well it is. Madrid is unseasonably cold. Not only has it been dropping below 30 degrees at night, it has been dropping below 20! Today we have the very British perpetual grey skies and right now its raining! Bliss. My weekend starts in just under 6 hours when I’m joined by Jon, Jack, Dan etc who are all over in Madrid for Henry’s wedding. Best news of all though, has to be that from Jon: “I’m really happy. Yesterday I found my favorite vegetable. The red onion. I bought a whole kilo!” Bless.
Espe invited a good friend of hers, Gema, over for dinner last night. I was placed in charge of preparing a nice Thai meal. A challenge I always like to rise to. I prepared spring rolls followed by a green chicken curry. The spring rolls were the best I’ve made to date and the curry was good as always, albeit not very spicy. I erred on the side of caution due to my Spanish company however there is plenty of curry paste left to fix that for next time. A good effort, yet the simplest thing to prepare turned out…
The title says it all really… maybe: www.theregister.co.uk
Tonight / tomorrow morning will present the best opportunity for those in the Northern Hemisphere to see the Perseids Meteor storm. I won’t bother writing all about it here as you can find out loads on the amsmeteors.org website. All that does need saying is get yourself out into the country side for the best views. Even with the heavy moonlight that will be present tonight you should see on average one meteor a minute… It should be an excellent opportunity to get some good photos! Doubt I get anything as good as the Astronomy Picture of the Day though!
Just spotted the following on the mongol rally text updates: “the 2nd mini in mongolia ever, come on!” Mini Adventure (The A Team) With any luck, if they reach Ulaan Baatar, they’ll be greeted by Christie and a large banner of Christie splashing through a river. You see, I got this in a mail from Tom today: “You might be interested to know that your oh so famous mini is now being sported in 7 x 3 meter banner at Dave’s Place overlooking the square. It blew down the first time it was erected but she is back and shinning…
So it’s true, British Drivers are the most uptight. Leaving Madrid for a weekend away I found myself getting increasingly wound up by the standard of driving of the Madrileños. Leaving Madrid for any weekend is tough as the roads are full of people escaping the city for the Mediterranean coasts. That is far too many people for the motorways to cope with, especially given that of only two lanes the first lane is plagued with slow moving lorries. A new points system on the driving licences and the “50 deaths on these roads this weekend last year” signs illuminated…
Tiredness, frustration, anger, elation… And people think that computer programming is dull. I’ve just finished spending far too long making improvments to the Mongol Rally’s mapping tools and I must say I’m more than happy with the results. Check it out for yourself. Where Are They?” Not easy, as I’m new to the Google maps API and on top of that I’m using sql to get info from the db into my php code which then dynamically generates the javascript code for the maps… Not at all easy to debug! As a result I’m really starting to get to grips…
I’ve been working with the Mongol Rally organisers in sorting out the car tracking systems for the official Mongol Rally web page, while at the same time following the progress of the teams. I must admit, the rally seems to be doing it’s job. Breakdowns, long border crossing and corrupt police… The text updates are a great source of entertainment. Some of my favorites so far: “Pulled over next to a concrete tank-statue by the rozzers. Couldn’t pay £75 fine for not understanding them. They settled for a Monty Python DVD instead.” “Turkish visas 30 euros, turkish insurance 38 euros,…