Up in smoke
Jimmy Cauty's resumé is one of the most illustrious in the pop canon. He co-founded The Orb, enjoyed seven consecutive top 10 hits with KLF partner Bill Drummond, and burned a million quid on the Hebridean island of Jura. He also began his career by painting the classic Lord of the Rings poster for Athena that adorned thousands of student walls in the 70s.
Now he is back with Blacksmoke, a new outfit with a stylish new website to promote it. Under the banner, "hard music for hard drives", the site features live audio streams, free MP3 downloads, Flash animations and, somewhat incongruously, some very blatant road safety advertisements. The group has yet to release a record but the site offers a taste of things to come. This includes former KLF roadie Gimpo's ode to the M25: a kind of heavy metal musical interpretation of Ian Sinclair's London Orbital, but a lot shorter.
The enigma of the KLF (which presciently stood for Kopyright Liberation Front) still lingers, with dozens of fan pages across the web.
www.blacksmoke.org
www.klf.de
No frills
"Many airports are actually better than local lodging" claims Donna McSherry, a Canadian who has been hosting a site dedicated to sleeping in airports since the heady days of 1996. It features ratings on airports in 523 different cities, ranking the quality of seating, listing those with sleep rooms or showers, and offering countless tips on the best place to have a kip. It says you cannot sleep at either Heathrow or Gatwick (although both offer free showers). McSherry rates Changi airport, Singapore, as the best airport to sleep in. "So quiet," she says, "that students study there during exams." She goes on to say there are signs reading: "no pets, no skateboards, no studying."
Closer to home, Flybudget.com is a site "helping to ruin the profit margins of rip off airlines around the world." It's an informative guide to budget airlines, run by 24-year-old Alex Banks, who shares a love of low-fi web aesthetics with McSherry. Most useful feature? It allows you to see what budget carrier flies from which airport, rather than trawl through the individual airlines' sites.
www.sleepinginairports.net
www.Flybudget.com
www.changi.airport.com.sg
www.skyscanner.net
Phallic buildings
Cabinet magazine has just run a competition to find the world's most phallic building. The winner, chosen from a long list of 47, was a water tower in Ypsilanti, Michigan. It has been nicknamed "the brick dick" by locals, apparently. Sir Norman Foster's "erotic gherkin," recently erected on the site of the old Baltic Exchange in the City of London, won the category for Best Uncircumcised Building. www.cabinetmagazine.org/phallic/winner.php
Al-Jazeera English
Al-Jazeera, the Qatari-based news service, has just relaunched its English language website. A rudimentary site was live during the recent war in Iraq, but it fell victim of numerous denial of service (DoS) attacks and was eventually taken down. As you might expect, the news agenda is focused on the Islamic world and the Middle East (although Blair's visit to the Labour conference makes the front page), but the reporting is unpartisan. There are also notable culture and technology sections. In terms of style, the site seems to have borrowed heavily from the template from BBC news online. http://english.aljazeera.net
www.Aljazeera.net
Escape realism
Politics and the computer game world rarely collide, except perhaps when the Daily Mail finds something to generate moral outrage about. But the games world has seen computer games tackle controversial issues. Last month, an online game called 9/11 Survivor provoked an outcry because it simulated an escape from the burning World Trade Centre. Meanwhile in Australia, Escape from Woomera is a similar first-person 3D adventure game set in one of Australia's notorious refugee detention centres. You cannot play this game online, or buy it in the shops (no distributor will touch it), but there is a website explaining the game. As Matthew Mirapaul of the New York Times pointed out recently, these games are turning a "platform for pure fantasy into a medium for social realism". www.kinematic.org/911.html
www.escapefromwoomera.org
New and noted
Football talk for clash city rockers
www.onemickjones.com
They'll get you there somehow
www.skyhighairlines.com
DIY Judge Dredd costume
www.2000adonline.com/
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