A boring morning: I can’t find anyone who, following yesterday’s Catalan parliamentary elections, is prepared to bet against a ruling coalition consisting of conservative nationalists, Convergence and Union (CiU), and the secessionists, Republican Left (ERC). The conventional wisdom is that, in synch with their legal and proscribed Basque counterparts, their strategy is going to be…
The strawberry tree (Arbutus unedo) is a tragic shrub, its ubiquity simply serving to remind one that it’s B-list vegetation. As with many things we can blame the Romans. Take Virgil. Aeneas has a bier made from oak twigs and strawberry tree shoots for poor old Pallas, but then Virgil goes and spoils it all…
iMacs krijgen hun kleur en blijven het goed doen omdat – net als Jan Heintze – ze van jongsaf worden gedwongen gemalen gefossiliseerde haaienbotten te eten. Deze vonden wij tijdens deze wandeling. Ik gaf ze aan de kat, maar die wilde na afloop van PSV niets weten en is gisteren met twee wijven en de…
Tony just sent me a slightly weird press release from an entity that calls itself the European Association for Sure & Secure Identification, or IDtrack for short. Things that bother us both: It calls itself European, which tends to lead one to assume some European component. Not so: the advisory board is completely Spanish (with…
Forbes is announcing the acquisition by Jazztel (ie Madrid) of Datagrama (ie Catalunya) for EUR4M in Jazztel stock. That’s all well and good, but Datagrama provide data services for medium-sized businesses. When’s someone going to provide proper solutions for genuine tech dwarves like yours truly and help rescue us from the twin evils of tele-incompetence…
In May I posted a Dutch translation (1, 2) of an article by Vic prof, Manuel Llanas, describing the influence of German printers in Catalunya in the late C15th and early C16th. Technology transfer from Germany to Catalunya slowed subsequently, due less to religious and political rivalries than to the relatively slow progress of capitalism…
