Mesut Ozil rules!

Mesut Ozil is looking very, very good value for his 42.5 million pounds transfer fee – he set up all three goals for Arsenal in yesterday’s 3-1 home win against Stoke City which put the Gunners top of the Premier league after 5 games of the new season. Wow! I think Real Madrid might have made a bit of a mistake selling him, lol!

Best place to rent or buy a condo in Pattaya/Jomtien

My wife Sureephon has posted an excellent article in her blog about where she thinks is the best place (value for money vs. location vs. facilities) to rent or buy a condominium in the Pattaya / Jomtien Beach bay area in Thailand, and I totally agree with her – she should know because she is Thai and lives in the area.

If you’re interested in renting or buying a condo here and you want an honest, unbiased opinion about where is best, check out her article here:

Condominium advice for Pattaya and Jomtien Beach, Thailand

Organisms ‘originated from space’

If what is discussed in the following article in Yahoo UK today turns out to be true (which personally I think is rather doubtful), it will surely be the biggest bit of news ever:

Scientists believe they have found the first evidence of life arriving to Earth from space, which could “completely change our view of biology and evolution”.

The team, from the University of Sheffield, made the discovery after sending a balloon high into the stratosphere. On its return they found organisms that were too large to have originated from Earth.

Professor Milton Wainwright, who led the team, said the results could be revolutionary. He added: “If life does continue to arrive from space then we have to completely change our view of biology and evolution.

“In the absence of a mechanism by which large particles like these can be transported to the stratosphere, we can only conclude that the biological entities originated from space. Our conclusion then is that life is continually arriving to Earth from space, life is not restricted to this planet and it almost certainly did not originate here.”

The balloon was launched near Chester and carried microscope studs which were only exposed to the atmosphere when it reached heights of between 22 and 27km from the planet. It later landed safely and intact near Wakefield when scientists discovered they had captured a diatom fragment and some biological entities, which were unusual due to their size.

Prof Wainwright, from the university’s department of molecular biology and biotechnology, went on: “Most people will assume that these biological particles must have just drifted up to the stratosphere from Earth, but it is generally accepted that a particle of the size found cannot be lifted from Earth to heights of, for example, 27km.

“The only known exception is by a violent volcanic eruption, none of which occurred within three years of the sampling trip.”

The professor said stringent precautions had been taken against the possibility of contamination during sampling and processing, and said the group was confident that the biological organisms could only have come from the stratosphere.

The findings have been published in the Journal of Cosmology and updated versions will appear in the same journal, a new version of which will be published in the near future.

The team is hoping to extend and confirm their results by carrying out the test again next month to coincide with the Haley’s Comet-associated meteorite shower, when there will be large amounts of cosmic dust. It is hoped that more new, or unusual, organisms will be found.

More of the best of FlashyOnlineGames.com

Following on from my post the other day listing the best games in FlashyOnlineGames.com, here are the best DreamWorks Animation games in the site:

  Shrek: Shrek ‘n’ Slide

  Shrek: Battle of the Belch

  Shrek: Eyeball Dropper

  Monsters vs Aliens: Panic in the Streets

  Monsters vs Aliens: Gallaxhar Invades

  Flushed Away: Sewer Ball Pinball

(See also here)

Chin Peng died here in Thailand yesterday

He passed away in a private hospital in Bangkok yesterday morning at the age of 88.

You may well be asking, “Who is Chin Peng?”. Well, he was the former leader of the Malayan Communist Party and its military arm the Malayan National Liberation Army, which fought a bloody guerrilla war against British Colonial rule in Malaya (modern-day Malaysia, which became independent from Britain peacefully in 1957) between 1948 and 1960, and then fought a new insurgency war against independent Malaysia between 1968 and 1989.

Unlike fellow southeast Asian anti-colonialist figures that included Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh, Indonesia’s Sukarno, Myanmar’s Aung San and Cambodia’s King Norodom Sihanouk, Chin Peng was defeated – twice in fact: in the first war by British Commonwealth and Malayan armed forces, and in the second war by a combination of the Malaysian army, the rapid economic growth of Malaysia and the collapse of the communist Soviet Union. As a result he had the distinction of being the only such revolutionary leader who failed to win his struggle. He had lived here in Thailand for many years in exile.

Chin Peng’s name was familiar to me because many years ago I enjoyed reading Leslie Thomas’s popular trilogy of “Virgin Soldiers” comedy novels about British soldiers carrying out their National Service during the Malayan communist war in the early 1950s. And on that slightly related subject: the first and third novels in that trilogy were made into feature films in 1969 and 1977, and it is interesting to compare the distinctly British humour in both of those films with the style of humour in the 1970 American feature film “M*A*S*H” (itself based on a novel), which is about US involvement in the communist war in Korea that occurred around the same time.

The best of FlashyOnlineGames.com

When taken all together, these lists of the best games in the FlashyOnlineGames.com site represent Flash online gaming heaven:

Sonic and Mario games

Classic retro computer and arcade games

Flash games based on TV cartoon shows

More Flash games based on classic cartoons

Disney Flash online games

Pixar Flash online games

Mesut Ozil – a good buy for Arsenal? Yes indeed!

Further to my post earlier this month about Arsenal signing Mesut Ozil: it only took the German midfielder 10 minutes of his first ever match for Arsenal, a 3-1 win away to Sunderland yesterday, to register his first assist for the club when he set up Olivier Giroud for Arsenal’s first goal.

Given that Ozil was also involved in pretty much every important Arsenal forward move in that game, it looks like he was indeed a good buy for the club. Still, it’s early days yet. I hope he can keep today’s form going all season!

A new collection of Pixar Flash online games

In addition to the rapidly expanding FlashyOnlineGames.com site (which you can read about in one of my posts last month), there are also now lots of great new games in the LightningCarsGames.com site.

Here are some of the best of those games for you to play right here in this blog:

Cars: Lightning McQueen Desert Dash

Cars: Radiator Springs Racing

Cars: Lightning McQueen Tractor Tipping

Cars: Doc Hudson’s Time Trial

Cars: Mater to the Rescue

Cars: Luigi’s Casa Della Tires

Cars: Ramone’s Coloring Book

Toy Story: Woody’s Big Escape

A Bugs Life: A Bugs Land

Monsters Inc,: Monster Melee

Finding Nemo: Crush’s Summer Holiday

The Incredibles: Save the Day

Ratatouille: Choppity Chop

WALL-E Pinball

Up: Sky Glider

(See also here)

Friday the 13th!

Today is Friday the 13th of September, 2013. So, the very best of luck to everybody!

I don’t actually believe in superstitious things such as the Friday the 13th “bad luck” belief, but I do rather like the horror movie series based on the day.

And on that note, here are some excellent free zombie and other horror-related online games you might like to play today (or any other day for that matter):

  The Last Stand

  Boxhead: The Rooms

  Boxhead: More Rooms

  Megaman vs. Ghosts ‘n Goblins

  Skull Kid

  Nuclear Eagle

(See also here)

No Suarez for Arsenal, but Ozil will do nicely instead!

Following on from my post in July about Arsenal bidding for Liverpool striker Luis Suarez (which didn’t work out, sadly), Arsenal did in fact finally spend some very big money on a true superstar, the totally awesome Mesut Ozil, in the final hour of Transfer Deadline Day.

Check out these two online newspaper articles for full details of the transfer:

The Guardian – Mesut Ozil can breathe new life into Arsenal’s Emirates era

The Telegraph – Arsenal and United land Mesut Ozil and Marouane Fellaini late on transfer deadline day