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Every now and again I go through phases of trying to geotag all my Flickr photos. There’s something very satisfying about looking at a map of the world and seeing all your pictures on it in the right places, but it is a very time consuming process, and with only about 1,500 of my 6,000ish Flickr photos on the map so far, it’s going to be a while before I get round to doing the lot.

Sadly, Flickr’s technology isn’t quite as helpful as it could be either. What with them being owned by Yahoo and everything (for now at least–I dread to think how bad things will get if Microsoft get their grubby mits on them), you’re stuck with Yahoo’s rubbish maps. Trying to put my photos from our recent Australia trip onto the map using Flickr alone would have been virtually impossible, for example, because Yahoo’s maps of Melbourne don’t really exist (unless you count a grey blob with no distinguishing features as a “map”). Oddly, their satellite pictures are really quite clear, but there’s no street-level mapping at all, even in the CBD. I’ve had to resort to installing this nifty mapping bookmarklet that lets me use Google’s much better maps to put the first photo from a particular location onto the map, and then I can drag the rest onto the same spot in Flickr.

And Flickr is equally confused by my home town. This previously geotagged photo correctly identifies itself as being “taken in Southport, England”, but this one (which I’ve dragged to exactly the same spot at the end of Southport pier at latitude 53.655505 and longitude -3.021492) was apparently “Taken in Banks, England“. A few hundred yards along the pier, closer to the town centre, we’re apparently in Brown Edge, England.

And I think it’ll be news to my parents when I mention to them that their house, despite being clearly visible on the satellite picture is not in Southport after all as we’ve all thought for all these years, but in fact in “Shirdley Hill, England”.

Having said all that, it looks like Google Maps aren’t immune to their own special brand of oddness. Looking at their maps to see where “Shirdley Hill”, “Banks” and “Brown Edge” actually are, I was somewhat surprised to see that there’s a place called Dummy1325 just over to the right of Southport. Must go and take a look next time I’m home.

From the BBC News website:

Memo to BBC News website readers: keep emailing this article to people. Email it to as many people as you possibly can…

#1: Surprises are good.

We told no one over here (apart from the bride-to-be) that we were on our way over to Australia for our friends’ wedding and Sal’s dad’s birthday. We turned up on Sal’s parents’ doorstep in Melbourne at 8:30 AM the other Friday morning and just rang the doorbell.

“Hello”, we said. “We were just in the neighbourhood and thought we’d drop in…”

#2: The Aus Dollar is bloody expensive these days.

When I first came to Australia, back in 2001, the pound bought nearly 3 aussie dollars. This time I was getting only just over 2. Not that that makes a massive difference if you’re only here on holiday for a couple of weeks, but it might be a big deal in the hypothetical scenario that someone needed to transfer their life savings across in the future…

#3: 7 Years is a Long Time.

Real cutlery appears to have made a return for inflight dining. How times have changed: I can’t take liquids on the plane and have to have my shoes X-Rayed, but I can be given a real knife. Hmm…

In other flying news, on the way back from Melbourne to Singapore on the way home we were on one of Singapore Airlines’ new 777s with their upgraded KrisWorld inflight entertainment system (this is the same one that they’ve put in the A380). Even in economy, the seat back TVs are huge (10.6″, apparently), although the entire system did crash just after takeoff (just as I tried to select Reckoner off of In Rainbows to listen to, but I suspect that that wasn’t the root cause), resulting in the slightly surreal experience of sitting on the plane watching Linux boot up on the back of everyone’s seat. “Can you understand the computer language?” asked Sal as the seat in front of me verified its memory and allocated itself an IP address.

When it was back up, I watched the excellent No Country For Old Men.

#4: It’s hard to see everyone.

With such a short time here, and as we hadn’t told anyone we were coming (and therfore hadn’t pre-planned anything) we struggled to get to see everyone. I think we did our best. And anyone we missed we will see the next time we’re in town.

#5: It’s surprisingly easy to fill a 2GB memory card in the space of a week.

It may take me some time to upload the 500 odd photos I’ve taken while we’ve been here.

#6: Melbourne weather is not all it’s cracked up to be (and Melburnians don’t half like to talk about it…)

Let’s just say I needed my jeans a fair bit more than I would have expected to, what with it being “summer” over here and all (although the sun did finally choose to make an appearance for our final weekend).

#7: Racecourses Are Cool

With the F1 Grand Prix coming up shortly, the authorities in Melbourne had already set up the grandstand and other assorted paraphernalia around the Albert Park course. As this is simply a public road for the rest of the year, you can just drive around it. So I did.

Sadly the limit on the road had been reduced to 40KM/hour, but I still got a strange childish satisfaction out of driving our tiny hire care around underneath the hoardings.

With Fidel stepping down this week, it seems only right for me to dig out my notes from our trip to Cuba last year and try to finish off the job of blogging it.

In case you missed or don’t remember the first half of this story, we’d begun in Havana, where we skilfully avoided any serious run-ins with the touts and spent the rest of the time attempting to speak bad Spanish, visiting the rum museum and the Capitol and drinking a lot of mojitos along the way…

After a few days in Havana, we moved on, catching an almost empty Viazul tourist bus bound for Viñales: tobacco country. It was a bumpy journey, and we weren’t sure if it was a great sign when the driver stalled at least once before he had even left the bus terminal car park, but we made it to Viñales in one piece and somehow on time despite us stopping to pick up and drop off assorted random people along the way. As we left the bus, we were mobbed by the owners of the town’s casas particulares (this being low season, they far outnumbered the passengers on the bus). As we’d already booked and paid for our accommodation, we tried to get past them with some polite “No”s and move down the street to get our bearings and check the map.

Unfortunately “No” apparently wasn’t an answer they were accustomed to taking, and it took me a while to work out that in fact the magic words were “reservacion… los jazmines… pagado”

“Ah!” said the closest tout, in English. “You want taxi!” And off she went to produce a taxi driver, who duly drove us up to our hotel (although not without him trying one final time to get us to change our minds and go to his mate’s casa instead…)

The Los Jazmines hotel where we were staying sits up in the hills a couple of miles outside of Viñales itself, with stunning views over the valley. We were lucky enough to have a room on the end of the row of rooms on the top floor, with views out in two different directions.

*

The following day we were up early and foolishly opted to set out on foot in search of the Visitor’s Centre to find out about walks into the beautiful countryside. Unfortunately it turned out not to be quite as close as it appeared on the map in our otherwise reliable Lonely Planet, and not quite as useful as the book pretended it might be.

“Oh no”, said the bloke inside the half-finished building. “You can’t arrange the walks from here. You have to go into town for that.”

Luckily, at that moment a bus came whizzing round the corner. We thanked the chap and legged it across the street to jump on board. It turned out to be the tourist bus, which runs all day in a circuit through the town and links up the other attractions in the area. It took us to the Mural de la Prehistoria, a garish mural painted on the side of a mogote, and then on to town, where we ate pizzas that cost about 50p and went to find the real tourist centre (where we arranged to join a guided tour through the valley the next day). We opted to cab it back to the hotel…

Having made the mistake of eating the predictably poor hotel food the previous evening, and not wanting to repeat the error, we set off a couple of hours later back into town. As we emerged from the hotel reception, there was the same taxi driver waiting outside. He started chatting to us on the way in, and I did my best to talk back. And then he reached into the glove compartment.

“Un Regalo!” he announced, offering a cigar in our direction. Not wanting to turn down the gift we felt duty bound to accept, although we didn’t spark up in the back of his cab, as he suggested.

Later that night, as we sat outside one of the town’s bars, he popped up again, wearing a baseball cap with “Jesus is my best friend” written on the top. I bought him a beer and took the opportunity to brush up on my Spanish…

I know I did this last week, but I’ve had so many new letters over the last few days that I’m doing it again (it’s times like these when you just wish that Spamusement was still going).

“Tye Stockton” has written in to say: “Don’t let hot women laugh at your small tool, because you can change that today.” Well, quite: after last week’s letters I went straight down to B&Q to pick up some power tools to impress old Scarlet Johansson. Presumably if those are still too small for her then I can return them under the sale of goods act as being not “fit for purporse”. Thanks, Tye, for reminding me.

Less helpful is this letter from “Lev Roche”: “Life’s tough, make IT tougher, harder, longer”. What are you suggesting? Yes, you are correct, I do work in IT, but I don’t think it’s fair for you to suggest I’m not doing my bit. How much tougher, harder and longer do you want me to work? Honestly. Some people…

Elsewhere, someone else is picking apart a bit of my life, but I’m not sure what Ilona Panoutsoukian really means when she says “Your instrument could be so much bigger”. Look mate, I play a standard-sized guitar, so I don’t really see what you are getting at.

Oh, and I haven’t read the letter from Gurpreet Nhum in full (“Doctors endorse this miracle solution that adds inches within just weeks.”) but I’m pretty sure the answer is cakes, isn’t it…

That’s all for now, but remember, kids: don’t be put off if we haven’t read out your letter. We do look at everything you send in!

Via the BBC News website, comes the moderately amusing story of some restaurant diners who, having complained about the service, ended up with the following item on their itemised bill:

1 – SUCK MY DICK FUCK FACE – £0.00

Which is quite funny in and of itself (well, at least it was charged at £0.00…) but more amusing is the response from the owner:

Owner Mr Langsdon said the message had been meant to be seen only by kitchen staff and he did not know how it ended up as an item on the receipt. “That shouldn’t come out on the bill, so we’ve got to find out what’s gone wrong there.”

Not, you’ll note, “we’re sorry for making a rude comment about a customer”, but “we’re sorry that the comment ended up on your bill”…

He’s also offered the diners a free meal… Don’t think I’d risk it, to be honest.

The Guardian: Jan 30th 2008: “As a Tory MP faces suspension from the party over payments to his son, should nepotism be banned, asks Pamela Hutchinson”

The Guardian: Feb 14th 2008: “Max, 19, hits the road”

Ah, so this would be the new blog chronicling the adventures of Max Gogarty, an overprivileged teenager off to “find himself” in India and Thailand. How fantastically original, and how deserving of a regular column on the website of a national newspaper.

It’s just odd that the same national newspaper already has a travel writer called Paul Gogarty, who just happened to have a thirteen year old son called Max when he want to Thailand in 2002. A coincidence, I’m sure.*

* Yeah, ok, so it’s hardly news that there’s nepotism in journalism, but the young lad’s blog is worth a quick look anyway just for the savagery unleashed on him in the comments (or just read some of the best ones here). There’s also the outside possibility that the whole thing is just one big spoof (and/or some kind of viral marketing for the new series of Skins, given the URL of the blog post and the fact that last year young Max wrote an “unseen” webisode for the series…)

Update: The Guardian’s travel editor responds…

No one snuck Max through the backdoor. I called him purely on the strength of his track record. On the back of his writing at his comprehensive school, he was invited on to a young writers’ group at the Royal Court theatre, and since then he has worked as an occasional writer on the TV series Skins. I think that’s pretty impressive for a 19-year-old.

Oh so he did some writing at school and wrote that myspace episode of Skins? Ah well then that’s fair enough.

Hang on, you called him? Since when did national newspapers start ringing up 19 year olds with no journalism experience and offering them a writing gig? And how did you know he was going on holiday?

One thing that came out of yesterday’s posts was that you want to hear a lot more from real people rather than journalists, so I’m going to be putting up a lot more readers’ recommendations and writing. I hope you like it. I’m sure you’ll let me know.

No, no, no, no, no. As one of the comments on the response says:

“Surely the one thing to come out of yesterday’s posts is that ‘citizen journalism’ and ‘user-generated content’ is generally bollocks, and people much prefer things done by professionals, rather than well-connected amateurs?

So the opposite of what you’re saying.”

Also in the comments is the dissapointing revelation from someone calling themselves “maxdad” that “Max won’t be writing any more blogs”. Shame. I was rather looking forward to them…

Ok, so I know that writing about Spam is just about the lowest form of blogging, but a couple of today’s missives caught my eye…

Amongst the messages that Gmail had helpfully moved to my spam folder today I found a note from the intriguingly-named “Nicolle Laurila”. The subject heading tells me that “Scarlet Johansson loves Men with huge equipment – do you measure up?” Huge equipment? I’ve not read about that in Heat. You mean like mechanical diggers and stuff? Well I guess that explains why she’s always hanging around at building sites, and at least now I know that the true way to impress women is to steal a crane.

In other news, I have a message from “Marjorie Escobar”, (a distant relative of the famed Colombian drug overlord perhaps?) who tells me to “Do What Millions of Other Men Are Doing Today aiken”. Well clearly this message was intended for Mr Aiken, and I wouldn’t want to be opening his post, so I’ll never know what it is that Millions of Other Men Are Doing Today–is it going to work? having long awkward silences in overpriced restaurants surrounded by other couples also pretending to enjoy themselves? buying half a dozen wilting roses from a petrol station forecourt? investing in an extra large box of man-size Kleenex?

Sadly, we can never know.

A third message, from the frankly bafflingly named “pacerfan714undersea” (that’s not your real name, is it?) is simply titled “Valentine Dad”. Now if that’s not the name of a seasonal comedy film that’s fun for all the family and stars Tim Allen, then it damn well should be…

Much as it pleases me to see Everton winning again in Europe last night (even after such a poor performance) and much as it pleases me to see so many of their UEFA Cup games being shown on terrestrial telly, so I don’t have to hunt around the internet for a stream, I do wish that someone at Channel 5 would have a quiet word with co-commentator Kevin Ratcliffe, on the subject of Mr Philip Jagielka.

Kev: you were a fine Everton player, but please, please, please could you learn how to say the Everton defender’s surname. With the rise of P2P streaming, I’ve been able to watch a lot of live Everton games this year, and no one else seems to have a problem with it: the guys on the Premiership feeds that go off to TrueSports manage to say it properly; the hilariously awful bloke on the Fox Soccer Channel manages it ok; Dave Woods, who is sitting next to you in the commentary box manages ok; hell even the Chinese commentators that I have to listen to when I can’t find an English language stream manage it ok…

C’mon Kev, it’s not hard–say it with me: his name is pronounced almost the way it is spelt. It’s JAG-EE-EL-KA. His name is not, and never has been: JUDGE-GEL-KA. Easy…

Just a quick one, but we inadvertently flicked on to the coverage of the Grammys the other night and saw a bit of Amy Winehouse. She sounded pretty awful, as she always seems to do whenever I see her on TV (I once had the misfortune to see her performing some kind of hideous duet with Charlotte Church that was just about the most tuneless thing I’d ever heard, and although this was bad, it wasn’t quite that bad). So I was wondering if someone out there in the big wide internets could explain the whole Amy Winehouse thing to me?

I wouldn’t want to suggest that TV talent shows should be held up as the barometer of good taste, but if she turned up at an X Factor or Whatever Idol audition and gave a performance of the kind she regularly gives on TV, she’d be one of the deluded fools that gets laughed out of the room. So how is it that she’s lauded to the hills with awards and things?

Now of course I know that the Grammys are the most ridiculous and self-congratulatory back-slapping awards of all, with so many categories as to render any success utterly meaningless (“Best Studio Tea Making (Non Classical)”, “Best Yodelling (Country)”…) and they always remind me of that scene in the B-Sharps episode of the Simpsons where Homer chucks his award out of his hotel window and the kid who finds it (“Hey! an award”) throws it back into the dumpster (“Ah, it’s only a Grammy…”) but she seems to have won several of the things, which is usual for a British artist. So this means that someone somewhere must have (a) bought her records in significant quantities (in so far as anyone really buys records any more) and/or (b) paid money to see her perform. Who are these people? I don’t believe I know anyone who has ever paid money for the music of Amy Winehouse* Do you?

[* Yeah, I know Sal and I accidentally ended up in the same field as her at Glastonbury this year, and that, even if we hadn’t done, a portion of our ticket price would have contributed to her gak habit anyway, but surely her imminent self destruction can’t be entirely funded by festival ticket sales–there must be other people making a more direct contribution. Seriously. Who are these people?]