Zippo Lighters: To Fill with Zippo Fuel or Not?

I love my zippo. You can use it for a lot of other things other than lighting up your smokes. I’ve use the grill as a screwdriver, the base to hit in tent pegs and it’s handy as a torch when it’s gone dark and you’ve left your torch somewhere else!

I’d say as well, they ain’t windproof. I think any season camper who’s been in the mountains will testify that they’re not as good as those lighters that are like jet fighter plane engines and kinda glow blue then red. But, they don’t look as good or as cool as the zippo plus you can’t use it for the things above mentioned. They are REALLY useless as a light.

Anyway… enough about my ramblings. I’ve read the instructions for a Zippo and in 20 odd years of owning a Zippo, I’ve never had a problem using other brand fuel. Their main competitor it seems is Clipper which is around the same price. So my question, dear reader is what do you think? Any notable experiences with using other fuel?

BIC Mobile Phones: Michael Weston would love it!

Today, I’ve seen for the first time a BIC mobile phone for 19 euros at a local tobacco store.  Yes, it is the same BIC that do the throwaway razors that is every travelling man’s best friend!

The image supplied is from France, but it’s the same branded packaging and everything!

I guess this will be the saviour of any traveller who has a phone stolen or has to make a lot of in-country phone calls while away on holiday or a business trip! It comes with 60 minutes of calls and is rechargeable.  There-in lies the difficulty if you’ve not got a charger.

It’s made by Alcatel Telecom, so as a basic no thrills gadget it will be cool. I mean, take this to a festival or a beach and there’s no worries about loosing it, just leave a forwarding message on your iphone! Cool!

Michael Weston from burn-notice, I’m sure would say how cool a bugging device this would be for 20 bucks… I’m sure they’d be a WHOLE episode on it

Within Temptation Barcelona Tour March 24 2011: Barcelona, Razzmatazz

According to nvivo and metalunderground.com Within Temptation have just announced a new tour date for Barcelona.

Don’t get your black pants on right now… it’s for March 24, 2011! Ticket sales are to be announced soon!

Venue:

Razzamatazz,
Pamplona 88

Play.com: How you won and lost my heart!

Play.com: How you won and lost my heart!

A review on my experiences with play.com, the alternatives, value and customer services.

I’ve been raving about play.com for sometime. I’ve raved about them in a magazine I write for Barcelona Connect re: How to Get UK books and TV here in Spain for discount prices. I never seemed to have a problem with them until mid last year. Play.com’s service, delivery times and order statuses just seem to have plummeted.

What sold me on play.com is the great auto responses, the free delievry to Spain which is ideal. Additionally, I can send books, dvd’s, t-shirts etc to friends in the UK for their birthday and save a great deal on the inflated prices of consumer goods here and save on delivery!

I’ve been using play.com since they first started… They used a business model not dissimilar to those book clubs where you buy X many books at 99p and then have to buy the rest at their price. Luckily, play.com were offering at that time great priced books and DVDs.

Now play.com offer band shirts and gadgets. Books here in Spain in English are well overpriced. Amazon don’t exist here, [well they did until they found out how little the average Spaniard reads]. Amazon do take a sizeable chunk on P&P. The question is, should I offer amazon my 5+ years custom from play.com? Is the loss of foreign postage for ad-hoc book buying really worth that much?

I think it might be. Thing is, let’s look at the facts for Amazon.

Amazon again are very hard to contact. Try and find a telephone number. Navigating a CONTACT US button is impossible. It kind of defies everything I’ve learned in 8 years of dedicated ecommerce  website building. Just in-case you want to know Amazon.co.uk customer service number it is 0800 496 1081

At least PLAY.com do offer this and it’s on their front page [but well low down]

I’ve never had a problem with refunds or items that never arrived getting replaced. Replies took 24H but I got one. One has to question the whole offline experience. I’ll tell you why now.

Books started to go missing in the post [for Spain] and are arriving later and later. My most recent purchase from play.com took 21 days to arrive. A family member in the UK  posted something last Monday and got to me today. So what’s going on?

What really miffed me was 2 sets of reordering for a friend’s birthday present. They never arrived, I reordered and one of them never arrived. It took ages to get a reply back from my friend who probably thought I never ordered it anyway. What was I to do? It was well outside the normal times to complain.

I loved play.com. Dudes, you had my heart. For ex-pat UK dudes in Europe, it’s a money saver, I can order in Euros get stuff delivered to Spain, UK, Germany… anywhere.

A book in FNAC vs Play.com‘s price is a far stretch. The question remains how cheeky FNAC are with their European distribution chain [I think it's massive] and the charges they ask for foreign language goods.  I recommend anyone, check out amazon.co.uk, play.com and abe.com [second hand] resellers. They arrive quicker than from play.com itself. Weird innit!

Still, I think my last order with play.com themselves will be indeed my ultimate one.

I can no longer afford to have friendships ruined by the ‘trust’ aspect of online shopping with them. The last delivery time of 21 days is excessive [that's from postage not ordering date], which would put the whole experience near 28 days from order to delivery.

The company does refund, it does have a telephone number, it is postage free. There is value in ordering from them. Still, paying a few bucks more from a similar company Amazon might have to be my next option or play, abe, amazon resellers….. sadly.

Bass the size of a violin, that sounds like a double bass!

Some time ago in the UK I bought a Ashbory [Fender] bass.

The Ashbory Bass a unique product. Basically imagine a violin, well it’s more or less the same size with super thick LATEX strings and ultra fine frets.

I had a trouble with the high end, but the cool thing is, you whack talc on your hands and play it like a fret-less bass and it just sounds like a double bass. I’m thinking of bringing it back with me from the UK to here. Using riffworks and my trusty notebook I can literally play D&B tunes sitting in a back of a car.  Taking it camping… no problemo… takes up NO SPACE at all!

I might loose the talc mind in the back of the car. My GF will go crazy!

Live, it does look a bit kinda like the guitar keyboard did for the keyboard player in Level 42. Yeah, a bit of a non event.  By that I mean SHAMELESS! However, the deep end and size of it means if you’re playing very simple lower level bass it’s just so easy.  I remember using it playing ‘Breathe’ by the Prodigy. You ought to know how fast that bass line is. This bass can do it. Looking for a Roni Size bass tone without octave effects.. this has it.

The only trouble is getting the strings to be in tune. You have to stretch the strings for ages [they're latex]. The G-string always seems to snap. Still, I think if you play a double bass tune at an open-mike night… you’ll get people wondering WHERE the huge bass sound is coming from. No way it’s coming from that violin ahhaah!

Here’s a walking bass on an ashbory:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVgLjvuMYq4&feature=related

Museo del Mamut : The Mammoth Museum Review In Barcelona

Museo del Mamut : The Mammoth Museum Review In Barcelona

I had the great pleasure of going to the Museo de Mamut in the gothic area of Barcelona this weekend.  If you’re looking for a museum surrounding history that’s akin to say Cosmo Caixa with all it’s interactive pieces, this is one not to be missed.

Its a step above a lot of other history museums in Barcelona. Foremost, the guides shape a tour in your language. You turn up, they do it. Next, the guides are palaeontologists not hired lingual help who don’t know much more than the employee handbook. Most importantly,  you get to TOUCH, FEEL, SMELL and interact with the exhibits. If you want to take photos, no problem.

The highlight is touching mammoth tusks, skulls, horns, teeth etc. from pre-historic animals. There’s mammoth leather hide which you can touch! My favourite was smelling an ancestor of a rhino’s horn. I could smell the animal itself. It was amazing!

You can ask questions and the guides will give you a response at your level of understanding. With my guide, she used the movie Ice Age to give examples to the kids. My GF asked a lot deeper questions and the responses were serious and informative. Great! Finally a guide [not a curator or director] that knows their stuff and you get to understand much more too!!!!!

There are so few museums anywhere with a level of attentiveness or going the extra mile like this mammoth museum does . To give an example, I didn’t go with a camera, as 99.9% of the time you can never use it. They had a camera on lend. This meant  I could take some memories back with me! Name another museum that does this? There is amazing attention to the whole experience and going the extra mile. I was blown away! They’re going to email the photos and send info on what we asked for!

The mammoth museum is not HUGE. A tour takes roughly 25-35 minutes. You can wander around thereafter. I recommend you do. There’s a lot to read on large panels and no urgency to leave. You can do as many rounds as you want.  I was in there around 1.5 hours.  On the ceilings  there’s cave drawings from around the world plus when you look around there’s hidden animals and lots of attention to detail that you would miss if you just went with the tour.

In addition, the site its on appears to have late medieval decor [note the pillars and wash basin and chimney].  So ask more questions

I believe it’s one of the few museums with a prehistoric skeleton of a cave bear. It’s really spooky and scary! The mammoths looked like the good guys!

On the plus side, it’s a great learning experience. Information panels are in part in English. The heavy reading stuff is in Spanish. No translation guides were given, which I thought was a pity . The price is expensive 7.50 EUR, but if you go with a library card and ID it’s 5 EUR, which I think is very reasonable!

If you want to get away from the usual things to do in Barcelona and touch history, I highly recommend this museum. I get the impression they’re going to add sabre tooth tigers to it, I guess watch this space!!!!

Website: http://www.museodelmamut.com/

Address
Museo del Mamut
Montcada, 1
Barcelona

Tel. 93 268 85 20
Fax. 93 163 51 27

Metro: L4 Jaume 1

E-mails:

info@museudelmamut.com

Got a band, book… something to share on Facebook?

I read this really excellent article today onFacebook marketing. There were a few things I didn’t know, especially about hacking the interface for your special fans and business pages. It’s a HUGE article which I recommend reading.  It starts off with the basics of marketing and social media and then gets into the HOW TO with tonnes of tasty advice and links!

I particulary liked this for your Facebook page!

“Tip: If you’ve got no development skills you can find some nice facebook FBML page templates that have just started to appear around the template stores.”

It’s really tasty. Once I get the graphics and songs remixed for Slot Machine Bandits my collab project… I might just do what it says!

Supercool Widget for Sharing with Chrome

I discovered an ultra cool widget for Chrome. My Mozilla has soo many plug-ins I use for work it’s kinda a slow workhorse. Anyway, for personal stuff I like Chrome. There’s a cool app called Shareaholic.  http://www.shareaholic.com/tools/chrome/welcome/3.0

Near the URL title bar you’ll see a shareaholic button then you press, up pops your Twitter, Facebook etc… and you share.

Easy, nice and even better unlike Mozilla you don’t even need to restart your prog!

Tasty!

12 Minute Short Movie Idea

Short Movie 12 Minutes:

Cast:

3 protagonists

1. Hitman, probably russian or eastern european

2. Victim: Male or female not a problem

3. Hacker: Male or female, but probably better some shady looking

Overview: We have suspicion placed on the victim, via dialogue that makes his look guilty. It changes when it’s seen as being innocent. It’s bizarre circumstances…

Opening Scene

We open with victim in a room, single light, tools of torture being laid out on a table. He’s questioned, why has he posted the photos, why does he like young girls, what does he want to do with the money? the victim denies all. And then asked why he’s received 25,000 in his account via international transfer. In reality it’s venture capital for a wine tasting business.

Cut

Flashback victim’s house. Victim is called in for dinner, we see his computer being remote controlled, we see photos being downloaded and uploaded and details of cash transfers.

Cut scene to victim’s house at a dinner table. Partner asks victim after toasting a glass of wine, “So, what you going to do with all that money then”, the victim shrugs… “I need to pay off a few debts, and then we need to get out of here…”, Partner askes, “and what about the legitmate business then?

Door bell rings….

Cutscene

Hacker walks in, it’s the brother/sister of the partner, we don’t know yet that the HOUSE is infact of the victim. They say, “Hello X, have some wine, so good you could come, we’ve some excellent news on our business deal.”

Cut to close up of a wine business and venture capital approved at a bank. Some explanation of how easy it was as voice-over. We hear clapping by a crowd as a standing ovation plus dramatic music. It’s ironic

Camera flashes back to the dinner table  partner and hacker clapping.

Fade to black.

Black screen: Reading 2 hours earlier:

The hacker outside a house, he closes laptop and makes a call. The shot is close up to the face. We just see his stubble. Shot from the passenger seat looking out onto a road with passing traffic .

He says,  “Its risky, he’s being traced, but it’ll be done tomorrow.” He hangs up and sighs!

Cut scene

Victim receives a call at the door from someone with a large box saying they won a prize. He needs to sign. Victim walks outside door and the hitman puts a black bag over the guys victims head. The delivery boy runs away as the camera follows in slow motion an empty box hitting the ground from left to right.

Cutscene

Cut to hitman hitting the camera with something to knock a man out.

Cutscene

Zoom in to hitmans face as we hear something heavy, [victim's body] hitting the floor.

Black out.

Cutscene

White text on black: Reads “20 hours later”

Hitman sees hacker outside the victim’s house, makes a call.

“Maybe he’s got the working partner. I’ve traced him”, [pause]. “Yes, bringing him in”.

Zoom to hacker as hitman’s accomplice puts a gun to the guys back.

We just see the hacker getting pushed. Hitman voice over, “yeah, we got the accomplice as well. “.

Cut scene:

Victim we see with torn T-shirt outside house crying [he's been set free]. The screen is split into 2. Simultaneously we see the same room that the victim was in. This time it’s the hacker [we only know as the character is wearing the same clothes. His face is obscured by a black bag over head.

A voice out of camera view [Hitman] says, “You posted the wrong kiddie porn pics for blackmail idiot”.

Cut scene.

Same torture room. We see  a greasy sweaty hand close up. We follow to the other that’s that’s pulling back on the loading chamber of an automatic pistol.  We here a sigh from the hitman.

Still on the gun we hear muffled sounds from outside the shot as the camera shot gets closer to the gun.

Cut scene

We see the gun as it’s pointing directly towards the camera.

BLACK SCREEN – 1 second pause and a gun shot.

Credits.

COPYRIGHT IS MY OWN 2010

The Eixamples, D&B, Funk, Rock Virtual Collaboration Project

The Eixamples, a virtual Drum n Bass, Funk Rock band from Barcelona Spain, have got a new vide for a song called, “Pulling the Rope”.

The home based Barcelona virtual group have wide and varied influences. This song has a very chill out Ibiza D&B vibe featuring heavier funk drum lines and epic funk rock based choruses. In effect the idea is to collaborate and release tracks from a variety of genres. All musicians are based in Barcelona Spain. This is a very early feeler instrumental demo. Vocal version to be produced shortly.

Okay, it’s blatant self promotion!!!!