Ibiza vol1.

 Animals and plants.

I've spent an hour downloading and renaming about 300 or so photos from my holiday. We have a few apps that will help out, I'm on iNaturalist now so I can get ID of stuff that I have no hope IDing on my own. Also on plant stuff, the app Flora Incognita gave me almost 100% ID rate on wild flowers and also cultivated stuff too. 

Big up to this guy's rizz.

Nice to see a Collared Dove duo. In fact along with House Sparrows these made up a duo of birds in decline in the UK, but doing well in Ibiza. Safe to say I never took a bad shot of these, and I took a few. 

Grauch.

Another bird doing locally well if not so hot overall is the Audoins Gull. These replace the Herring Gull here in Ibiza. even down to the reputation of being a chip thief. Wiki seems to play it down but as its all inclusive here. I've seen them sweep down and steal chips from a Dutch family. 

Finally we saw something that was only really present in Santa Eularlia the Pitiusos Lizard or Ibizan Wall Lizard.

Proud of this shot.

Along with a Red Palm Weevil and its attendant notices of bio control on various palms, this was the creature I saw the least here. 

Cute

To be fair, this is a massive palm pest, so seeing this least, is a good sign. 

We used to be...

 ... A proper internet.

Ever noticed how the net is shit now. I'm not talking about search which has been borked for ages. But discourse. A whole, we can't talk about "sensitive topics," because Google imagines us as a bunch of Suicidal Syd's ready to throw a seven at the slightest notice. We say unalived rather than talk about death head on, because god forbid something we all face in our life time should be taboo.

Worse of all, because of some nannying censor, all comments are policed within an inch of its life, less someone let slip and inconvenient truth under the guise of trolling.

Yeah I got an old Justin Bieber shit post vid removed by YTube. Something that ceased relevance a good 10 years ago. Still my rant still stands.

Eye beef ah.

 So, you'll get a short entry here. Hate phone typing so suffice to say, I'll not take up your time.

Been here a day and, it's Ok. Weathers nice, and the TV is mostly Great! As Ibiza is club orientated it's like my culture won instead of rock, so you get clubbing TV, where you can watch a DJ spin records or watch them review an Oberheim OBX with its inevitable Behringer clone.

We found the bus stop, and if this actually works, a link to TIBbet (TIB) buses. So if you're here and want to travel you can look it up.

Game plan

The reason you're getting an extra dose this week is that another hiatus is on the way. I'll see if I can post from the resort but for now... you're getting books. 

Game Plan for Disaster is the 74th book released here in the UK. It's not a bad story seeing its all about hand egg (U.S Football). The quick version of this is two stories. Kevin "Ace" Harrington state's star player is being targeted by mystery accidents and gamblers, whereas Robbie Stevenson son of the head of the Library is being targeted by two thugs who convinced him to steal a rare edition of Edgar Allen Poe's The Gold Bug. 

It's quite a nice mix of stories for once. Not everyone is part of one gang for once. Everyone seems  to want a piece of Ace and they get busted one by one. 

We'll also take a minute to say how nice the illustrations are in this one. And that the Hardback Angus and Robertson edition that I have completely spoils the plot. Clue its not the boys lost in the woods which is the cover for every other edition. And that includes the UK paperback.

Also for some reason we do not get a next episode / book trail in this version which is the only difference between the two editions. 

 Anyway US edition here.  UK edition here.

"Exciting" Cable news

 God knows how I managed to luck into this but it seems Archive.org have come up trumps once again. 

Actually I know full well how I got there, looking for stuff on Video Buyer and User magazine. But what we have here was literally the unsearchable. A full scan of the magazine we got in the mail from Cable and Wireless every month or Videotron as it became.

There is HVC or Home Video Channel  which was always scrambled, and was part of the adult channel. 

 Also not being Indian or of South Asian heritage there are listings for Indra Dhnush which has information here. Finally there is the pre NBC Superchannel with the looping dog animation and Voltron but no Conan O'brien or Tonight Show with Jay Leno. 

The Children's Channel bit is causing me some grief as some of these do not ring a bell. Stories without words was normally Bunny With Chequered Ears / Teddy Dropear. But this suggests some stuff which I don't remember. 

Anyway if you want to check out what August 1991 was like for us go here.

Bee Orchid

 One of those things I really didn't expect to see. I know we get the Pyramidial Orchid flowering along the verges here near London, in July, but this was out of the blue. 

Went to the bootsale and got a few things, a load of slides and comedy on tape. Was about to leave the giant field its held in and noticed a small pale flower in long grass.  It couldn't be an orchid, could it!?

It is exactly what it is and its remarkably small for what it was I would say its about 2cm or nearly an inch.

I hunkered down and took a few shots, including a close up of the flowers. It's a Bee Orchid Ophrys aperifera. One of the lesser seen orchids here. 

I knew Kent had a few orchids but never expected them to be this close to the smoke.