The new o2 site is a beast. Using the network analyser of the indispensable Firebug, the page to send the web text alone takes over 30 seconds to finish rendering and makes an incredible 288 HTTP requests to completely load the page (I develop with the cache disabled). This is well above the 5 seconds generally recommended by usability experts.

Not only that, there’s no way to “stay logged in”, meaning to send another message later on that day involves logging in again and making the 4 or 5 clicks to get to the send message page, with each page taking an eternity to load.

Any web monkey can whip up a page with a few simple inputs that loads in 100ms. Surely o2’s bells and whistles shouldn’t add too long onto that.

Can we be blamed for using o2sms and other similar tools to avail of the free text messages we’re entitled to with our o2 contracts?

Apart from wanting one anyway, I have a couple of good ideas for apps. Dartmaps for iPhone anyone?

If only I knew someone who worked in a phone shop; that’s how things get done here. Instead, I’ll just have to cycle around the city put my name on as many waiting lists as possible.

Better than a zoo, the animals have plenty of room to roam and the surroundings are more like their natural environment. Think more Boabab trees and lagoons than concrete cages. You can also get right in with them; the lemur enclosure being particularly interactive.

Here are some photos. I didn’t get any pictures of the aardvarks because the battery ran out.

Today, it’s down to a cool but humid 27C. Thankfully I have more roadworks on the street outside to keep me sane.

As seems to be the norm, it broke down last week, complete with various flashing lights. It being an out-of-warranty flashed Mexican NTSC Xbox, I decided taking it for repair might raise some eyebrows. So, not being willing to splash out for a new one, I gave a go at a home-made fix.

Torx screwdriver set in hand, I cracked her open to discover that the disc loading mechanism was fubared. No bother, I sat a disc in the drive tray and manually pushed together the mechanism holding the spinning motor and lens and popped the drive cover back on. The end result: Success! The drive now spins and reads the disc sin problemas. The only catch being that you have to disassemble the drive every time you want to play something else…

• Ireland Photos
• Madrid Photos
• Bonus Video

Take a look at bumfly for cheap flights.

Basically, you enter in your trip details (which cities, approximate flight dates and other options) and the site will start to monitor cheap-flights websites for the fares for that trip. Then, anytime the flight drops in price, you’ll get an email notification.

A lot of people want to travel somewhere for a weekend or a couple of days, but don’t mind the exact date. Fares can differ greatly from one weekend to the next, so it’s good to know when’s cheapest to fly.

The idea sprang from an old script on one of the netsoc machines that would monitor the Ryanair website for cheap flights and tell you when was best to fly. I’ve taken that idea and made it all “Web 2.0″.

It’s a simple enough idea, but hopefully will be useful to some folks and might make me some revenue on ad clicks.

Fallas 2008 was a good one: 19 days of festivities including 4 nights of fireworks, street parties, paella and setting fire to things. The concluding night saw us moving from plaza to plaza taking in the bands and DJs, buying cans of beer from crusties with freezer bags, talking to randomers, eating churros and chocolate, dodging firework battles, dancing to the music outside someone’s window with a thousand other people, drinking chupitos in a Scottish bar at 7am and finally helping the brass bands and firecracker throwers wake everyone up at 8am. Thanks to everyone that came over to help us celebrate. Here’s to 2009!

After all that we needed some R&R, so we headed to the mountains near Cuenca for some fresh air and banger-free tranquility.

betsie:~ mackers$ cal 9 1752
   September 1752
 S  M Tu  W Th  F  S
       1  2 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30

* They sometimes use the perfect like we would the imperfect, so I’m including it for the sake of argument.

Some of these are probably never actually used. However, it does show the kind of mental jiggery needed to actually have a conversation about anything that happened before today.

[Updated with some corrections]