Blue and deep red, blaugrana, the colours of the near-religious Barcelona FC football team.
Little kids as young as two are taught the team’s chant, an attractive ditty - and most certainly they come to recognise it before the airs of the national anthem, which isn’t necessarily revered in Catalunya.
So, with great pleasure, on the way back from the bakery this morning, buttered-croissant and barra-de-pan in hand, I heard the tune bounce up along one of the local alleyways, this at 10 in the morning, no drunken fan, this.
Ten-seconds later appeared, an old lady, plastic bags in both hands, though one hand also held a walking stick. The blaugrana lady she has become known, for every day she passes this way, and every day she sings the same song, and once she finishes, she starts again. She has a special thing for younger men, for she feels it’s from them she’ll get the most animated reaction, and she does. She gave me the eye today, her 65 year old eye, and I smiled back. Long may she sing!
I received a wedding invitation today.
Ceremony in local town hall, and celebration afterwards in “Bar No Sweat”.
I wonder if they’re trying to tell us something?
… I work from home, and I work alone - today I caught myself talking to myself, this hasn’t happened before, but it happened today - should I be worried?
I met a chap today, Valentí Feixas, who has a business, selling liquors. The company’s offline branding is fabulous. We spoke about his website, as I tend to do (saddo!) and he revealed that he had a domain name www dot a to z dot es. Meaning http://www.abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.es/ - I was flabbergasted. I came home this evening and typed it in. Low-and-behold!
I may have been lazy about updating this blog, but my energies have been elsewhere of late: namely over at Le Style. Check it out.
There’s a suspected car bomb incident in London this morning. The device in question has been made safe. There was no explosion, and no injuries. For this I am relieved.
The BBC News website quotes an “intelligence source” here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6252276.stm, saying “All options, including the Irish, are open at this stage” in reference to who might be responsible for the suspected terror attack.
This shouldn’t NEED to be said, but with such a sloppy turn of phrase chosen by this “intelligence source” and then quoted by the BBC, I’d like to point out that the term “Irish” refers to the population of Ireland as a whole: old, young, male, female, north and south, catholic and protestant, muslim, jew and atheist alike. It’s a rather large brush that has been used to paint the canvas - and a bloody insult. I’m not impressed.
Over the last two years I’ve had various good web ideas. Two of which I’ve gone ahead to build and put live. One was Post Expression, the other, soon-to-launch is bicingTag.
I’m involved in web design you see. So when I get good web ideas I set about building these things myself, or working with people who have skills I don’t, to build them.
Post Expression is a fabulous idea, but the programming of it, done off-shore was torturous. The developer might take a hike for three days and leave us to just… sit there. Or some element might get added, and when we’d try it, it was full of bugs. The process of programming took so many months that all my enthusiasm for what is a novel concept just disappeared.
I find the same with bicingTag right now. It’s taking long than planned. I’m going thru page after page with the developer (different guy to Post Expression) and finding more and more to do as each page passes. I mean, basic example: there’s a photo upload button, and when you upload the functionality will accept jpg, not gif. Why Not?! When it gets uploaded there’s no option to delete the image and replace it with another image. Why not?! There has to be, for usability sake, and therefore I’ll sit here, with my eyes closing from boredom and frustration boiling in my veins, while I ensure this basic stuff gets done. He’s a good guy, the programmer, and seem interested in doing the work work well, so we’ll get through it. Again however, my enthusiasm for a good idea is being diluted to such a point, where I’m afraid that when the site goes live, I won’t have any energy left to promote it: just like what happened to Post Expression.
My advise to anyone in my position: get someone else to do it. Or else it will kill you. I can’t see myself taking on another project like this for a very long time.
And I ADORE it, I get such a rush from the sound of the engines, it’s makes me roar - and I’m not exaggerating one little bit.
See this, I took it about three hours ago.