David Marsden
Writing, investigating, building things and occasionally creating a ruckus.
I write about local democracy where I live in west London, build odd little web projects, make music and restore my old band Hovercraft's lost tapes, and manage a one hundred-strong community of pretend football managers.
My own little world.
01
Writing & local democracy
Investigative citizen journalism
Southall Stories
Local democracy, planning, environment, housing, accountability and the things people would rather you didn’t notice — from Southall and across Ealing.
Civic infrastructure
Ealing Civic Commons
Gathering what’s happening to Ealing — and who’s deciding it.
Incubated by Southall Stories.
Personal writing
Blog
Notes, observations, photos, family life, music, politics, technology and whatever else has caught my attention.
02
Football worlds
I’ve been running online multiplayer football-management communities for many years. These are the worlds, archives and tools that have grown out of them.
Community
Top 100
The original multiplayer Soccer Manager community: five divisions, promotion, relegation, cups, rivalries, statistics and an alarming amount of history.
Community
Top 100 Regen
A second-generation multiplayer football world and community.
In development
The Beautiful Game
A new multiplayer online football-management game.
Data
The Pink Final
The companion club and player database for The Beautiful Game.
From the archive
One Jimmy Carter
My old football blog. Kept online largely because the internet ought to remember things.
03
Music
Punk music · 1995 → now
HOVERCRAFT
A retro-space punk rhythm and blues band formed in Grimsby in the mid-1990s, resurrected thirty years later with songs recreated from dusty old cassette tapes, and hazy memories.
04
Things I build
Human-first publishing tools
Helping Hand
A family of small publishing tools for getting material from paper, tablets and local files onto the web with as little machinery in the way as possible.
05
Now
A few changing glimpses from around the site.
Selected writing
Peak Absurdity on the Ski School Run
Big kid went skiing with school today (his school breaks up for summer a week later than everywhere else). He had to be at school half an hour earlier than usual to catch the coach …
Favourite photo See the showcase →
