Rolling Stones cancel El Ejido concert

Having seen the Rolling Stones cancel their Valladolid concert yesterday due to Jagger's laryngitis, I was not really expecting them to play in El Ejido 2moro, yet hopeful. Its now confirmed that the concert is fucking cancelled. What fucking shit luck !! To have them play on your doorstep in the boonies of Andalucia, seemed a bit too good to be true. To have great seats by the stage even better ! It was El Ejido's big and only moment on the map, hope we get a refund before the mayor runs off with all the money !! Perhaps Jagger looked at the relatively low ticket sales and thought fuck this, I'll save my now voice coached voice for a bigger gig like Twickenham ! Guess I'll never see them again !! Tags : Rolling Stones concert + El Ejido

Rolling Stones to play in El Ejido in August

Its finally been confirmed that the Rolling Stones will play at the Estadio Santa Domingo in El Ejido on August 16th. Got great ringside seats by the stage as the Redhead braved the heat and the long Q , standing for 4 hours as tickets were being sold from the Ayuntamiento de El Ejido before they are available on www.tictacticket.com on the 20th. She was complaining that having danced next to Jagger at a friend's wedding some years ago, Q-ing up for hours to get tickets to see him play was weird ! So 1982, 1990 and finally 2006 , 3 decades over which I will have seen the Rolling Stones. Tags : Rolling Stones + El Ejido

Six daily clicks

Every day that I am online (which is pretty much 362 days a year ) , I click on the following six sites at the start of the day. All the clicks are free and all the other sites are linked via banners on the top after your click. It should take no more than 90 seconds a day to make a little difference to this fucked up world we live in !!If there are any more sites like this that help worldwide , please leave the link in a comment.

• The Hunger Site : A daily click gives 1.1 cups of food to the hungry worldwide. In 2005 nearly 53 million cups of food were funded.
• The Child Health Site : A daily click helps restore vison to blind children, prevents life-threatening disease and helps child amputees to walk. In 2005 visitors clicks funded health services to more than 486,000 kids worldwide.
• The Breast Cancer Site : In 2005 visitor clicks funded more than 2500 mammograms for underpriviliged women.
• The Animal Rescue Site : In 2005 visitor clicks funded nearly 30.6 million bowls of food for animals sheltering in sanctuaries.
• The Rainforest Site : A daily click saves 11.4 sq. feet of endangered rain forest . In 2005 visitor clicks funded the preservation and protection of 360,513,660 sq. feet of rainforest.
• The Literacy Site : In 2005 visitor clicks funded more than 868,000 free books for children who would otherwise not have the oppurtunity.

Yahoo - serious ?

For many years I have thought Yahoo was shit and now they finally admit to not being interested in being No.1 in the search engine world. I have never really used Yahoo to search anything and find that it's slow to crawl websites for new information. Google for whatever its misgivings and the continual moaning one reads about in the web forums is the still the world's No.1 search engine with an approximate 60% slice of the search engine pie, and also has a greater charisma than Yahoo in its corporate image. Google's revenue is far greater despite being a younger company than Yahoo and I aslo respect Google's current stance in not handing over search information to the Govt. A year ago Microsoft's MSN was touted as being the new kid on the search block to eventually catch up with Google. As one has seen that Microsoft has got enough problems on its hand with a Swiss cheese browser that is riddled with security holes and still hasn't changed an OS after nearly 5 years, should we hold our breath for MSN to perform? Yahoo's admission to not being interested in being No.1 in search dominance is not an encouraging stance for the company to take and doesn't help in Yahoo being taken seriously. Perhaps its too late for them to pull their finger out .... ?? Tags: Yahoo + Google + MSN + search engines

Ego Surfing with egoSurf.

ego Surf is a new site where bloggers can massage their ego and see what their ''ego-points '' are for rankings for their blogs in Google, Yahoo, MSN, Technorati and del.icio.us . One simply enters their name and their blogs name without the www. and gets their ego-ranking as a point total. A button is available to add to your blog for others to see your ego ranking. egoWatch and ego-Rank will be coming soon. Not terribly accurate at the moment, but an amusing ego-wank !! (a recent ego-Surf showed a total of 11,584 Ego-points for this blog). Tags: egoSurf + egosurfing + egoWatch + egoRank

time 2006

The Rolling Stones bust their own record for the biggest take in tour history at $162 million leaving U2's arsewipe arenas way behind.... All Peers might blow Firefox's popularity through the roof if their P2P extension works .... a new feed icon replaces all other XML RSS Atom etc icons with a choice of colours at Feed Icons .... though as I write the public ''Gracias no Fumar'' signs will be pasted everywhere in Spain with their new Anti-Smoking Laws , Almeria's '' La Voz de Almeria '' headline states that 80% of bars and restaurants in the Almeria province will allow smoking as ..... time takes a cigarette and extends itself by a leap second at the dawn of 2006 , first celebrated by Kiritimati on the Christmas Islands followed by a mundane countdown to the New Year at Time and Date.com .... here's to a better year than 2005 with less natural disasters , plane crashes, greedy wars and less crass stupidity from the world's biggest war-mongering, cunt-faced cowboy rectum, George .....

• Rolling Stones + Blu Ray + Feed Icons + Almeria + time + 2006 + rectum

Sheep Brain Stew Receipe

The following receipe serves 4 people.

• INGREDIENTS :

• 3 sheep brains
• 3 onions, chopped
• 4 tomatoes, choppped
• half a bunch of coriander leaves
• 6 green chillies
• 1.5 tsp. of turmeric
• 0.75 tsp. of chilli powder
• 1.5 tsp. of salt
• 2 tsp. of vinegar
• 3 tbsp. of olive oil

• INSTRUCTIONS:

• Clean and wash the brains. then sprinkle half a tsp. of salt and turmeric powder on them and boil with 2 cups of water. When the water is boiled, remove the brains.

• Heat the oil in a pan and fry the onions till they are light brown. Add the chopped tomatoes,coriander leaves and chillies to the pan. Then fry them on a slow heat and add 1 tsp. of turmeric powder, chilli powder and one tsp. of salt. Continue frying while adding about 4 oz. of water. Finnally add the vinegar and then add the cooked brains and allow to simmer , covered for about 5 minutes. Serve hot.

• For those who have never eaten this before, brains look like scrambled eggs and taste absolutely delicious.

Sheep brain stew

Pickled Mangoes - Rundaas Style

Parfait jars are the best method of storage for the mangoes once pickled, especially with their air-tight rubber seal. Use the biggest ones which are about 12 inches high. INGREDIENTS :

• 10 Kg. of small green mangoes
• Small green chillies
• Small red chillies
• Salt

• Slice the mangoes into small wedges (having removed their hard green pips) and put a layer about 2 inches high into the parfait jar. Then add 2-3 green and red chillies and sprinkle some salt. Then add another layer of sliced magoes 2 inches high and repeat the process in layers all the way to the top of the parfait jar. Close the rubber seal tightly and turn the jar upside down and then upright again. Place the jars upright in the sun during the day, turning them upside down about three times. Leave them for 3 days in the sun to sweat which will create their brine.

• Put them all in the refridgerator and enjoy them with curries, steak, fish and whatever else depending on how fucked up your taste buds are !

• Pickled Mangoes

The Turner Prize 2005

The 2005 Turner Prize has been won by Simon Starling. His work involves transforming an object or substance into another. He describes his work as ''the physical manifestation of a thought process...'' In 2004 he crossed the Tabernas desert in Andalucia, Spain on an improvised electric bicycle.The waste product produced by the bicycle was water which he used to paint a watercolour of a cactus for a piece entitled ''Tabernas Desert Run ''. For his Turner Prize exhibit ''Shedboatshed'', Simon Starling dismantled a shed, turned it into a boat and loaded the boat with the remains of the shed. The boat was then paddled down the Rhine to a museum in Basel, dismantled and re-made into a shed. Though I'm not very excited by the work for the Turner Prize for several years now, strangely enough I predicted that Starling would win, leaving a comment to that effect on Art News Blog around October 20th earlier this year. Perhaps it was the bias I that live in Tabernas !! Tags: Turner Prize 2005 + Simon Starling + Tabernas

A Rendezvous at 140 m.p.h. through Paris

On an August morning in 1978, French filmmaker Claude Lelouch mounted a gyro-stabilized camera to the bumper of a Ferrari 275 GTB and had a friend, a professional Formula 1 racer, drive at breakneck speed through the heart of Paris. The film was limited for technical reasons to 10 minutes; the course was from Porte Dauphine, through the Louvre, to the Basilica of Sacre Coeur.

No streets were closed, for Lelouch was unable to obtain a permit. The driver completed the course in about 9 minutes, reaching nearly 140 MPH in some stretches. The footage reveals him running real red lights, nearly hitting real pedestrians, and driving the wrong way up real one-way streets. Upon showing the film in public for the first time, Lelouch was arrested. He has never revealed the identity of the driver, and the film went underground until a DVD release a few years ago.

http://www.hardscience.net/rendezvous20_04.mov

Tags : Claude Lelouch Ferrari 275GTB

Grilled Swordfish Seaweed Steak

A 5 min Rundaas recipe for swordfish (use tuna fish or salmon, if swordfish is unavailable).

Ingredients :

• One Swordfish steak (0.5 inches thick )
• One sheet of nori
• One teaspoon of Tamari or dark soya sauce
• half a lime
• sesame seeds

Instructions: Whack on the grill to full force. Put a sheet of nori (slighty moistened first with a few drops of water) on tinfoil on the grill tray. Place the fish on it and squeeze half a lime all over it. Then sprinkle the sesame seeds covering the fish and add a teaspoonful of tamari and grind pepper all over it. Turn the swordfish steak over so that the marinade hits both sides of it and then wrap the fish in the sheet of nori completely sealing it . Put a few drop of extra virgin oil or sesame oil on the side of the sushi nori parcel facing the grill, and spread it all over. Stick it under the grill for 3-4 mins (more if you don't like your fish slighty raw in the middle) . That's it !

Spain introduces ADSL 2+

It seems since that since my previous post on the broadband race , Pedro's donkey has had a comparative nitro boost with Jazztel and Wanadoo offering a new, much faster technology called ADSL 2+ . Quoted as ''upto 20Mbps'' Jazztel is offering it currently at 30 Euros (20 quid ) and Wanadoo at 20 euros (13.5 quid ) a month (on offer till end Jan 2006) . A lot depends on where you are in Spain and your proximity to the exchange. Jazztel has pumped 24 million Euros into attempting to cover 88% of Madrid's population with 3 million lines. This can only spring hope for the future for us in the boonies of Andalucia where the only current solution is a choppy 2Mb satellite connection at an absurd 180 Euros (122 quid ! ) a month. Needless to say that there is no mention of ADSL 2+ on Spain's biggest ISP Telefonica's website and trying to find their ADSL prices is a convoluted messy process.

Protection against Art Scammers

(Logo taken from Art Space 2000 , available for other artists to put on their sites.)

As I receive at least 3 e-mails a month from people wanting to buy paintings, mostly claiming to be setting up a new house in Johannesburg and pulling either the Certified US Cashier Check or Money Order 4-1-9 Advance Fee Fraud , I decided to post some lists below of their e-mails for other artists who may not be aware. The ones I receive seem to have been written by the same person as the same grammatical errors are there and they seem to favour e-mailing via yahoo.com or yahoo.co.uk . Asking for a telephone number is an effective way of syphoning out the reality of the request .

• Here is a recent one from Dianne Hansen : dianne_hansen001@yahoo.com
• HI ,I saw some lovely and creative artworks on your site and i will like to buy some for our new house in Johannesburg. I will like to buy:
• 1. (Title Removed )
• 2. ( Title Removed)
• Pls send me the price of the artwork excluding the shipping price because i have already contacted a shipping company that will be shipping our other home decors.Pls get back if they are still in stock so i can arrange something with my husband ontime . I will be paying you with a Certified US Cashier Check or Money Order. An urgent reply we be appreciated.Thanks.
• Regards, Dianne

Two extensive lists of these Art Scammers are available at Absolutearts.com (e-mails and I.P. addresses) and at ArtQuest , a list of e-mails, a link to a page explaining the scams and outlining how to receive safe payments and filing a complaint at the Internet Fraud Complaint Center if you have been fucked over. At Art News Blog Dion quotes an incident where he received a similar e-mail for purchase and then an artist friend of his sent him the same scammy e-mail he had received with Dion's e-mail address at the bottom !! Tags : Art Scammers Art Fraud

Apple video iPod - Too much hype !!

The amount of hype and coverage the new video iPod has received has been incredible considering there are many other portable video players out there. Despite Steven Jandali saying that the new video iPod was "the best music player we've ever made,'' adding that the video element was a secondary issue, it has even made the news channels on T.V. amongst numerous references on the internet.

Perhaps what wasn't added in his hype was the elimination of the Firewire and only USB 2.0 available which seems like backward technology in order to boast that its 31% thinner than its predecessor. Ask yourself, isn't one's time more important than space ? Also its one of the only gadgets out there where you have to pay extra for a mains charger which is taking the piss at $299 or the more expensive 219 quid ($ 384.36) U.K. option !! The video iPod seems more like a gimmick to entice new iPod buyers. Staring at its 2.5 inch screen would be enough to make you go blind if you were watching an hour's worth of anything (forget the sparcely available content).As Jandali joked earlier about browning his bagels with the iPod, he seems to have done a big U-turn. I hope the new screens don't break in one's pockets either!! Sony's new PSP in contrast has an incredible screen as an example of portable video.

As it happens, yesterday my 3G iPod had suddenly become an expensive paperweight as it has totally died on me. I had to wade through all the bullshit one was blasted at about the new iPod to decide what to replace my old one with. I finally settled on a 20GB colour 4G iPod as though the new one is only 10 quid more with 10GB more space and a 0.5 inch bigger screen, black option (and of course 31% slimmer !), it has no Firewire, no mains charger, no skins as yet to protect its delicate screen and body and will probably be obsolete in the next 3-6 months with another rushed offering from Apple. I will have to wait till the end of 2006 for the ultimate iPoDA with iPhone, 16.7 million colour video, camera , iTunes and all the other normal wireless PDA functions, with a flap at the back like any mobile phone where a new lithium battery can be simply inserted to replace it instead of dealing with the iPod Battery replacement programme. Tags : Video iPod