The Gospel According To Rhys - Colwyn Bay North Wales Web blog About Sport Technology Web 2.0 Internet Life and Making Money Online

This weekend, I was in Caernarfon, celebrating regular reader & commentor Ian’s 25th birthday with drinks, drinks and more drinks. One topic was regarding a return to the screen of a certain advert. I didn’t believe it, truth be told, until I saw the advert myself.

Yes! Milky Way adverts are back! Brilliant! I actually smiled and danced a little when I saw it 10-20 years after it’s first airing.

Adverts were better back then, weren’t they? None of this CGI bollocks, and they worked, because you remember them.

What adverts & what else should be brought back from the 1980’s?

Dominating at least one other blogger’s time at the moment is Chain Rxn, a rather addictive game where you have to set off a set of explosions to get as many points as possible.

“But wait!” I hear you say, “Wasn’t that game called Boomshine? And ridiculously addictive? And 2 years old?”. I’ll say – yes it was – but now it has Facebook integration, and all the wonders that entails.

Namely bragging when you are on top of a leaderboard.

Sure, there were two hours where my brother and Charlotte overtook me, but I am once again on top! I may have played solidly for 2 hours to beat that, but that’s beside the point.

The reason? A lot of the people I have beaten I am going drinking with on Saturday, yes it’s a birthday, and I’m off out. To say I need a night out would be an understatement, so Saturday should be fun! Drinky drinky in Caernarfon! See you Monday.

A story recently emerged from the Digital Britain Report is that games who are deemed to be “Culturally British” may get tax breaks.

“The review quotes the system in place for British movies, where those that “speak to a British narrative, rather than the cultural perspectives of Hollywood or multinational collaborations” will be given cultural tax credits.”

Fabulous! This got me thinking. What games could be released under this new venture? Here’s some suggestions.

• Chavilization
• Arse-arse-ins Creed
• Call of Duty: Free Trip to France
• Earl Grey Tea-m Fortress
• Death-binge-r
• Animals Crossing: Let’s Go To The Park And Look Hard, Like
• Soul Concealed-Blade
• Fallout 3 – Featuring Shaznay and Chardonnay outside a nightclub.
• 2010 Fifa World Cup – UK Edition. Sorry, English edition, because none of the others have a chance, and we’re sure to win.
• Dance Dance Revolution: Banging Remix Edition

And of course Street Fighter: Hoodie Edition

There’s mine in my 3 or 4 minutes it’s taken me to write this post. What do you think? Any suggestions of “Culturally British” Video Games? Leave them in the comments

photo credit: malias

Andrew Feinberg

Facebook!

And their usernames.

Yes, instead of going to hot indie chicks at festivals “Yes! I’m on facebook, I’m member number #4509390″ (which may have happened to me before), we can now say something a lot more manageable.

Of course, the blogging world has been going crazy for this. Social networking sites have compiled lists of the Funniest Vanity URL’s (using the lamest sense of the word), and the SEO Bastard Gurus have been beating their chests for getting a great keyword rich URL, despite the fact the rest of the world doesn’t really care (and that SEO can’t be taken, because it’s less than 5 letters long).

Me? I’m happy with claiming my internet identity. I got rhyswynne. In your face all the other “Rhys Wynne’s” out there (and I know of at least 3 on facebook personally).

What did you get? Happy with it?

Recently, I have been working on a new design, and it’s finally live. It’s similar to the old design, with a few small changes. I have gone for a redesign because I want to change the focus of this blog. From personal posts, to something of a more geeky nature.

I’ve started programming again, Just small little addons, plugins & routines, but it will hopefully grow into bigger projects (I have started a fairly big project, but I keep getting distracted with smaller manageable plugins, some of which will be released on this blog). I did write a few plugins during the time of the old site, but said plugins were a hidden away feature of the old site. On this site they will have their own dedicated page with commenting enabled.

So that explains why I redesigned the blog, but in the process I have learnt a lot about wordpress, web design and even myself in the design. Here are 3 things that I have learnt.

1. I am a perfectionist
I don’t want to say I don’t try in work (because I do), but It takes me about 2 hours to skin Wordpress from a design in work, but here it’s taken me around a week or so. Why? Because of my perfectionist nature. It does help designing a blog without a blog actually there as well (a lot of my work clients don’t start with a blog, but want one), but -with my humungous online web presence, my deisre to have my blog integrated it with Twitter, Facebook, my toaster etc and my perfectionist nature, it doubled production time.

2. Designing Wordpress Themes Without Widgets is a Bitch
The simplicity of Wordpress allows themes to be shuffled around easily with widgets. Of course, my template was originally designed without the widgets integrated with the template, so trying to shoehorn them in has taken the most of the time.

3. I can probably converse in HTML & CSS
One thing I haven’t used as a guide have been HTML & CSS documents. It’s weird, I probably know a large proportion of the languages off by heart, and this project was the first time I realised it. I guess the best way to explain this feeling is if you are learning a language, and you are constantly converting what they say back into English, the point when you stop converting it is a bit of a revelation. That’s the point I am at now with HTML & CSS.

So finally, what are your thoughts on the layout? I’m dying to know what you guys think of my new layout. Likes? Hates? Why haven’t I included you on the blogroll? Please let me know. Thank you.