News Achive

The University of Birmingham Guild of students has had another election. The results of which are here.

Silly bear! More

news and images from news.bbc.co.uk

It's not been a good time for bridges of late, first there was the Burway Bridge in Ludlow which collapsed due to floor waters and severed a gas main, and now a bridge over the Mississippi has collapsed, hurting dozens and sending 50 vehicles into the water.

news and images from news.bbc.co.uk

Shock as Mississippi bridge falls

'Then the bridge started falling'

In pictures: US bridge collapse

Bid to recover Mississippi bodies

A couple of updates from Alana. Firstly, some pictures from her trip to Australia and then a report on her attempt to lead a Canadian invasion of the USA across Rainbow Bridge.

Australia

Canada

Just to show what can be achieved when I put my mind to it. In less that a week, the next Captain Chair video has been completed and is now online.

Beware, Helmetface!

The title of the 3rd Captain Chair video can now be revealed, and it is Holding out for a Hero! But, hey, I think we can go even better than just the title. How about the entire video? Interested? Then head over to the Vault! ('Making of' material to be updated shortly)

Pestering people you know is kind of fun, but nothing beats pestering people you don't really know. Sometimes this results in a punching, but othertimes it results in a nice photo for The Map.

Whilst we're on the subject (which we weren't), I guess everyone wants an update on the 3rd Captain Chair Video. Well, it's still not finished. Keep waiting. In the meantime I have created a new section on the site - The Video Vault, where you'll find all the videos we've filmed so far.

Ok, ok, I know Red Nose Day was a couple of weeks ago now, but I've only just discovered this whilst avoiding work and playing on youtube.

I'd like to present the two official red nose day singles currently in the charts, and it's a case of wheels vs legs (in numerous senses of the word).

On the left, we have Girls Aloud Vs The Sugababes with a butchering of 'Walk this Way'. I think the less said about this the better (the video gets a lot more tolerable if you turn the sound off). On the right, we have a wheels-version of the classic Proclaimers song 'I'm Gonna Be', with new and improved lyrics such as 'I would roll 500 miles'.

Well, I know which one I'd rather buy (and it seems the British public agrees). And you can do it here from the Red Nose Day website.

Representatives of Godfather actor Marlon Brando's estate are suing two furniture makers and a retailer over a home cinema chair called The Brando. Further information on BBC news.

Thought you might like to see the full manifesto pictures edited together. They almost join up. Almost.

A couple of updates...

Work continues on the 3rd Captain Chair video in the series, though we are having problems with a lack of footage and the finding of time to film more.

Having been updating this main page recently due to the concentration of events on the campaign mini-site. On that page you'll find links to (amongst other things) the blog, downloads, and of course the two movies:

Ride of the Chairs

and

Captain Chair the movie - Director's Cut

Captain Chair was forbidden from running in the University of Birmingham Guild elections this year. Something to do with him not being a student anymore, or something. Undeterred, the campaign will continue on anyway, because could you actually think of a better cause to fight for?

Follow the link above to the 2007 campaign mini-site (yes, I know I should really remove the 'Guild Elections' bit now, but give me chance), and for those in Brum check out the Facebook group.

From a newly circulated email to the members of the University of Birmingham Chemistry Department -

Dear All,

Dear All, Has anybody borrowed one of the new chairs from the Reading Room? If so can you please return it. If this is not the case then I have to assume that one chair has been stolen.

Is this a simple borrowing? Theft? Or a devious chairnap plot? More details will be revealed as we get them.

I still have a backlog of things to upload and, instead of doing it, I 'm writing new stuff - Shrewsbury and Big Brother. There's some logic in there somewhere.

My scanner came out over the weekend so I can now provide you with a couple of new additions to the Map - Peru and Rainbow Bridge, Canada.

Another addition from The Lionheart that's been sitting in my inbox for the past week or so but, with one thing and another, I haven't gotten round to uploading yet.

Remember, if you have any bridge or chair photos from around the world don't forget to send them in.

My little boy arrived this morning! Whilst his mummy was undergoing an examination, the midwife inquired about Chair Club. Obviously I told her nothing.

Apologies about the lack of recent updates, but I haven't really had any new material to add. Until now. I've now gotten my hands on a couple of new items and I'll be uploading them over the next few days or so. To start off here's a nice picture of a bridge in Lisbon.

Due to last year's lack of interest and my increasing panic about having to write a thesis based on no results, I have not arranged an event for the University of Birmingham freshers this year. There were plans to walk about the Guild anyway promoting ourselves, but Andy was too tired and Chris was busy handing out free lunches. If there is significant interest shown (via the forum) I'm sure something can be sorted at reasonably short notice for next week.

I've just been sat watching the trailers on apple.com and found this upcoming film entitled The Bridge, about people who commit suicide by throwing themselves off the Golden Gate Bridge.

Synopsis:

More people choose to end their lives at the Golden Gate Bridge than anywhere else in the world. THE BRIDGE offers glimpses into the darkest, and possibly most impenetrable corners of the human mind. The fates of the 24 people who died at the Golden Gate Bridge in 2004 are linked together by a 4 second fall.

Slightly depressing stuff, and has caused controversy due to the director managing to capture 23 of the 24 people's suicides on film.

The Bridge is released in America on the 27th Oct.

I decided to take the plunge and installed a forum on the site. Be warned that at the moment I'm playing about with the settings so don't be surprised if it suddenly disappears.

ChairClub.co.uk is not one of the 50 Coolest Websites. Due to their grave error, I suggest we boycott Time until they either issue an apology or we appear in the 2007 list.

A preview...

The full story is being worked on right now, needless to say there is a reason there's more than 1 of them (besides me playing about with the paint).

And here's some more things to colour in (otherwise known as 'pictures I couldn't be bothered to colour myself', but hey! the kids love 'em):

This time he's been to Devon.

I've had the figure for ages, but only just gotten bored enough to take photos and put them online.

Chair Club welcomes new writer Rui to the site. As a member of the dreaded 7th Floor (think 'level of hell'), he spends most of his time throwing around bottles with skull and crossbones on in the hope that what he ends up making isn't quite as lethal as what he started off with. Anyway, here's his entry -

Due to the increasing amount of stuff I've been sticking in Misc, I thought I'd better sort some of it out. Sensibly, all the chair-related stuff has been moved to Chairs and the bridge-related stuff to Bridges. Which kinda makes sense.

Added a couple more wallpapers to the mechandise section.

Stupid Guild site. Stupid Google. Annoyingly, when you type 'chair club' into google, the first result that comes up is the version of this site that's hosted on the BUGS server and was used for the elections. This means everyone is missing out on all the exciting new features that I've put online in the past 6 months.

This means I'm going to have to find out if my password is still active, and if so remove the elections site from the net.

Also, I did my presentation. It had a bridge in. 'Nuff said.

Because I am bored and waiting for my waiting supervisor to come and tell me what's wrong with the presentation I'm giving on Wednesday, here are some of the things people are typing into search engines to arrive at this site:

• Flat pack chairs
• 70s/80s/90s/most other decades chairs
• Gary Hughes
• Toys for the left arm of galactus and head of galactus

  12-06-06

  Renew! Renew! Renew!

  After a lot of messing about and credit cards not being accepted, ChairClub.co.uk has been renewed for another year! YEAY!

  10-06-06

  New wheelchair design

  

  A designer who has spent most of his career working on parts for Formula One cars has come up with a new, off-road wheelchair.

  for the full article see the BBC news.

  09-06-06

  Map update: Stover Park

  

  An update to the map, and our first chair video! Hopefully the combination of my new camera plus YouTube will mean many more chair and bridge videos on the site in future! Go view the entry on Stover Park now!

  For those who don't know, tomorrow is ChairClub.co.uk's first birthday! Whilst the geocities site appeared (scarily exactly) one month beforehand, it was on the 10th June 2005 that the 'proper' site appeared on the Net! Shame I haven't thought up some way to celebrate really.

  30-05-06

  X-Men 3

  There are a number of rumours circulating about the net about what happens in X-Men 3. I can inform you that (spoiler) whilst Xavier is dusted, don't be too worried - his chair survives completely unharmed (end spoiler). Which is a relief.

  08-06-06

  Not Captain Chair Returns

  Over the weekend I remembered what the plot was to the new Captain Chair comic (which means I can start on part 2). I also remembered what the title was supposed to be. Which isn't Captain Chair Returns. Oops.

  05-05-06

  Captain Chair Returns - full comic

  It's here! It's finally here!

  

  plus:

  

  05-05-06

  Map updates: Canada & Fiji

  A few more countries hit the map: Canada and Fiji (which technically has been online since last year but I forgot to put a link to it until now).

  02-05-06

  Bridge-LEGO

  To keep you going while I finish off the colouring:

  

  24-04-06

  Comic preview

  Here are a couple of preview images from the new Captain Chair comic. Yes, the colouring is a bit rubbish but a) it's not finished yet, and b) I don't really know what I'm doing - I just thought I'd better give it a try instead of doing b&w stuff all the time.

  

  Hopefully it'll be finished sometime this year.

15-04-06

Updates! The giant bridge construction is finished, and a few more campaign photos have been added. I scanned in the New Year comic, but the scanner hasn't picked up half the detail so I'll have to try again.

edit: it's here! it's here!

06-04-06

I finally did it! The first film of election photos is now off being developed! Can't actually remember what was on the film anymore, but I'm sure there's some pretty exciting stuff!

Now I just have to get round to finishing off the other film...

04-04-06

Over the New Year I attempted to create a Captain Chair comic to celebrate the coming of 2006. The intention was to finish it on New Year's Eve. I failed. Unfortunately, the comic was drawn in Devon and I left for Birmingham shortly after - leaving the comic behind. At the weekend I returned to Devon for the first time since January. The drawings have now been completed, and hopefully within the next few days I'll be able to (finally) put the comic online! The story is a little similiar to this one, but with added mammoth.

29-03-06

30 of the 184 have now been identified, a third of which have been issued with their badge. Apologies for the extremely long time it's taking me to upload the rest of the election photos, but I still haven't gotten round to walking across the road and getting the film developed. The sooner I get a new digital camera the better.

17-03-06

Did you vote in the elections? If so then the beautifully drawn '184' image above (which took far, far to long to create) is now available to you in badge form! Show your friends how proud you are to be one of the elite 184 and wear your badge with pride!

15-03-06

See the fantastic drawing above? Pretty soon that image (once its been cleaned up a bit) will be available in badge-form to every member of the 184 to treasure forever. I'm currently having a few problems getting that rectangular image to fit in a circular badge, but as soon as I get it sorted they'll be on the production line!

12-03-06

The results are in, and Damian got 184 votes! Yeay Damian! He rules. The elections website (which looked a lot like this one) also managed to win an award, which just goes to show that taking a year to prepare things tends to pay off.

10-03-06

Greetings! Now that the ballot boxes are closed, we've moved server away from BUGS and have installed a number of things that would have been banned whilst the site was being used for election purposes. Hopefully everything is working, but due to the huge amount of stuff being added at the moment, a few things are probably not working.

Since the elections are still big news at the moment, I direct you to the following areas:

details of Damian Johnson's New Adventures of Captain Chair TV series details

Campaign '06 information

and of course

CAPTAIN CHAIR THE MOVIE

03-11-05

Yeay! More colouring in! And, as a special incentive, everyone who sends in their coloured-in picture will get themselves a fantastic Chair Club badge!

So here for your crayoning excitement are CHAOS Captain Chair, The Destroyer, Dryrot and Animated Dr. Sabbath!

10-10-05

Just realised this morning that I've made a number of updates to the site recently and not posted about them here. This is mostly because I forgot. It's also interesting that since posting the news story on the 4th, visitation to the site has increased by loads.

04-10-05

Rumour Control

The following email is currently being circulated about the net:

For your information, a couple of weeks ago, in the odeon cinema, Festival Park, a person sat on something sharp in one of the seats. When she stood up to see what it was, a needle was found poking through the seat with an attached note saying, "you have been infected with HIV". The Centre for Disease Control in Birmingham reports similar events have taken place in several other cities recently.

ALL of the needles tested HAVE been found positive for HIV. The CDC also reports that needles have been found in the coin return areas of pay phones and coke machines. Everyone is asked to use extreme caution when confronted with these types of situations. All public chairs should be
thoroughly but safely inspected prior to any use. A thorough visual inspection is considered the bare minimum. Furthermore, they ask that everyone notify their family members and friends of the potential dangers, as well.

Chair Club is here to set the record straight that this is a hoax. Chairs are perfectly safe to sit on and I can only assume this rumour is a SAB plot to try and discredit the good name of chairs.

Some people are questioning where I am getting my facts from when discrediting this email. The information comes directly from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) - and they should know better than anyone really, shouldn't they.

06-09-05

The Map fills up a little more as Damian posts some reviews from Cheshire - specifically Helsby, Frodsham and Chester.

31-08-05

Having even less money than he did last year when he resorted to going to Butlins, this summer Damian had his summer holiday over the bank hoilday weekend visiting his friend (yes, he does have one or two) in Devon. This means, of course, that Torbay has now been added to The Map.

02-08-05

Another day, another addition to The Map. After a day spent fiddling about and learning how to do things (made no easier by not knowing the proper names for stuff I wanted to do), The Map has now increased its educational power! As well as now enabling people to learn about chairs & bridges around the world, it also provides information on country locations and flags! Be impressed! It took me long enough to do.

Oh, and Europe gets a mini-map due to getting a bit crowded, and some Austria photos have been added (but I'm not adding hotlinks to make sure you have to look at the main map.)

01-08-05

Added information on the 90s Captain Chair animated series.

27-07-05

A major new addition to the site today! After many months of thinking about how best to do it, I have now added a bridges and chairs around the world section to the site! It's in the early stages at the moment, but over the next few weeks expect more photos to be added, comments from the photographers, and hopefully a few more countries!

21-07-05

The Captain Chair toy section has been updated with photos of my new Bridge Boy figure, which looks pretty ace if I do say so myself. Captain Chair now looks a little less lonely stood on my shelf.

I've been having a think about the badge situation, and decided that I should really slap the Chair Club logo on all of them. Therefore, I shall be doing a limited reissue of all the waves (excluding the Hub Quiz one) with the new logo, which is the perfect opportunity for those of you who missed out the first time to get hold of them.

18-07-05

It's taken a while, but we finally get a review of a pub in Selly Oak! Yes, I'm as amazed as you are. This only leaves the OVT, Soak, Bristol Pear, ...

After much hunting, I've managed to get hold of a Bridge Boy I action figure! I'm now attempting to get hold of his cape (which was unfortunately missing), and of course that elusive Bridge Boy II repaint.

16-07-05

Damian takes a look at the seating in one of the pubs in Birmingham city centre.

08-07-05

Something not written by me! New reporter Hpos gives her view of the Inn on the Bridge.

07-07-05

Review of the bridges at Lickey Hills now online. Yes, it's another review based on things in Birmingham, but since no one else is writing anything then you'd going to have to put up with it for now. I've also added some pictures of the few Captain Chair toys I own. These can be found here.

30-06-05

I managed to get hold of a Captain Chair figure from the 90s animated series (you know, the good one as opposed to this horror) the other day and will be uploading some photos when I've cleaned him up a little. If anyone has any of the rest of the figures I would be grateful for photos as they're quite hard to get hold of.

In other news, I went to see Batman Begins again last night, which has resulted in some minor updates to the review.

22-06-05

The first Chair Review is online. Damian starts off this section with a look at the chairs in his flat.

18-06-05

I went to see the new Batman film the other day and was glad to see a load of bridge references in it. An article all about it is now in the review section, and Christopher Nolan gets an honorary mention in 96.43%

15-06-05

A slight rearranging of Bridges to allow for the addition of a TV & film bridge review section. Now everytime you watch something featuring a bridge, you can write a review and we'll put it online. To start us off Damian has written a quick review of Move - And You're Dead, a Thunderbirds episode. It's not fantastic, but then he did have to write it from memory. I'm sure you can do better!

14-06-05

We set Damian a task: watch lots of The Amazing Captain Chair and try not to have your brain melt. Unfortunately he wasn't entirely successful in his task so until he recovers there won't be any screencaps up, but you can read the text-only version now.

13-06-05

A new badge is available to celebrate the move to a .co.uk. Despite a slow start last night, the Quiz exclusives soon disappeared, so if you didn't get one then it's highly unlikely you'll be getting one at all.

12-06-05

A preliminary Retirement Spectacular Quiz report is now online. Expect it to be fleshed out a bit when I'm not quite so tired.

10-06-05

www.geocities.com/therealchairclub has turned into ChairClub.co.uk! I've dug deep into our non-existent funds and forked out for this shiny new site which will hopefully allow us to expand beyond the limitations imposed by free webhosting. A lot of the text links are now changing to pretty graphical ones, which is bad news for those on dial-up but good news to everyone else.

For those complaining that there's no new stuff here, I will point you in the direction of The Amazing Captain Chair (which is missing screencaps at the mo, but give me chance) and I'll upload a proper Quiz report as soon as we've had the event.

31-05-05

As was reported yesterday in the lj community, Chair Club will be sponsoring Cathy & Damian's Retirement Party Quiz on Sunday 12th June at Shackleton, UoB. As well as adding a certain theme to the questions, Chair Club will also be providing a number of exclusive prizes. So far confirmed are:

• Chair Club badge commemorating the occasion (which looks pretty amazing, if I do say so myself).
• Signed limited edition Captain Chair prints.

Keep checking back for more info in the lead up to the event..

28-05-05

Captain Chair is here!

25-05-05

Wave 3 badges have been released and are ready for ordering. And after many, many hours work over the past couple of days, the Captain is nearing completion. That said, there's still a lot more to do on it.

23-05-05

No updates for a couple of days, but be assured that I am working hard on introducing a brand new section to the site which should be up in a week or so, and I am currently working on not just one new wave of badges, but three! It is in the preliminary stages at the moment, but Chair Club will more than likely sponsoring a major event in mid-June. Details will be revealed soon.

17-05-05

The new 'holidays' section has been added. This details some of the yearly celebrations Chair Club supports and will be involving itself in this year. Also updated is the Chair Club history, which now details the beginnings of Chair Club.

13-05-05

The Fantastic Facts section has been added, which should provide the really bored people out there with some entertainment.

12-05-05

The members page has been updated with several new faces. Don't forget to send in your photo too!

11-05-05

Wave 2 of the badges are now available, and these are proving to be even more popular than wave 1. I must urge anyone interested to get their order in now before these items sell out. Stock of wave 1 is now extremely limited, and once they're gone, they're gone.

10-05-05

The Real Chair Club website goes online! Welcome to the biggest and best Chair Club site on the net.