Ronda, Spain, Spanish, Themes, and Everything Else

Enhorabuena a los equipo de fútbol español y el pueblo de España.

That was a great game, Congratulations to the Spanish football team for winning Euro 2008!

So tonight is the final between Spain and Germany in the Euro 2008 football competition and of course I need to figure out which team to support.

Having lived in Germany and with family there, and of course loving Germany as much as we do, you'd think it would be an easy choice, except that we've met some great people in Spain and I really like being here, well, apart from the stinking hot summer days.

If I support Spain and they win or lose I'll be demonstrating empathy with my neighbors and telling the world Spain is the place to be. On the other hand if I support Germany I might get a few friendly jokes at my expense about how I'm just a typical foreigner who wants to be in Spain but isn't prepared to be Spanish.

Sigh, it's not an easy decision to make, so who do you think is going to win? And would you support Spain if you live here?

When we first started our travels from Australia to Europe we had no idea how things were going to work out for us and luckily nothing bad has happened to us, although we have been within a few kilometers of some bad stuff like riots, bombings etc.

As a traveller we tend to think that since we're on holiday that the rest of the world must be on holiday as well, but the reality is that bad things still happen, except being a traveller you might actually be closer to it.

We were lucky before we started our journey that part of the plan was to visit Sri Lanka which is a country enduring a brutal civil war so our travel agent advised us to get the very best insurance we could afford. We're glad we did because the airport was bombed the morning we were supposed to leave which delayed our flight from Colombo by nearly 12 hours.

Not that much of a big deal since we didn't have connecting flights but it's the sort of thing that can happen to anyone and you could be out of pocket by many hundreds or even thousands of dollars if you need to pay for new flights and hotel stays, and that's not including the cost of medical treatment if you happen to be unlucky.

Travel Insurance Direct is one of those companies all Ozzies should talk to before leaving the safety of Australia. They're a direct insurer underwritten by Allianz so no middle men and being part of Mondial Assistance can provide emergency evacuation back to Australia (or New Zealand) at short notice.

We were lucky and didn't need our cover, but it certainly made a huge difference to our peace of mind when we were in places that aren't like back home.

This is a short tutorial, it might not even be a tutorial really, but the information is solid. Let me give you a bit of background. Now and again we (Ceejay and I) do webdesign for small business, mostly 4 or 5 page websites.

An issue we frequently come across it that if we use static HTML pages, then either we need to update the pages when the site owner needs it, or the site owner needs to learn HTML to do this themselves.

Our latest project is a site that only has static pages, it also needs to be multilingual, and the site owner wants to be able to update the pages herself, and this is the sticky point, she doesn't want to learn HTML. She has her reasons, she's busy running a business and these days with WYSIWYG being so ubiquitous she shouldn't be forced to learn HTML. Read More

When it comes to being single, I do empathise with people who feel they have something to offer a partner. For this reason I understand why someone would use a dating agency, perhaps go along to a speed dating evening, or even use an online dating website.

But why oh why would you start a thread at BlogCatalog saying you're "in the market" for a new girlfriend and then post a picture of someone you claim is friend asking advice from complete strangers about whether to pursue her.

You can check it out for yourself, right here, and no doubt this thread will get some interesting responses, maybe it'll even be bumped endlessly, and shame on me, my post here will probably get it a few hits to keep it being bumped.

I hope the girl in question doesn't mind, and as for the person who started the thread, well, I hope he finds someone to share his life with but somehow I don't think so, at least not if this is his idea of how to get a woman's attention.

Do you remember a while back I talked about doing webcasting, and the struggle to find good hosting for videos? The idea is still very much in the back of my mind for a couple of reasons. We have a humor related domain that we really want to use for funny videos, and we're talking through the idea of doing some travel documentaries and sticking them up online.

The only problem is that most hosts aren't too keen on videos since they can chew through your bandwidth pretty quickly and I understand CPU use can go through the roof at times.

Now I have no doubt anything I do will be small scale but I'm always looking for ways to do that 'next big thing' that turns into a major project that gets investors.

This morning I was browsing the web looking for YouTube clone software because I don't think Serendipity or Wordpress are going to cut the mustard. Similarly, Joomla and its ilk are just too oriented toward text.

Now let's assume I go ahead and do something along the lines of a humor video site, I'd obviously want other people to be able to upload their own videos, and that kinda means having a dedicated server since most entry level VPS would just not be upto scratch. The alternative is the VPS Hosting provided by HostV that is designed specifically for video hosting.

From what I've been able to gather, most VPSs don't come pre-installed with FFMpeg or Red5 so you can pretty much forget about hosting and streaming videos. Considering HostV is a division of the same company where I got that list of the YouTube clone scripts I might bookmark them for when I get round to this.

A few of my regular readers will know that the other half and I regularly put together HTML templates that we give away for free and promote on Open Designs amongst other places.

This works really well for us, it gives us massive backlinks and improves our Technorati rank, in addition to giving us constant traffic from people who click our designer link to see more themes. We all know building solid backlinks in a fickle blogging world is difficult, this is why I consistently recommend giving something away to get more exposure.

Recently we've had a couple of not so pleasant experiences with clients who wanted custom themes for Wordpress, except they couldn't work out what they wanted and ended up costing us a lot of money. So, we're throwing around the idea of producing attractive looking templates based on 2 or 3 column layouts, and then selling a link in the footer to your site, or if you're an SEO, then to one of your client's sites. Alternatively, we could sell the entire theme with resell rights. Read More

I love this little roundabout in Spain. It's in a small village known as Benaojan about 15minutes drive from Ronda and while the fountain is often working, the other day was the first time I had my camera handy to get this great shot of the water gurgling away.

Now in case you're wondering, Spanish roundabouts aren't all surrounded by flowers, although there is an effort being made here to beautify parts of the villages, but in this case the powerlines still haven't been put underground and that's a slow process in these parts.

The hills you see in the background are limestone mountains filled with caves, in fact the one on the right has a cave entrance behind it that forms an underground river which resurfaces about 4 kilometers later at a cave entrance known as Cueva del Gato.

The bar to the left of the roundabout is the local everything, yes its a bar, and at night the locals go there for a beer, but during the day it also seems to be the village hangout spot and a cup of coffee is not impossible. One of the most amusing things that happens in small Spanish villages also happens every day in Benaojan, and the fountain is the focal point.

Years ago, way back in Franco's day and before, jobs weren't guaranteed and the local employers or foremen would turn up in the village and select the men they wanted for that day who would all hang around here chatting and smoking cigarettes. Well those days are gone but the old men still congregate every day right there.