Here it is, this is something I've seen other bloggers do and it really seems to work. I'm going to give away 2000EC to the winner of my first Entrecard contest.

Here's what you need to do. Its very simple. Write a minimum 150 word post on your blog about my contest, or my site, or anything to do with my themes etc, you need to link to my site and one of my posts in your post body. So that's two links all up, one to my home page, and another to one of my posts, it can be any post. Your post needs to be permanent, but the incentive is that I'll link to you as well.

The prizes go like this. First prize is 2000EC, second prize is 1000EC, 3rd prize is 500EC and the contest expires 20th May. So basically its a short contest, the winners will get their credits on the 20th or 21st. I'll basically put all contestants names into a hat and my other half will pull three names out.

Simple contest, no unnecessary rules, no vote rigging, no extra chances etc, just write a post, comment here so I know you've entered the contest and may the luckiest person win.

Every year without fail I make a donation to the Red Cross. This is a small thing that I do, and I don't kid myself about it, but I love it when I see a business doing something similar, and better than that, actually spending some money to promote the fact they're doing it.

Take this Yorkshire based Land Rover dealership for example. They've made the decision to support the British Red Cross this week for the Annual appeal. I like that.

Years ago I was a member of a Red Cross Response team and we used Land Rovers exclusively because of their reliability and fantastic off-road capabilities, and the fact they can be used as a complete workhorse. Very few SUV's would be able to compete with the Land Rover Defender on that front.

Ripon Land Rover is my business of the day for supporting the Red Cross and I think other motor dealerships could take a leaf out of their book, find a cause, then actually get your web designer to add it to your homepage and do a write-up.

You see in business I believe its not just about selling Range Rovers, or having a service centre, or even offering books on Land Rover's history. No, its also about being seen to part of your community, and to support the community that supports you.

This post is specially for one of my favorite readers, a lady who was telling me this morning she had a cricket running around her apartment. I won't mention her name coz she complains that I have no tact, but she knows who she is, don't you Jillian?

These wonderful creepy crawlies, the Egyptian Grasshopper (Anacridium aegyptium) hang out everywhere here in our part of Spain and make a heck of a mess on the windscreen when they fly across the highway. My other half hates them, she won't move past them and goes into panic lockdown mode whenever one is within a few meters of her.

She claims they're out to get her, like they deliberately fly directly at her, and I can't convince her otherwise. Poor we grasshoppers. Anyway they're quite distinctive don't you think? Lovely striped eyes and a ridge down through the shoulder blades. I don't have a more detailed picture to show the eyes but I'll keep a look out for one in the next few days. Hope you like it Jillian, oh, and thanks for using one of our themes. Check out Jillian Approved

I drink a lot of coffee, it shocks people to hear this but I'm capable of drinking upto, well, do I really want to admit how many, er, about 20-30 cups per day.

I'm sure you'll agree its not the healthiest diet but look at the word, take of the 't' at the end and you get die so I figure its going to happen anyway and I may as well enjoy life before it happens, don't you agree?

Anyway, with a diet like mine I drink a lot of instant, it takes less time to make than a proper coffee, which I still enjoy, but at this volume it makes no difference, heck my tastebuds probably couldn't tell the difference anymore anyway. Ooh, a double 'any', my writing style is slipping.
Continue reading "Buying coffee in Spain"

Last night around 11pm the usual Sunday night calm we've become accustomed to was absolutely shattered by the din from dozens of car horns, people yelling and shouting in the streets, and a lone foghorn blasting away.

Not knowing what was going on and suspecting the apocalypse we sneaked a peek outside the front door and not seeing any reason not to go further we gingerly stepped out a bit further.

Silly us, if only the TV was on the right channel we would have known the reason, but no, we were watching the continuing saga that is Spanish Idol, completely oblivious to the football on the other channel.

If we were a little more observant we would have known that Real Madrid had just clinched the Spanish Championship League Cup beating Osasuna 2-1 with a man down due to penalties.

So now we know how the Spanish celebrate a football win. I am certain several of the locals wouldn't have made it to work this morning, at least not if the noise was any indication of the amount of alcohol (cerveza) consumed.

BTW, the locals whether drunk or sober don't pronounce Madrid they way we would in English. They say something that sounds like 'Maahdrih', the final syllable is short with a rolled 'r', and the final 'd' is almost silent. I have no idea if this is just the local Ronda dialect but its fascinating nevertheless.

OK, so as you know we do a bit of traveling, mostly through places we've never been to before, and our trusty printed map isn't working very well anymore. It's a bit wrecked, the pages are falling out and the ink is fading.

So, I've decided to go cutting edge and get myself a GPS system, woohoo, but this is the catch, I don't want one of those tiny little things you stick on the dashboard, I'd actually rather buy one of the USB GPS systems that connect to the laptop, which seem cheaper than the car version anyway.

We bought a Vista powered laptop a few months ago which gets used only sporadically and would be a great use for it for when we go off with our cameras, and since I already have a backpack for it we could even take it off-road on bicycles.

I've been scouring the laptop PC GPS software programs forum over at Laptop GPS World for info, I'm happy to buy the USB GPS system online and have it shipped to me, but finding out what software to use is another matter.

Do any of my readers have any experience of using a USB GPS system, I know some of you in the US probably do, so which software is generally better for Vista. If any of you know anything about European maps, what I need is software that covers western Europe.

I'll go ask in the GPS forum as well but since so many of you live in Germany if you can recommend something I can get from MediaMarkt I'd really appreciate it, I do need good maps of Iberia and the USB dongle.

It seems to be the vogue in Entrecard circles to list your top ten droppers, which spreads a little love and gives them a reason to continue visiting and maybe even make a comment or two.

So, without further ado, here are my top droppers for April ranked from most drops to least. My top three get a short blurb, the remaining seven a mention.

1. Modern Glam. Not only is Modern Glam my top dropper, she gets a special mention for having made some really nice relevant comments. She's also active at BlogCatalog so we bump into each other quite a lot. You should check out her jewelry store while you're here.
2. nofaceberg, aka Danny, a New Yorker who writes some stuff, yeah I know hardly a great review but when you read his site you'll agree with me, can be very funny.
3. MamaFlo's Place, a retired and recent convert to the non-smoking world (228 days and 1 hour as I write this). This lady does a bit of travelling and posts piccies of places she's been.
4. CK Marketing
5. Pixelated Thoughts
6. Search Engine Panel
7. Karlonia.com
8. Dot Com Mogul
9. Wooden Fish
10. Reenashwina

Next month I'm going to switch this up a bit and rank droppers by both the number of drops and the number of comments and give each an equal weighting so it will be interesting to see how many of April's droppers stay in the top ten.

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.