Meridian Zero, the one and only local metal rock band.

Meridian Zero is a local ‘homegrown’ metal rock band based in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain. They do give me a lot of inspiration, especially when I see the individual band members playing separately in the videos below. How they manage to create new music by melding all the sound contributions together never ceases to amaze me. Meridian Zero is fast gaining popularity which is also good to see.

After releasing their debut album «Doors of Creation» in late 2007, Meridian Zero is holding several concerts in the Canary Islands later this month to promote sales of their compact disc. One concert will be held in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria on the 15th of March, 2008; two concerts will also be held in Tenerife – one on the 29th of March in Los Realejos and the other on the 25th of April right here in La Orotava! Check www.Meridian-Zero.com for more information.

Here’s their video «Fighting to Arrive»:

Here’s the lead guitarrist and good friend Ivan «Scalpel» Ruiz playing the solo from «Fighting to arrive»:

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Online marketing campaigns: aim for targeting or saturation point?

Marketing Wisdom | Online marketing campaigns: aim for targeting or saturation point? 

It’s been two weeks since I last wrote an article for «That’s business», so I thought it was time to reflect upon this topic.

In mid 2007, I set myself the following simple goal: to quadruple the number of web visitors by the end of the year. The target was 200 daily web visits, which at the time seemed like an immense number. I’m pleased to report that visitor numbers are up again substantially in the last 2 months; there were 9271 visits in January 2008, and 10,550 visits in February! This result is actually almost double my anticipated aim, so I couldn’t be happier! There’s no secret or hard and fast rules to increasing web traffic, but it does require a serious, continuing effort to achieve these visitor numbers.

First and foremost, visitors don’t come from nowhere. They have to be attracted to something. Although I am not formally educated in this subject, I do have a few personal theories about how to improve exposure to my internet business. For one thing, social networking theory has helped me to understand complex interactions [Read more →]

Making sense of chaotic Spanish drivers.

Making sense of the rules of the road in Spain

You may not be able to think of anything more chaotic than a crazy spanish freeway, and in many cases you’d be absolutely darn right. But there is an underlying order in chaos, and this is what I’ll attempt to extract and share with you here. As many regular readers know, after many delays, I recently obtained my Spanish driving license, so I’m in a unique position to make sense of it all now. Far from being totally random, vehicle movements on Spanish roads are actually quite predictable when you can recognise the patterns:

  • At high speeds, spanish drivers prefer to swerve rather than initiate abrupt braking manouvres. This avoids the chances of a pile up caused by multiple rear-end collisions. It increases the risk of crashing into everything else, but never mind that.
  • To aid the fluidity of dense, high-speed traffic, giving way to merging traffic is not advised. Instead, spanish drivers help them to incorporate onto the freeway by changing lanes, but only if there is an opportunity. Otherwise they’ll shoot straight through without slowing. The rationale: why molest all of the cars behind you for the sake of a few in an entrance lane?
  • To further aid the fluidity of dense traffic, drivers are taught from the very beginning to use the right lane unless overtaking. Except that this rule is not merely reccommended, it’s truly extolled here in Spain, being drummed into all driving students by all driving instructors for hours on end.
  • Unfortunately, Spanish highways have become so clogged, that travelling in the right lane inevitably means encountering slower moving vehicles within less than 20 seconds’ time. And because the Spanish are usually running late for their appointments, there is also an overwhelming presence of Spanish drivers in a hurry to get somewhere. Hence, you’ll encounter a wide spread of driving velocities, from the achingly slow to the dangerously fast. Simple explanation? In Spain, there is always some schmuck in more hurry than yourself, so you can’t stay in the left lane very long either…
  • What all this means in real terms is that Spanish drivers change lanes more times in one hour than they change their underpants in a whole year. [Read more →]

Learn Spanish watching television!

Learn spanish watching cooking shows! 

Learning Spanish:

A very good program to watch when you are learning Spanish is «Karlos Arguiñano en tu cocina» (Karlos Arguiñano in your kitchen) currently aired on channel 5 (telecinco) at 1:00 – 2:30pm weekdays. He well-renowned Spanish chef, known for three things: his ability to cook an extremely wide range of authentic Spanish dishes, his cleanliness around the kitchen studio is second-to-none and his reputation for telling bad spanish jokes.

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Shimano vs Microsoft. When you’re sitting at the top, the only way is down…

Shimano vs Microsoft.

In the bicycle industry, there’s a common analogy often drawn between shimano and another well-known business monopoly, Microsoft. Both have (or had) a majority market share. Both employ ruthless business tactics. Both arguably produce products with «planned obsolescence» in mind. Both excel at introducing new products that are not backwards compatible. Of course none of it is ever compatible with anything else either… [Read more →]