From the creative SheepFilms.

Yes, I finally got around to changing the look of my business site, King Websites. The old site had a lot of content and no design but this has now been reversed. It’s also broken down into the two main things I do now; small business web design and freelance coding.

Yes, it does look like it’s been designed by a five-year-old who’s just found the shape tool in Photoshop, and in some respects they’d be right. But heh, it’s better than my dour last attempt. Hope you like!

Call me a pessimist but after looking at all the proposed major developments suggested for Brighton I think we’ll be lucky if we even see one of them actually be built. Falmer Stadium, The i-360, Frank Gehry’s Buildings and the Marina Developments should all be built. Brighton has always prided itself on it’s progressive architecture. All the moaners should clear off to Eastbourne where they belong.

If only the controversy created by the Gehry Buildings could be mirroredby more important issues. The letters to The Argus around this issue always make me laugh. And for once I agree with the council and developers views.

The latest idea is of The Wireless City. “The city council is considering installing a WiFi network covering central Brighton next year which would be extended later across the entire city.” Another nice idea but I can’t see it happening. Almost free phone calls around town would be nice though.

Unfortunatly, one of the most spectacular scenes in the whole of Sussex is slowly being eradicated. Last October there were around 30% of the Starlings that have normally appeared on The West Pier. I think the council should blow a few quid on making this Victorian relic a bit more Starling friendly. I’m sure you could sort that out for £100K.

In other news I saw this advertsing slogan for a new games exhibition:
Lets hope nobody gets the wrong idea about that!

No, this isn’t a post about Allo Allo, just a collection of some rants I’ve seen on the net recently. We all love a good moan and here are some of the latest.

Warren Ellis took a well deserved shot at the inane celebrations of St Patrick’s Day by people who are not Irish. His Annual St Patrick’s Day Message is well worth a read.

Charlie Brooker loves a good moan too but in this article he stops for a moment just to watch the wonderful The Trap documentary by Adam Curtis. I’ve enjoyed the last two episodes and I hope he can knit it all together for Sunday’s final one.

I saw Casino Royale this week and though that Daniel Craig was a superb choice for James Bond. There are some people that disagree … a year before they saw the film. Their site is the imaginatively titled www.danielcraigisnotbond.com.

Julie Burchill has a good rant about my local council in Brighton & Hove. “Brighton Women’s Centre was shocked to find its modest annual funding had been slashed from £6,000 to a big fat zero. This at a time when the council could pocket £2m in parking fines in a six-month period without breaking sweat.” All this from her new book, Made In Brighton, coming soon.

What would make me moan? Possibly seeing this as I opened my door in the morning.

Here’s a chance to win some prizes in the Big Brighton Quiz run by Visit Brighton. Visit Brighton is run by the council and probably costs around a million pounds a year to run. That’s £4 from every resident ploughed in to making all the restaurant and beach pub owners’ pockets that much heavier and the congestion and pollution that much worse. The least we can do is try to win a few prizes off them!

Sticking to local items I came across the great VisitSouthDowns.com site. I’m hoping to cycle the whole lot later this Spring if possible but for starters how about the Dyke Railway Trail. Full map PDF downloads available at the site.

Here’s a PDF of all the cycle routes in Brighton, supplied by the local council. It’s quite detailed when you zoom in.

A Brighton man who runs a message in a bottle service has been asked to “investigate some of the many other ways to send messages overseas.” I just don’t think email is as romantic as that.

Gah! My eyes! I hope I’m nvere asked to make a website as cutesy as this Japanese website I discovered. Here’s Pet Salon Angela.

Science. An article about Superconductors at BBC Science. I remember watching Tomorrow’s World when I was young, seeing the levitating sheets of metal and thinking there would be skateboards like that one day. Seems like there’s still going to be a bit of a wait.

PDF Mags. A brilliant collection of downloadable design magazines from across the world. I’m hoping I get some inspiration from these.

A good video about the future of Net Neutrality.

My latest site. Simple one-page website for a new female plumbing business in Brighton. Introducing Girlz On Tap.

Colorstrology. A really good looking Flash website which will tell you the colours associated with your day of birth. I may start using this for clients!

Seminars about Long Term Thinking. It’s always good to have an idea of what the future holds. This site has a collection of audio seminar mp3s to listen to all based around what the future holds.

A jetty at the end of Shoreham Harbour. Not sure if there were herons or cormorants sitting on top of those poles.

Sound 101 - Bad Vibes. Rate which sound is the worst.

A couple of non-spoiler scenes from The Wire on YouTube. Scene one featuring McNulty and Bunk contains some entertaining usage of the F word (as well nude images). Scene two features the character Omar Little, a man who’s occupation is stealing from drug dealers. Two of the funnier scenes in the series.

Charlie Brooker hates Macs, from The Guardian.

More YouTube! See this brilliant wedding reception dance where everyone acts out the Micheal Jackson video of Thriller. And see the funny highlights from this weeks My Name Is Earl featuring Catalina and Randy.

Sing In The Shower music generator.

From Fiachra Gibbons on the making of Last Resort, a film set in Margate:
“You have to feel sorry for Margate. There it is, stuck out like an untended boil on the backside of Kent, disowned by its solidly respectable neighbours, Ramsgate and Broadstairs, whose facades seem pulled in a permanent rictus of displeasure and embarrassment at its coarse proletarian pleasures. All through the 1980s, London councils dumped the mad and the bad - their undeserving poor - into the empty bucket-and-spade guesthouses along its broad bay. Even they didn’t stay.”

You’ve got to hand it to Channel 4, another Celebrity Big Brother makes the front page news, is mentioned in an early day motion in the Houses of Parliament and has effigies of the shows producers burnt in a province of India. Looks like the only winners will be Channel 4 themselves and me (who put £5 on Shilpa to win at 5-to-1 last week, Ladbrokes link to your right if you still fancy a flutter).

If you listened to the media you’d think that Jade Goody, Jo O’Meara and Danielle Lloyd were going to set fire to a few mosques when they’re released. Personally I think they’re just a collection of three uneducated ‘celebrities’ who, through their lack of cultural understanding, have joined forces and have started to pick on somebody they don’t like. If there was an attractive Polish film star I’m sure those three would be acting the same. The laugh is on them as on a show like this you can see their careers slipping away in front of your eyes while they remain blissfully unaware, stirring their cauldron. Not that I’ve actually watched any of this as I’ve only seen around 10 minutes of the show (honest), and then just to catch the lovely Cleo Rocos who I probably had my first ever crush on.

The media saturation is so overwhelming yet the voices you hear are generally 90% loud and reactionary. The lack of clarity of thought is the only thing I’m worried about lurking behind the doors of British houses, not a dark underbelly of racism. Now I even turn off the radio if they’re discussing the matter. Same for BBC online news. Read Germaine Greer’s refreshing take on the ‘controversy’. I wonder what would happen if the 22,000 people who complained got off their arses and actually did something about racism in their area? Now that should make the news.

A little bird tells me the next eviction vote is between Jade Goody and Shilpa Shetty. Is this a ballot on racism in the UK? If the furore can last till the end of the series I think I’ll win my bet on Shilpa but people are gonna get bored of the news story very soon. I only hoping Shilpa can win this series before the enevitable backlash of balanced thought prevails and the cover of Heat Magazine with Jade saying “I’m not a racist, it was just the way the show was edited,” appears.

Enough of that rubbish. Here’s when Brighton’s West Pier burnt down, speeded up.

Goats on trees.

Every Extra Extend. Brilliant music shoot-em-up by the Japanese maker of Rez.

Video of Market Street in San Francisco filmed in 1905, before the big quake.

Newsreel video of the Hindenburg blowing up.

Vidmeter. Shows you a list of the most watched videos on the net.

No, I didn’t go to see Fat Boy Slim yesterday. There’s some good pictures at The Argus though. Including this famous Brighton face I haven’t seen in ages:

The webstats for KingOfMyCastle during December really skyrocketed. This site had over 80,000 hits and nearly 6,000 unique visitors.

The BBC’s John Simpson looks ahead to World news events in 2007.

I finished watching The Wire Season 1 too and it’s so good I’ve ordered the second box set. Probably the best drama I’ve seen in a very long time. If you skip to the 2:20 in this YouTube video Charlie Brooker gives his opinion of it:

Yes, not much has been happening online over Christmas to report about. I’ve just been playing The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Wii) on my Wii and watching the first season of The Wire which is shaping up to be the best cop show of all time, even after watching just 5 episodes.

Ibiza Sonica - Nice (for a Flash site). Check out the 1 hour eclectic mix by Charles Webster by going to Downloads, then hovering over the record box.

Stumble Video - This is the closest thing to turning YouTube into a viable TV station. Just watch the videos it shows and rate them. Stumble will then start to learn your likes and dislikes. I hope this works on my Wii!

And if you really want to keep a video you see on YouTube then just visit the Video Downloader 2.0 site. This will store the video on your hard drive. You can then put it on your phone if you like.

Whats looking like being the biggest nerd debate of 2006/7, the Wii vs the PS3. Read about the designer’s perspective over at GamaSutra.

Here’s a 9 minute interview and clips of Daddy Freddy on Record Breakers and Blue Peter. I remember him vividly but I can’t find too many others out there who remember him.

Listen to The Guardian’s political cartoonist Steve Bell as he takes a tour around his home town, Brighton.