Here’s a few interesting things I’ve seen or heard on the net recently.

Want to edit your photographs but don’t have Photoshop? Then use the online image editor at Pixlr. It’s relatively simple to use.

Live camera from the LHC collider in France.

Games:

Coign Of Vantage. Rotate the screen using your mouse to find the hidden image.

Totem Destroyer. Perfect blend of skill and luck. I managed to do all 25!

Split Words. Match the correct parts of words together. This is much harder than it first seems.

Music:

The Re:Publikan Podcast. Download mixes by AtJazz, Mark Farina etc..

Dixon presents Inner City 2005 - 2008

Here’s a few things I’ve been looking at during our dreary summer.

20 Abandoned Cities and Towns at Web Urbanist.

Minimal Techno actually invented in late 60’s shock! Hear the lost tapes of Delia Derbyshire the BBC electric music pioneer.

The timeline of internet memes. From this chart I think I was first getting into the internet in 1998.

Superb interview podcast with Charles Webster. Some great songs there along with a discussion about his new compilation CD on NRK Records.

Well I picked up one of these last Saturday and I thought I’d share how I feel about the device.

Firstly, it looks amazing and is a perfect size, roughly 5 CD cases stuck together. And for £39.99 does the three things I need it to do; listen to radio; allows me to plug my mp3 player into it; and is a portable speaker with the addition of a battery. I’ve been looking for something that could do all this for a while at that price, but with no luck.

Plugging in my mp3 player the sound was amazing. It disables the volume control when you do this turning it into a simple monitor speaker. It’s very punchy for it’s size and was much louder than I thought it would be.

The radio auto-tuned in around 30 seconds and it found 20 stations to listen to. I was getting 3 out of 7 signal bars but this seemed enough for clear reception.

I often listen to the radio as I fall asleep and the Pure Mini’s low volume range was perfect. I had three volume settings that could all be used for getting off to sleep depending on the external noise.

But, it’s not all roses. I’m finding quite a few issues with the machine. Enough to think about taking it back and waiting another year for some one to create the simple radio I need.

Now, I’m not sure if it’s just this strange humidity we’re getting in the south of the UK this week but my DAB reception has been all over the place. It’s jumping from 1 to 4 bars (out of a max of 7) constantly which is leading to a lot of bubbling and cutting out. I don’t live remotely or in a valley and the Pure Bug Too I had for a month last year had amazing reception so I can only presume that the DAB tuner in the Mini has been scaled back. Then again, I also lose a Freeview Multiplex with this weather so maybe it is just atmospheric conditions. There’s no external aerial socket so you’re pretty much left with the 17 inch fully extended aerial to get a signal.

Selecting the station is also a bit more complicated than it needs to be. It needs three actions; pressing the stations button, turning the volume dial to the required station, then pressing this dial in to select it. An additional station dial would have been better, although I think the normal Pure One uses the same all-in-one functionality.

Finally there’s one issue which could well be a fault. When the radio is on standby, i.e. plugged in but in the off mode, and the mp3 player is plugged it occasionally makes some feedback noise, like a cough, as if it’s discharging some energy. It’s very annoying and loud enough to wake you up.

So, I’ll wait a week or two but if I’m still having issues I’ll have to take it back and maybe buy a more expensive, less portable radio. That’s unless somebody can suggest a solution to the reception issues. Can I crocodile-clip a better aerial to the top of the current one?

Welcome to a new series of music compilations heavily inspired by Charles Webster’s (miso records) radio shows for Ibiza Sonica. It’s a selection of lesser known tracks with a variety of styles, age and tempo, from Grace Jones to Aphex Twin. I hope you enjoy!

download -> eclectronica01.mp3

eclectronica 01 - compiled by John King

blaze - lovely ones
senor coconut - around the world
rae & christian - spellbound
atjazz - parralels
aphex twin - ptolemy
grace jones - i’ve seen that face before (libertango)
cpen - speedfreak
millie jackson - all the way lover
aqua bassino - espirito de amor
freaks - the rain (version 2)
chico mann - sound is everything
steve lawrence & eydie gorme - black hole sun
logan - flash (charles webster’s radio friendly vocal mix)
eurythmics - city never sleeps

Yes, another set of links I’m dumping here top clear up my browser’s bookmarks.

Film sequel quiz. Go on - you know they made one more.

Current status of HDTV in the UK.

Logic Puzzles. For when you want to waste an afternoon.

Sorry I Missed Your Party. If you can’t make it to a party youself take a look at these ones.

Whole Lotta Blog. Searches blogs for links to music files. Dodgy (in the crim way) but very good at finding obscure stuff without resorting to bit torrents.

German Bunker In My Garden. Guy tries to find a bunker in his garden. Start at the link and work your way up the archive.

Fed up of badly made, badly designed, expensive t-shirts? Well worry no more as now there is a unique t-shirt store based in the US that will always have a design you like.

Design By Humans selects five designs each week to become part of their collection. It then also selects designs of the week and the month. The current design of the week is this one:

Most of these t-shirts are $24(US). If you buy two t-shirts the shipping costs to the UK are $14(US), which makes $62(US) in total which is around £16 per t-shirt. There’s no import tax on that and it comes in a high quality parcel that will always survive the journey.

The quality of the material is amazing allowing the print to last much longer than shirts I’ve bought in the UK. To take a look at the huge range of t-shirts they have then just follow this link.

Ah, time to do a post I think. Here’s a collection of things I’ve been looking at this month:

Superb ambient Spot The Difference game. I did this in about 30 minutes, without cheating once! Give it a go.

Next time Brighton and Hove Council do something to get on your nerves just let them know about this story: Brighton and Hove City Council spent nearly £60,000 on mineral water in just a year.

A game! Run your dinosaur away from the exploding volcano using the cursor keys in Dino Run!

Charlie Brooker on Battlestar Gallactica. Probably in my top 5 shows last year.

Want to know how Alan Moore writes a comic script? Well it’s very detailed. Read his full script to Batman: Killing Joke here.

Interview with Ice-T, from The Guardian.

Aphex Twin and others who put images actually into their songs. Bit technical but clever though.

Billy Bragg on A Different Strand of Socialism, from The Guardian.

Looking at The Wire and Modern American Urban Areas. Nice video of this discussion.

Mark Steel’s article on an anti-war protest which wasn’t printed in The Independent because of their lawyers.

And finally some great sound effects. This should follow all my jokes: Instant Rimshot. And this whenever someone makes a mistake: Sad Trombone.

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.