Menorca.

So the good lady wife and I took a little week off work to go to Menorca. We’d neither of us been to the Balearic’s before so weren’t really sure what to expect, in addition it was a last minute “bargain” style booking so it was a gamble for sure.

Upon arrival it was raining. Yes that’s right, RAINING. I know. Happy holidays. It was basically colder and wetter than the England we had left behind three hours earlier. Abby was not impressed, I think she secretly blamed me for the rain as well, which I suppose is only fair since I’ve learned that as a married man everything bad is basically my fault.

The weather stayed pretty gray for the rest of the day but by day two were were in full beach holiday mode. The beach at Cala Galdana is pretty special I have to say – we certainly liked it.

On the second day of our holiday, we went to the Fiesta de Sant Joan in the city of Ciutadella. This was to put it quite simply, nuts. The rep sold us down the river really, explaining about the historical significance of the festival, which involves men in costumes riding around the city (picture Venice without the rivers) on horseback, saluting the mayor and so on. The information from the rep said “Find a quiet bench in a square and sit down with a glass of Pomada and watch the festival go by”.

The reality was this; two hundred Menorcan Stallions ploughing through a crowd of about 15,000 people all crammed into a small town square. Health and safety, what’s that?

It was hard to get a sense of the scale as we were jammed up against a wall by a several hundred drunken Spaniards, but this just about gives you an idea:

Menorcan stallions are famed for rearing up onto their hind legs – the locals think it’s good luck to touch the shield on the chest of the stallion when the horse does this – watching the stallion’s front legs working the air, I think it’s only actually good luck if you survive without fatal head injuries or massive brain damage.

When the horse wants to go sideways, regardless of where it is and who is around it, it goes sideways, ploughing 50 or so boozy locals out of the way as it goes. All in all, it was bedlam, and despite the slightly inaccurate description from the rep, I’m glad we went!

The rest of the holiday was your more standard beach holiday fayre, so I’ll take you back to a more peaceful scene. We went on a little walk from Cala Galdana to a nearby beach called Cala Macarella, on the way the views were pretty special:

And because no post from me these days would be complete without a panoramic or two, on the walk back to Cala Galdana I go this – click to make it bigger:

The beach at Cala Galdana is a nice place to be – it’s where they filmed the movie “The Blue Lagoon” which I’ve heard of but never seen.

I hope you like these,  I can recommend to you a holiday in Cala Galdana,  it’s alright there really. Except did I mention it rained again whilst we were there? I know.

Occasionally I like to furiously smash the keyboard on my computer in the pursuit of creating something moderately interesting. I feel a sense of achievement having made something which will be looked at by literally as many as several people.

I also like free things, and I constantly marvel at the stuff that people are willing to give away for nothing. For instance, whilst digging around for free gallery viewers to use in a web page, I went to have a look at what the latest version of SimpleViewer is looking like, only to find the author Airtight Interactive has moved the game forward with several new flash gallery packages.

One that caught my eye was the TiltViewer package because not only is it all whizzy and 3D and makes my eyes and brain feel all nice, it also has a very cool feature in that it can display images using a live feed direct from a flickr stream. So I thought I’d give it a test. For those without a pathological aversion to flash websites, you can click to view my tiltviewer flickr gallery. For anyone that doesn’t like flash, you’ll have to make do with this image showing you what you are missing.

Hurts doesn’t it? I’ve only had a brief look at what else you can do – one thing is specify a tag from flickr so it only loads images with that tag – such as this Holga gallery or this Cars gallery

In other news, I had a comment and an email requesting a more detailed photo of how my suction cups attach to the metal poles for my car rig. Happy am I to oblige as I continue my one man crusade to lift the shroud of secrecy pulled over car rigs.

So there you have it – a hole into which you insert a pole. Then tighten a screw. This particular pole has a bevel cut out of it, but I’ve used some lengths of aluminium which don’t and it doesn’t need them, as long as the pole is 5/8th of an inch you will be ok. Also you should use solid aluminium not hollow, as it’s not strong enough and you’ll get loads of flex otherwise.