A quick note to say that the trip to Pamplona was fantastic and that photos will be forthcoming just as soon as I get a chance to sit at my own computer. Right now I’m at a Cyber Cafe in Sants, after a great Shish Tawok in the Lebanese restaurant next door. To fill in some details, I got back from Navarra on Monday night around the stroke of midnight and spend all day yesterday in a complete panic trying to move stuff out of the old aparment and in to the new. To do so we rented a PepeCar and after a wrong turn in the north of Barcelona central, were under pressure to get back in time not to fall victim of the €80 fine that I’m sure they must make a killing on. After some hairy moments we got parked and paid in time to go shopping afterwards. So after a bloody manic day running around, Maika made my birthday a whole lot better by getting me my very own PSP, with of course, GTA!!

I’ve just about gotten the sand out of my ears after the trip to Roses and it’s time to pack the bags again for what’s sure to be an interesting trip to Pamplona. Pretty much everyone’s heard of the place or at the very least, the main fiesta of the Pamplona calander - San Fermin. Anyone still in the dark should know that I’m talking about the bull run that goes on every morning for eight days of July each year. As the popularity has grown among Italian, American and other tourists, so has the dread of the locals, to see what used to be a relatively enjoyable week turn in to a beer guzzling, pintxo munching, bull teasing infestation. In recent years, a usual sight would be drunken idiots sleeping in the locals’ gardens or on the very high murals where they could (and have) fall to their peril. To cheer themselves up, the owners of the houses like to get up at dawn and spray as many of these lost souls with cold water as they can to see if they’ll wake up and do something typically stupid!

However, as dreadful as this sounds, those who have grown to resent the main celebration of San Fermin have some comfort in the fact that there is a another date on the calendar that brings the spirit of San Fermin, but not the tourists (yet). This ikle version, otherwise known as San Fermin Chiquito goes on for the weekend and doesn’t feature the encierro (bull run), which believe it or not, is not the only thing to this fiesta! Scheduled for the 23rd and 24th, it just happens to be when I’ll be there, so I’ll get the photos up as soon I get a chance to take them. (d’uh)

As nice as Roses is, you can’t help but feel like a total tourist with nothing but hotels, “traditional” restaurants and souvenir shops around the place. Thankfully there is the Ciutadella, which has been preserved from the strangling grip of tourism in a box. Actually it’s just about the only defining characteristic of the town and ironically it was the place most devoid of people (tourists). See more pics here.

Trying to find some decent information about web-hosting is a bit like asking victims of a car crash what happened - everyone will have their own particular view thanks to a little thing called vested interest. It’s bloody difficult to get a straight answer on anything and if you do, then you should be extra-cautious as you go forward. What it comes down to is that there are many solutions and if you want to sum it up in one sentence, it would go something like this: “You get what you pay for“.

Now all that’s left is to decide why you want a web-hosting plan and how serious you are about making use of it. You could go for a free hosting plan, with which you get plenty of ads, no scripting or database support and a slow loading speed. As bad as it sounds, this would probably work for complete beginners who want to experiment a bit and will more than likely abandon their sites within a few weeks.

Shared hosting is the serious but non-profit option. It’s ideal for a personal site like this which won’t have big numbers of visitors and which don’t particularly need to be secure. There are tons of different providers out there and finding the right one could prove to be easier said than done. After checking out whats on offer and also getting a satisfied customer’s recommendation I reckon I’ll be going with Bluehost in the near future so I can stop piggybacking on the space that I’m using now! From what I’ve seen, they aren’t so big that you’re just another number and they’re not so small that they might just disappear tomorrow.

Finally, dedicated hosting is for hard-core users who want complete control, reliability and security. That generally means businesses, so unless you’re setting out to build a money-making empire, you’ll probably want the more reasonably priced shared option.

Living in Barcelona has its advantages but like most relatively large cities, you end up running from place to place and there just isn’t much opportunity to relax. Yes there’s a beach beside the city, but unless you’re a guiri or have never been to a beach in your life, it sucks. Apart from the contaminated water, the strange stains that the sands seems to leave and the occasional infestation of jellyfish, it’s always overflowing with sun-worshippers so finding a peaceful spot normally takes half a day.

That’s why we took advantage of the long weekend to get out of town and travel up the Costa Brava a little. Roses or Rosas used to be a charming seaside village until the seventies, which saw an influx of tourists, hotels and apartment blocks. That said, the change of pace was worth the trip and I took a few snaps that I’ll post in the coming days.

Thanks to a really handy feature from Last.fm, I’ve been able to add my personalised music charts to the site. You’ll find them in the pages category of the sidebar. Note that I haven’t had access to Last.fm for the past few weeks, so some of the listings may be less than accurate, like the one saying that Sabina is my second favourite artist. Obviously he’s number one!

Two corporate giants have gone head to head in a historic race to see who can delay the release of their revolutionary product without pissing off every single last one of their customers the longest. Although Microsoft are very experienced in this area, Sony hit back today with news that the European launch date of the PS3 won’t fall this side of Christmas. But all is not lost for MS as they announce severe compatibality problems with the upcoming Vista OS that may lead to the latest in a long series of delays going back almost two years! Who will win out…watch this space.

It’s kickoff time, and although this post won’t see the light of day until I have my styles in order, I’m gladly going to re-iterate that if you are reading this blog in Internet Explorer then you are a moron. If on the other hand your chosen browser is Firefox, or even Opera (which I’ve been getting more fond of as each day passes) then welcome and congratulations on not being a moron. Long live the fox!

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