We returned from lunch at about 6:30pm, which is a good indication of the pleasure we derived from it. Santa Maria is a tiny, trendy joint which is the brainchild of former Ferran Adrià (El Bulli) students. We boldly opted for the taster menu - essentially a license for the staff to supply tapas and tapas and tapas non-stop until you fall over.
Highlights included maki rolls with pork, mango, avocado, seeweed and pineapple on top, carpaccio of pork loin with artichoke and pear, frogs legs (a first for me), quail, duck liver on fried 'angels hair' (something sweet you usually find in breakfast pastries) and various unidentifiable salads and other morsels. Dessert was outrageous - before the tiny, perfect tiramisu and plate of chocolate truffle and nibbly bits, there was there cup of vanilla custard adorned with what i think was cola mousse, atop raspberries and poprocks (aren't they illegal or something?)!! We were instructed to eat it 'bottom up' and it was this fizzy bubbly sweet thing. Uff! I could have died..

Wierd thing was emerging from the toilet slightly more than tipsy, the taste of the frogs legs still lingering. T'was dark, there was spooky music and straaange pictures all around.. I spotted two dry fish tanks with shells on the bottom and low and behold a live frog camouflaged in each one. Felt a bit queasy for about 5 seconds, but forgot all about it when I returned to more tapas being shoved in front of us.

So that was anniversary number 7.

On Friday night Elisse had asked me to leave uni a bit early, because we had somewhere to be at nine thirty. I had absolutely no idea what was going on until we got out to the olympic basketball stadium near Badalona and Elisse let me know we were seeing Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. They were absolutely incredible. I've never seen Nick Cave live and watching him dance about on stage during the songs and banter with a few of the audience in between was fantastic.

I had a great birthday yesterday. Elisse, Tim, Angela, Hélder, Ana and I all went down the beach for a truly relaxing afternoon. We tested the cricket set out for the first time, and discovered that the ball that came with the set doesn't bounce on sand, not even a little bit. We had sandwiches, beer and a few of us even braved the water to go for a (very) short swim. After that we headed back home for some Hummingbird Cake, which we managed to cook evenly in spite of our crappy oven.

After that, with Elisse and I just about falling asleep, we went out for tapas with Elisse's French 'cousin' and her friend and then for tea shakes afterwards at Copa Café.

Thanks to everyone for a really great birthday.

Today, while I was performing a slightly-more-extensive-than-necessary vanity search I discovered that the results as far as the second last entry on the 5th page refer to me personally. After that I'm beaten by a combination of Chris Rea playing a song called "Stainsby Girls" and (ironically) some google ads for contacting HaydenPanettiere, who plays the invincible cheerleader from Heroes.

But more interesting was that I found not only a reference to the Gutmann Soundwave Therepy product that Evan and I did, but a copy of the image, which is cool. Of course the author of the blog in question was the guy who started the discussion on the crypto list that caused me to come up with the idea in the first place.

This last week has been pretty hectic, but I think it's just the beginning. I now have a desk and computer at uni, which is cool. I was a little worried when I saw everyone else running Windows on their systems, but relaxed when the tech support guy came in and asked if I wanted Windows or Linux. So after a fair hiatus I'm going to be regularly using Linux again.

Part of the deal with getting your own workspace is spending a regular amount of time at uni. This means that on Mondays and Fridays when I have classes I'll be at uni all day, which is great for getting work done and also great for my Spanish too. I spend my other three days a week working at home and I should be working now (Saturday morning) as well.

I had my first presentation for class on Friday, which was about as bad as I was expecting. A combination of trying to present a topic I didn't know anything about two weeks ago and public speaking in Spanish meant that a lot of stuff came out wrong, but it was really just a practice presentation and at the end of the day I was happy with it.

And in case you didn't believe me, I found some videos of Richard Stallman's talk on YouTube, here's the introduction (in Spanish) and here's the Free Software Song (in English).

I also spent the time where I should have been reading adding thumbnails to the main section of the photos page, so go have a look.

I've finally found myself in a moment where I've done everything necessary - I survived my morning spanish exam, had an amazing, enormous lunch at the Japanese restaurant, enjoyed the fresh air and the sun and here I am, left with no choice but to procrastinate online.

My birthday was certainly memorable. The day itself I was out working from 8:45am until 10:30pm, but in the end I really enjoyed it. I brought lamingtons to my spanish class, just like in primary school, later my Canet kids presented me with this *beautiful* trendy red handbag substitute hip holster thing, then I went out with Hayden to a sweet little 'Catalan-fusion' restaurant in Gracia, and ate kangaroo for dinner, followed by this incredible invention dubbed 'chocolate semi-curado'.
Mhmmmmmm

I had a wee party last sunday on the roof. We adorned it with crepe-paper flowers and all sorts of colourful things. It was nice, especially when we finished it all off by having our very own 'falla' on the roof in honour of our kitchen shark that has guarded the door since Australia Day. We did the lot - Juan poured rum (for lack of lighter fluid) on the pile of paper shark on a tray, and we had a solemn procession accompanied by solo pink-recorder music, speeches, then our very own pyromaniacs display not 4 meters from a row of gas bottles...

On Friday I found out that Richard Stallman was coming to speak at UAB this Monday. I must admit, for all my trying to only speak Spanish at uni I was looking forward to being able to fully understand a presentation, plus I've never seen him speak before so I thought it should be interesting.

Richard Stallman walks in looking every bit the geek with a backpack on and carrying a laptop bag as well, gets his laptop set up. After organising the tea he walks up to the mic and says, "¿Queréis que hablo en Ingles o Castellano?"

I didn't know that Stallman speaks Spanish. Now I do.

It's like, just April. And we're on the roof eating lunch getting a tan under a never-ending blue blue sky.

[insert evil laugh here]

I never found the RSS reader in Safari very useful. I prefer to read news sites like Slashdot on the site - and I don't really want to be checking Safari all the time for new articles - which come through fairly regularly. Since Leopard though, you can stick RSS feeds in Mail as well, which I find really useful for the various blogs I read.

Thinking about it I actually read a fairly odd selection of blogs, so I thought I'd list them here (in no particular order).

Bruce Scheiner's personal weblog. He's a security expert who (literally) wrote the book on cryptography. I think he's got a very good way of looking at security in general, not just computer related, and every Friday there's a post about squids. I found out about Bruce Schneier from the Solitaire algorithm that featured in Cryptonomicon.

The world's toughest programmer, Mike Lee. This guy used to work at Delicious Monster, he also set up the Lemur charity stuff and just generally writes interesting posts, a lot of which have nothing to do with programming or Lemurs.

Scamp is the blog of a creative director at BBH. Bruce put me on to this one, maybe this is just proof that he's right and I'm going to end up in advertising one day after all.

And of course, the world famous Mike Tyson. Mike's a mate from Monash who's still there doing his PhD. He's white, skinny, blonde and a pacifist - eg. not the boxer, but still gets plenty of posts for the other Tyson.

Last week was one of the most intense bits of tourist-ing I've done in a fair while. Elisse, Helder and I hired a car and drove down to Valencia for Las Fallas (Les Falles in Valenciana). It's a huge festival which has two parts. The first part is these enormous models that are on display in every town in Valencia as well as lots in the capital itself. Groups of people work on them all year and some of them are incredible feats of art and engineering, you can see photos of some of the more impressive ones in the gallery. Then at the end they burn them, which is an incredible sight in itself.

There's also lots of fireworks shows and a whole bunch of crazy people running around setting off petardos (firecrackers) everywhere. This ranges from groups of adolescence throwing bright spinning firecrackers at one another to little kids walking along the street with their parents dropping lit firecrackers every five metres or so.

I think Valencia hires most of the pyrotechnical experts in Western Europe, as well as the nightly fireworks show and fireworks set around every burning Falla they hold a Mascletà each day, which is a fire cracker sound show - something you've got to hear to believe, even a few streets away.

The second main part is the Pasa Calles (street parades) which go on for the whole three days. All the participants in the parade (except the musicicans) are dressed up in traditional Valencian costumes. The most impressive of which of the Falleras, the women (ranging from the elderly to children who can't yet walk) wearing the most incredible dresses and with their hair done up in a style that reminds everyone who didn't grow up in Valencia of Princess Leia.

I think this post is already too long so you'll have to wait to hear about the rest of the trip.

And I'm far too tired to explain the plethora of photos up there now.
In the meantime enjoy reading about this New Zealander who claimed to have been left speaking Australian after being raped by a wombat.