Another weekend rolls by...
Saturday, we grabbed breakfast at the Brixton Lounge and met up with my NYC mate Matt and Ted/Dave. Then it was into the West End for lunch in my fave café, the Photographers Gallery (check out the excellent Japanese fashion devotees exhibition!), followed by a bit of a half hearted stroll down to the Stop the War demo in Trafalgar Square.

By chance, I popped into the National Portrait Gallery and saw a fantastic exhibition of photos called 'Circling the Square'. These featured photos from a selection of demos, protests and celebrations in the Square over the years, and included a great image from an anti-war demo in 1914. Very apt!

Got home to time to watch the teletext roll by, confirming Cardiff's 3-0 thrashing of Crewe and then it was down to the Albert for a top night: the new owners Pat and Paul have done a great job of getting a buzz about the place, with free poetry and music in the back yard and free home cooked food. Nuff respec'!

Sunday we wandered up to Opus café in Acre Lane for a coffee and a read of the papers with with Marcus (it's a small but friendly café - highly recommended!) before I went home to try and put together a load of computer bits to make a back up server.

Took some time off to watch a dreadful piece of cod-Celtic TV tosh, 'Boadicea' before aimlessly moving a load of cables around inside a box and wondering why the PC wasn't working. Maybe tomorrow, then...

Nigerian scam emails: fighting back!
Ever been blasted with loads of dodgy emails from people purporting to be Nigerian businessmen offering you millions of pounds? Well, this guy got so pissed off with them, he decided to write back and rip the piss out of them. Classic stuff! (disclaimer: there might be some dodgy stuff on that site too)

On a different note, if you're a footie fan, you might find something amusing in here: Coping with Failure and Pre Match tension

A minor hangover
Last night was a good 'un, starting off with a visit to the trusty Albert for a chum's birthday. For the first time this year it was a bit nippy in the garden, which means one thing: Autumn's on its way. Woohoo!
Later on, trudged up Brixton Hill to catch the tail end of Vic's fine Poetry Corner - I'd missed the poetry but managed to get thoroughly blasted by a 'avin' it punk band. Good stuff!

"You dirty old man!"
Just come back from the Boston Arms in Tufnell Park after a brief visit. The Actionettes were booked to perform with 60s pop producer, Kim Fowley. I was supposed to be taking pictures, but things didn't go quite to plan.

Fowley came on and dirged his way through some forgettable sub-Velvet types noises, while spouting a load of sexist shite calling female audience members 'bitches' and asking them to get their tits out.

The Actionettes didn't like the cut of his Neanderthal jib one little bit, so came on stage to say that they wouldn't be performing with that "disgusting, dirty old man" Fowley - much to the amusement and encouragement of a fair chunk of the crowd!

Respect to the Actionettes for taking no shit!

Football woes
The good news: Cardiff City have no problem scoring goals, thumping in five in the last two matches.
The bad news: on both occasions, the other team scored more :(

Pub quiz
The Prince Albert in Brixton continues to show why it's the finest boozer in town with the addition of a fun quiz night on Tuesday. The place was packed (no mean feat for a Tuesday!) and the beer flowed handsomely. I'll be there next week!

Executive box woe
I'm afraid today hasn't gone to plan. What should have been a whoopy-doopsy, all expenses paid trip to Reading for a Toshiba press launch and - oh yes! - the prospect of watching the mighty Cardiff City continue their winning form went horribly wrong.

Sure the exec book at Reading was suitably whizzy, and there was free beer, but things started to go awry when the food was wheeled out: chicken, chicken or, err, more chicken.
Far from enjoying a pre-match feast, yours truly was left nibbling on a dull diet of dried pitta bread and lettuce.

And the the football! The first half was a joy to behold, with Cardiff commanding the game and looking set to roll onto another triumph. After 12 minutes we were 1-0 up and looking good for more.

And then something odd happened at half time. We became Reading and they became us! Suddenly, Reading were al over us like a bad suit and we slumped to a 2-1 defeat.

And then I came home to find that the entire urban75.org has site has mysteriously gone offline (that'll teach me to boast about the stats, eh?)

Oh well... ho hum...

A feast of stats!
Unzip your anoraks, push up your band-aided specs and get a load of these tech-tastic stats!

Oh yes! Access stats!
The urban75.net part of the site is currently getting 100,000+ page impressions per day. On the bulletin boards, there are 2,500-3,000 new posts every day, 100 new threads and around 15 new posters registering every day.
urban75.org attracts 40,000 page impressions a day while the urban75.com part of the site creates such a large weekly log file (in excess of 600 meg) that I can't be arsed to download it!

What browser?
I used to be a big fan of Netscape until it turned into the most unpredictable browser on the planet. Version 4.7, in particular, was a piece of unmitigated dog shit and you could hear the howl of frustrated web designers echoing all over cyberspace as the crappy program screwed up their carefully-hewn layouts.
Sadly, Micro$oft has the browser market well and truly sewn up now - 91% of all traffic to urban75 is using Internet Explorer.

What's the busiest time of day on the site, Mr Webmaster?
Well, let me tell you. The busiest time is 1800 (GMT) with the quietest time being around 5am.

Collossal Cardiff City Crush Gillingham!
The mighty Cardiff City slammed five goals past hapless Gillingham on Saturday - with Earnshaw bagging four! Tuesday night, I'm off to Reading football stadium courtesy of Toshiba, who have invited me to the launch of their sports WiFi service. By a wonderful twist of fate, it just so happens that Cardiff City are playing Reading that night, so with luck, I'll be posting up live match updates on the bulletin boards!
Come on Cardiff!!!

Disaster!
The mighty Wales bombed 0-4 to Italy in the San Siro stadium tonight, despite putting up a brave fighting display that wasn't reflected in the score. I watched the game with a load of chums around the flat, desperately hoping that my lucky Wales/CCFC/urban75 flag would work the same magic as it did at the Division Two play offs.

It didn't :(

A feast of favicons!
If you didn't know, favicons are the neat little icons that appear in your favourites list and in the browser bar when you bookmark a page.

They're fiddly little feckers to get right, so if you've been struggling to make a 16x16 pixel art form, check out this feast'o'favicons for inspiration.

If you fancy having a go yourself, head for these sites:
Favicon tutorial
Another Favicon tutorial
or create your masterpiece using the FREE online editor at:
Another Favicon tutorial