Derren Brown has produced an alternative version of his website. It is visually stunning, and in places quite disturbing. It is a pretty interesting way to present a website, and goes against everything usability guys go on and on about. Navigation is particularly unclear, but this gives the whole site an almost game-like quality. Loads of spooky sounds and subliminal images keep popping up all over the place. I really like it. Now go and check it out - NOTE gratuitous use of Flash.

I don’t know whether to blame myself or her mother.

I’ve just stumbled across a cool bit of technology called semacodes. A semacode is basically an optical barcode that represents an URL, this allows any semacode reader to scan the card and therefore link to the relevant website. The smart guys at semacode.org have created readers for a number of camera enabled mobile phones, allowing you to take a snap of a semacode and then bring up info from a website. Now here’s a smart use of this. Over at semapedia.org they have a goal to connect the internet with the real World by linking together semacodes with wikipedia allowing your cellphone to be a smart travel guide. They need your help to tag the World. Oh and by the way, here’s what http://roysworld.co.uk looks like as a semacode, maybe I should get a tshirt printed?

I you are worried about buying a property that is haunted there is an e-document available just for you. ‘The Art And Science Of Spotting Haunted Houses And Detecting Ghosts’ is available for download, for a price of course. Written by W.S. Chin (nope I don’t know who he is either) it sounds like a hilarious read. Here are some quotes from his website, www.spottinghauntedhouses.com:

OK, you have seen the property and fallen in love with it. This is the one you’ve been looking for all your life. The price is right. You’re about to invest your life savings into it. And you’re about to sign a mortgage for perhaps 30 years. Mighty big investment, you would agree. Perhaps the biggest investment of your life. But after you’ve moved in, strange things begin to surface. Things go bump in the night! There are shadowy figures hovering around you and your family! You feel invisible, cold fingers touching you!

I will show you over 60 techniques to interpret those sometimes very subtle signs. I will also reveal to you things that can attract ghosts into your house…things you may have right now! “But can a person really detect ghosts?” If you are in good general health, if you can be silent and listen to your mind, you can! In my younger days, I was very psychic. I saw dead people!

Now, how much will such an important document cost? Compared to the property you’re going to buy or rent, NEXT TO NOTHING! I actually would rather give it away for free! But in the real world, there are overheads to pay, mouths to feed etc.

You really can sell anything.

Derek Acorah’s Ghost Town van spotted in Shrewsbury.

Annie has decided to name her feet. She has called the left one Shi-Shi and the right one Norman. When putting on shoes she asks whether the shoe should go on Shi-Shi or Norman, and I have to say goodnight to them at bedtime. Bonkers.

So it’s official, Derek Acorah is to leave Most Haunted to work on his new series Ghost Towns. I can’t say I’m totally surprised. If anyone read the Heat magazine interview with Derek and Yvette Fielding it was pretty obvious that they no longer get on at all, and she wasn’t going to leave. I guess this is the end of an era, the show will never be the same again, I just wonder if Derek saw it all coming?