'Bradford Coder Dojo June 2015: Tasty Pi!' Our monthly Bradford Coder Dojo was a bit busier than usual this weekend, at least for the mentors, with three sessions available to the kids that came along. Paul Scott ran a session on getting Raspberry Pis up and running (which I had chance to take part in!). Shi and
Introducing Shipley's Code Cafe This coming Saturday, I will be leading a trial in Shipley of something we are calling Code Cafe. The idea: Introduce coding to people over the age of 18. That’s it. And I can hear one or two of you reading this saying “Woah there! Just for people over
Look up your Amazon wishlist in a local library Another Sunday, another little bit of a quick coding effort. Following last weekend's look up Amazon bestsellers in your library effort, I received a number of responses. If you took the time out to contact me, thank you! It's good to see something that's
A short note about prototyping I like traveling by public transport. Aside from accidentally hearing Game of Thrones spoilers, I sometimes get to overhear design and creative chats. The benefits of the Shipley to Leeds commute, eh. I earwigged a conversation the other day, the general gist was creating visuals in Photoshop is the only
Look up Amazon bestsellers in the Leeds/Bradford library system I had a quick half hour at the weekend to pull together a quick thing that sits between two big databases. Normally I’d call this a “hack”, but some of you might think that suggests something illegal. No laws were broken in the making of this thing! If we
'Leeds GovJam 2015: in just three points' Here's a thing. My post-gig notes for Leeds GovJam weren't very big. Literally three points in my notebook. Here's the note. To compare, usually when I go to "gigs", public or private, I get a good twenty down. I usually write the
Looking ahead to Leeds GovJam 2015 As I type this the 2015 Leeds GovJam is about to kick off. A quick note. Let’s jump back a couple of weeks. I talked at NUX in Leeds, a talk that covered a lot of bases. The crux though was how, in 2003, I actually enjoyed my switch
Exploring the lives of "older people" through the Age Camp unconference The Monday just gone I attended Age Camp in Leeds. Some takeaway thoughts. It is worth disclosing up front I attended the event voluntarily in every sense. I was made aware of it by someone who thought I’d find it interesting. I wasn’t paid to attend. I gave
May 2015 NUX Leeds notes So, my talk at NUX in Leeds is done and dusted. You can catch the slides at the bottom of this post. The summary of the whole thing was captured by Claire Gibbons in her photo above. A couple of people have dropped me a line to ask why I
'Pitches: I love to hate you (but love a good workshop)' Ask anyone in an agency their views on pitches, and it's the thing everyone loves to hate - and hates to love. At the worst end they are viewed as a gamble, a drain on resources, the cause of much in-fighting (“We've only got three days
'Doing my own thing: nearly one year on' With running “my own business” now just about hitting the one year mark, I've been looking over the stuff I put down a year back and since. Pictured: The Shrink Your Briefs class at Studio of Things. I've a collection of documents - business plans, road
The future could be ace, but we still need to think of IE8 A few weeks back we were looking into a new project. The old "Do we have to support IE8?" point came up. Chat with the client. Globally, IE accounts for just over half the "desktop" web traffic. IE8 is about 16%. This for a browser that
Why volunteer? I updated my LinkedIn profile this morning, to reflect some of the "other stuff" I've been involved in recently. It's all the recent volunteer stuff I give time up for for nowt: mentoring at the Bradford CoderDojo and Young Rewired State in Leeds, steering
Scorsese on story versus plot Following on from my talk at Forefront in Leeds back in November, I found a video on YouTube of an interesting chat between Jon Favreau and Martin Scorsese on Marty's preference of story over plot, or "rather because of character and a very different approach to story&
Getting Hyperlocal with young people in Leeds This past Saturday I took time out from my weekend to inhabit that fuzzy space between “work” and “play”, this time helping out at the Leeds Young Rewired State Hyperlocal gig held at Leeds library. Some quick thoughts on that - before time and the event races away from me!
You say persona, I say person-ah A couple of nights ago I presented at Forefront, a regular gathering in Leeds for people who work on and with the front-end of digital products, be they designers, coders, or people just interested in that sort of thang. At short notice I rustled together a talk entitled You say
David Chang and deliciousness One weekend back in August I was slumped in a chair in a front room a short drive from Washington DC catching the end of Jimmy Fallon square off with David Chang for a hot wing eating contest. Chang's one of those guys that I find fascinating. There&
Opening the Leeds School of Data When I moved to secondary school, in my first days of my first year of secondary school, I was introduced to the formal concept of 'science'. I was worried, scared a little even. Lessons in 'physics', 'chemistry', and - gulp - 'biology'
Hacking together a data masher To say I started my latest hack on Sunday when I had a spare hour would be a misstep. I actually first had a go at it a few months back, around Easter time. The idea back then was a simple: Grab all the Leeds based events from Eventbrite and
Weathering a two hour hack After finding a little time Friday lunchtime to hack about with Bradford council's website stylesheets, I found myself with some unexpected downtime today as well. Towards the end of last week there were threats of thunderstorms across the UK. The storms were spectacular. As the storms hit buildings
Try something new to something already there >“I hate it. Especially as I have an iPhone. Look. It’s not like it is on your [Nexus 5’s] bigger screen. I have to pinch to zoom and put the phone that bit closer to my face - and squint. It’s horrible. I don’t want
'Open data in Leeds: represented by just three organisations?' A quick note off the back of having a look through Leeds Data Mill’s data sets. There are 78 data sets: * 73 provided Leeds City Council * 4 from Yorkshire Water * 1 from Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust Firstly, I was surprised by the high number of contributions
The return of the Leeds digital lunches So, after a little beavering away in the background the Leeds digital lunches are coming back. As a reminder, the digital lunches are a lunchtime forum where a (digitally focused) topic is talked about by gals and guys with experience on the subject, and other people can mosey along and
mhLeeds workshop I spent Saturday at the splendid Duke Studios in Leeds for a hack-day-cum-participatory-workshop to help design an NHS supported mental health and wellbeing website for young people. Unlike at the recent Leeds GovJam, where my role was more of a 'listener' and 'director' to the teams,
The 'public spaces' of Bradford and Leeds During a trip to New York last year I visited the Sony Wonder Tech Lab. The Wonder Lab is a four story interactive exhibition taking you though the history and a glimpse into the future of Sony. So a pretty wide story. (The lab is probably how the National Media
