and thus no time to blog nor upload photos. Try again in a few days…

…using a combination of knowledge from my PHP classes (I’m about to sign up for the advanced classes for next week) and this page on how to Search and Replace using PHPMyAdmin so now the apostrophe issue is cleared up and there aren’t enough other errors to make it worth my while. My Spanish blog‘s another story though, I ended up going in and editing each entry by hand… Luckily there aren’t that many pages.

So, it’s still raining and starting to get colder just in time for Stu’n’Anne’s visit. Hope they don’t mind too much. Atticus is certainly a bit bothered by it all and is showing early signs of SAD. He’s missing M&D too, mind, who phoned last night to say they’d spent 15 hours on the road and had made it Los Mochis, of all places. They’ve set a new record, they’re probably somewhere near the Canadian border if they’ve kept up the pace.

We watched Pan’s Labyrinth again last night, as Sita hadn’t seen it. I’d forgotten how powerful a film it is. It’s the ultimate fable on rejecting authority and a gruesome depiction of post civil war Spain. I saw the Devil’s Backbone (El Espinazo del Diablo) t’other week too which takes place in the same era but doesn’t have as clear a division between fantasy and reality. Still fine viewing though. Had a game of Scrabble too. I got all the good tiles…

In terms of the HTMLery I’m going to be putting together a shopping site for a high-end artesanal jewelry store to complement their flash site soonish which’ll be interesting and a chance to practice my PHP skillz. Also I read the readme file that came with the photoblog theme and it explained how to have thumbnails on the archive page, so I sorted that out. Looks quite nice, oi reckon. Shame i’ve now got two blogs that don’t quite render right on IE6 though, but frankly IE6 users deserve all they get.

And that’s all for today. Next up, dragging Atticus through the rain to pick up El Público with its weekly events listing, Ocio, and then paying the phone/interweb bill, rent, and PHP course… it’s going to be an expensive day this one…

So along with the sunshine, Monica and Daniel left Guadalajara this morning at some point or another, we slept through the exodus. They took us out to the La Loteria cantina and the I Latina last night for a superlative send off. It’s been grand having them around. Some of many highlights include trips to Michoacan, watching entire seasons of TV programs, washing the dog, German/Mexican cuisine, more new restaurants than you can shake a fork at, Chacala, Spanish lessons in Starbucks and bars, Sanjuaneando, craft buying frenzies, accidental furniture shopping in the Baratillo, Lucha Libre, Tequila and lots more… Happy trails, Monica and OD!

… although the unicode lettering of all the entries is buggered up and I´ve no idea how to search and replace weird accents on a MySQL database. That´s my next project…

Never mind, it´s not like people read the archives anyway.

So what a weekend, Meg, Matt, Matera, Bowling, Pool, Sexual Diversity Parade, “Clubbing”, Tequila, tequila and even Lucha Libre. Then spectacular thunderstorms, power cuts and blog outages then last night Monica and OCD´s farewell gathering (they´re off on Thursday at the crack of dawn). I´ve got lots to catch up on but at least the heat should no longer be an issue… I´m wearing a long sleeved t-shirt today for the first time in 8 months you´ll be delighted to hear.

Meanwhile, in Gwod, we fit A LOT into yesterday. Flickr more or less sums up the first part. Part II was going out at 11h30 pm just like all the hip young Tapatians ready to party, but finding the music a bit too loud and settling for a night in playing Jenga and eating chocolate biscuits.

Matt’s permanently surprised with the number of cars that A) he’s never heard of and B) are allowed to circulate on the roads…

via BoingBoing.net:

Stop whatever you’re doing and click on the flash video player thing above… Doesn’t lose its magic no matter how many times you play it.

Other news: Just removed Larsen B ice shelf from our fridgefreezer and what with the drizzle and half a metric ton of ice in the front garden, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

I have to say that I haven’t, but at least 900,000 Brits per year have according to this spurious report (in Spanish). That’s why, if you ever move to Mexico, pick yourself up a pay-as-you-go phone from OXXO or similar for about 20 quid (40 bucks) and buy fichas (credit) every now and again to keep it juiced. They’re sturdy, have a long battery life, come with Snake preinstalled and once you work out how to turn off Spanish predictive text you’re laughing.

So of late there’s been a bit too much navel gazing going on so this post is an attempt to redress the balance by sharing some links away from the agaveweb empire…

I really enjoyed this article on 10 common photography mistakes. Most of them are pretty self evident but when driven home with good examples it’ll make you think before your next trip out with a camera. Next time I’m in an agave field (Saturday, I think), I’m going to try a fair few shots lying on my stomach… Also found some good advice for taking group shots.

One of b3ta’s finest moments is this picture evidence showing evolution to be lie. Behold the Microsoft Big-assed-table, Chilean Lake Missing, and The Onion’s back on form too.

And this just in today, JWood’s coverage of El dia de los Locos in San Miguel de Allende, is great. Especially the Osama bit. Well worth a read, today and every day.

Alright, self-absorbtion should resume with the next post prob’ly. A bientot.