1. Blog of David Rodger, sound production teacher and wanna-be PHP developer;
2. Spanish bacon; or...
According to a number of on-line sources (Encarta, About, etc.), spanpsek is a melon widely grown in Southern Africa. That name is used in South Africa and if you call it canteloupe or anything else while there most people will not understand what you mean. South Africa's spanspek is vastly superior to any equivalent elsewhere. In this respect it's rather like Swedish strawberries (the commercially cultivated jordgubbe, not the wild smultron).
The purpose of this page is actually not to demonstrate how widely travelled or knowledgable I am (I'm neither). If you were wondering what spanspek is, now you know and it may or may not interest you to know that I just liked the name and was delighted to find the domain name available. When my registrar had a 99 cent special on domain name registrations, I jumped at it.
If you think blogging is just an extremely accessible form of vanity publishing, you're probably right. But everyone else is doing it, so I thought I might too. I'd like to write about a few things I'm interested in, like sound production and web development. The latter includes my impressions of this software, Habari, and notes about using the konstrukt framework of which lately I have become a bit of a fan. We'll see where it goes.
Amazingly, the previous version of the site (a front page with a picture of spanspek) made it on the first search page in Google and this site remains there (so far).
Juana Maria de los Dolores de Léon Smith was born 27th March 1798 into a noble Spanish family. Her great-grandfather was Juan Ponce de Léon, who was the first to explore Florida while searching for the Fountain of Youth.
At the age of 14, in 1812, Juana and her sister were orphaned during the Peninsular War when British troops besieged her native town in the Third Siege of Badajoz. British officers, encamped outside the walls of the city, gave the sisters protection from the sacking and looting that followed the successful assault. One of them was Capt. Harry Smith, of the 95th Rifles Regiment, who married her a few days later and eventually became Brigadier-General Sir Harry Smith.
Rather than going to live with her new husband’s family, she chose to accompany him during the rest of the war. She travelled with the luggage train, sleeping on the battlefield, walking beside the troops and sharing the deprivations of the campaign. The soldiers idolised her for her beauty, courage, amiable character and good judgment. She was admired by the officers including the Duke of Wellington, who knew her well.
With the exception of the Anglo-American War of 1812, Juana accompanied her husband to all his postings, the most noteworthy of which was South Africa where Sir Harry served as Governor and High Commissioner of the Cape Colony.
The Governor enjoyed bacon with his breakfast but Juana Smith preferred cantaloupe. The Afrikaans chefs jokingly referred to the melon they served her as Spanish bacon or, in Afrikaans, Spaanse spek. Cantaloupe is known to this day in South Africa as spanspek.
That's a great story. Thanks a lot.
Oh my word, true story? I love it, totally telling it
Thanks :)
Not my story! Thanks to Jay.