Christmas and New Year in Thailand

Lucky, lucky me! Although Christmas is not generally celebrated in Thailand, I am currently in the tourist city of Pattaya (see www.pattayacity.com/pattaya/), and there is plenty of Christmas to be seen here. Plus a whole lot more too... what fun!

This is my last post for this year, so all the very best to you wherever you are, have a great time over the holidays, and have a Happy 2007!

HTML code for the two Sonic Java games I made

Lots of people have been asking me for HTML code to link to the two Sonic the Hedgehog Java games I made (see this post), so I thought I'd put it here for anyone else that might want it:

Link to the Sonic Matchit game from your website, MySpace, etc., by copying and pasting the code below:

<p><b><a href="http://www.dan-dare.net/SonicMario/Dan%20Sonic%205.htm" target="new_win">Sonic Matchit Game</a></b></p>

Link to the Dr. Robotnik Abalis game from your website, MySpace, etc., by copying and pasting the code below:

<p><b><a href="http://www.dan-dare.info/Games/DrRobotnikAbalis/DrRobotnikAbalis.htm" target="new_win">Dr. Robotnik Abalis Game</a></b></p>

Two Sonic the Hedgehog Java games I made

Just for the fun of it, I created the following two Sonic the Hedgehog Java online games using a couple of ready-made templates:

  Sonic Matchit

  Dr. Robotnik Abalis

Of course, they're not a patch on the Ultimate Flash Sonic game, but not much that's freely available on the web is. You can see all of these games, and loads more, at www.dan-dare.info.

Retro time - Nintendo Game & Watch

Do you remember those neat little Nintendo handheld LCD computer games called "Game & Watch"? They were most popular in the 80's, or at least they were with me as I collected around a dozen of them back then. They featured great mini-versions of classic games such as Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros., Zelda, Balloon Fight, and so on. Check out this site for loads more information about them: www.gameandwatch.com

And here is an excellent thing - there are Flash online game versions of four of the best Mario ones, which you can play now by clicking on these links:

  Mario Bros.

  Donkey Kong II

  Donkey Kong Jr.

  Mario's Bombs Away

Coup blimey, what a week it's been in Thailand!

My timing's as impeccable as ever - I came back home to the farm (which is right in the middle of Thailand) from Bangkok three days before the military coup which (as of today) still sees tanks and soldiers on the streets in parts of Bangkok.
(I say my timing's as impeccable as ever because I left Patong Beach in Phuket exactly one week before the tsunami struck at the end of 2004. Lucky or what?!)

However (and unlike the terrible events of 2004), this has so far been a very peaceful coup, with no fighting and no loss of life, and with apparent support for it right across the country. Certainly where I live in rural Thailand people have accepted it and see it as having been necessary after all the political turmoil and resultant social problems of this year. It's certainly a uniquely Thai way of sorting a serious national mess out, and my hat off to them for having the guts to do it in this way.

The Thai peoples' (justified in my opinion) complete loyalty to their King helps ensure that whatever happens with their governmental system, Thailand never really changes at heart - and that is an extremely good thing. Although they are Westernizing here at an amazing rate, clearly they are in no imminent danger of losing that essential "Thainess" that is treasured the world over.

Updates to my Sonic and Mario games website

Sitting around on my farm in the middle of Thailand has its charms and appeals for me - clean fresh air, abundant fresh produce to hand, relative peace and quiet, well away from the Rat Race. But I still work on my websites when I'm there, from time to time, just for fun. To that end I have made some very big changes to my Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario Brothers games site, with the additon of loads of new Flash games (taking the total to over 50 games now). Here is the link for the site: www.dan-dare.info. I hope you take a look and have some fun...

Back in Thailand

Finally made it back "home" after having spent too long in England due to delays in selling my house. It's really good to be back, it's a crazy but wonderful place as always. I just drove most of the way around Bangkok using the outer ring-road motorway. It isn't quite finished, as they are just now building an absolutely massive new bridge over the Chao Phraya river to link up and complete what will then be an "orbital" road. The bridge construction work is awesome, a staggering piece of civil engineering on a par with anything I've ever seen.

But it also provides a prime example of the crazy contrasts in Thailand between ultra-modern and old-fashioned approaches to things: The existing route through Bangkok which the new bridge will eventually replace is currently also under construction, with large sections of it either dug right up, or surface-planed, or just left as single-lane mud tracks full of pot-holes, causing utter traffic chaos such as I have never before witnessed, not even in Bangkok.

What an inspired piece of traffic planning, lol!!

I thought we were a bit screwy in England for doing similar things, but this is screwy on an epic scale. Still, it makes life much more interesting I suppose. Imagine how boring it would be if you could just drive everywhere you wanted to go with no massive hold-ups!! ;-)

I love Thailand, it's the best country on earth! I'm heading off for a beach holiday in the Koh Chang island chain for a while now, no doubt discovering more bonkers contrasts along the way.

Sold my house at long last!

Finally! I have managed to sell my house in England! It has taken over 8 months to sell it because in England people can pull out of buying a house right at the very last minute, believe it or not. How stupid. In my opinion, once a sale is agreed it should be legally binding. That is the case in Scotland, so why isn't it here? Anyway, it is all done and dusted now, and I have to vacate my house on Friday. After that I shall be traveling around a lot on business before finally heading back to Thailand for a while. So this is my last post here for perhaps a month. Cheers for now!

A very funny little Flash movie

This made me laugh the most I have laughed in quite a while, so I hope it does you too... Super Mario Quickie Short Flash Movie

Web-based fun for kids (of all ages)

I have been putting together two new pages for one of my kids' entertainment websites over the past few weeks or so, and I just finished them today. They are: Sonic the Hedgehog Images and Music and Super Mario Brothers Images and Music. I found it totally absorbing, even a little addictive, creating all those little animated GIF cartoons... but now I'm going to go and have a proper life this weekend! :-) If you want to, you can now access all my Sonic and Mario fun and games in one convenient place: Sonic and Mario Flash and Java Games.

That's it for another 4 years

So that's it, the 2006 World Cup is now over. Italy beat France 5-3 on penalties after a 1-1 draw through extra time to become World Champions for the fourth time, while the French captain Zinedine Zidane got himself sent off, which was certainly a memorable way to end what had up until then been an incredibly illustrious playing career (before the tournament started he had announced he was retiring from the game upon its conclusion). It all petered out into a rather ordinary World Cup in the end, after such a brilliant start. The final was entertaining, but it wasn't a great football match. Still, well done to Italy. If only England could be so doggedly and determinedly successful.

H.G. Wells and Jules Verne

I recently obtained from a second-hand bookshop a small collection of novels by H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, two authors who are often referred together to as the "Founding Fathers of Modern Science Fiction".

Included in this wonderful collection are "The Invisible Man", "The Time Machine", "The First Men in the Moon" and "The War of the Worlds" by Wells, and "Journey to the Centre of the Earth", "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea", "From the Earth to the Moon" and "Around the World in 80 Days" by Verne.

These stories are all around 100 years old, and yet they still take some beating in my humble opinion. They are skillfully written, are immensely enjoyable and have hardly dated given their age and the advances in science since their original publications. I urge you to track down and read any of the works by either of these wonderful authors - I am certain you will thoroughly enjoy them.

England lose on penalties, yet again

Oh dear, as usual for my national football team, it's all gone horribly wrong. England are out of the World Cup, losing to Portugal (again) on penalties (yet again) in their quarter final match. Wayne Rooney was sent off after 62 minutes, and that after all the fuss about his foot injury and whether he would be fit to play in the World Cup. It's all academic now. England never really looked like winning once they were down to 10 men, but valliantly held on for a 0-0 draw through extra time, and then the fateful penalty shoot-out which they lost 3-1. There's nothing else worth saying about this from my point of view. So now it's "Vive La France", and especially Thierry Henry (I'm an Arsenal fan for my sins) - well done for beating Brazil in one of the other quarter finals.

Bend it like Beckham... and didn't he just!

World Cup 2nd round: England 1 (Beckham 60 mins), Ecuador 0. England are through to the quarter-finals for the 9th time. They still don't look to me like they're quite good enough to win the World Cup just yet, but they are certainly getting better, and Wayne Rooney looks like he's hitting top form now after "that injury". As for David Beckham, what an amazing goal he scored - one of his trademark pin-point-accurate long-range free kicks. Oddly though, this is the first one he's scored from himself in around 3 years. What a perfect time to change that!

The 2006 World Cup Finals tournament... so far

Well, I think this is the best World Cup Finals tournament ever. So far it's featured the best football, the fairest play and the friendliest fans all partying together regardless of the countries they support. Wonderful stuff. Shame England look decidedly average up to now, despite two wins from their first two matches and qualification for the second round. On their current form I wouldn't rate England's chances against the likes of Argentina, who look unbeatable. Still, one lives in the hope that the English long-ball game might unsettle the top sides enough to get the desired results. And you never know, we might yet rediscover our real creative attacking form and play the game properly - as the mother country of the beautiful game, we ought to try.

England, the Cross of St. George and the World Cup

Having just seen the England football team completely outplay Jamaica at Old Trafford to win 6-0 in their final friendly before the World Cup, I was impressed by two things: the incredible amount of English patriotism on view in the 70,000 strong crowd, with the red and white of the flag of St. George seemingly covering every inch of the stands; and the fact that England surely won't really miss injured striker Wayne Rooney THAT much given that the gangly but skillful Peter Crouch certainly can score goals too (he scored 3 in this game).

It's been really lovely to see English patriotism (not nationalism mind you) steadily on the rise. For far too long we English seem to have been embarrassed by our great nation and have hidden our patriotism from view. All over the world other countries celebrate their national identities for all to see, and I'm so pleased we're now starting to do the same here.

And please, please, please can we stop hearing about Wayne Rooney from now on. Enough is enough - there are other players in the England squad more than good enough to "cover" for his absence, so let them get on with the job in hand.

Hard-core sci-fi reading...

Almost a week since my last post here, and it seems like only a few days. Why is it that the older you get the quicker time seems to pass? It's important to me to know the answer to this, as I want to slow it down as soon as possible... :-)

I spent the past week reading sci-fi novels, when I wasn't working on website stuff. Books read were:

"Future History", Jerry Pournelle
"King David's Spaceship", Jerry Pournelle
"Ringworld's Children", Larry Niven

All three were very good reads. If you've read and enjoyed the awesome "The Mote in God's Eye" and it's sequel "The Mote Around Murcheson's Eye" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, then I recommend both "Future History" and "King David's Spaceship" as they take place in the same story universe as the two joint-effort books. In the case of the latter, it immediately precedes "The Mote in God's Eye".

If you're a fan of the classic "Ringworld" by Larry Niven, then it is well worthwhile reading the sequels "The Ringworld Engineers", "The Ringworld Throne" and "Ringworld's Children". A very impressive story arc, expanded upon even further in various other Niven books set in the Ringworld story universe. See "Neutron Star", "Protector", "A Gift From Earth", "World of Ptaavs" and "Tales of Known Space" for starters. Fantastic stuff!

I mention all of this because this is the kind of sci-fi I really like. It's often referred to as "Hard" sci-fi, as it deals with realism and not fantasy. Futures depicted in all the above-mentioned books are highly plausible because they are futures based upon the prediction of possible technological and social developments from our own time. It makes for interesting as well as entertaining reading anyway.

Rainy Sundays and cool websites

Today, a late Spring day, is a dreary wet Sunday in Northamptonshire, England (14 degrees C, gray overcast sky, breezy, constant rain showers) - perfect for spending hours surfing the web. If it was nicer outside I'd venture into the spectacularly green and beautiful countryside around where I live for a cycle ride, as Britain is at its best this time of year. Apart from the weather, that is. So instead, here are a few cool sites and pages I like to visit on days such as these:

Extensive picture galleries of classic British children's TV, sci-fi and comic-strip books

Extensive picture galleries of toy ray guns from all over the world

Amazing Flash version of Sega's "Sonic the Hedgehog" video games

The original Star Wars movie trilogy as three animated GIF cartoons

The bizarre interactive Flash world of "Vectorpark"

Find out what's happening in the world of "Grand Theft Auto" gaming

Hopefully you'll find those links will help pass the time a little less boringly than might otherwise have been the case. :-)

Places to visit and things to do in Thailand - Part 1

When in Bangkok - Get down to the Chao Phraya river for a change of scene. The easiest way to get there is to use the BTS Skytrain, stopping at the Saphan Taksin station (S6 on the official map). Once there, take any of the river cruises (they're all reasonable value for money) or the up-river taxi boat for stunning views of Bangkok and some its most famous sites. I recommend one trip in the daytime, and another at night. Even the short trip on the river taxi boat across to the south bank is quite fun.

When in Pattaya/Jomtien - Take a trip out of town and travel 15km due south to Bang Sarae beach. It's a lot quieter than Pattaya and Jomtien beaches, and makes a pleasant change. Food and drink are a bit cheaper, and there are hardly any beach sellers around to hassle you. Alternatively, for another pleasant day out of town, head to the harbour that sits right between Pattaya and Jomtien and take the ferry to Koh Larn island. Then take a taxi to one of the west coast beaches. Lovely beaches and views, nice and quiet. A bit pricey, but worth it.

When in Trat/Koh Chang - If you thought Koh Chang was a tropical island paradise (which it is), whilst stayng on the island get yourself down to Ban Bang Bao and take a day's boat trip (it's a couple of thousand Baht to hire a fishing boat if you haggle politely and buy some beers for everyone on board) to Koh Wai for an even more amazing taste of tropical island paradise living. Or take the Koh Wai ferry from Laem Ngop near Trat (where all the ferries to Koh Chang are).

More tips in the future...

About my nom de plume, "Danny Dare"

"Danny Dare" was a cartoon strip in the 1960's "Wham!" comic in Great Britain. Danny was a fan of "Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future" from the "Eagle" comic (as am I, hence my assumed name), and his adventures were inspired by those of his space-travelling idol. It must be one of the few cases ever where a comic strip works in this way - a strip about a fan of another strip, both strips being in totally different comics. If you know of any other similar examples, please drop me a line, as I'd love to hear about them. Anyway, you can click here to view a scan of a complete episode of Danny Dare from the Easter 1967 edition of Wham! if you wish (taken from the original artwork).

Who am I? Well, here's who I am...

Welcome to my Blog. My real name is Peter John Inns, I was born in October 1967, and sometimes I live in Northamptonshire, England (my original home), while other times I live in Thailand. I am a Business and IT Managing Consultant by profession. My hobbies and interests include (but are not restricted to) travelling, socialising, watching movies, listening to music, reading novels and anything to do with "Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future".

I also love Star Wars, Harry Potter, Red Dwarf, Futurama, The Simpsons and playing computer games. My favourite games are Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Mario Brothers, The Legend of Zelda and Grand Theft Auto. See my free games website for Flash and Java online versions of some of them: www.dan-dare.org/FreeFun/

This Blog will be an occasional commentary on anything I feel is relevant to life in both England and Thailand. I love both countries, but they are so totally different, especially Thailand when you have lived there for a number of years away from the "touristy" areas.