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.