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I think winter has arrived. Technically we're still in autumn, actually only really the beginning of autumn but the Gods decided it would be entertaining to dump a few million truckloads of snow on Spain.

Last night's news broadcast was all about the various places around Spain where thick snow fell and prevented trucks and cars from getting through mountain passes or where farmers suddenly found themselves having to put their animals into shelter.

We were treated to a particularly good scene showing a truck driver grabbing his radio and telling his boss he couldn't make his delivery on time because of the snow, and hearing the boss reply in curses not being aware the conversation was being filmed.

In another scene we saw a basque farmer with a cute Austrian style house leading his dairy cattle, each of which had giant swiss style bells around their necks. I say Austrian style, in fact roaming around the Basque countryside you'd be forgiven for thinking you were in the Tyrol of Austria, language is about the only difference, and of course getting to the Basque countryside is a lot closer for Spaniards.

Here in Ronda the temperature dropped considerably although we don't have snow. Apparently a light dusting of something cold and white has fallen on the upper reaches of the Sierra de las Nieves, and Ronda sits on it's doorstep.

Yesterday the temperature in Ronda was around 15 degrees celsius, but combined with the wind it felt like about 5 degrees, and this poor schmuck only has one jumper and a couple of jackets. I think a small shopping trip is called for, at the very least to get more jumpers and a beanie for my head. Cycling around Ronda when it's this cold isn't much fun.

You're probably wondering if I've fallen off the planet with my recent absence, not quite but close, at the very least I've torn all of the grey strands on my head out.

What happened is that my Internet connection is extremely unreliable, and so is the power, and on top of that, the house we're renting has a major plumbing problem with water leaking out from under the toilet when we flush it.

It's not as gross as it sounds, it looks like regular clear water from the cistern, but it's still close to 9 liters every time we flush.

The problem is that here in the Ronda campo the sewage pipes from the toilet to the main tank or main sewage system is really small, only about 2 inches (5cm), whereas a normal sewage pipe would be at least 4-6 inches (10-15cm).

We've even had to stop flushing paper down the toilet, which isn't very nice, and we hate the thought of having a bin in the bathroom for that, but we have to do what we have to do.

The problem isn't fixed yet, might never get fixed, in which case we have to reconsider living in the campo, but that's a decision for another day.

The good, well actually GREAT news, is that I have lost weight. Yay!

Before we sold the car I was around the 103kg mark, the other day I had the chance to weigh myself again, and this is after three months of cycling or walking everywhere, and I've dropped to 93kg!!!

Now if that isn't exciting I don't know what is. For my body size, age, etc I should reach my optimum weight around the mid to late 70s, so if this keeps up, and I guess if I'm not stupid, then maybe by the end of the year I'll be getting close to my ideal weight. Then I just need to make sure I'm also fit and have some stamina.

Righto people, let's be honest, how many of you have a secret desire to be the next Madonna, Serge Gainsbourg, or Buddy Holly? And how many of you have been to a Karaoke bar, had a few drinks, gurgled your guts out to Tammy Wynette, and then told everyone the next day you didn't enjoy it and won't go back, but secretly you didn't mind and probably will go back?

Yeah I thought so, I'm the same, karaoke generates a love/hate feeling inside me, I love the idea of pretending to be a superstar, on the other hand I hate the way people sound who can't sing. Read More

I've been playing around with RapidWeaver, a Mac web authoring application that works similarly to iWeb but produces standards compliant code and allows me to easily change the template from page to page by simply selecting it from the themes pane whilst editing a page.

The more I get involved with it, the more I love it and can honestly say it beats the pants off software like Joomla or Wordpress for my needs, which is mostly 5-10 pages static websites, although I'm using it to develop a 300 page site as well.

Are any of you guys Mac users? Have you tried RapidWeaver? It's shareware, and costs about $79 to buy a license but seems well worth the money. There is a reasonable range of plugins available and a few people have produced third party themes, but the most exciting part of it is integration with the iMedia browser so I don't have to export an image from iPhoto to use it.

I've tested the code it produces and whilst I can't show you a test site yet I can tell you it produces XHTML strict in every page and they validate!

RapidWeaver has some really nice functions like built-in meta tags and titles for each page, and complete control over filenames and permalinks simply because the pages are static HTML pages to begin with.

Adding javascript is a simple thing to do, and can be added in two places, either into the page inspector, or hard coded into the theme, for one of the sites I'm creating I've actually inserted a news ticker into the space normally reserved for a navbar.

If I can find the time to create a new theme for RapidWeaver rather than just butchering one of the existing themes to do what I want then I'll release it here, I was thinking of porting some of the great open source themes to begin with, then work on premium themes later.

See that thing in the photo; it's the white line that looks like a worm clinging onto our bathroom door. This morning we just about had fits when we saw it, the toilet is blocked and water is running from underneath the bowl onto the floor.

In fact one corner of our bathroom is flooded. The landlord and a plumber will be coming out today to fix the drainage on the outside of the house, and I hope, to sort out the seal around the base of the bowl.

Anyway, when we saw that white thing on the door we immediately had really bad thoughts. Just yesterday I retrieved an earthworm from under the bed, and then this appears on the bathroom door.

We have three growing kittens who we rescued from the campo and who had some terrible infections, fleas, worms etc when they were younger so you can imagine what was going through our minds.

Was it a tapeworm from the leaking toilet? Or had one of the kittens been troubled by worms after we thought they'd been cured?

The other half refused to remove this from the door, I think she had the heebie jeebies just thinking about touching it so I the hero of the house had to gingerly remove it with a piece of paper towel from the kitchen.

Funnily enough it wasn't squishy like I'd expect a worm to be, nope, in fact it felt quite firm, almost as if it had a hard core. A closer inspection revealed it wasn't a worm, or some new alien species of snake, or anything scary at all.

Can you guess? It was actually a piece of shoelace that those darling little kittens must have found somewhere around the house. So there you go, panic over, no more story to tell.