Unfortunately it rained heavily on Saturday night, which must have dampened everyone’s enthusiasm a bit, but when I was there on Friday night and Saturday afternoon everything was great.

This weekend Dan Raine and Ed Dale have announced some amazing new tools for members of the 30 Day Challenge, which I would urge you to join if you are remotely interested in online marketing – and it’s completely FREE. The tools, which have been a few months coming, are designed to cut out the tedium of social bookmarking by doing it all for you automatically and will save a ton of time.

At the same time they made an enhanced version available to members of Immediate Edge and another great reason to join.

All in all 2008 is a great time to be an internet marketer – I’ll see you inside the 30 Day Challenge or Immediate Edge.

This morning I’m recovering from seeing The Cure at Palau Sant Jordi, where they played for an amazing 3 hours 5 minutes and performed 38 songs! Although there were problems with the drums drowning out everything else for a period, many of the songs were The Cure at their best, something akin to being run over by an express train.

The concert kicked off with a couple of numbers from Disintegration, which do benefit from the band’s stripped down sound owing to dropping keyboards from the lineup, but the highlights for me were the earlier songs.

Setlist:
Plainsong
Prayers For Rain
alt.end
The Blood
The End of the World
Lovesong
To Wish Impossible Things
Catch
From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea
Kyoto Song
Please Project
The Walk
Push
Friday I’m In Love
Inbetween Days
Just Like Heaven
Primary
A Boy I Never Knew
Pictures of You
Lullaby
Never Enough
Wrong Number
One Hundred Years
Disintegration

Encore 1:
At Night
M
Play For Today
A Forest

Encore 2:
The Lovecats
Let’s Go to Bed
Freak Show
Close to Me
Why Can’t I Be You?

Encore 3:
Boys Don’t Cry
Jumping Someone Else’s Train
Grinding Halt
10:15 Saturday Night
Killing an Arab

Originally uploaded by Old Telephones

At the end of last year my parents, who live on the Costa Brava, decided to take the plunge and subscribe to ADSL. They’ve been signed up to Direct Telecom for a few years ago, mainly because they have fantastically cheap calls and my sister lives in Australia.

They signed up for ADSL with Direct Dial and received the equipment, and waited the four weeks they were told it would take for Telefonica to connect them. Unfortunately on the final day my parents received a phone call from Direct Telecom telling them that Telefonica couldn’t install ADSL. Anyway, Direct Dial reapplied to Telefonica; another month later the same result. So my parent’s Spanish friend phoned Telefonica to find out what the problem was.

The answer; since my parents don’t use the telephony service from Telefonica, they wouldn’t connect them to ADSL, simple as that, clearly an abuse of Telefonica’s monopoly and illegal under European law. Last year they were fined €150 million – I hope the bastards are fined again.

Barcelona sunset

The building work – just in case you were wondering – is the new Ciutat de la Justicia, the new law courts for Barcelona and Hospitalet and has been going on forever.

 

View on Flickr

We would have seen them earlier in the year when they unveiled their latest album at Razzmatazz, but tickets sold too fast and we missed it – this time though we booked immediately.

The band are really good, they sound exactly like they do on CD, and it was great to hear those songs played live and see that they really can perform. It is a shame that they play such short sets though and 505 was sadly missing.

My main complaint though is about the venue. Although Razzmatazz isn’t the greatest venue in the world at least it is the real deal – a grungy converted warehouse with a great rock ‘n’ roll vibe. The Espacio Movistar – well, it does have good sound, but it has no atmosphere. And since it is expressly designed to be a music venue the layout is terrible.

I hate the way a corporation has got in on the act, I hate the bland security, and I hate the fact that I have to buy vouchers to exchange at the bar. When we saw Travis a few months ago security tried to stop the guitarist climbing into the audience – why? – and last night they were stopping people from sitting on the shoulders of others – what is all that about?

I don’t quite know what to think about the Nou Camp redevelopment plans, but the stadium certainly needs to be covered.

I’ve been to see FC Barcelona play numerous times and sometimes take a camera with me. This is from about 4 years ago I think and shows the view from the top tier.The advantage is that you get a great atmosphere and a good overview of the pitch. The trouble is you’re too far away. But it’s much better up there than in some areas and if you take binoculars you’re laughing.

The Nou Camp

Anyway, we talked a lot about SEO, StomperNet SIMPLE, the 30 Day Challenge and Immediate Edge and about Facebook. At the moment there is something wrong with Facebook for me which is that everything is a bit to spammy. Sure, you only get stuff from your friends, but there is nothing there that wants to make me stay there. Vampire points? A waste of time in the end, Facebook isn’t going anywhere if that’s what it has to offer.

That’s where I start to doubt the viral project in Immediate Edge – it may have some clout in the short term, but I feels like we have a Facebook bubble. When I first signed up there was no one there I knew – now everyone is, but communication isn’t any better and more time is wasted.

Now, I haven’t looked, but some good Facebook apps would be live football scores for your favourite team, or stock quotes streaming. That’s nothing new to the internet, but it would at least make Facebook a bit more attractive to me. Perhaps the viral project is only aimed at making a fast buck – after all it’s supposed to teach us internet marketing skills – but I don’t see a long term in it. But don’t listen to me, make up your own mind and if you think I’m wrong then I’d love to hear why.

Anyway, the food was good, nice and spicy and so I’ll be back soon. In the mean time you can read about chicken curry recipes to get you in the mood.

Last night we booked, but on Friday and Saturday they have an odd system where they have two sittings, the first from 8.30 to 11 and then second from 11.15 to 1. I prefer to eat at around 10 when going out, so this didn’t really fit in with my plans for the evening, but we accepted the first sitting and arrived at about 9.

The restaurant is nicely decorated, with rich clothes from the spice route and Buddhas overseeing the diners. My first course was a salad of baby spinach with mint, basil and figs, while Miriam chose what turned out to be a giant spring roll. In fact she’d been looking forward to the starter she had last time, which was a cold Thai coconut soup which was excellent. Unfortuantely although it is listed on their website it was apparently removed from the menu at the beginning of August.

For the main course she decided on seafood brochets, while I was in 2 (or 3 minds) about what to select. One of the dishes was described as tuna tataki and since I’m not really up on Japanese cuisine I asked he to tell me what it was. When the dishes arrived I was a bit aghast. While the waitress had told me about the peppercorns and sesame seeds she’d neglected one important fact; the tuna was raw.

Now I’m not that fussy about food, but one thing I don’t eat is raw fish due to an unfortunate experience in a sushi restaurant while visiting Tokyo many years ago, although I will eat it seared tuna which is quite rare. When we eventually got a waitress over she explained that it wasn’t raw because it had been marinated. I beg to differ, it was raw.

Anyway, I asked them to cook it for me which they did (probably the chief was thinking “philistine”, but I’m in charge here, I am the customer ) and it was rather bland but at least cooked. While the dish was being re-engineered for me I tucked into some of the prawns on Miriam’s plate and they were pretty good.

We skipped desert as we were both a bit unhappy with the restaurant, although I think we both had a good time. Time for a drink at l’Acensor (I’m not going to tell you how to get there, it is great because it is largely tourist free) and then home for a glass or two of wine and some music before bed.

Anyway, I have just googled tataki and the two recipes I’ve read state the tuna should be seared! If it had been done like that I’d have been perfectly content. Next restaurant; a return to Cardamon.