I had my first day back at uni on Friday, which was something of an experience. I'm doing a masters in - what translates as - Computational Science and Engineering. Both my classes were small (4-5 students), which is nice and I think my spanish will pick up pretty quickly, it will have to. Having said that, 5 straight hours of classes in spanish at the end of every week is going to be a bit rough.

2 x large artichokes - €0.79
300g butter - €1.05
1 x onion - €0.15
1 x very drinkable bottle of Spanish white wine - €2.25

Knowing it would cost 5 times more to make the same glorious dish in London

...priceless

I haven't done that much programming in Cocoa since Leopard came out so I haven't really spent that much time with Xcode 3. However I'm trying to learn a bit of network programming and I'm sure the debugger in the new Xcode is completely broken. I don't know whether it's trying to reflect lazy initialisation of objects or whether it just doesn't know where it's going, but stepping through code makes no sense what so ever. Then it shows an exception three lines (and as many complex method calls) before it actually happens, leading me to spend half an hour trying to work out why my code was crashing when adding an object to an array.

I do like the new pretty colours though.

Since this day only happens once every 4 years, i see no reason why it should not be celebrated as an international holiday.

In any event I'm in the mood for one. Last night we paid our respects to the Gimlet bar, who serve two of my most favourite things in the world - good gin and glacée cherries - in the one cute little pretend martini glass. They're not cheap, but two is all you need to feel delicious, and the sensation is not encumbered by unnecessary additions like tonic or ice.

Last Sunday I spent the day in an olympic stadium in Reus rehearsing for the upcoming ACEM concert. The 'wind sectional' consisted of 1000 catalan music students blowing their instruments at more or less the same time. Having gone out the previous night, left the house at 7am then proceeded to get lost in Reus, I was expecting the worst and was pleasantly surprised by how well it turned out. The whole thing was very well oiled and the sound of 300 flutes playing at the same time didn't break my skull. I was however shattered by the time I got home and was greeted lovingly by my insanely hungover boyfriend who still hadn't managed to leave the bed at 6pm.

In other news since my last rant about the thorough knowledge of grammar I have in my mother language, I have been appointed English conversation teacher at my Spanish school. In return for a couple of hours of weekly conversation with levels 3 and 5 English, they pay my course fees plus a nifty bonus for books. It's a great deal except for the fact I don't understand English.

Back in December Mike Lee announced that he would try to get 100 people to donate $100 each to the Madagascar Fauna Group by the end of the year. At that point it was somewhere around the 27th of December, so it was a tight squeeze. In order to push this he was offering to send each person who donated before 2008 one of Thievey's adventurous brethren.

I thought I'd contribute, since I don't often donate to charities and this seemed like fun. All things went well, the 100 milestone was reached and surpassed and over $12,000 was raised for the lemurs. I asked for my lemur to be sent to Australia, since I was going to be there for longer than I expected and I don't trust the Spanish postal service further than I can throw a large heavy object. Of course my new friend arrived about 3 days after I left Australia.

Pepe is now enjoying a break in Melbourne and seeing some of the sights. We'll let you know a little more about Pepe soon.

Yesterday we had a 'quick review' of the present and present perfect subjunctive, which we should all know back to front by this level. I totaled a number of 1 completely blank face (me he quedado a una vela) in the room, and resolved to learn it before the aural practice the following day. God knows how I ended up in level 4 of a possible 5, especially with my expert knowledge - thanks to the Australian education system - of grammar in my home language. I think I can pick a noun, verb and adjective, but put me face to face with a present perfect subjunctive and I'd probably self-destruct.

Like Buika eloquently describes in her song Jodida Pero Contenta, I am indeed very happy with the classes. The pace is exhilarating and I'm loving recognising more and more of the finite spanish language every day. I'm prompted to talk in spanish whenever I can, and love exercising the quirky phrases our young teacher regularly imparts upon us. I suppose the final straw would be a spanish-speaking boyfriend.. but I guess I have it ok lest I forget english altogether.

I thought I should probably write a little post, just letting everyone know that I have made it back to Barcelona.

I got back on Tuesday, after my 3 weeks in Australia to see Bruce for his 60th and get a visa turned into 2 months while I hung around waiting for my visa to come through. But now I have it, I'm back in Spain and thoroughly enjoying myself.

Chris (who lived next door to us in Ealing) is over at the moment and Elisse and I made Coq au Vin and we had a big dinner round the table with Chris, Jordi and all the housemates. We then went out for mojitos at the cuban bar and were all feeling a little worse for wear this morning.

Once again drawing inspiration from The Might Boosh, which we had playing at home all afternoon, and this moment in Black Books, I decided to attend Carnaval as a prostitute robot from the future.

I went with the boys to Sitges - site of the campest, most densely transvestite fiesta, and had a wild time. Turns out Carnaval is just one massive dress-up party, and we had lots of fun drinking botellón (a home-made plastic-bottled alcohol picnic) and dancing to terrible pop music until 6 in the morning. Most people opted for shop-bought costumes and props, so I think I get points for originality.

It was definitely a success because it's monday now and i'm still sore and a bit testy.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeee!
[06:57am]

Reading through the crypto list today I came across some posts regarding Gutmann Sound Wave Therapy. The relevant bit is below.

Whenever someone thinks that they can replace SSL/SSH with something much better that they designed this morning over coffee, their computer speakers should generate some sort of penis-shaped sound wave and plunge it repeatedly into their skulls until they achieve enlightenment.

Another post suggested the term should be popularised and made to be something sales people fear, even without truly understanding it. Not one to sit on my laurels when I can find work for other people Evan and I started work straight away on the Mobile Enlightenment Unit. If you couldn't be bothered with the hi-res image the sales pitch is below.

Do you know a programmer who believes they can write a replacement for SSL in the time it takes to finish their coffee?

Tell tale signs are phrases such as 'proprietary crypto' and 'secret algorithm'.

Simply apply the Gutmann Sound Wave Therapy Mobile Enlightenment Unit, stand back, wait and breath a sigh of relief - you've just made the world a better place.

I would like everyone to ignore, for the moment, the scientifically impossibly shaped audio wave, the instructions on it's requirement for the therapy are quite explicit. In fact if someone could come up with an equation to create a waveform that even closely resembles a penis that would be great too.

Also, sorry to all the people who usually read this and have no idea what I've been going on about.