I’ve just watched the cricket world cup highlights. Wow! What a game. The game featured was England v The West Indies. Brian Lara’s last international game. I’m sorry to see him go although I never watch cricket so it really doesn’t make any difference but I hear he was an entertaining player in a game that could do with some excitement. But today’s game was worthy of a place along side such memorable occasions as Liverpool winning the champions league and Great Britain winning gold in women’s curling 6 years (I think) ago.

It may not have been worth anything but at least England went out in style and showed that there is quality in the team despite the bad press and critisism. Michael Vaughan lead the team well totting up a good innings. Then came along Kevin Pietersen who made a century but fell at the next. Finally it look like the windies had got the best of england but  then the crowd were silenced as Paul Nixon put in a quality performance falling short of the target by 3 runs with 3 balls to play. I have to say having started to believe england had it them to win I thought we’d thrown it away at the end but Stuart Broad saved the day hitting a four which pushed england 1 point ahead and winning the game.

Who knew cricket could be like this! Excellent!

I’ve just spent the evening digging through a pile of old cds and trying to clear out any of no value (some how they just seem to build up). And it’s a miracle! I found the cd containing my old rafcareers.com website which I built back in 2001. I’ve been wanting to add it to my portfolio since I put it together.

The site, or the version which I’ve added to the portfolio is the flash version. I also designed an html version, with the help of Tom Thorpe, when I worked at design net. The previous version had been built by Deep End but the COI weren’t happy with it so we got the contract to sort things out.

Having such a clear and obvious brand I developed the design around that and the idea of using an airbase to navigate around the site. It was a fun project to work on although we ran in to a number of technical issues, primarily with the integration of a ‘flight bag’ (shopping basket) to save jobs which users were interested in.

In the end though, the site launched and was extremely well received, making the cover story of Cre@te Online and being awarded 10/10 on The Web Review, on ITV.

Adding an archived version of the site to my portfolio proved to be a bit of a mare. When Tom burnt it to disc using his mac the formatting of the file names was changed to all caps and the names were truncated. So it has taken me a good hour to go through and rename the files correctly, opening all the different flas and seeing what loads where. As it stands I think I got most of it working. At least you can get a sense of what the site was like. I don’t think any of the games will work, or the downloads either.

So if you are interested click here to check it out, but remember it isn’t live so not everything works!

Went to see 300. I really enjoyed it. So I’d give it 4 out 5.

Not much of a plot but I’m a sucker for fantasy in all its tackiness. Then again stylized visual effect was amazing. You definitely need to see this in the cinema. Yash enjoyed it too although the story had no depth. Clearly watching a bunch of young men with 8 (not 6) packs had something to do with it. I must say it certainly got me wanting to hit the gym.

I would sum it up as Gladiator cum Lord of the Rings because the cinematography was excellent. Wonder how long it will be until a gay porn spin-off is made? ‘3 hungdred’? That is crap but you get my meaning.

Beyond the film, the website is well worth checking out. Obviously created in the usual vein of film microsites using flash and all the rich media, but the finish is top quality and it reflects the style of the film perfectly. One item of note is the video footage of the cast in training to get their bodies in shape for filming. Serious stuff. I’d both love and hate to go on a boot camp like that. The end result and feeling of achievement would be immense but the pain of getting there would be unimaginable.

Wow. It has been a long while since I last posted anything. If you are reading…
Sorry but I lost my connection here for about a week. All thanks to Homechoice. Their box desided to pack up and I had to wait almost a week for an engineer to turn up and replace it. The funniest thing was we ended up trying three boxes and five remote controls before we could get it working again. Shows what good quality hardware they provide.

Well anyway for now I haven’t got the time to change although it looks like Talktalk offer a better deal. Will sort it out shortly. I looked through all the different providers and it works out that Homechoice or Tiscali as they are now offer a pretty good deal but I’m fed up with the shit service so I’ve got to find something different. I’ve just tried out a freeview box and it picks up a bunch of random channels but I think I’ll switch to that as with Talk talk I can then get a monthly cost of about £20 rather than near £40 with Tiscali and BT. Will update as thing develop.

Aside from all that I’ve just spent most of the week visiting my grand dad in the isle of white. Hence the lack of communication. What a perfect week to take off. The sun has been out non-stop and we’ve really enjoyed the week. Went down to the beach. Amazing how many people were d0wn there. Beautiful although the sea was freezing…

As it goes I’ve got a whole bunch of stuff I want to write about but it is 3:30 am so I best go to bed. That’s wants happens went you’re off line for a week…