I'm off on a weekend bender, all day tomorrow in Manchester, then a majority of Sunday catching the football. I've got tickets for United v Arsenal, fingers crossed for a classic match. Hopefully I'll stay intact this time around without getting a busted nose. I still think there might be some permanent damage to my breathing as my nose keeps feeling blocked up.

Just put a bet on the Grand National as well, a fiver on one of the favourites and last years winner Hedge Hunter. Might risk another bet tomorrow on something with a better odds if we drop by the bookies.

I found this girl pretty interesting as well as tasty. If you click on the link she should be holding a sign with your town or city wrote on it. A bit of clever IP tracking trickery there for you. Nice touch.

I've started to add the backlog of photos I had to the site, its about time as well, the last ones I posted up was back from summer last year.

Anyway I added a few from my birthday last Friday, on this rare occasion you can see me in the background on the last one lookin' a bit grim! Also posted some from last years SuperLash and a good couple in December of the George Best tributes outside Old Trafford. There are one or two others I've posted up as well but you can see them for yourself in the photo gallery.

Must say there are still a couple of dodgy issues with the photo gallery and getting them posted online. I'll have to get around to fixing them, when I can be bothered.

Started reading a new book at the moment Ric bought me for my birthday, 'Bulletproof Web Design' the last book I read by Dan Cederholm was really good so I hope this one is to the same standard. Perhaps after I've got through reading that I'll be inspired to resign the site.

Finally, just to demonstrate a new feature on the site that'll allow me to post up videos from YouTube. This allows me to quickly show you some of the crazy clips I tend to come across from around the net. Here's one of my current favourite adverts for Lynx deodorant starring Ben Affleck:

Well I'm not going to say I'm thrilled about it, but I've reached a quarter of century now. The time is creeping in on me and I can already feel my bones begin to stiffen.

One good remedy for stiff joints though, a good old drink! You can't have a birthday without getting a bit tipsy, so I arranged to meet with friends for an all day drinking session.

Started off at 1pm in the afternoon finishing up at 4.30am, the venues I managed to get through: Henry J Beans, Sir Ralph Abercrombie, Brannigans, Pitcher and Piano, Waxy O'Conners, Tiger Tiger, Sam's Chop House, Black Lion, Bar 38, Teasers.

Places rejected due various reasons: Revolution, Cocoa Rooms, Teasers (returned later), 42nd Street.

Thanks to everyone for sending cards and birthday texts! I also got a copy of Fight Night Round 3 for a present so I'll no doubt spend the remainder of the weekend getting over my hangover and playing that.

I've got a day off today, so I'm spending time sharpening my Xbox skills. Feeling a bit sluggish today however, reaction times seem down. I've been having a crack on Geometry Wars and the best I've reached is the 500,000 mark.

Been having a crack on the Reaction Speed test, but I can only muster 0.202 not even good enough to get on today's scoreboard.

Off on a bender tomorrow round Manchester since its my 25th birthday! Starting at 1pm going on till as late as I can manage it. I hope to take a ton of photos and I'll post them up on my return.

Had a call earlier from an agency to see if I fancied going in for a job in Belgium working as a FatWire content developer, similar to what I'm doing now. Turned it down then thought about after I could have been working in the home of Stella!!

I've got some updates for the site planned soon too, if I'm not to hung over at the weekend I'll try and get them online. It's mainly backend stuff but I might consider a new design to.

Well it came yesterday (Ghost Recon: Advanced War Fighter, Xbox 360), but I've only just got around to writing about it. It seems pretty good as far as I can tell, I've played a little bit of the single player game and a few hours online. There have been reports I've heard about of it being a bit flawed, especially online, but after from the usual glitches it seemed fine.

I hope it can capture the magic of the older titles and hopefully we'll really be able to get some 16 player killing on, al-la Halo 2.

In other news, I completed my visit of 5 different bars on 5 different days for an unofficial national pub week. We missed the real one a couple of weeks ago so did our own this week. I hit the following bars, RSVP, Cafe Rouge, Where People Meet People, Cocoa Rooms (very swank) and today Lime.

Yesterday's drinking session ended in a downer yesterday, when I was head-butted by some loser in the pub. An unprovoked attack by the tosser has left me with a cut across the bridge of my nose and a dry cleaning bill for my blood stained clothes.

He was claiming he'd been down to Anfield to try and get into the game, that we ended up loosing after lanky Crouch's effort left us to loose 1-0. Anyway I think this guy was just looking for a fight and caught us with a good one. Got a free round out of it though and my nose didn't break, so its not all doom and gloom.

Anyway because of that, we never made it to the planned trip to Tiger Tiger in the end because I'd not get in covered in blood, so had to stay in the Seven Oaks to drink the night away.

Well I decided to create an RSS feed for the site after playing around with the mini aggregator I created the other night. It's not like anyone will be really eager to know what I'm blogging about next but the option is there now. It's apparently also a blog standard as well, so I'm that one step closer to creating a complete package.

The next step is to probably add some XSLT and CSS to the raw feed so that it's more presentable.

You can subscribe to the feed here:

Well its been a while since I've done any kind of development updates on the site but I managed to do something worthwhile tonight. I've created a test RSS news reader that'll take any RSS feed and display it in a format that can be integrated into the homepage at some point in time.

It needs a little bit more work on it yet, but I'm happy with the progress I've made on it tonight after a few hours work. If you pass it the parameter xmlfeed in the URL followed by an RSS URL then it'll display that particular feed instead. Current default is BBC News.

Well I've not wrote anything for a little while, I've been too busy playing on the Xbox to be bothered to write about what I've been doing with myself.

Although I have never little to report on anyway at the moment, things are pretty quiet. I've got my new TV, I ended up getting a Samsung LE26M51B, which is quite a bit better than the one I intended on getting but it came with a higher price tag.

Turned out that a Media Center PC isn't compatible with the NTL Samsung STB I have so I never ended up buying on. The one I had on order from PC World I cancelled when they couldn't get hold of the LCD screen I wanted with it.

I really need to start posting more photos on here too, I think I've broken the photo posting abilities on the site at the moment and I really need to get around to fixing it. In fact the whole site needs a bit of a spring clean. Hopefully I'll get around to it in the next couple of months, when the Xbox addiction subsides.

That makes me think I'd like a nice new camera phone to so that I don't have to keep posting them crappy grainy photos my current phone kicks out. I'll have to start looking around for a nice model.

Just starting to get into practical learning of Java / JSP now that we've been let loose on the templates at work. So I'll have something interesting to finally get stuck into. Apart from that its the same old at work.

Off down to Old Trafford on Sunday for the game against Liverpool then out round town for some beers, so looking forward to the weekend!

Oh, HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I've just taken notice of the current UK Charts number 1, Nizlopi - JCB Song. I really hope it makes number 1 for Christmas, its a great little tune.

Can't decide if its a serious attempt at a song though or a comedy tune... check out the video for it too if you get chance, its ace.

Besides that, feeling a little hungover from last nights Christmas party. Turned up to be a little mediocre, the free bar ran out far to early and the music wasn't much cop. Still managed to get pretty drunk though, that's what its all about!