At last, I've had an offer accepted on a really nice house. Assuming all goes to plan, I'll soon be the owner of a nice two bedroomed Edwardian terraced house in Stirchley.

I'm really quite excited, as I've been renting for around 18 months in Birmingham, since selling my place up in Yorkshire, going off travelling, and settling back here in Brum to go back to university. Anyway, I decided to do a little research online into Stirchley - to see if there were any local websites or any blogs or other webby things. It seems that there's not much. BirminghamUK.com has a page about Stirchley, with a picture of one of its many many Indian restaurants. There are in fact two such establishments within about one minute's walk of my potential new house... yum.

A rather odd thing which did turn up on my ask.com search (I was actually quite taken in by their marketing strategy of asking why most people rely on just one search engine, when they wouldn't rely on (say) one source for their news, or research), was this site offering a method by which people in Stirchley could get in touch with "Orientals and East Europeans" for dates. One of the charming adverts posted on the page reads:

"Ive been told by many people that I'm very easy to get along with, are a very good listener. I'm very clean as well as Drug Disease-free. I'm docile, physically affectionate (as well as emotionally), caring, passionate, sensitive, intelligent."

"Docile", "drug and disease free"? Well, you've got to aim high, I suppose...

Another site which I quite like about this city is BirminghamItsNotShit.co.uk. This site very aptly advocates Birmingham as a fun and happening place, in just the way that Brummies would. It's genius. You can even buy from a vast range of BirminghamItsNotShit goodies, such as t-shirts, mugs, fridge magnets and the like. Brilliant. I've also noticed that this very blog of mine has found its way onto the list of Birmingham-based blogs headed by the title "Brum Blogs - they're alright". Thanks for the link guys!

Oh, and talking about links to my blog, I'm also now on the Birmingham Linux User Group's Planet, an aggregator for the blogs of some of the group's members.

Right... I'd better do some work... will write more about the house as the situation unfolds.