Normal service will be renewed…

I've been spending quite a lot of time in Tarragona recently, without Internet access (quite a joy, in many ways). Anyway, it's summer and I'm sure everyone out there has something better to do than read some blog. If not, get thee to a beach!

I'm back in work tomorrow, so I'm sure that I'll be blogging fairly regularly again before long.

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August 18, 2008 | Filed Under Catalonia, Site news | 1 Comment

SyS - political posters and baldness: you decide

I've added some more photos that were sent in to me over at SyS, my new blog about political posters, stickers and graffiti in Spain.

I've also added a post comparing electoral posters for Josep Duran i Lleida and Joan Ridao, two bald Catalan nationalists with different strategies. This is not to be considered anti-bald propaganda or hate-speech.

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March 5, 2008 | Filed Under Catalonia, Politics, Site news, Spain | 2 Comments

"Good night and good luck" - Zapatero

Zapatero closed today's big debate with these words, after nearly two hours' bitter argument over the state and future state of Spain.

Vital details: Rajoy's suit looked cheap and too small; Rajoy seemed much more nervous and uncomfortable while pretending to be calm (the photocall); Zapatero seemed much more nervous during the debate and interrupted Rajoy frequently; Zapatero was, intellectually, the better arguer; Rajoy's confidence won him points. Rajoy's point that people 'don't understand macro economics' seemed somewhat patronising and foolish.

In terms of the actual discussion, there seemed to be a roughly equal balance between who 'won' each point. The general opinion seems to be that this is 0-0, which is beter for Rajoy than for Zapatero.

Cuarto is reporting that Zapatero won the debate easily among males and those aged between 24-50. Women and the youngest voters were much more balanced in their tastes, though Zapatero comes out on top in every single poll.

Good luck, indeed, to the Spanish voters.

On a different, but connected note: allow me to introduce Simbolos y Senyals, a new project I've started. It's all about the political posters, stickers and graffiti which many of us see on the streets of Spain. My hope is that, along with what examples I can share, readers will send in photos or documents which can be stored together to create a database and library of political campaign material used by major political parties and smaller activist groups. Please take a look and let me know what you think. Also, please feel free to contact me with any examples of such material which you'd like to share.

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February 26, 2008 | Filed Under PP, Politics, Site news, Spain | 1 Comment

Back in black (more site news)

Oh no!

You will, no doubt, be thrilled to know that my unplanned 'maintenance work' is now complete and that the blog is working at full speed again. I have restored all of the posts I lost (mostly in the correct order), checked the permalinks and so on and everything seems to be working.

However, I lost pretty much all of the comments from the last week (though I re-posted some of them Google's cache) as well as my blog roll (which will take an hour or so of annoying copy/pasting to restore). This is not, as some have suggested, a wild attempt at censorship. It was more the result of a situation where by the time I realised what kind of problem I had, it was already too late to back-up my data.

Tip to fellow WordPress users: set up a cron (or use a plugin) to backup your site automatically at least once a week. I recommend the WP-DB-Backup plugin which allows you to schedule backups and have them emailed to you automatically.

Right that's enough geek talk. I'll try and cover Tomas Delgado (the world's biggest arsehole) and silly tax rebates, later this evening.

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January 30, 2008 | Filed Under Site news | Leave a Comment

Kaboom!

I've just managed to recover most of the site after some sort of serious database issue. Some of the most recent comments and posts have been deleted, But I will try to recover them too (I have a DB backup, luckily).

Normal business will resume shortly.

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January 29, 2008 | Filed Under Internet computer, Site news | 2 Comments

2007 in review

2007 was in essence a pretty nondescript year. Gemma and I were lucky enough to travel a fair bit (Amsterdam, Seville and about 5 trips to the UK for weddings/new year). We also had a near perfect holiday in Benicassim, the principle highlights of which were seeing Iggy Pop play live and the enjoyment of a metaphysical state known only as Ginferno.

In terms of statistics, it has been 'another record breaking year' (which makes me feel like I'm at work!). One day I had about 7000 hits after a link to thebadrash was posted on the Popbitch messageboard. Unfortunately, I didn't have any ads on the site which would allow me to profit from such a large volume of traffic, so I've now prepared myself for the next spike and the inevitable river of gold which Mr. Google will give me. I also had one post which received 48 comments, a new record for the site.

Some more stats:

All in all, I had about 90,000 visits on the site which is quite a good number.

My visitors came from: USA, Spain, 'unknown', Great Britain, 'European country' and Australia (and then loads of others)

Apparently, 89% of visitors came into the site directly (via a bookmark or typing the address in)… not sure if this is true but if it is then it's very good news.

Top keyphrases: Reverend Goatboy, Most evil people in history, Max Carlish, badrash, pimp my Myspace, The Vagina Institute. Barcelona did quite well too.

2008 promises to be a fruitful and enjoyable year and I've got several big web projects in the pipeline which will, I hope, be of some interest to at least some of my visitors. We'll be back in Barna tomorrow, so there's nothing left to say except that I hope that most of you have a pleasant, safe 2008. Oh, and roll on the US elections!

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January 1, 2008 | Filed Under Home, Site news | Leave a Comment

CiU's man and the Mafia boss

An interesting story has been bubbling away for several months. Antoní Fernández Teixidó, a CiU member of the Catalan Parliament, failed to turn up at court the other day for a hearing into his links with Malchas Tetruashvili, an alleged Georgian mafia boss. Apparently, during an anti-mafia operation, police found a letter from Teixidó, written on official notepaper, thanking the Georgian for dinner. The mafia guy could then take that note and show people how well connected he was. It's an old trick, but a pretty stupid one as most people don't write a note on official notepaper to say thanks for dinner. It makes you look a bit odd. Hopefully more details on the case will emerge soon.

My favourite bit so far is some of the information surrounding Teixidó's failure to turn up at court. Officials said that he must have known about the case because they'd sent him a telegram. A telegram! One wonders why they didn't send the pigeons like normal.

===

By the way: you may have noticed some strange characters and symbols cropping up in my posts. There's some sort of problem with my character encoding settings which I don't currently have time to look into.

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November 23, 2007 | Filed Under Catalonia, Site news | 1 Comment

Updated: New comments system

I'm experimenting with a new comments system on thebadrash.com. It's called 'Intense Debate' and appears to be designed to allow for a more exciting commenting experience, as well as giving people the option of commenting on various blogs using one user profile (sort of like what OpenID offers). Anyway, those of you who are bloggers (especially if you're not 100% satisfied with the way your platform handles comments) should check it out, or at least keep your eyes peeled for a post on here saying that I've decided to stick with/completely ditch Intense Debate.

Please bear with me while I dick around with my blog a bit more.

UPDATE: Intense Debate looks really promising for the future but it's still a bit too buggy for me. I'm going to keep my eye on developments over there, and hopefully will be able to switch to them in the future.

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October 30, 2007 | Filed Under Internet computer, Site news | Leave a Comment

Summer holidays

Blogging has been erratic of late. My real job is going well. There have been a lot of recent events (London & Glasgow attacks, Yemen attacks etc) which I have strong feelings about but on which I've not had time to talk.

There is a column at The Guardian which is causing some controversy. The writer argues that to ignore British foreign policy while trying to understand Islamist fanaticism is a mistake. I sort of half agree with him. The way I see it is that our foreign policy has had an effect on a lot of the young men who have joined Islamist groups. But that doesn't mean that Islamism wouldn't exist without Western influence in the Middle East. Sayyid Qutb developed his warped ideas about us in the 1950s.

And still, understanding that Islamism exists without Western military action, it's stunning to think that people believe that our foreign policy has nothing to do with terrorism.

A world without Saddam Hussein is a better world. And yet, the way in which the war was prosecuted seems to have given both a breeding ground and fodder to the Islamists. This is, it must be admitted, a huge strategic failure. Iraq, like it or not, has become both recruiting ground and recruiting poster.

Islamism is clearly the enemy of socialism and democracy. But that doesn't qualify any and all action by Western governments as acceptable. It is right that we criticise our governments when we feel that they have made mistakes or overstepped the mark. Those commentators who try to smother criticism are missing the point. Debate is what makes us strong.

thebadrash.com will be on intermittent holiday between now and the beginning of September.

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July 6, 2007 | Filed Under 'Terror', Site news | 4 Comments

Flux - thebadrash.com design

I'm messing about with some different design options for the site currently, so you may find elements appearing, disappearing or changing style over the next week or two. Just keeping you all on your toes.

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June 11, 2007 | Filed Under Site news | 2 Comments

We're off to Amsterdam!

thebadrash.com is taking a thoroughly undeserved break by jetting off to Amsterdam for a long weekend. We're really looking forward to it as neither of us have been. If anyone has any useful travel hints (other than "Don't buy the most expensive weed on the menu" - as if I'd do that!), feel free to leave a comment.

Back next week.

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April 11, 2007 | Filed Under Site news | 3 Comments

Pimp my MySpace with foulness

I'm not sure how I ended up with a MySpace account. It's not something I'm particularly proud of, though I'm glad that I can use it to stay in touch with friends in the UK who don't really 'do' email like I do. Anyway, what I really wanted to write about today is why I'm going to start a new tradition with my Space. Starting yesterday, I'm going to find the most tacky, disgusting and cutrÃ© profile design possible for my profile. Perhaps it'll feature a buxom bikini model, a famous footballer, a sports car or an alien smoking a spliff. Ideally, it should include just the right balance of transparency, non-complimentary colours, animated gifs etc to render it practically unreadable to all but the most dedicated stalker/layabout.

I'm going to celebrate the trashiness of the world's most popular website and I want you to come with me. Suggest a theme from pimp-my-profile.com, or an equivalent (ideally with a song which you think will compliment the layout), and I'll adopt the best entries for a week each. Let's get low.

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March 27, 2007 | Filed Under Internet computer, Site news | 2 Comments

The Trap

Last night, we watched the second part of Adam Curtis's documentary about the concept of freedom in modern society, The Trap. It was really very interesting and while naturally polemical in its structure, still worth watching even for those who still think James M. Buchanan has all the answers (you're wrong: he doesn't). Curtis basically condemns the adoption of 'game theory' as a system of social management, because of its flawed classification of humans as simple, mechanical computing machines.

I'm sorry to say that we missed the first part in the series. Reviews of it were very good, though, so I'll have to see if I can't hunt down a copy.

In other news, my colleague, Eric and I met up with web2.0 professional, John Bell on Thursday evening. He said a lot which opened my eyes and got me thinking about new ways of approaching social media, specifically in Barcelona and Catalonia. Anyone who wants to be at the bleeding edge of web technologies could do worse than bookmarking his blog (and then reading it at regular intervals). He wrote a very kind blurb about this blog here.

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March 19, 2007 | Filed Under Catalonia, Internet computer, Politics, Site news | 2 Comments

The bad design

Regular visitors may have noticed that I've been dicking around with my blog's design recently. This is a bad habit to get into because I can easily become distracted by design elements rather than focusing on writing top quality pieces to bait iberianNotes. In fact, true design ought never to interfere with the 'creative' process.

So, I've decided to stick with this theme ('redoable') for some time, and refuse to allow myself the joy of tinkering with the CSS. Except for two things: removing the bullet-points from those link categories; ~~and fixing my main page/post page title fields; and fixing my sidebar. Let me know if you hate this new theme, though.~~

Er… yeah, I've gone back to the old one.

In other news, Gemma and I are off to the land of Betis on Friday. It'll be my first trip to al Andaluz in quite some time and I'm really looking forward to it. In particular, the cathedral and the AlcÃ¡zares are meant to be stunning.

Oh, and before I forget, feliÃ§ aniversari a la meva dona! It's Tuesday the 13th!!

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February 13, 2007 | Filed Under Site news | 2 Comments

Why things have been quiet

Despite a big couple of days here, thebadrash has been very light on content of late. There are a few reasons for this… and I'd like to use a blog post to talk about them.

1 Christmas was fantastic. Gemma and I took her parents with us to Modbury for a traditional English Christmas. We all had a great time, I ate too many pies. But at the same time, it wasn't exactly the holiday I'm used to enjoying there: I had to speak Spanish and Catalan a lot of the time. While that's undoubtedly good for me, it is also exhausting. So there you have it: a brilliant holiday from which I returned knackered.

2 The iMac. As you may have noticed, our joint Gemma & Tom Christmas & Kings & Easter present has been eagerly awaited in these here parts. I'll admit that I have been somewhat tied up in constantly checking the TNT site for information as to whether or not the new computer had left Arnhem. The computer is fantastic. I've managed to sort out the wireless internet connection.

3 Work. I was looking forward to getting back to work in January because we've started a potentially major new project, in which I'm taking a leading role. Like most bloggers, I can't live on comments alone and work has been offering a lot to chew on (if you'll excuse the hideously mixed metaphor).

There's more to come for thebadrash, though. The new computer is in part an investment because both Gemma and I are interested in improving our design (and web design) skills… I might even adjust my minimalist myspace page.

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January 11, 2007 | Filed Under Home, Internet computer, Site news | 2 Comments