Keys Corner

We were supposed to be flying from Hahn to Santander, but the weather was so grotty at Santander, that after trying to land 3 times, the pilot decided to land in Bilbao instead. We did wonder, if we´d have to make our own way from there to Santander to pick up the rental car, but Ryanair laid on buses to take us there – not bad for a flight which only cost 4.99 Euro! Better service than we had hoped for.

We drove down to Salamanca yesterday and found the language school – after quite a lot of searching, as we couldn´t find the road on the map at first! Today we were up at 6:30 (some “holiday”!) to grab some breakfast and come in to the school to be tested for our level of Spanish. Quite unjustifiedly, Ruth seems to have copped an easier class, with only two others in it, whereas I am in a class of 6 who seem to be studying at a more advanced level – both are pretty basic however!

We are off to do some more of this:

We will now find out which is more taxing – learning Spanish in German (here) or learning Spanish in Spanish (Salamanca). We’re not taking a laptop, so don’t expect much happening here until we return in about two weeks. We do, however, hope that the pond experts visit while we are away – they were here today to fix the new liner on one side where it has slipped down into the water over the winter and the pond is now not a pretty sight! They have promised to come back in the next week or so to have a second attempt – we shall see.

Normally, you have to pay about $1,25 for a Euro. Not if you are the PGP Corporation, however:

Nice price, if you can sell at that rate…

vowe’s posting reminded me that I have a photo of a surprising road too

Brad Pitt, the actor, is working with Frank Gehry on the £250m King Alfred development in Hove (UK).

Pitt, who is not qualified as an architect, is working on the design of a restaurant and a penthouse in the controversial complex, which has undergone a major redesign since winning the competition for the redevelopment of the seafront site in 2003. The development originally consisted of four towers up to 120 metres high, but after local residents protested, two of the towers disappeared and the height of the other two was reduced from 38 stories to 20. Hove Council hopes that the involvement of the celebrity will help win more support for the project, which some in Hove still consider to be an eyesore rather than a exciting signature development for the town.

We don’t normally have much success with growing orchids, so we are very pleased with this example, which is blooming nicely at the moment, and normally lives in the lounge!

I have been trying to get a Siemens Gigaset WLAN camera to mail snapshots via an smtp mail server at 1&1 Puretec which requires authorization (i.e. an account name and password).

The upload to the account always fails with “SMPT upload failed”. Also, any attempt to set the time on the camera also fails ” NTP server: Unknown NTP server.”. I can access the mail account using the same parameters from Apple’s Mail program without problems and can set the time on my Mac using the same timeserver that I want to use with the camera. So I don’t think I have a port closed on the DSL router which should be open.

The camera model is new (came out in March this year) and I haven’t found any newsgroups reporting problems / solutions for the camera, so I am putting a note here, which will publish to Google – if anyone has an idea what the problem or the solution could be, I’d appreciate a reply (in German or English) here. As we are going to be away for a couple of weeks shortly, it may be a little while before I respond, but I will appreciate any ideas others may have. I suspect the problem could lie in the firmware, in which case I will have to wait for an update.

British banking has been an absolute disgrace for the last 15-20 years. Electronic funds transfers between banks have always taken a minimum of three days, and in our experience sometimes even longer. Now, after increasing pressure from consumer organisations and even the Bank of England, the banks have agreed to speed transactions up to take less than 24 hours. This will bring them into the same ball park as the German banks have operated in for as long as I can remember.

However, don’t get too excited yet – the Brits need until the end of 2007 to pension off the monkeys now used to process the transfers and replace them with modern computer systems. The task force which has come up with this proposal is now looking into why cheques (which on the continent are now almost extinct) take so long to clear in the UK.

This is a real time-waster, and don’t think it remains as simple as dodging just one dot!

The British museum has been unknowingly exhibiting work by Banksy, better known as a graffiti artist. The “prehistoric cave-painting” was described as follows:

“This finely preserved example of primitive art dates from the Post-Catatonic era.
The artist responsible is known to have created a substantial body of work across South East of England under the moniker Banksymus Maximus but little else is known about him.
Most art of this type has unfortunately not survived. The majority is destroyed by zealous municipal officials who fail to recognise the artistic merit and historical value of daubing on walls.”