My good friend and erstwhile gig pimp Pete Ashton is on the shortlist for 2007's much coveted Brummie of the Year award. He is, by his own admission, "dead chuffed about it"; I am, by my own admission, dead chuffed for him. For those who don't know Pete, he's worked tirelessly towards encouraging, urging and sometimes forcibly coercing the city's artistic community to use the Internet to their best advantage. His Created in Birmingham site has - in a remarkably short space of time - become an invaluable resource for writers, artists, designers, popular beat combos and all-round creative types [...]

This is a bit of an oddity from the archives, but that's never stopped me before. While clearing out some old stuff from the attic of my mum's house I found this parody I'd written a long, long time ago in an adolescence far, far away. It must have been 1988 or 1989, and I must have been 17 or 18. It was published in my Sixth Form College's ragmag while I was supposed to be studying for my A-Levels. One of those A-Levels was Philosophy, which will become somewhat apparent later on. I also remember writing a fake biography [...]

Last night's Dream Within a Dream event at Birmingham's Ikon Eastside was fun. As well as being a Halloween-themed night, it was also the venue's Closing Party for the season. The current incarnation of Ikon Eastside is a disused factory in Digbeth, winter is upon us and disused factories in Digbeth get bloody cold in winter. It all makes sense to me. The main event was organised by 7-Inch Cinema, Birmingham-based [I think] organisers of hip and groovy underground film events. I missed the first hour's worth on account of tardiness and random acts of raconteuring, but I caught Black [...]