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.

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.

Today’s game is Dice Wars. It’s like a mini version of Risk where you have to roll higher than the territory you’re attacking. Good quick fun!

Today’s ‘everybody is stupid’ moment goes to the news that Camelot are withdrawing a scratch card game as it’s too confusing. Yes, it uses minus numbers to show cold temperatures and working out if you were colder or hotter proved a bit too much for some people.

Today’s bet was another of my crazy longshots. It’s a bet that Croatia don’t qualify from Euro 2008. They are currently top of the table with only two games to play but if Russia win both of their matches, Croatia lose against Macedonia and England beat Croatia next Wednesday then they don’t go through to the finals. It’s a long shot and it wasn’t even available at the normal betting sites. Therefore I took my first shot at using BetFair which is a totally different kind of betting site, called a betting exchange. Here you can place bets ‘against’ results as well and you can choose your odds from a selection. It’s not as complicated as it sounds. For a £25 stake (which was free with the offer I had) I stand to win over £600. Fingers crossed!

Today’s annoyance is Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, insisting that the War On Iraq has not increased the threat of terrorism. I feel so confident which such free thinkers in charge of the country.

Today’s mix tape comes from DJ Rocha with his Made Inn Radio Show mp3 mix - sorry about the RapidShare link. It’s a light deep tech-house mix with nothing too underground or experimental.

Today’s ha! comes from John Scalzi who reports back from the new Creation Museum somewhere in the US. “Every single thing on display in the Creation Museum is either caused by or a consequence of exactly three things: 1. The six-day creation; 2. Adam eating from the tree of life; 3. Noah’s flood.”

Been a real busy month at King Mansions with some great web projects coming out the door this week.

Here are a few of the things I have been reading and looking at during the month of August.

Easy to follow recipe for Bhindi Gosht. Great Pakistani Okra & Lamb Curry from scratch. You can get half of those ingredients in a packet of Karahi Gosht Masala spice blend available from your local world food outlet.

Short Movie (10 mins) called Flesh which juxtaposes a vision of a pornographic American society with the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks. This is NSFW.

“Over the past several months The Nation has interviewed fifty combat veterans of the Iraq War from around the United States in an effort to investigate the effects of the four-year-old occupation on average Iraqi civilians. These combat veterans, some of whom bear deep emotional and physical scars, and many of whom have come to oppose the occupation, gave vivid, on-the-record accounts. They described a brutal side of the war rarely seen on television screens or chronicled in newspaper accounts.” Superb article in The Nation.

Motorcycle News magazine need to check which ads go with which stories, as can be seen here.

How many times can Superman give his secret identity away without anybody remembering? Lots.

Ooh! Another new episode of Tribe tonight. Read interviews with the presenter Bruce Parry and some of his crew.

Here’s all the online crap I’ve found interesting in July:

The Story of My Sands - A look at the codewords used over tannoy systems. I well remember a Mr Sands on Brighton Pier and Somerfield.

Heavens Above. Calculates where satellites and the ISS will appear in the sky. Apparently you can see Iridium Flares in daylight too if you know exactly where to look.

What The World Eats. Time Magazine photo study of the food consumed by different cultures around the world.

Charlotte Gainsbourg - The Songs That We sing - (listen by choosing ‘5:55 The Album’)

The 12 Master Formats of Advertism. Nice video explaining the 12 main advertising tropes.

Mike Read is backing Boris Johnson. Not the dead cockney one but the dire radio DJ. Not only is his article pure reactionist gold but the comments are hilarious too. I say Mike Read for Mayor!

Trailer for a crazy South Korean movie about dragons with rocket launchers, called D-War.

The iPhone v the Nokia E70. An interesting article (contains comedy and swearing).

After about 48 hours of trialling ecommerce systems I think I’ve finally found the one I can hack into enough to achieve what I want. I’m making the mother of all baby stores and it’ll look amazing. More on that soon.

Slideshow from The Guardian: “Peter Walker talks to North Korea expert Nick Bonner and photographer Charlie Crane, who have produced a book of photographs from the country’s capital, Pyongyang. The pair travelled to the city three times to photograph people, tourist sights and hotels. Laid out as a guidebook, the pictures in Welcome to Pyongyang are accompanied by commentaries from North Korean tourism guides.”

Follow Me Now: The Zigzagging Zungazung Meme: “Do read the following, then, as but a draft of a more measured, more textured cultural and social history — a zigzagging story about the migrations and manifestations of a well-traveled musical figure. I will continue to version these texts and sounds no doubt, on the blog and — before too long we hope — in a book.”

The Atlas of the Universe. There’s quite a lot of stuff less than 10 light years away.

Listen to: A brilliant heavy dub and roots mix CD called HEAVY SOUND SYSTEM STYLE mixed by MadMongos.

Watch: The first part of the first episode of Filthy, Rich & Catflap:

I’ve finally finished my South African News aggregator website. It’s a website that collates news items from various news sources from South Africa and puts them on one page. You click through to the actual news story website if you want to read more than just the short excerpt.

Why South Africa and why do this?, I hear you ask. Well firstly I thought the domain name was funny so I bought it on a whim. I overheard a South African talking about his country in a pub and it did sound like Ifrica, but maybe Efrica is more accurate?

Then I was left with what I wanted to achieve with the actual site. Greedily I just wanted to earn money from advertising and get as high up certain online search facilities for the phrase “South Africa”. I suppose thats what every other commercial site wants. South Africa is hosting the 2010 World Cup so that gives me three years to climb those rankings and get a piece of that action. The World Cup will be a huge boost for the country and it could be possible to sell the domain name for a very nice profit.

Now I had to work out what to actually do with the site (I’m sure I’ve thought about this the wrong way round). I was toying around with RSS feeds and I suddenly thought of making one place where all the news from South Africa could be screened on just one page. Add some local bloggers and we have a site! Thats what’s up there now.

Over 2007 I’ll keep tabs on its search rankings, the amount of bandwidth the special Magpie RSS aggregator engine uses and the visitor statistics. If it does well then I’ll probably work on stage two of the site which would have the ability for people to select their local cities, choose sports and businesses, nominate their favourite blogs etc.. A little more interaction. We’ll see.

Oh, and if you know any South Africans please send them the site URL and ask them to forward it to their friends, thanks!

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.

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: