Ronda, Spain, Spanish, Themes, and Everything Else

Part Time Couriers Required Now! I'm not joking, this is a great opportunity.

My dear readers, knowing that two of you are bus drivers, three or four of you deliver pizza, one of you operates a taxi, and of course let's not forget those of you who constantly pester me about making some extra cash, how about this for an opportunity, one of the firms I regularly deal with has openings for couriers.

Ever thought of becoming a part-time courier? If you have a drivers license, and you're wanting to earn some extra cash this could be just the opportunity you're looking for. The company is SunStar Postal Service (SSPS), a global freight firm based in LA but offering same day deliveries in the US and the UK.

Many years ago when I was a student a friend of mine did a stint as a courier over the summer holidays and earned enough to pay his rent for the next semester allowing him to concentrate on his studies, man was I jealous, at the time I would have walked over hot coals for an opportunity like that.

But of course being a courier isn't only for the young or fit, in fact some of the best couriers are more mature people who are organized, perhaps you're retired or even a stay at home parent, believe me you can make this work as well, so stop reading what I have to say, if you're interested, click that link.

I just told this joke over at BlogCatalog and it got a few giggles so I though I'd share it here;

There were these three blondes walking in the forest and they come across a set of tracks, well being the intellect the first blonde says "hah, I know those tracks, those are the tracks of a deer, I studied them at college".

The second blonde looks at her in disgust and says "Don't be silly, those are the tracks of a deer, I know coz my Dad and brothers used to go hunting, those are the tracks of a deer".

The third blonde gets quite irate and yells "You stupid blondes, you're what give us all a bad reputation, those are grizzly bear tracks, I know because my ex-boyfriend was a forest ranger".

Half an hour later they were still arguing and pulling each other's hair when the train ran them over.

It's been a long time coming, my first publicly available Wordpress theme, based on the other half's pixabella04 free html template. I've had a few comments here, and in my stats showing the people are actually looking for Wordpress versions of my themes, so bowing to pressure, here is the first.

This is a widgetised three column wordpress theme with a separate options page allowing blog owners to choose either green, blue or red colorsets. To install, simply download the zipfile, extract, and copy the folder into your Wordpress themes folder, then in your administration dashboard select a new theme. Once you've chosen pixabella04 you'll see that the theme has support for adding or changing widgets in three places. The first is the top part of the sidebar where the advertising currently sits, then both left and right sidebars.

In addition, an options pages is created with a dropdown select box that allows blog owners to choose green, blue or red colorsets. The navbar in pixabella04 is set to display your static pages. Hopefully this won't cause any problems for anyone. The navbar works but has no limits on the number of pages so blog owners with a large number of pages might have to play around with header.php to make this display correctly.

The theme has been tested in Opera, Firefox, and Internet Explorer 7 and seems to work find in them all. Special thanks to Brand Spanking New for the icons used in the post footer.

Now, here is the wp-wordpress theme.

The Serrania de Ronda is one of the prettiest parts of Spain, filled with Pueblos Blancos, Natural Parques, and any number of endemic species, some of them only found within a very small area of the Serrania. But this weird looking scooter is the rarest. It is in fact the first one of its kind I've ever seen anywhere on my travels around the world.

I'm sure we've all seen bicycles with small 2-stroke engines attached, and of course we all know what a motorbike is supposed to look like, heck even scooters have a definite shape, but this thing is a cross between all three. It's the shape of a small motorbike, has the ease of use that comes in a scooter, and the pedals of a bicycle.

With the number of cyclists in Spain, many of whom could easily ride between the major cities in a single day, I guess I should have expected to see something like this, but let me tell you how we came across this little beast. Read More

This is one of those things that really annoys me about some blogspot users, (and for that matter, people who use Typepad), please, please, for heaven's sake allow people who aren't blogspot users to make a comment on your blog.

This is particularly annoying when these people have signed up for Entrecard, they obviously want traffic, I assume they want people to revisit, perhaps even become fans who subscribe to their feed, and they do allow comments, but they're idiots! They only allow fellow blogspot users to make comments. Why? This makes no sense.

Now listen, I have a blogspot account, in fact several to showcase the themes I've done, but this is my main blog, this is where I want you to visit, and if I leave a comment on your blog I don't want you or any other potential visitors going to my blogspot profile page first. I have this blog for a reason, so people can read what I have to say and so I can build my own group of online friends.

Not allowing me to comment on your blogspot blog unless I login into blogger just annoys me and probably thousands of other people who might like to comment on your posts. Remember, if you've written something good enough or interesting enough that I want to comment, this is a good thing. It means more readers for you, and if you monetise your blog as so many of you do, then you should want people like me to comment.

So, please do me and everyone else a favor, enable comments. It's really easy to do, here's how;

It's that time of year again, no not Christmas, it's Earth Day, in my opinion one of the most important environmental days of the year. Here's hoping a few more people take up the challenge of separating your garbage into recyclables and non-recyclables. Perhaps even start a compost bin with food scraps, let's try to reduce our waste to more manageable levels.

While you're at it, change to longer lasting energy efficient lightbulbs to reduce your carbon footprint, or take a walk to the local shops for that pint of milk you need instead of hopping in the car and driving to the next shopping center. You'll feel better for it I promise.

Where we live we don't have a garden big enough so we aren't able to plant a tree, but at the weekend we bought a few more pots for small shrubs in our patio. The other half is also growing cuttings of native plants she's seen in the area to try and encourage a few more native insects to come to our patio. It isn't much, and might seem like a wasted effort but we believe it's important to do.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we're going to go our today, using human power, and enjoy our planet, smell the fresh air, perhaps get our knees dirty whilst we take a few photographs, and then enjoy a packed lunch on the hills around us. I might even take the time to lie on the ground and stare at the clouds long enough to make up shapes in the sky. Happy Earth Day everyone!

My regular readers will be very excited by this find, it's an Aixam Series 7 quadricycle, and of course you realize these are a very rare sight being made by a specialist manufacturer in France.

Now for the benefit of those of you who don't know why an Aixam is special, take a closer look at the number plate. Can you see it, there isn't one. You see these little beauties are considered to be a quadricycle, and that means they don't need to be registered, in fact in some EU countries you don't even need a driver's license to operate one. I'm not 100% certain of the rules here in Spain so I'll have to research the lack of driver's license detail, but even so I was pretty stoked to get a photo of this tiny little car.

In the back of my mind I have this ideal future where I no longer need a car, perhaps I can make use of public transport, taxis that sort of thing, of course this lifestyle will require I live close to major services like a supermarket, I picture myself on a small island with Internet access, writing my posts in the morning, wandering into town for lunch at a tapas bar with the locals, enjoying an afternoon siesta, and spending the evening hours relaxing over a BBQ or a few drinks with friends. One of these little no-stress cars could be ideal in that life, what do you think? Read More

If you're a blogger who uses Google's blogspot to host your blog here's a quick suggestion that might help you get some traffic that stays long enough to make a comment, maybe even become a regular subscriber. Reduce the number of posts on your front page.

Believe me when I tell it is not cool, or trendy, or helping your SEO, or making your site more user friendly to have a 30 or 40 posts on your homepage, all of them filled with images or YouTube videos, and your siderbars filled with so many widgets you can't actually see the content for them.

Take a hint, reduce the number of posts on your page, and seriously think about how many widgets you really need. I understand that some of them might make you some money, by all means keep these, but do you really need to display every award your friends have given you or those stupid widgets like the purring pussy cat that follows your mouse cursor I've seen. Read More