Porto is Portugal’s second largest city and one of its major industrial areas. Famous for its Port wine, successful football team and salted fish, Porto is definitely an area that is full of flavour but may not be an investment opportunity UK investors have considered in the past, so TheMoveChannel.com provides an overview of Porto and its culture. Porto, also Oporto in English, is Portugal’s second largest city and capital of the Norte Nuts II region. Located in the estuary of the Douro River in northern Portugal, Porto is considered the economic and cultural heart of the entire area. The historic centre of Porto, Ribeira, has been declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO and is a delightful riverside quarter. The area is a mesh of narrow streets and houses once painted or tiled...

Dan Says: August 7th, 2008 at 10:19 am 5 How old were you when you went on your first flight? Where did you go? Probably two or three. I think I went Tunisia. Do you like to travel by airplane? I love it. Oooh, I love flying. What was the longest flight you have ever taken? Not that long in one go. I think Seattle from London, which is about 11 hours. What seat do you prefer: window, center or aisle? Depends where I’m flying. If you ever fly to Nice, get on the port side window (port side, check me out). You get the Alps and the coastline after the turn past Marseille. What are three things you’re supposed to do before the flight takes off? Restore your seat to the upright postion, fast your safety belt, turn off your mobile phones and make sure your table is put away, make...

A few days ago, Gary Andrews tagged me with a book meme.Basically the rules are thus. Below is a list of classic books.You are supposed to:Look at the list and:Bold those you have read.Italicise those you intend to read.[Bracket] the books you LOVE.Reprint this list on your own blog.Although I should be doing some work, I shall, nevertheless, indulge in this quickly.1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen2 [The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien]3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee6 The Bible [well, most of it—know your enemy and all that...]7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte8 [Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell]9 [His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman]10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott12...

The Longrider talks about those morons at Plane Stupid.Worrying, though, the lack of security surrounding the PM. If some half-witted little shit-for-brains like Dan Glass can smear superglue over his sleeve, just think what could happen if a really determined attacker wanted to do him real harm, eh?Yeeeeeees, just think...Anyway, see you all later: I'm off to buy a taser, some rope and a portable scaffold....

Blast from the past here. Former USSU President Dan Glass, whom I've met a handful of times, glued his hand to Prime Minister Gordon Brown's sleeve to protest the expansion of Heathrow Airport. Dan's now doing an MsC in human ecology at Strathclyde University.He had been invited to Downing Street to recieve an award for his work with Plane Stupid.Dan is a member of Plane Stupid, a group that protests airport expansion and the impact of flying on the climate. Indymedia has audio of the events.Although I won't pretend I don't take the odd longhaul flight every couple of years, I quite admire Dan Glass for his bravery and imagination, and I'm totally opposed to any further airport expansion. Instead, we need to improve public transport and look into how the Eurostar can be made cheaper to...

Arrested war crimes fugitive Radovan Karadzic ( pictured above left ) grew a long, white beard to conceal his identity and practised alternative medicine while in hiding . The former Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic ( pictured above right ) was a different proposition . And now he’s on his way to the UN War Crimes Court in the Hague . The notion of former political leaders who start aggressive wars and breach human rights, then change their jobs and appearances in order to avoid justice is an interesting one . I wonder what George W Bush and Tony Blair will be working at and what they will look like in 10 years or so ?     UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has been in a few sticky situations recently . But he got an unexpected sticky moment when he met Mr Dan...

IF you had to glue yourself to anyone, would you glue yourself to Gordon Brown? A campaigner against Heathrow Airport’s third runway has attempted to glue himself to Gordon Brown at a Downing Street reception. Dan Glass, a member of Plane Stupid, was about to receive an award from the prime minister when he stuck out his superglued hand and touched his sleeve. Plane Stupid says Mr Glass, from north London, then “glued his hand” to Mr Brown’s jacket as he shook his hand. But Downing Street said there had been “no stickiness of any significance”… l’m sticking with Gordon: Speaking afterwards, Mr Glass said: “My left hand was covered in superglue and I stuck it to his sleeve. “I just glued myself to him and after 20 seconds he tore...

Until this week, I wasn’t aware that the Twelfth would have been commemorated on the first of July (Battle of Boyne = 1 July 1690 Julian calendar) if it hadn’t been for the British adoption of Pope Gregory’s shifting of the calendar in 1752!But then I also wasn’t aware that the Pope had given a mass to celebrate William of Orange’s victory at the Boyne. Something that wasn’t mentioned on the banners or in the field this afternoon – though they were strong on Freedom and Liberty ...A year later in July 1691, the Battle of Aughrim – my old house at school – was won by a battlefield fluke when the Jacobite general (who was winning at the time) was unexpectedly decapitated by an even more unexpected cannon ball, throwing the Jacobite forces into disarray and allowing the...

It’s the third week of this series of book reviews, and given that the two featured so far have featured uncontained vitriol towards the Satan of modern literature, Dan Brown, it seems only right that I should “get it out of my system” by doing a whole review of one of his “novels”. And so, without further ado, this week’s selecion has to be Digital Fortress. As with all of Dan Brown’s “works”, Digital Fortress is by no means deep, considered, or erudite. It’s a shallow page-turner riddled with predictability. The final thirty pages of Digital Fortress were, perhaps, the worst of Dan Brown’s “writing” I’ve had the misfortune to experience: The solution to the book’s central conundrum was glaringly...

IMPLIED SPACES by WALTER JON WILLIAMS Night Shade Books hardback, 256pp, RRP US$24.95, ISBN 978-1-59780-125-6 - June 2008 Night Shade Books must know that people like myself - despite believing ourselves to be sophisticated and resistant to slick marketing and simple sub-genre categorisation - are actually easy marks. I caught sight of the gorgeous Dan Dos Santos cover of Walter Jon Williams’s Implied Spaces, noticed it was described as a “novel of the Singularity”, and I just had to read it. Thankfully, this swift little novel is rewarding in proportion to its promise. The upfront marketing makes more sense once you start reading, because Implied Spaces starts off reading more like a Middle Eastern fantasy, and stays that way for a good three chapters. Our hero...

Via exlibrisThere is a challenge going around t'internet based on the "1001 Books you must read before you die"  which is to read 10 out of the 1001 books before the end of next february (a rate of one a month or so).  Sounds interesting - and the list, like all lists, is controversial.I've marked stuff I've read in bold, stuff I've not read but have in the house (self or spouse's collection) in italics (As a selection from these will form part of what I am likely to read to complete this during the year) (and it's got David Peace on the list blue_condition- thereby rendering it more interesting than the usual collection.  The titles are generally Americanised (and the cut says novels but it includes poems and memoirs too). 2000s  Never Let Me...

Another year, another stylish restaurant opening from Alan Yau. The entepreneur and restaurateur, native of Hong Kong, has taken London by storm in recent years with a succession of well received asian restaurants including two michelin starred restaurants (Yautcha & Hakkasan). He started with Wagamama in 1992 which he sold in 1998 when it comprised 2 restaurants. These were followed swiftly by Satsuma (for the Royal China Group), Busaba Eathai, Hakkasan, Yautcha, Ping Pong, Sake no Hana and now Cha Cha Moon. Famously, he was very unhappy with what happened with Wagamamas. It was a hostile buyout and he is quoted as saying that that was “was like seeing your baby brought up by strangers with different values”. He is seeking to make amends with Cha Cha Moon. It is intended...

My cohort from Clearleft, Andy Budd is up now. Let’s see how he does. Without any faffing about, he kicks off with a story about checking into a hotel. This is better than bullet points any day. He maps this experience onto a graph. This is his user experience curve. The start and the end of the experience are the most important so you should focus on those parts but the whole experience is important. Andy shows a different graph which maps the user experience curve of checking into a different hotel. This curve looks different because the experience was sub-par. We need to look at examples from beyond the Web. Andy will go through seven touchpoints of user experience. First Experience Counts This sets the tone for the whole day. He quotes some dodgy statistics about how quick...

pizza problemsAn anonymous reader, I will call them Deep Throat Pan, left this nugget of blog gold as a comment on this post. It is the original Irish News review of Goodfellas by Caroline Workman. The review that ended up in court, three times. Judge for yourselves. I have no problem with it as it reviews the food. You'd think that would be a given with a restaurant review but not so......more herehereand here (maybe the end?)ORIGINAL IRISH NEWS ARTICLE26th August 2000Irish news article by Dining PartnersMay Sheridan & Frances HarperNot good, fellasWest Belfast boasts very few restaurants. Perhaps it’s for this reason that Goodfellas has made such a name for itself, and continues to do so well. Cars lined Kennedy Way outside the restaurant, and it was so packed that people were...

So here goes, the look back over 2007 and see where it all went wrong. Will have to find a magnifying glass though to find that though! It’s been a pretty amazing year to be completely honest. Gigs - The reason that I do this, and there have been great ones ones (Al Baker and Andrezj Stepien in March, Unison Stage at Guilfest, The UK tour spots in Liverpool and London, Kenny Leckie in October, and  Jamie Nixon in December), good ones (Newcastle on the tour, the first time at Brel and Strummerville at The Tunnels in Aberdeen), and also crappy ones (Buffalow Bar in Cardiff and the last one at Brel). On the whole though the good ones out number the bad ones, which is fantastic. In this year I have played around thirty proper full gigs including countless open mic slots in Glasgow and...

When I tried to tell spoombung about this, he looked at me as if I was completely barmy.As I've mentioned before, I've been enjoying making compilation cassettes of my vinyl to listen to on my way to and from work. However I've now found a way to make the whole process much more unpredictable-I use a dice to select which shelf of LPs I choose from, then to choose which sixth of the shelf to choose from, from that I plunge a hand in blind and pull out the first LP I find - and record a track from it. So far, so much like a bigger, more complicated version of shuffle-play on an i-pod. Here comes the weird bit. I'm continually adding to the tape by recording randomly selected tracks all over it - but with gaps, decided again by the dice, and using the fast-forward button. The end result...

Further to the Jane Austen nonsense, referred to at the end of last Thursday's post, the Times reports the comments of two seasoned publishers. These two have been in publishing for a total of thirty years. They receive 1,000 unsolicited submissions every month. Each. Between the two of them, over the whole of their careers, they have only published four or five unsolicited manuscripts.Moral: don't waste your time and money by sending unsolicited books to big-time publishers. You have to find some other way to gain their attention. Preferably, you need to get into the position where they approach you, rather than vice versa.*If the above doesn't put you off sending in mss to unsuspecting and uninterested publishers, here's a story that just might. It was passed to me by translator Viktor...

A small slice of social history. The Peckham Experiment was one of the grandest of the interwar collaborations between art and science. 'George Scott Williamson and Innes Pearse were a husband and wife team who believed that an individual's social and physical environment could decisively affect his or her long-term state of health.' The couple commissioned a building by Sir Owen Williams, the Pioneer Health Centre, a sleek glass, steel and concrete structure that would today be given a grandiose title like 'community health hub'. The diving board is a masterpiece of concrete design. The Peckham Experiment set out to correlate the effects of environment on health, and the initial medical examination of the 3411 participating men and women was unsettling; only 14% of the men were without...

I always like to have a good book with me when I’m travelling. A few years ago, when I was making a trip to the States, the journey was made tolerable by some excellent reading material. The Victorian Internet is a wonderful true story written by Tom Standage, author of The Mechanical Turk. It tells the history of the telegraph while subtly drawing parallels to today’s revolution in information technology. When I finished the book, I passed it on to my good friend Dan in Baltimore. He then read through it as we spent a few days together on a mini-roadtrip through Maryland and Virginia to visit American civil war battlefields. This week I got a small package in the post from Dan. Inside was an item that pre-dates the plastic age: a glass telegraph insulator with the words...

The Birmingham Post has a report on a new gallery show on Ladypool Road in Sparkbrook. Baghdad Café is part of a project called Under a New Sky, which has brought together eight artists well-known on the international art circuit to propose a number of community-based projects, linked to the idea of regeneration, for Sparkbrook. The Ladypool Road building acts as a kind of exhibition and information centre for the project. Participating artists include the American minimalist artist (and rock critic) Dan Graham, who is showing a video of a glass pavilion installed in the grounds of a museum in Portugal. Graham hopes to do something similar in Birmingham. Others taking part are Reza Aramesh (Iran/UK), Paul Eachus (UK), Nooshin Farhid (Iran/UK), Runa Islam (Bangladesh/UK) and Goshka Macuga...

Mark Z.Danielewski's new novel Only Revolutions is the author's most significant book since House of Leaves. The latter was a cult hit, a deconstructed multi-narrative novel that - in early, prized, editions - used fonts, typography and colour to weave an intriguing fiction about what is essentially a haunted house. Danielewski, who also designs his books, created a set of intertwined narratives and an extended musing on architectural impossibility. The idea of a house that was a little like a combination of the Winchester Mystery House (official site) and the Tardis was rendered in such a way as to make it convincingly realistic (remember that splendid web fiction about the cavers? Ted's Caving Page)The new book jumps right off the deep end. The fonts and colours are all there, but the...

Found via blinman.com, a list of things which apparently I should have done before reaching 30. Let's see how many I've accomplished. 1. Have a really stupid accident which necessitates a hospital visit It wasn't my fault, but I did once have a ski-ing accident without actually ski-ing. I was spectating (couldn't ski because my knees were wonky) at the bunny slopes on Glenshee (which had melted so they were more bunny patches), when the instructor ski-ed up to where I was standing and asked why I wasn't joining in. I explained that I couldn't under doctors orders and he said that was a shame. For reasons passing understanding, he then leaned forward, grabbed me and flung me over his shoulder, fireman style (yes, I was screaming at him to put me down). He then turned round, ski-ed down...

Andrew Bolt is a columnist with Melbourne's Herald Sun, Australia's biggest-selling daily, writing twice a week on politics, culture and society. He also writes for Brisbane's Sunday Mail, and is a regular commentator on Channel 9's Today show and ABC TV's Insiders. He appears weekly on radio stations 3AW in Melbourne, ABC Adelaide and 4BC Brisbane. Andrew has worked for the Australian Labor Party and the State Opera of South Australia. But most of his career has been spent as a journalist, including two years as Asia correspondent for the News Ltd group of Australian newspapers. He has also reported from Africa and Israel. He is married and has three children. Here Andrew offers his thoughts on 'favourite' books. Andrew Bolt on the idea of a 'favourite' book Norm asks me to write...

It’s extraordinary, isn’t it. How long is it since I started banging on about Hall & Oates on this journal? Not to mention Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers? Last night [Bad username in LJ tag] alerted me to the fact that The Guardian were running a huge piece about the new embrace of really smooth music, and then a few hours later I get a mailout from a club called Pretzel Logic, starting up at The Legion EC1 on the 30th March, playing music by – you guessed it – Hall & Oates, Steely Dan and The Doobie Brothers. That night I’ll be in Amsterdam, playing semi-smooth music myself, although not as smooth as Toto. My only regret is that my own band isn’t really doing much at the moment. If it was, I could fire off the usual press releases to the listings about our own brand of...

On recyclingI remember the days when we had just the one bin. Every Sunday night I could be seen standing on top of it, trying to get the lid down in time for Monday morning's collection of household waste, dead badgers and assorted engine parts, which would then be thoughtfully buried in a big hole in the ground. Of course, that big hole in the ground would one day become a large, new hill and the future venue for the town's dry ski slope; which just goes to show that slashing and burning the planet's resources does have its uses.But no. Apparently, dry ski slopes and big hills with their own supply of methane gas have fallen out of fashion, and in the name of preventing our low-lying coasts from disappearing into the sea, we've got to stop landfilling and start recycling.So, instead of...