You’ll understand (I hope) why I would be more than happy to link from here to there, but not the other way around… – this blog is strictly personal and the dayjob office site is far too serious to link to an opinionated place like this!

I started there on a 2 year contract, but was able to impress them sufficiently to get it converted to full time / permanent; and with the current state of the economy I am quite massively grateful.

So: because of that – and also because I believe the entire Universe runs on the “it’s my ball and if I don’t get to be on the team I am taking it home” principle I will here offer one of my very rare plugs.

If you need any kind of conference, exhibition, meeting, product launch or meeting venue in Birmingham then consider venuebirmingham; we offer competitive rates, just 2 miles from the city centre, with on site bed and breakfast accommodation, full catering service available, and one of the most impressive venues in the whole Midlands: the Great Hall.

Put it this way – if we can put on the General Election 2010 Leaders Debate and the Antiques Roadshow then we can definitely make your event a success too!

First up is the incomparably excellent Island in the Sea of Time by S M Stirling. In this book the island of Nantucket in the present day is flung back to the year 1500 BC – and apart from that initial fantasy element the whole story is grounded firmly in reality. This is part of the reason I like this book so much – the characters are all modern day people that you can relate to… – and they are suddenly thrown into this extreme situation and as a result you can sympathise with them that much more, and the danger seems more immediate, probably because they relate to it much the same way that we would.

This is the start of the whole Islanders trilogy – and after that comes the Dies the Fire trilogy – and after that comes another series of at least four more books… – so if you like this one then be reassured that there is a lot more to come!

Hence this mug: it is a mug combined with a cafetiere so you can get good coffee at work. So many people ask me about it that I decided to blog about it and also link to in on Amazon so you could get your own if you wanted to!

Suddenly America is no longer a pariah – suddenly I find myself wanting to volunteer to help make President Elect Obama’s vision come true; suddenly I think that there is hope for the environment after all.

I was literally in tears when I saw it; and even now two days later I can find myself choking up when it hits me again.

And then a new realisation hit me – that now America is doing better than the UK in terms of race relations and making up for the bigotry of the past. And let me tell you – this feels very weird! I have been used to being proud of Britain for what we have done – the way that anyone here seems able to make it regardless of race – the way that we seem to be anti-racist. (I know that there is still racism around; what I am trying to say is that to me, the husband of a black woman and the father of a mixed race child, the perception is that things are getting better.)

And this is just not right! – we need to catch up to America and overtake them again! We need to do more – and if we elected a black prime-minister then that would just equal them; no – I am afraid that there is only one thing for it; Prince Harry needs to get out there and marry some gorgeous black or Asian or Chinese or Malaysian or Maori woman so that the next heir to the throne is mixed race!

Can you imagine it?! – Britain having it’s next but two king or queen someone of multiple heritage! – how cool would that be? – and how much would it say to every black, asian or other minority that you are part of this nation; this is your home – and of course saying the inevitable and obligatory fuck you to the racists!

It says “fuck you” to the BNP on so many levels;

• that a black person beats people of all other races, thus shattering the myth of the Aryan master race.
• that they consider themselves naturally British and are ecstatically proud to carry the Union Jack
• that every single right minded person in the country is also proud of them, and sees them as first British – then as an Olympic medal winner, and – oh yes – they happen to be black!

Well, these flats are known to me and I thought I would not let a bunch of racists twats get away with this; so yesterday I printed off a load of leaflets and on the way home delivered them through the letterbox of every flat in the block.

These leaflets did not mess about either; it told people to get out and vote on Thursday in the local council elections for ANYONE but the fascist, racist, nazi BNP; register your protest and make sure your voice is heard.

All racism in every form needs to be confronted. Make the racists and fascists the ones that are worried; do not allow them a platform and challenge racism wherever it raises its ugly head.

To do more, go join up with the Unite Against Fascism and the Hope not Hate people – and most importantly vote on Thursday against the BNP.

And so I thought long and hard about what I could do a website on, and I decided that one of the very few topics I cared enough about would be the work of Bryan Talbot. (also relevant was the fact that there were no other sites about his stuff yet in existence; if I was going to enter the field I wanted to be number 1 in it!)

And so – 12 years ago now – I started the website. And then when Bryan had finished Heart of Empire he came up to me with his now famous “I am getting really tired of people asking where I get my ideas from; is there a way we can tell them? – and maybe make a couple of quid into the bargain?” – and so the Heart of Empire CD-Rom was born.

Now; I have always found it hard to summarise what the CD-Rom is about in a short space of tme – the so called “elevator pitch”. If I have got 10 minutes or so I can easily get peoples heads around it, but if I have a couple of minutes it’s hard – mainly because there is just so much on there!

And so I thought why not release the first chapter online for free and allow people to read it and see what it is like without trying to explain it! – and so here it is! – allow me to present to you the entire first chapter of the Heart of Empire CD-Rom!

The first presenter – Suzi – went to an established online marketing agency here in Birmingham – Tamba Internet that thought they knew what they were doing…. They created a “viral game” that would publicise her. (and what’s more, the link to the game from their site opens in a new window for crying out loud!) Now the first they got wrong was allowing the presenter to make the “pay off” an “accidental” video clip of her getting changed with “accidental” movements of the other presenters hands covering up her naughty bits. Erm – sorry.. – this is interesting to me how?! In an era of celebrities hardcore sextapes leaking onto the net, how the hell is this gonna engage? This is pitched at the level of maximum crapness and patheticness; for anyone not used to these sex tapes it is just enough to shock; for anyone well used to the sex tapes it is utterly incapable of titilating in anyway… – and the agency should have told the presenter this! They failed in their duty to their client of stopping them from making a horrendous decision that would actually damage them!

Then the agency compounded this error by an order of magnitude, by making a game of such undescribable boring-ness that I wanted to poke myself in the eye with a pen to make it go away. It consists of the presenter reading out the name of shiny-shines – “Ipod!” – “DVD player!” – and then the player has to click on them on some shelves behind her. (and after playing it, it is actually quicker to get to the “naughty” video by losing! – if you just let the timer run down then the game ends – and you get the same pay-off for losing that you do for winning – but a hell of a lot quicker!) These idiots utterly fail to understand playability and usability; they do not understand gameplay or how to make something interesting and compelling and I failt to see how they stay in business.

They fall for the classic, basic beginners error; just because you can do something on the net doesn’t mean that you should… – of that if you go ahead and do it anyway just because you have the technology does not mean to say that a fetid dingoes kidney in the real world is any less of a fetid dingoes kidney just because it is an online Flash game that is an emailable viral marketing campaign.

Content, content, CONTENT!!

Postscript; this is how much these jokers fail to get the point; in their news article to plug their inclusion in the show they do not even link to the online game!

The existing political parties are too in debt to established big business interests and will not – and can not – take the moral leadership needed on these critical issues. Pressure groups such as Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace are doing great work… – but they are on the outside trying to exert pressure… – the only thing that will make a different is real world political power – and that’s local city councillors, MP’s and MEPS.

So – if you are also disgusted at the slow rate of change and also despairing about the worlds we will leave to our children then do something! – join the Green Party now!

In Birmingham they are trying an excellent tactic; focus all available campaigning resources onto a single council seat and go all out to win it. In other cities where they have tried this it has worked well, and I cannot believe that Birmingham does not have a single Green City Councillor! The only way to save the planet is to get serious political power; and the only people currently with any credibility whatsoever are the Green Party.

I heard about Freecycle back in October ’04 and thought it was such a great idea; when I came to check if there was a Birmingham UK one I couldn’t beleive that no one had already launched a group! – so I immediately did so and it’s just gone from there.

It started slowly, but for the past year has been gaining a huge amount of momentum. I still moderate the group every Friday – so watch out if you try and join on that day, or if you come and try and scam us… my patience for idiots gets less every year….

What I am trying to do now is to get the City Council to help us out; publicise us on their website and newspaper that is sent to every house in the City. The reason is that we are saving them cold hard cash from purely green motives and without making money ourselves; because they get taxed for every ton they put into landfill and there is nothing better for stopping stuff going into landfill than Freecycle.

Anyone out there know how to get the Council to actually do something?!

I wrote to my MP and she has started to badger their head of recycling – but so far – nothing!