Grilling time

I was back in the UK recently and amongst many things, meal, meeting friends, drinking, I did something I haven’t done in a long time. Something which has prepared me in some way for my up coming BBQ.

I grilled some toast. 

And I don't mean just sticking some cheese on top of toast and grilling that. I mean taking bread and turning it to toast with a grill, not a toaster. How 1990's.*

Motherhubbard toast in a Monday to Friday grill

As you can see this was in early stages of toast cooking.

And I hope this won’t put off people eating BBQ’s at mine but I did burn one piece of toast.

Fingers crossed that the BBQ goes a little better.

*My family weren't very Tech Savvy when I was a kid and we were late adaptors to toasters.

Can I Digg it?

With it being an extended weekend and my visit back to the UK later this evening I have declared the office ‘Dress Down Friday.’

And for this occasion I will be accessorising.

Nice hat
I’ve decided to try out a hat for the next few days/weeks/summer.

So I will be heading back to Runcorn for a few days to celebrate a birthday. And I was investigating the weather (what else is a Brit to do but worry about the weather)
Seems I’ll be missing out

 
Stop hiding Sun

Not good. Not good at all. At least my hat should keep me dry.

But your all here for your Friday Digg fix. Today’s a video fun packed feast to get you through your one day extended rainy weekend. Happy May!

We Didn’t Start the Flame War. This video should be the very first thing any new persons to teh interwebs should see. For bonus epic pwnage read the comments in Digg. How’d they do that? [video]

TV edit of Snakes on a Plane. This is how not to sound repitivie you mother f**ckers. Although it’s a fight between “monkey fighting” and “monkey frying.” Which one is it? [video]

Denise Richards’ Fun Bags. I ain’t saying no more about her Fun Bags as I’d get in trouble.

Durex Warranty. Nice design. [photo]

Japanese Food. It’ comes in very small packages. [photos]

6 Random Coincidences That Created The Modern World. I wonder the World would be if just one of these didn’t happen? [article]

A Real North West England Urban Legend. Man breeches “muscle squeeze and squat ban” (WTF??). Two words. Purple Aki! [news]

The Dark Knight 1960’s. Why so serious? [video]

Ferries Bueller Fight Club Theory. Great idea. I wish it was true. [article]

Empire State Building:Made by hands. Photos from when ESB was built. The good old Healty and Safety-less days.

Pumpcast News. News at your local gas pump. Funny skit. [video]

And finally. From this weeks popbitch, again.

 “A story about a big squirrel and a baby squirrel.”

JUMP little guy JUMP!

Feeling lucky

These last few days I’ve been feeling very very lucky.

First I had popped down the shops to get some tomatoes for sandwiches. As I was lightly jogging up the stairs, as you do, I came centimetres away from stepping on a SNAKE! A monkey-fried snake.

A monkey-fried snake on a Monday to Friday step. [bonus second photo]

This guy is by far better then any of the lizard spots I’ve seen over the last 13 months here.
Pretty lucky that I just happened to go get tomatoes at that time.

Then, later on me and the missus were out attending some evening for a local pub football and pool team. The seasons have finished and they' were having a trophy giveaway.
They were offering out raffle tickets and I picked up two. The tickets were for a game of “Play Your Cards Right,” you know, that game were you have to say whether the next card is higher or lower.
So my number got called out first and I stepped up to the cards. About 14 cards later (all in one go with only one change your card move) I had won.
A grand total of 89€. Sweet!
(There is a photo on someone’s camera of me, with trilby, €89 all gangsta style. A bit like this. Double sweet. If it comes back to me I’ll make sure to post it for sheer badass-ness.)
What makes this win a little bit better is that I was told Play Your Cards Right is a popular game in this bar and normally last 30 minutes to an hour with any number of people getting up to play after other fail. So me to get up and go from start to end in one go that’s pretty lucky.

And finally. After going down to one of the beach restaurants yesterday to spend my weekends winnings I topped up my phone on the way back. Since moving on to pay as you go I’m pretty crap when it comes to staying on top of keeping credit on my phone. So I grabbed a 15€ top up voucher from a shop, put in the pin and got a message saying I had 25€ credit!

My tired old phone.

Now I’m sure that Orange were having some special offer for those people that keep forgetting to top up there phone and telling them “do it now for free €10” as I got a message from Orange earlier that day but like normal deleted it immediately.
So it’s pretty lucky that I can’t read Spanish very well otherwise I wouldn’t of been so surprised about this.

It feels nice, when it happens to you.

So I have my dad and his family visiting from Saturday. It should be good. Their visit coincides with Semana Santa (Easter Week). There will be a lot of parades with men in cloaks and pointy hats (yes, like they look like those kind of pointy hats) carrying creepy statues of Jesus and other various things happening all week. This is also the only fiesta/parade that I have yet to experience since being in Spain. So now I can mark off the last one.
And expect quite a few photos.

Another favourite habit of mine when people come to visit, and I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, is I turn in to “Vacation Mode.”
I’ll do a lot of things I don’t normally do, like eat out (although me and the missus have been doing tapas nights out again quite recently), go to the beach in average weather (average to me maybe, but there are a lot of holiday makers walking around in shorts and vests) and just generally walking around the main part of town really slowly (damn it tourists, pick up the pace).

I’m also looking forward to showing off my new favourite place El Molino.
Unlike other touristy flamenco bars which do big shows with all the dresses and proper dancers, El Molino is 90%+ filled with the Spanish. It has a solo guitarist/singer who performs on a very small stage and then anyone in the bar can join him on stage and dance to his music. And after a few drinks no one is shy.
I learned about El Molino when we first arrived but never went to it. Not sure why. I was taken to El Molino last week and had a fantastic time in there and wondered why I never went to it sooner? Although I plan to make up missed opportunities.

But I do need to work on my rhythmic hand clapping a bit more.

And if I'm ballsy enough I might start watching some youtube teach yourself Flamenco dance lessons....

or perhaps not.

Clapclap-CLAP. Clapclap-CLAP. Clapclap-CLAP.

Yer Yellar Belly Paper

I’ve never really been an avid reader of newspaper’s. I think I could probably count the amount of times I bought a paper on one hand.
I did read a lot of the free papers when I was living in London but I think that just fuelled my distrust and hatred of newspapers.

This is mainly down to sensationalist journalism which nearly all papers employ now and the celebrity culture which has killed of real journalism and actual stories pushed aside.

Obviously this isn’t anything new but a few stories have came out this week which are totally bizarre and highlight some of the downfalls of newspapers and journalism these days. And if you searched my blog I’m sure you’d find a few entries about my feelings towards the idiocy of some magazines, newspapers and articles.

Firstly, if your a follower of glinner (@twitter) then you’ve probably come across this story.
The Express newspaper ran a front page article about survivors of the Dunblane Massacre. The journalist, Paula Murray, decided to befriend some of the survivors on social network sites and then reported how they boasted about drunken nights out and generally acting like regular 18 year olds and that they should be ashamed of this.
I have no idea how she came up with this idea, where the article is really going or why the editor passed it (other then just to get sales numbers up) but it’s not journalism at all. I don’t even know what this piece is trying to get across.
Glinner goes in to this article much more then I do here and his blog entry is worth a read (if you haven’t seen it already)

The next article that got my attention is in regards to children’s safety on the game Animal Crossing for the Wii. This one stung a little more then the others being a gamer. A lot of the times when there is a killing the attacker is often linked to a game, and some times by the slightest degree of opportunity that the reported has. As a gamer it does, at times, feel like this kind of entertainment is being picked on unjustly.
If you’ve not played Animal Crossing on the Wii (or the DS, they’re both nearly identical) in the game you control your character in a small town, you look after your town, speak with villagers and decorate our house. It’s very much like a watered down SIMs. It’s a game for all ages and if your a follower of the series, like I am, you can find it quite addictive spending 15 and more minutes checking on your town everyday.
In this article on an American local ABC channel it is reporting

“Mid-Missouri Internet Crimes Task Force is warning of predators using games like, "Animal Crossing- City Folk," to target kids.”

Predators, as in paedophiles. Can you name any other kind of adult predator?

Without looking for an interview from anyone connect with Nintendo or the Animal Crossing game the article explains that

“When hooked up to the internet you can talk to anyone across the country. Kids playing the game have no control over what other players might be saying.  For example, the character we ran across could be the man in California police are warning about.”

What the report fails to acknowledge is that in order to be able speak and interact with other players on the game, around the country - and the World you - have to first swap friend codes with that person which means actually knowing who that person is in order to swap friend codes.
So there is no way of being able to interact with adult predator on the game unless you first know them.
The Internet Crimes Task Force then, out of the blue and based on nothing at all says

“"There is no reason an adult should have this game," says Andy Anderson, Mid-Missouri Internet Crimes Task Force.
Anderson says adults playing "animal crossing" and similar games are likely doing it for the wrong reasons.”

This is just plain idiocy. It’s hard to grasp just how stupid this comment is. I’m 27 (I think…yes, 27) and I enjoy playing this game. I know the missus, 26(almost-Missus), plays it, my sister, 24, likes playing it as does my mum, 21+ (just being nice to my mum there) and none of us are doing it for the wrong reason.
Which is suggesting that my and my family are all adult predators. Fail.
The problem is that newspapers and programs love these quotes and will play them often and a lot of the population won’t think of researcher this themselves and just follow the quote on some insane village witch-hunt.

Lastly is OK magazine. OK magazine have slowly been sliding down the morale ladder with regards to Jade Goody and her terminal illness.
Whereas most magazines, articles have kept things a bit to the minimum OK magazine seem to have struck a deal on reporting Jade’s death.
They’ve stuck pictures of her sons crying along with him in the headlines on the front page (in some strange way to sell papers, I haven’t a clue who is buying it for that story but they’ve got to be a bit of a wrongun)
But no OK magazine have just stepped totally over the edge by publishing a special edition Jade Goody Tribute to her Life 1981 to 2009 (issue 666, no less - popbitch 19/3/09).
She isn’t even dead yet. Could they have not waited? Are they that desperate to pick up what has to be slow sales that they are pre-empting her death.
When I first seen that linked BBC article I looked at the image first of the magazine and thought that Jade had in fact died. But I was wrong, possibly like many others that spotted the magazine at their local newsagents the morning it came out.

The problem is, is that this kind of reporting has been going on for over tens of years and won’t go away soon. But there has to be limits really to what reporters can get away with.
Have a story that is going somewhere.
Stories that interview people from both sides of your report.
Wait till your subject has died before releasing a tribute and have a bit of common sense.

I’d just like to add, a bit off topic, that I’ve reverted to the old comment style. I don’t know how many of you had been put off commenting due to the feature rich but undoubtedly cloggy, slow and clumsy previous comment system I had. I am very sorry.
I gave up yesterday when I got frustrated far too much trying to comment on my own blog.
Hopefully my pages should loads faster and you can leave your comments much easier. Unfortunately I have lost some of your comments. Not lost they just don't show. I know where to find them when I want to look back.
Please come back and comment.
First person to comment can have a signed MS paint drawing done, by myself, of whatever you wish.
GO.

Monday Monday

Its Monday morning and we all know what that means...

The shops are open again and that means I can get some PG Tips.

However there was a slight set back this morning when there was a power cut in the whole town.

Back online and working after a town wide powercut. Just what I need on a Monday morning a good (real) reason to NOT work.
25 minutes ago from Twitter

But there is something prehistoric and fun about hunting around darkened grocery stores trying to find the items you want.

But I'm pretty sure that cavemen didn't hunt PG Tips by night. Or at all.


Despite researchers attempts no evidence can be found of this type of situation.

Although this theory it might explain why they use monkies in their ads.

Anyway, back to my cuppa.

Sunday, bloomin Sunday

I still find it hard to adjust to Sundays here. It's can be pretty quiet at times. A bit like a few years back in England when shops were not allowed to open.

Most shops here are closed of a Sunday still. The only ones open are tourist-y ones and that's during the tourist season.

But the small grocery stores and supermercados they stay closed. So for the essential important items, like PG Tips, you can't get them on a Sunday if you were to run out.
Days, for example, like today.

After making a cup of tea for me and the missus this morning I realised that we have run out of such an essential item.

Back in England, if this was to occur, I know I could of just gone down the local Co-Op and been back making a cup of tea within 5 minutes.

What's made this particular situation harder today is that we are packing for our move. And all this hard work will seem so much harder without the medicinal strength giving properties of leaves and cow juice.

Tapping red shoes and singing

There is no place like a new home.

After days waiting around for a response from our letting agent we have now been confirmed a moving in date in to our new home.
Originally planned for the 1st of February we were able to get the date moved forwards a few days to this coming Thursday.
Which is a good date really as we get chance to move in and then the weekend is straight upon us.

Another good reasons for this date is we get kicked out next Friday.

Christmas in England Part 2 The South

Our second week in England was a lot more quieter and calmer. It was good to have a power shower back (the one problem about staying in my mums is that her shower has as much pressure as a balloon). Although the missus parents shower can sometimes be TOO power shower and take off a limb.

We do do a lot of playing out in London and my alcohol tolerance had improved somewhat so I was able to not get too drunk, phew.

But there was a lot of pointing...


The missus points


I point

And kissing (maybe too many festive parties was the problem)


The missus friends kiss


I kiss not one...


but two friends.


And my friend kisses the barmaid (which is often referred to as a "normal night out."


Look, presents
I did get a present of my friend, some marbles, which we then played in the corner of the bar. I won. Of course.

But there was also even better times at the missus which included eating Christmas Roasts!

Tuck in

But then it was time to leave. And after booking an additional suitcase on the return flight due to the missus clothes shopping and Christmas presents we went the airport.

Our plane

And I decided to play about with the missus present a little more.

Big plane taking off

And after horrible horrible weather all week, catching two mini colds and having a horrible runny nose we arrived back to Spain to find this.

Hardly a cloud in sight

And this is the view from the coach off the coast as we pulled back in to Nerja

Glad to be back

Slideshow from two weeks


But despite having missed all my family and friends for the last year and all the fun I had in those two weeks in England I am really pleased to be back in Spain.

Christmas in England Part 1 The North

My short week in Runcorn was pretty insane.

I'm unsure whether I like flying anymore? I used to love flying loads. But my last few trips have been plagued by cramped conditions (although the missus forward thinking prebooked us extra leg room on one journey) and getting very dry eyes and mouth from the recycled air.

But there is still something childishly exciting about being a few thousand feet in the air flying over cities.
But I'm quite sad to say the very first thing we did when we arrived in to Manchester was to head to the nearest McDonalds. You can take the man out of England but you can't take English out of the man (or something like that)

Trying to squeeze in seeing my mum was a hard task as she had made plans to go to Leeds for two days and Liverpool for one whole day during the six days I returned from Spain.
Trying to get work (we work from home and in this case holiday) done while having two screaming and very loud kids in the house was really difficult (although easily more managed when one of them went back to school).
Almost as difficult as trying to find a place to put our laptops.

Count 'em. Five laptops.

Most of my time though was spent catching up with my 10 month old nephew, who misses out on sharing a birthday with my by 24 hours.
And we did get a lot of photos of him including

Him enjoying his new booster chair so he can have toast at the table like everyone else.


And his thoughts on girls....or Chelsea's awful awful home game against Cluj (I was making pretty much the same face at that game)

In my first week my poor tolerence of alcohol seemed to take over when I had to cut short a night out with a friend after only two drinks due to meeting up with my dad earlier that afternoon for a few pints.
And I'm pretty sure one very slurred conversation over curry with another friend. But that one is ok as it wasn't just me that was drunk.

Although good things do come from drinking with my dad, including this Holiday season Christmas card-esque photo


I did spend some time in Liverpool myself so the missus could do exactly 1.75 hours worth of shopping before exploding at the sheer amount of people cashing in on early sales.
I got to see my stepbrother who I hadn't seen in a while. Almost swear at a few bus drivers, first one closed the doors and drove off just as we were about to get on. Second one was driving close to the speed of sound on the way back.
And we also spotted this guy out early

Aren't there supposed to be reindeers?

But almost too quickly my time was over and we had to head down South to the missus parents. Although we almost saved the best till last.
We got first class tickets down to London and enjoyed lots of free foods and drinks, loads of leg room and more importantly lots of peace and quite and calm.

Good Bye

well i finally got to the shower...

but for some reason i did everything backwards today?

normally i go
shampoo-wash face-wash body

but today i went
wash body-wash face-shampoo

i might be entering Bizarro World

Hello, good morning!

Hot off the press

Just released is Opera 10 Preview. It's like a mini Christmas present.

Shame I have to travel for the next 6 hours and don't get to play on it for a while.

Go have a play with it.

[Link]

Several kinds of joy

Tomorrow I haed back to England for a few days for Christmas and catch up with friends.
I'm very much looking forward to it. Having a drink and watching football with me dad. Chewing the fat and catching up with friends. Having a tasty pizza from The Asda.

Oh and having an early Christmas.

(Although Christmas has come an little early as me mum purchased me the fantasic 100 billion zombie on screen, shoot em up left4dead. Very Christmas-y)

Speaking of Christmas last year my dad got me Star Wars 4 and 6 (the very first and third movies released, for those not sure)
As you can tell he had missed out episode 5. Which is kind of important in a trilogy.
I never got round to watching those DVD's, but hopefully I should be getting the missing piece to the jigsaw.
(To dad, if you're reading this, this doesn't mean you should go out and get 5, it may already be wrapped up and under a tree somewhere.)

But for those people out there loking to get DVD's for friends and family, if your gonna get a trilogy of films, make sure you get all three.

Snow

A little weather news.

This weekend it has been freezing cold here.

So cold I even felt chilly with just my jumper on in the evening!

So cold that it actually snowed on the hills right behind where we live.


The big hill right behind where we live with it's snowy top.


I was actually on my way to play football when I took these shots with my phone.
And yes, it was chilly playing football.


Some of the more mountain-y hills a little further away where covered even more in snow.

I was told by someone that this was the closest there had been snow fall to Nerja (probably less then 5km away) in a very long time.

I did get a few other better shots today as I made my way to the market with my camera, I'll upload/post them a little later.


This is a shot from the bus.


And this (slightly) snowy hill panorama.



It's very unfortunate that I didn't have the missus BRAND SPANKING NEW camera.
I've just ordered for her (it's ok she knows already) some Fujifilm long zoom range Finepix that has 18x zoom on it. I could of taken photographs of the frozen, snow covered plants on top of them mountains from where I was stood with that camera!

Tit and tat

and on that note

i went for another walk in the park yesterday which i want to blog about
ive been too lazy to upload the photos on to flickr
but today ive mostly been playing around/installing various user scripts for opera, working and anything else that meant i didnt have to get out of my seat

this is due to having a very late friday night (out until they started putting the furniture away, something i havent done in a long time) and then a walk totalling 5 hours yesterday ive need a bit of a rest

but despite being a vary lazy blogger of late i want to get any unwritten posts out of my system before i go back to england for 2 weeks
which im very looking forward to
not the weather though

Estoy aprendiendo espanol...not so much

A few weeks ago I started taking Spanish lessons.

Before I moved to Spain I was teaching myself and it was going really well. I had some podcasts that I listened to while commuting to and from work, which would take on average 40 minutes. That meant each day I could do almost an hour and a half a day of "lessons."

But here in Spain, of the two jobs I've had, the longest commuting I've had to do is a 10 minute walk. Almost the same time it to to walk to the bus stop back home. And now I work from home which means I get even less time to listen to lessons.

Obviously you'd think that working from home would give me more time. But I get up later, work more (in this job I can't spend hours online and still get paid for it) and tend to do a bit more around the house. Which means that 6oclock comes round quicker and then I'm in "relax" mode.
I guess I have bad time keeping.

But my Spanish lessons are a good idea. It makes me get out of the house. Forces me to take part in lessons. Not only that, I actually use the Spanish I learn (you tend to find there aren't many people wanting to speak Spanish at 630am on a packed train).
And it's nice being surrounded by a Spanish environment. Across the road from the class is an old persons home. They do a lot of painting and dancing. So some times when learning Spanish you'll have flamenco music coming through the windows and the occasional sound of dozens of feet stamping on the floor. It's nice.
And afterwards on the way home when walking through the main town there are always a lot of people eating out in bars and restaurants. It's certainly an alien feeling in November compared to what I was used to this time last year in England.

There is a slight problem though. It's not that the whole class is in Spanish. But what was suppose to start as a beginners class has turned quite difficult.
Whats happened is a Experienced Spanish Course has started on a Friday. One of the people from that class started taking the Tuesday/Thursday--free--beginners class. Probably to brush up. I think it's trickled through the class that there is this other class to brush up on.
So now more experienced Spanish speakers are taking the beginners class and the average level of the class has increased A LOT.
So I'm slowly starting to think I'm falling behind. Already some of the beginners have dropped out of class and I'm feeling a bit of the same.
I'm thinking that if I took the same time that I put aside for lessons now but went back to teaching myself I'd be able to work at my own pace and from text books I understand.

The problem with this is outside my Spanish lessons there aren't many Spanish people I speak with. So anything I learn I'll forget again unless I use it.

I'm going to keep going for now. I'll have to start putting a bit of an effort in to home studying. Combining the two sounds like the best option really. I just hope that in the mean time I don't get left too far behind in class.

Some news not regarding me

From the BBC.

Fire crews hunt escaped hamster



Eight firefighters have been called in to help find an escaped hamster in East Lothian.

Two crews used a chocolate-covered camera and a vacuum cleaner to try and locate missing Fudgie at six-year-old Zoe Appleby's home in Dunbar.

Fire crews spent five hours trying to recover the pet after it scuttled down a hole in the kitchen floor.

But, the hamster, who was being looked after for a friend during the holidays, is still refusing to come out.

My favourite bit from this story line comes a little later on though...

Mrs Appleby said: "We came down for breakfast and discovered Fudgie had opened the top lid of her cage and she had made her way into the kitchen and we reckon she has gone through the smallest of holes in the kickboards where the units are."

Yeah, it was the hamster. Overnight it grew stronger/learnt to lock pick and made a run for it.
I guess it was bored of doing the same thing it does every night and trying to take over the World.

And relax

so my family are now back safe in the england
the missus friends too
the feria is over
i think?
today is a bank holiday* here in spain although that hasn't stopped me--or the beach--from taking a day off

things can start to get back to normal
i can kick that holiday feeling--eating in a lot of the times is nicer then eating out

so what's next?

halloween

like i mentioned in a previous blog--which can i add no one guessed i was a member of "Baywatch"--i need help in for my next role

here goes

my costume is luchadores, mexican wrestler

"Grrrrrr"
i need, from you, ideas on a name--something like nacho libre--and if you're really down with your wwfs a wrestling move/pose
also if you want to put in more input, should i 1)wear a pair of metallic gold/siver/other colour leggings with a painted or unpainted chest
or a all in one olympic style suit
?

*i'm not sure it is a real bank holiday
it just seems to be a day when the the police all have a day off

There's a party on the hill dyawanna come?

So the Feria started yesterday. The Feria is the last major fiesta in Nerja's calendar--with the exception of New Year.

Basically it's like a travelling fair, but on steroids. Like I said there's a fair ground, bars, music, live shows--dancing and singing, Pussy cat Dolls where at Malagas Feria earlier on in the year so that's how big these village parties get--lights and games where you can win prizes, which the missus won a prize on, on her very first go.

I think it's pretty much open 24 hours a day for about 4 or 5 days and it looks like a lot of fun.

Although we did go to the opening yesterday-pictures to follow of course--we didn't stay too long as the missus had friends who flew in only yesterday so we thought it'd be best they rest.

So tonight we are off ot to enjoy a proper night out at the festival.....if the rain stays away and I'm very muc looking forward to it.

I'll try and get some photos uploaded sooner then later. With the family having left on Tuesday I have a bunch of photos and amusing videos to upload from their visit first.

Because they're worth it

After playing around with Google's Chrome for about a month I recently went back to Opera. I don't know why but it just feels nicer--and this is excluding all of the additional features that Opera has built in to it's browser over other browsers, RSS feed, IMAP to name the main ones.
Now it seems like Opera has rewarded me with Opera 9.6. Personally I think you should try out the Opera browser for yourself, it's a treat.
They're more innovative with their browser then any one else and they have a great community.

And although this video doesn't do the browser justice, it's just very pretty and well made.



For those that like to read a lot of blogs and news online you will benefit a lot with the new "Show Scroll Marker," which is just a simple see-through but noticeable line that keeps track of where you where last up to when scrolling down a page. It's a simple and very effective feature that makes you think "why hasn't anyone thought of this sooner?"

[Opera Browser ver 9.60]