Video clips of Valle de Benasque and Llanos del Hospital in Spain

Here are a couple short video clips from a valley in the central Pyrenees, or Pirineos, in Spain. These show the mountainous region close the border of Spain and France, within the Valle de Benasque. My wife and I were married in a small church in this region, since her father and his ancestors lived in and farmed the valley using traditional, non-technological tools and practices.

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  Teye and Belén, Flamenco at Club Passim

Last weekend my wife and I spent a fantastic evening watching and listening to Teye, a dutch flamenco guitarist, and his Spanish wife Belén, a dancer from Sevilla. Club Passim sits unnoticed in a Harvard Square alley, half sunken but with many windows to let in the light on the lower level. The atmosphere was small and friendly as though one were in a living room, and Teye was eager to chat. Belén began by accompanying the guitar while seated on a percussion box - a cajón - where she slapped out the staccato rhythms of Flamenco. From there she leaped into brilliant dance, strutting, twirling, and tapping her way into what seemed like a frenzy. Teye's guitar playing was equally hypnotic while his hands were all a blur as he thrashed the strings. If you have an opportunity to see them perform, you must.

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  Recommendation for BodasDVD Wedding Photographer of Barcelona

I highly recommend Bodas DVD wedding photographers in Barcelona, Spain. They met with us on several occassions the year of the wedding to coordinate the plan and requirements, and they were very accomodating to our wishes. They even traveled 4 hours to the wedding without charging us, although we did provide a hotel room for them. Carlos and his collegues were very helpful and patient throughout our wedding day. The result was a one hour interactive DVD movie of our wedding and a beautiful, leather bound wedding album of 20"x30". Everyone to whom we showed the album commented that they've never seen such a beautiful and unique album, and they all complemented the photographer's skill and style. Carles de Gispert also runs the multimedia business of Inédita and InéditAleph, and regularly uses Adobe image and video design products.

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  Ruta Hípica - a walk along an ancient path in Spain

A walk on the Ruta Hípica, an old road through the Benasque Valley of Spanish Pyrenees. This trail starts on El Camino del Sol near Eresue and passes along a north-western slope until it reaches Cerler, and ultimate Llanos del Hospital.

Before modern transportation this valley was relatively isolated and had its own language, Patués. Many locals still speak Patués and the valley is trying to preseve the language by continuing to teach it in schools.

Un camino antiguo por los Pirineos Aragonés en el Valle de Benasque, España. Desde Eresue hasta Cerler y Llanos del Hospital.

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  Barcelona Monthly selects my photos of Casa Milà for February

My photographs of Barcelona's Casa Milà were highlighted today in Barcelona Monthly, a blog described as:

The author's choice of Barcelona's events, worthwhile bars, restaurants, shopping and other leisure experiences.

• Entry on Barcelona Monthly
• My photos of Casa Milà
• My Casa Milà photos on Flickr
• Index of my photos of Spain

  Llanos del Hospital, Restaurante Ansils, Restaurante la Fuenroya

Photos from the valley of Benasque in the Pyrenees of Aragon, Spain. Summer 2005. Photos were taken with Kodak DX4530 point and shoot 5MP digicam.

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  Wedding Reception Photos

Photos of Steven and Mercedes wedding reception at Gran Hotel de Benasque (Hotel Valero), Spain. These photos taken with the Kodak disposable cameras for each table so they are not very clear. September 3, 2005

www.flickr.com

If you'd like to see the formal wedding photographs, here they are on Flickr, taken by BodasDVD in Barcelona.

  Back in the saddle again

This week I've returned to the office from Macromedia's generous sabbatical program. For the last 45 days I've occupied myself with a wide range of activities, and surprisingly almost none of which had anything to do with ColdFusion. Now that's a vacation!

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  [steven@macromedia /work]$ shutdown -h +360 'Going on sabbatical. Please log off'

Like many others at Macromedia, its my turn for a long sabbatical, although I've been eligible for over a year. For the next six weeks, until September 12th, I'll be out of the office. I suspect that this is the first and the last time I'll be able to take such an extended leave.

I plan to spend the first 3 weeks at home, biking, swimming, reading, and blogging. Some of my objectives include reading parts of several technical books including one on Eclipse which has a chapter on building plugins, one on building Dashboard Widgets on Mac OSX, and one on Photoshop CS. I may take some time to read up SELinux, too.

During this last month I've been reading Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat, which I highly recommend, so I hope to finish that up. I think that Friedman's book is complemented by Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, and by Spencer Well's The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey, but best if read (or viewed) starting with Wells and finishing with Friedman. If I find a day to spare, I think I'll finally sit myself down to watch the whole 8 hour series Cosmos, by Carl Sagan.

During the second half of my sabbatical, I'll be in Barcelona, Spain and then in the high Pyrenees. My wife and I were married in a civil ceremony two years ago and now we will be having a formal ceremony in a 12th century church in a small mountain village near the border with France, close to Pico Aneto, the highest mountain in Spain. I used Ray's BlogCFC to create a dual English/Spanish informational website to assist the guests.

If you're not familiar with the region, check this out. Its a small Javascript app that zooms in on Barcelona and the Pyrennes, which I made for those who will be travelling from the US. It's a little slow in MSIE, but great in Firefox. This was before Google Earth came out, so I was trying to provide a way for non-technical people to get their bearings.

  Photos of Casa Milà in Barcelona Spain

Also known as La Pedrera, Casa Milà is one of Antonio Guadi's architectural masterpieces. At one time it served as a collection of luxurious apartments for Barcelona's elite, but today exists as a museum. Built in the very early 1900's, it is a monument to 20th century Modernism. It sits on Passeig de Gràcia in central Barcelona, a few blocks north Plaza Catalunya. These photos were taken in January 2005.

Photos of Casa Milà

Other Photos of Spain

This photo gallery was highlighted in February 2006 on Barcelona Monthly.

  Spanish Film Recommendations

Preparing to pass the Movie Meme, here's a rehashed, repost of my rather lengthy comments to the 3rd House Party Movie Meme blog entry....

This reads almost exactly like a list of my own DVD collection. I'll buy anything directed by Pedro Almodovar or Alejandro Amenábar, or starring Gael García Bernal or Javier Bardem. Concord isn't all that far from Grafton, so maybe we can swap sometime :)

Gael García Bernal is really emerging as one of the best Mexican actors, with credits including The Motorcycle Diaries, El Crimen de Padre Amaro, Amores Perros, and Y Tu Mama Tambien.

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  More photos of Spain

El Solano and Valle de Benasque of Huesca, in Aragon, Spain
Eresue & Ramastue	Benasque & Ancilles & Cerler
Arasan	Liri

Barcelona's Laberint, and Holiday Festivities
Maze / Laberint	Celebrations / Trobades

  Roses are red, blogs are blue

As a Valentine's Day gift, I spent this weekend building a new blog for my wife based on Ray Camden's BlogCFC, merged with the Aura skin.

The new blog is called Casa Arbañil, the name of her family's second home in a small village up in the Pyrenees of Spain, where my wife spent many summers growing up and where we continue to travel each Christmas. As a native of Barcelona, a Catalan speaker, a current resident of Massachusetts, and a chemist by profession you'll find future blog entries on these categories. As soon as her we get her domain name www.casa-arbanil.com mapped to our ISP then the blog will located there, until then it remains on TalkingTree.com.

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  Bones Festes i Bon Nadal!

This is my 4th time spending the holidays in Spain, one in Madrid and the last 3 in Barcelona, the heart of Catalonia where Spanish is the 2nd language between Catalan and English.

On the departing flight with Alitalia I managed to read the entire book "Teach yourself Unix in 10 minutes a day", an introduction to SELinux, an overview of the new features in Fedora Core 3, and a tutorial on building RPMs. Not bad overall, but I've got one hell of a jet lag from not sleeping.

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  It really is a snap with Snap Gallery

Madrid 1998-1999

This weekend I launched my first incarnation of a Snap Gallery photo organizer/slideshow. Snap Gallery is an open source wizard that allows you to build a nicely polished, customizable photo gallery with very little effort. I'd first seen this on Aaron Johnson's blog and I really liked it. I had been rolling my own version of a photo wizard, but with time constraints it wasn't as nice as I hoped. SnapGallery is perfect.

The wizard script runs on your desktop when you build the gallery, where it finds the photos in the directory you point it to, walks you through each photo while you create a title and caption, and then generates the appropriate web files that are saved along side the photos. Then all you need to do is upload the photos and web files to their final destination on the web. The wizard script runs on Windows, but the web files it produces are compatible for Linux and Windows.

In my case, I downloaded the zipped snapGallery.wmf file and then edited it to default to certain colors and fonts, which the comments in the script prompt you to do. I then made additional edits to wizard that changed the size of the windows used during the wizard (they were too small for me), changed the default document type to index.cfm (ColdFusion), and then changed the generated html to add a banner and even some CFML. The CFML includes a footer at runtime so that if I choose I can customize the footer and it will automatically be reflected in each of the snapGallery web files.

So, check out my first Snap Gallery!