.gr.st.h.com” one more time… Anyroad, viva el meme, and cheers for now…

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MEG!

Mum says it was fine to celebrate last night since I was born at 2am ish and we’re 6 hours behind GMT.
Happy birthday to Keith Chegwin, James Earl Jones and Susanna Hoffs out of the Bangles, if they’re reading too…

Since Pat’s leaving this morning, we had our b-day celebrations a day early and went to La Matera to eat our own weight in perfectly cooked very rare steak. We sampled a couple of Chilean wines and at the end of it Sita got a waiter to come over with a mil hojas cake with a candle and i was sung (with varying levels of expertise), Las Mananitas. It didn’t reach the level of brutality that Ed mustered with his pinata, and that’s a good thing. Jose also showed up with the latest Propaganda (Jose’s an incredibly accomplished poet… among other things). Anyroad, a few more beers and comeraderie at home and then off to bed latish. A fine, fine night all round. The only negative point is that I might not be up for Fernando and Aldo’s DJing this evening, then again, maybe with a strategic power nap… I’m not as young as I used to be you know. I don’t know how these kids manage it. The prospect of a quiet evening in with Sita, vino tinto, scrabble and one of the DVDs she got me is looking better every minute. Thanks for all the emails and comments, muy amables todos.

This is my fave pic from today:

with this one a close second: Click the cowboys pic for a look at all the new photos from Zapopan, Chapala, Ajijic and Jocotepec. V. nice day it was, i had my favourite fish (and favourite Spanish word) for lunch, huachinango (red snapper), sita looked on in disgust as Pat and I worked our way through whitebait type fried fishy things and we took in the view of the lake. Great weekend all round. La Matera tomorrow evening for a pre-bday bash and Tuesday for continued festivities.

Ma Come No was the Italian restaurant of choice for Friday evening’s celebrations. Highly recommended, we suggest the Spanish Tempranillo… Saturday had me and pat checking out the patchouli oil and Tim Burton sponsored hippy market, the Tianguis Cultural before hightailing it over to Zapopan to see a disturbing statue of Juan Pablo II with little Juan Diego, huichol history (including unexplained taxidermy), modernish art in MAZ the Museo de Arte de Zapopan, and a filling lonche with all the requisite salsas. Sita took Pat to our little neighbourhood coffee shop, Starbucks for bickies and cafe and then supplies in Gigante. Victor and Jayna came round for lemon chicken and suchlike. After they left we watched Lord of War, Nicholas Cage as the prototypical arms dealer, then bed.

This morning: Skype with mis abuelitas and brekky, now we’re off to Chapala to check out Jocotepec, a little further on from Ajijic, where i went with Monica, Daniel and Ed last week. Pizza and a movie this evening… Little descriptive detail here since we’re in the key finding stage of leaving the house, cheers

Just had to leave the office and go home to check in on everyone after I got the alarming message that our kitchen had exploded. Sita had lit the oven to make toast for her and Pat. The flame had gone out and the kitchen smelled of gas. She tried to light it again, only to have it explode, shunting the cupboards to the side of it about 4 inches, blowing open the doors and firing all the hobs/rings all over the kitchen. Obviously just the wrong combination of butane and air… Sita got off with a ringing in her ears and a sudden crowd of neighbours and Avon ladies advising her to eat bread to get over the shock… Blimey. Quite a morning. Anyroad, it looks like the stove´s alright and after putting things back in their place Sita seems OK too, and luckily she´s got the ever-reliable Pat for company. Looks like it´ll be The Waffle Factory on Avenida Mexico for breakfast though… The photo is of my little desk in me office, there’s a couple more photos on Flickr of the view of the plaza and the bar where Sita and I met, and where we took Pat last night before a meal of Ropa Vieja in the Cuban restaurant, La Bodeguita del Medio.

Well, here I am on day 3 at me new job. I was first in the office and managed to walk here from the house despite a late night jam session with Aldo’s band (more of which later). It appears my main job is to research the history of the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, make notes and find a way of presenting it as a documentary project to possible funders. It’s a lot like being a student again, except this time I’ve got a PC and not the Acorn Archimedes as a partner in crime and I’m reading more during the day than back in Swansea. I’m also working on some postcard ads to advertise my web services to the many specialist shops that are in this mall. It’s a nice easy start and I’m very much in favour of the 10am start time. So I’m getting plenty of creative input. I even suggested Les Rythmes Digitales for a demo yesterday and they went with it. Which was nice. It’s a little too early to try and incorporate scrabble into my schedule though, and maybe hold off the Skype for a week or so.

So last night I went round to Aldo’s mansion in Zapopan where he was practicing with the band to be Guadalajara’s premier covers group. It was v. impressive, musically as well as in range. I played The Cure’s Just Like Heaven, Jarabe de Palo’s La Flaca and a couple of others. They played everything from Judas Priest’s “Breaking the law, breaking the law” to Toto’s Love isn’t always on time, with riotous aplomb. Fair play to ‘em. They’re definitely out of my league musically, but I had fun.