Bit of a news round-up today. Here are some of the stories I’ve bookmarked recently:

This article about North Korea is maybe slightly biased? It’s opener of, “In a cold sweat, I was led away by the jackbooted and armed North Korean border guards to a bleak side room” is a fair indication of how the rest of the article goes. Fair and balanced news reporting from The Sun as usual.

For some reason I like this story about a Hypnotist Thief from the BBC.

The Pen Spinning Tournament in Japan. Check out the videos by clicking on the pictures.

Big Business and the NHS from The Guardian. “No minister can now discuss the NHS without mentioning “new providers” or “alternative providers”, which is their code for private companies, or “choice” and “reform”, which means privatisation.”

Also at The Guardian (yes, I do read other papers) is a look on why people hate Heather Mills. I’m a fan of hers which makes me quite unpopular as to most people she’s on par with Myra Hindley.

I have some bad news for any of you who went to Margate on their holidays as a child. The Scenic Railway in Dreamland, Margate, has been burned down. The site lost it’s Big Wheel many years ago and has slowly been stripped back so that almost just the Scenic Railway rollercoater was left. I still think was the scariest rollercoaster in Britain, mainly due to the fact is was all pretty much wooden and saw it’s fair share of fatalities over the years. It was Grade II listed and it was only a matter of time before somebody put a match to it. The property there will be worthy a few quid now, probably. Best keep an eye on who profits out of this.

Live Web Cam of the peregrine falcons at the top of Sussex Heights.

And finally a video. I’m not very good with heights and this walk along an abandonded ridge way defies belief.

It’s traditional here for me to let you know what my Grand National selection is. This year, like my disastrous 2007, I haven’t had time to study form, listen to pundits or get the word on the street. So what you’re left with is plain guesswork.

There’s no horses sticking out for me so it’s gonna be one of those years where most of my bets will be on clapped out old nags that might just finish somewhere in the first 4. I’ve placed each-way bets on:
NAUNTON BROOK 100-1
FUNDAMENTALIST 66-1
L’AMI 40-1

And of course, I had to put some money on one horse to win, and it didn’t take long to pick this one. My 2008 winner of the Grand National will be …..
KING JOHNS CASTLE 16-1

If you can’t make it to the bookies just click on the Ladbrokes link on the right (5th down). Good luck!

Drivers always seem to make my life as hair-raising as possible as I cycle round our Cities’ streets. Luckily we have some good cycle lanes in Brighton, but here’s a sit that focuses on the very strange ones: www.weirdcyclelanes.co.uk.

I’ve noticed the start of the proposed Seafront-to-Downs has been created with cycle paths going up two blocks up The Drive. If anyone knows where they’re going next please let me know.

News:

A 2,000-year-old mechanical computer salvaged from a Roman shipwreck has astounded scientists who have finally unravelled the secrets of how the sophisticated device works.

New generation anti-depressants have little clinical benefit for most patients, research suggests.

1 In Every 99 Americans Now Behind Bars. While one in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 34 is behind bars, for black males in that age group the figure is one in nine. Land of the free?

The World’s largest digging machine. Weighing in at a portly 45,500 tons.

The Wire’s War on the Drug War. Ed Burns, Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, Richard Price and David Simon the creators of HBO’s The Wire have their say on the drug war.

And finally:

I’ve never bought much lingerie but this site my change my mind. The interactive knicker picker. But for some reason I can see Men using this site a little more than women.

Using one of these nifty wingsuits:

Crazy Penis have a new mix tape available at www.futureboogie.com. No tracklisting but it’s on a 70’s soul, deep house mashup vibe. Enjoy!

Download some Charles Webster, Moodymann, Theo Parrish and Ron Trent mixes at Bozman’s site. I’m getting into the 3 Chairs and Charles Webster & Moodymann mixes on Page 2.

I’m playing a lot of Advance Wars: Dark Conflict on my Nintendo DS at the moment. Let me know if you fancy some wifi battles.

Kids, just because you put the word Monkey next to something doesn’t make it cool.

I’m thinking of creating a Russell Brand Sentence Generator. It will spurt out words like Shackled, Pomposity and Judgemental.

Currently going through a non-red meat phase for a while so I’ve been cooking such delights as Jhinga Bhindi Fry which is a prawn and okra stir fry. You can get the recipe here. I may even attempt to grow my own okra this year, yikes!

And finally, all the local councils on the South East coast are being complete idiots in stopping the residents of Sussex from getting hold of the wood that has washed up on the beach. Just when you thought that you might get a little kickback from all that council tax you’ve been paying. No. The beach is off limits and so is the wood.

Men Who Look Like Old Lesbians. Does as it says on the tin.

Check out the latest celebrity armpit flaps at flappits.com. You must be pretty deranged to think of that one.

An interview with Ken Buckle, mobile disc jockey in Enfield. His words of wisdom include, “You can have women asking for Abba week after week, then next time you think, ‘There’s a load of women here, I’ll give it the old “Dancing Queen”,’ but nothing happens. There’s no guarantee in this game. It’s like fishing.”

Interview with Chris Rock, from The Guardian. On Hillary Clinton:
“I think America is ready for a woman president. But does it have to be that one?”

And originally from the geniuses at Poisoned Mind, here is how I spend most of my day:

A great game as seen at The V Hive.

Design your own album cover by following these rules:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article title on the page is the name of your band.

2. http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quotation is the title of your album.

3. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4.Use your graphics programme of choice to throw them together.

Second try:

Try to come up with one yourself.

As I can’t see a resource anywhere online here is a list for the conversion of pixels into ems for the font-size property:

9px = 0.5625em
10px = 0.625em
11px = 0.6875em
12px = 0.75em
13px = 0.8125em
14px = 0.875em
15px = 0.9375em
16px = 1.00em
18px = 1.125em
20px = 1.25em
24px = 1.50em
28px = 1.75em
32px = 2.00em

I would apply a font size of 100.01% to the body element at the begining of your css stylesheet to make the above values work, like so:

body {
font-size:100.01%;
}

The reasons for this strange value is due to IE’s extreme font resizing bug. More explanation can be found here. The default font size would then be 16px.

It’s a waste of css to apply a font-size to every element on your webpage so try to apply font sizes only when necessary. For example, this webpage has only two sizes of fonts and it’s all in the arial font. You could achieve this with only a minimal amount of CSS:

body {
font-size: 100.01%;
font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
color: #333333;
line-height: 1.5em;
}

a {
color: blue;
}

a:hover {
color: red;
}

h2 {
font-size: 1.75em;
font-weight: normal;
}

p {
font-size: 0.6875em;
}

That could be all the CSS you need for the whole site.