Whitstable, May 2011.

While previous embeds in the old format still worked, the new auto-generated shortcodes did bupkis. Zip. They weren’t stripped out of the text editor (HTML or visual – I tried both) but nothing appeared on page, and a quick look at the source indicated the code wasn’t even making it to the browser.

I tried editing in different browsers, and applying older or simpler themes (not that Bueno is wildly complex). No joy.

The solution is buried in this thread from the WP support forums, in a post by WordPress Tips author Panos. Here’s how to apply it to a ‘googleapps’ shortcode:

1. Change ‘googleapps’ to ‘googlemaps’
2. Delete all the other crap
3. Go back to the original iframe code and copy everything in the src element
4. Paste that in after ‘googlemaps’
5. The URL string you just pasted in will being ‘http://www.google.com/maps…’ – change ‘www’ to ‘maps’
6. If necessary, force size by adding these to the end of the URL string:
• &w=[width in pixels]
• &h=[height in pixels]

Asanka’s menu would be 100% West African and heavily Ghanaian were it not for some samosas and spring rolls appended to the bottom (‘NEW!’). Service was quick and friendly, though at just after six on a Wednesday we had the room to ourselves.

My groundnut soup came up spicy, nutty and anointed with red palm oil. L’s fish light soup was hotter still, with a good, meaty chunk of tilapia. The obligatory fingerbowls and washing-up liquid came up with a cutlery back-up; even so, we made a horrific mess that our waitress politely overlooked.

We paid 24 cedis (plus gratuity) for:

• Groundnut soup
• Fish light soup
• Plantain side x 2
• Large Club x 2

A couple of new friends live up that way. And somewhere round the corner from them, says Google Maps, there’s a nightclub called Aphrodisiac. Since Accra obeys the First Transport Law of Developing Cities – the number of taxis is inversely proportional to the number of usable street addresses – Aphrodisiac became the basis for a trip to their place.

So we hailed a cab, gave our driver the name of the club and took off. His bid to ditch the main road traffic down backstreets proved futile, but if you’re going to be in one (and you are) kids dancing to FM radio outside tiny open-fronted shops is a better backdrop than anonymous 4x4s.

After half an hour on the road we arrived, and it didn’t look entirely right.

We consulted the map. Our driver consulted the map. We all consulted the map. Our driver took the map to a guard at a gated compound, who consulted it too. It started to rain.

Eventually, the guard came over and leaned into the car with a curveball: “New Aphrodisiac, or old Aphrodisiac?”

Minutes later, and in rain that was now torrential, we were on the way to old Aphrodisiac. In places the rattling compact pushed through water up to its bumper.

It was about ten minutes away. Disoriented from the backroad route, we had no idea which direction to walk in. Phone calls weren’t getting through. The driver took another look at the map, and we tried him on some more landmarks we’d seen on Google – the Duty Free diplomatic shop, the Association International School. But they’re expat and high society things. Nobody takes cabs to them.

More driving. More rain. At last we clocked that we were on Patrice Lumumba Road, got a call through to our friends and had them guide us the rest of the way. We overthanked and overpaid – at this point he deserved more than the eight cedis we’d agreed – and dashed inside for a beer.

This isn’t a story I tell because I think it’s extreme or unusual. Exactly the opposite. As well as infrastructure deficit –  which the ruling NDC’s 2012 budget promises to address, with a little help from China – developing cities like Accra suffer from information deficit. One of the characteristics of developed cities is that they’re navigable as well as traversable.

On our first trip here a successful businesswoman described a scenario exactly like the one above to us, except that she wasn’t talking about taxis – she was talking about her clinic’s emergency ambulances.

A one-man polyphony machine, Stetson sets his feet in a resonant room and wires himself up like a cyborg, with microphones on the walls, all through his bass sax, and on his throat. Pointedly ignoring decades’ worth of looping and overdubbing technology, he blows the bejeezus out of arcane contrapuntal variations over and over again, with phantom sounds gathering around the deep pulse. The music seems weirdly sentient because only the continuous cycle of breath pumping through it keeps it alive.

Here’s part of a number from 2008′s New History Warfare Vol 1 Stetson posted on his Soundcloud… worth hitting the link and playing some of the session work to get a sense of his range.

His trade was to gather leeches, but now leeches were very scarce and he had not strength for it. He lived by begging and was making his way to Carlisle where he should buy a few godly books to sell. He said leeches were very scarce partly owing to this dry season, but many years they have been scarce – he supposed it owing to their being much sought after, that they did not breed fast, and were of slow growth. Leeches were formerly 2/6 [per] 100; they are now 30/. He had been hurt in driving a cart, his leg broke his body driven over his skull fractured. He felt no pain till he recovered from his first insensibility.

The world’s weirder than most people can possibly imagine. And to try and pass this off as in any way strange or challenging is just offensive. Everyone please stop it.

/ends

“But what this means is that Amazon will capture and control every Web transaction performed by Fire users. Every page they see, every link they follow, every click they make, every ad they see is going to be intermediated by one of the largest server farms on the planet. People who cringe at the data-mining implications of the Facebook Timeline ought to be just floored by the magnitude of Amazon’s opportunity here.”