This is one of the coolest things I have ever seen!! Its called Google Earth. “Google Earth combines satellite imagery, maps and the power of Google Search to put the world’s geographic information at your fingertips.” It basically allows you to view pretty much any place around the world from a birds eye view. However, its not just that – you are able to drag the ‘map’ around, display roads, get birds eye view directions, view the 3D building (only in certain US cities like New York) and loads more.

Its also Free (there is a Pro version which you have to pay for which has even more features.

Related links:

Google Earth

Is it the end of Flash? Its unlikely to end for a long time but generally there are fewer Flash sites as they used to be.

This article gives a few good points to indicate it could be.

You don’t see as many typical Flash sites as you used to especially if he dis-regard movie web sites.

http://malandarras.com/2005/06/death-of-2advanced.html

The trailer for the highly anticipated movie King Kong is now online. The actual movie is out December 2005. It looks amazing!!!

Click here a select the size you want the trailer. To find out more about the movie check out http://www.kingkongmovie.com/ and also http://www.kongisking.net/

You can also download the trailers to your computer using the links below:

Large size
Medium size
Small size

Met up with a few friends today to watch Batman Begins. It was a brilliant movie and arguably the best movie of the year. Its properly the best ever Batman too – not seen the first 2 for ages though.

The movie was a very much British affair. Of couse Batman himself played by Christian Bale is British (Welsh), Michael Caine (Alfred), Gary Oldman (Jim Gordon) and Liam Neeson (Ducard) is Irish. Also the director Christopher Nolan is English.

The main bad guy was the scarecrow – played by Cillian Murphy (was in the brilliant movie 28 days later). It would have been good if he was in the movie abit more.

Christian Bale is one of the best, if not the best Batman. Certainly better than George Clooney and Val Kilmer. You could tell he had worked hard to get into shape. His previous movie was the Machinist where he lost loads of weight – in Batman he is certainly not skinny any more. He is said if this one goes well, he would not say no to doing another Batman

The movie starts of slow and shows how Batman became Batman. The fight scenes were great – the way the camera was moving fast made the fights even more impressive. In some ways it would have been better for the camera to zoom out abit and not move as fast so you could see the fights better.

The batmobile was really cool – it had 5.7l V8 engine in it. The designers of the new batmobile actually went to the normal American companies who make the vehicles seen in movies and were told it could not be done. They went back to the UK and they said no problem Its much better than the other batmobiles – certainly better than the one seen in Batman & Robin.

One thing I also heard was that in the movie there are a few shots of Batman stood on top of really tall buildings right on the edge or on top of towers etc – Michael Caine told the director it was the best CGI he had ever seen. It was not CGI but a stuntman tied to the tower. He wanted it to be as real as possible. You can tell this when watching the movie.

There was one major plot hole in the story involving the main weapon in the movie. *** Minor spoiler (highly the following area – text is in white) It basically involves the instant vaporisation of water – for some reason it didnt vaporise the water in humans who were near it (we are made mostly of water – something like 70-80%). (End of spoiler) ***

I highly recommend seeing this movie – one of the best movies for a long long time.

Related links

BBC Movies
Official site
IMDB Batman Begins

When designing web sites using CSS you need to know a few things about browsers and how they behave differently.

This web site has the essentials.

http://www.maratz.com/blog/archives/2005/06/16/essentials-of-css-hacking-for-internet-explorer/

What a stupid US F1 Grand Prix. There were problems with the Michellin tyres which were used by 7 of the teams. Michellin has said it was not safe to use them in the race. Never mind the safety of the drivers, there is also the stewards and the public as well.

From what I have read and heard its mainly the FIA fault. To solve the problem a chicane (although some teams may not have liked it) could have been put in on the problem turn (slowing the cars down). This would have got the race going with all teams involved. It seems like it could be FIA president himself Max Mosley who said no to the chicane (Ref). Of course Michellin most take some blame for having the wrong tyres – however, they made a mistake, its happens sometimes, but there was an opportunity to solve the problem (a work-around). I also think Bernie Ecclestone has to take some blame. He should have got teams to just sort something so that the reputation etc of ‘Formula 1′ itself was not ‘damaged’.

The stupid thing was they knew there was a problem a couple days ago and could of sorted something out but instead left it till today and still have meetings to try and sort things out. Within an hour to go before the race was due to start no one really knew if the race was on, if they were building the chicane, if no one would race,…….. Even as the ‘race’ started with all the cars it wasnt certain what was going to happen. The crowd were not surprisingly unhappy and confused.

It could not have happened in a worst place. F1 in the US is no more now. A lot of the manufacturers and sponsors are US based. For example, Toyota’s biggest market is the US. Just imagine how much money has been lost. Most of the teams were even happy to let Bridgestone teams go to the front and even not get any points. 120,000+ ppl had come all the way spending loads of money to watch an embarrassment.

Click here for the press release from the Michellin teams (BARHondaF1 website)

Related links

Formula1.com
BARHondaF1

The president of UEFA, Lennart Johansson, said today that the sponsors of womens football should basically cash in on their looks and not on the actual football. Here is what he said:

“There are so many companies who could make use of the fact that if you see a girl playing on the ground, sweaty, with the rainy weather and coming out of the dressing-room, lovely looking, that would sell.”

Related link:

BBC Sport

Woohoo!!! If you visited this site over the last few days you would have got an error. We had problems with the server but its all sorted now. Also over last few days set up tons of clients email, talked to technical support loads of times and restored loads of web sites.

Saturday spent most of the day out. Met up with a few friends around 12 – mainly chilled out, had a few drinks, abit of lunch before we went out in the evening. We did spend some time at my place laughing at my shocking mp3 collection!!

In the evening, we all went to the BBC (British Born Chinese) Official Meet which was being held in Pitcher & Piano. I was one of the organisers but had not been involved too much since I have been on holiday and then been really busy since coming back. We were there for about 5 and a half hours – basically until we got kicked out. I had a Italian Burger (a big burger with mozarallo cheese and beef tomato) – it was quite nice.

Some people had to leave early and after much discussion we ended up in Revolution in Deansgate Locks. I didnt plan to stay too long as I had to get up early-ish the next day but stayed till just gone 1.30am. Or maybe more like 1.45am. I am not too sure!!! It was a really good evening and I met loads of new people.

I did take a few photos but not sure if they are any good. I will put them on the site at some point of there any good so keeping coming back. Also if some other people took photos so if I find out about it I will link to their photos.

Today (Sunday) I went to Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire – my parents were having a home warming party so spent the afternoon and early evening there.

Had a great bank hol weekend. On Saturday went to see Star Wars. I enjoyed it but found it abit too cheesy at certain points. The fight scenes were great. It was maybe slightly too long but well worth checking out. Its certainly better than Episode 1 and 2 but not quite as good as some of the original ones.

I also went to see Chemical Brothers in Manchester Apollo. It was a brilliant gig. The support band were called The Infadels (didn’t think much of them and friends didn’t like them either). By the time The Chemical Brothers eventually came on it was about 10.30. It had been a long wait – we got into the place just before 8pm. They started off with Hey Boy Hey Girl so everyone knew the song. Most of the songs I didn’t know – I knew about 4 or 5 of them!!! The only slight problem was some of the people in the crowd – it was so hot and sweaty that when people were dancing and jumping they ended up jumping into us and sweat was flying off from their hair. It didnt ruin the gig though.

On Sunday I managed to get myself out of bed and played football. It was the first time in about a month and I was knackered! I did manage to score 1 or 2 goals and it was quite enjoyable. In the afternoon and then evening went to a friends BBQ. Had a load of burgers, some prawns, a few beers and lots of singing. I always seem to end up singing karaoke (and this time Singstar on the PS2). At the BBQ they were 2 different BBQs – there was the normal style BBQ for the burgers and chicken wings etc. Then there was the chinese style BBQ which is more of the open fire type – I cooked a load of prawns on it at the end. I am not sure they were 100% cooked but it tasted pretty nice.

On Monday went for Dim Sum with some friends. We then pretty much did nothing!! Just wandered around town, checked out the Dutch market,…. We then went back to mine and watched Old School on DVD. By the time it finished another friend had arrived and we went for a meal in San Rocco. I had a Rack of Lamb which was pretty good.

Photos from the Chemical Brothers gig can be seen here (there not the greatest photos in the world but there OK). Photos from the BBQ are online. You will need a username and password to gain access.