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Okay, this is a bit late (There has already been a Speak the Web: Liverpool event), but here are some brief thoughts from last Thursdays Speak the Web conference in Leeds.

Corn on the cob?

Stuart Smith started with a brief (and quite amusing) history of the mobile web. He made the point that it’s not just iPhone users that we should build mobile websites for and that the typical mobile user was probably using a much less capable Nokia S40-based phone. He’s right of course, but he ignored the fact that iPhone users typically use the web on their mobiles much more than anyone else, but maybe that’s because the web often sucks so badly on the standard Nokia S40/60 browser? Still, he noted that countries like Uganda had quite advanced 4G networks so we, as developers, should be mindful of opportunities in places we otherwise are not mindful of. He also showed a slide of a corn-on-the-cob vibrator. Despite the other guys’ immaculately presented slides, this won the title of classiest slide of the night.

Opera was represented by Chris Mills. His talk had largely the same content as Bruce Lawson’s in Sheffield (so I won’t go into detail again). The HTML5 slides from Sheffield have been uploaded, by the way. He presented it in a similarly energetic way though, so I wasn’t bored hearing it again! I also learned that lots of people in Russia use Opera, but not many people who speak about Opera!

I’ve read a great deal by Andy Clark, on his blog, on Twitter and elsewhere on the web. He often goes under the name Malarkey so I shall refer to him as such. His talk can be summed up, I think, thus: Design for the clients you want and build for the web browser you want. I think this was what he meant by Hard Boiled web design. The concept of progressive enrichment (as opposed to enhancement), I think has its benefits. After all, even the appearance of the pages he showed us on tired old IE looked pretty nice.

I laughed when he showed us the IE6 stylesheet he’s been using for years. So sparse. I understand the need to bully IE users onto a more advanced browser, for the good of the web. I also feel no love for Microsoft. However, this approach just seems vindictive. The bulk of IE6 users are those poor souls working in government agencies and councils, the NHS and others who have no control over what browser they use. To give them such a poor online experience seems unnecessarily cruel. If they chose to use IE6 themselves, I’d say stuff ‘em, but no one chooses to use IE6 these days. Of course Malarkey’s talk was a stark contrast to the boys from Cahoona who spoke in Sheffield: “Just give the client what he wants, regardless of whether it’s the best solution” (I’m paraphrasing). I wish them both well, but I think I’d rather work as Malarkey does. If I was in a position to do so of course!

All in all, another awesome conference. I think the audience was a bit more chatty and asked more questions than in Sheffield. Was this because Leeds has a more excitable bunch of design-types? Maybe, but I think it had more to do with how well the speakers got on. They ripped the piss out of each other in such a good-hearted way that I think it relaxed everyone. Malarkey even dropped a Hicks-approved oooOOOOh! bomb. First time I’ve seen it used ‘in anger’. I’d like to note that at both events there were some pretty friendly folk. It was a weird novelty for me that the first two people I said hello to in Leeds both noted that they had read my blog post about Speak the Web: Sheffield! Thanks once again to the guys who arranged all this.

Okay, so I’m a bit cheeky. I went to two TEDx Norths. I went to the one in Sheffield, where I live. Then when I saw they had some interesting speakers, I got some tickets for TEDx Manchester as well. The two were both interesting events and have been summed up better elsewhere on other blogs, so here I will make just a couple of brief points.

I preferred the Sheffield TEDx. Why? Because although the speakers sounded like they’d be less interesting on paper, they were actually more interesting. Manchester gave us talks from people with big credentials. People from all across the BBC: Radio, Childrens, the head of research & development at BBC Future Media & Technology. There were people from the Guardian and from Nokia. These guys all gave interesting talks, but they were so wide in scope. In Sheffield the deal from the speakers was thus: “I’ve made something / am involved in something. Maybe not a lot of people find it that interesting, but I’m really into it and I want to share my passion with you”. In Manchester it was more, “Facebook! Twitter! Web 2.0! Social media! Cliche!” and I got a little lost in all the buzz words. Twitter and Facebook were mentioned so frequently, I think we could have engineered a drinking game out of it. I didn’t learn anything new about either of them, unfortunately. It didn’t help that each speaker had 20mins each, which blatantly wasn’t enough for most of them. Like in Sheffield, we were played old TED talks on video. If I wanted to watch them, I would do in my own time (as I often do) on Miro, or their YouTube channel. This should have been scrapped to give the speakers more time! (Disclaimer; I think Lost is the most self-congratulatory peace of crap JJ Abrahams, nay, anyone has ever done, so his talk was especially lost on me)

For me, the one guy who stood out was Phil Griffin. He talked about Manchester and its architecture. He told us about the tower blocks that are being torn down and the old pubs he knows that are lying dormant. This is obviously something that he cared about deeply (he even showed us pictures of the area where he once got married). This, more focused talk, was simply superb. I have an interest in architecture sure, but I’m a web developer with a much keener interest in the web. But the one man who didn’t mention the web (let alone any web2.0 cliche’s) once during his talk was easily the most fascinating speaker. He also used the large screen to display photography, rather than a dry list of bullet points (“*facebook *twitter *web2.0″).

Maybe in the future TEDx North could, and I don’t believe I’m saying this, be a little less web-orientated next time? Some pictures are available on my flickr stream.

You’ve probably heard of the TED talks. They’ve spread in part due to their excellent internet strategy: a powerful website, a strong presence on YouTube, software like Miro and the like. TEDx is a series of talks operating in the UK under license, I believe. They don’t quite pull in the Bill Gates and Seth Godins’ of the main TED talks but, as I found out last week, they present some pretty interesting folks.

TEDx came to Sheffield so my colleague and I spent the whole day at Electric Works and yes, we had a go on the slide. The range of talks kept things interesting. It started off quite business-orientated and the highlight in the morning was definitely Mike Southon of the Financial Times. He gave an obviously very finely tuned presentation that likened business success to the path the Beatles took. It was pretty ‘fluffy’ stuff, but I’m no business-head so that was probably fortunate. As the day progressed, the talks got a bit more creative-y. Highlights for me were Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino from Tinker it! bigging up the Arduino open-source hardware project and Andy Huntington with his little magic noise boxes (my name for them, not his). I wanted my own.

Andy Huntington at TEDx Sheffield

By the afternoon, the suits had all disappeared and the crowd was a little more geeky (I mean that in a loving way, obviously). That’s understandable, considering the breadth of topics. TEDx Sheffield was a day that did inspire, the only bad thing I thought was that they played us videos of previous international TED talks. I could have stayed at home to watch those, guys. I took some (not especially great) pictures that you can view on my flickr stream.

I had what could be the ideal politics-geek day-trip last Wednesday. I awoke at ridiculous O’clock to travel from Sheffield to Westminster for the first Catch21 Productions conference since I joined them as ‘New Media’ bod. This was held in the Houses of Parliament itself. I was excited to get bumped to the front of the security queue and through St Stephen’s entrance. Inside we held the conference which involved a number of college/6th form kids asking questions to us and our guests. Guests included delegates from Operation Black Vote, The Electoral Commission’s and the UK Youth Parliament and also we were able to have a question and answer session with Charles Kennedy MP, Ann Widdecombe MP, current Education Minister Alan Johnson MP and Daisy McAndrew – Chief Political Correspondent of ITN. The audience asked some good questions which yielded some interesting answers.

Catch21 will be displaying highlights from this event on our YouTube channel. Personally, I enjoyed opportunity to meet some very significant MPs from the three main partys and we all got some ideas of where Catch21 can go as an organisation from a seemingly pretty keen audience. Besides, I get down to London so infrequently the Tube is still a novelty. I wonder how long that will last?

(picture courtesy of the lovely people at OBV)

On Sunday, it was brought to my attention by a friend that once a year, the kindly folk of Haigh Hall throw a free music festival for those in the area, presumably by way of compensation for them being in Wigan. I rolled up half smashed to find out what was going down with my homies.
Haigh Hall is a genuinely beautiful place, and I’ve come to the opinion that all music festivals should be held in the grounds of stately homes if simply for the reason that, surrounded by two or three square miles of semi-landscaped woodland, there was no problems with the toilet arrangements.

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It’s been low-blog count limbo round here for a while. I’ve been over-rung with websites to maul at work so I’ve been somewhat terrified to even look at a TinyMCE text entry box. What else have I done? Well, I’ve been all the way to Westminster in London Village to try and help raise some more funds for soon to be internet-sensation Catch21 Productions. Well, we hope. We’re certainly going to try. I reckon we could do some pretty exciting stuff with it anyway. More on that, hopefully much more, later in the year.

I’ve also been to a wedding, a stag do, paintballing (ouch), go-karting (crunch) and to see some downright awesome bands like 65daysofstatic (for the 4th time!) and A Silver Mt. Zion (for the second time, but this time wasn’t half as good – slackers). I went to watch ‘28 Weeks Later‘ which was disappointing, but not surprisingly so. I just loved the prequel far too much and naturally the usual disappointment in a sequel followed. I also watched the start of Big Brother UK Series 384, but I’m too ashamed to talk about that…

BBQ this weekend down ’sarf. Maybe next week I’ll reveal some shiny new website designs I’ve been working on. Oh larks oh lawdy! Hurrah!

I’d sworn to myself that I’d get round to seeing Mr. Scruff; DJ, artist and all round leg-end. Fortunately, last week a friend invited me back once again to Hull to see him at the uni. What a brilliant night. Such a fun DJ! Plenty of people dancing, very early in the night and such great visuals from the VJ as well. Lots of fluffy animals. Lots of pie. He drew everyone into it with some of his classic tunes, a drop of tweeness, a bit of a Rooty-toot Manuva, some more bass and then British geek-anthem, Ug. Go to a party where Mr. Scruff is playing. It will make you very, very happy.

(p.s. big thanks to Jon for basically driving me and my kit round all weekend)

Sheffield’s Plug is a club I’m only just becoming familiar with. It definitely thinks its trendy, what with its minimalistic urban branding and all. Whatever, they bagged Four Tet and a Luke Vibert DJ set all in one night. That got my attention and I dragged along my poor friend Mark, who’d been visiting from out of town. The Four Tet guy (Kieran Hebden) brought along Steve Reid who (I now know after internets research) is some sort of jazz drumming-god. I know sod all about jazz (or drumming) but boy could this dude play. He had an advantageous position at the front of the stage and I’ve never seen anyone so into their instrument (yeah, even more than James Murphy last week). Certainly not a 60 year old anyway. I mean that in a nice way, y’know? He seemed to take point while Hebden worked his way through an array of electronic gizmos (that’s an industry-standard description of what he was doing, okay?) I love Four Tet and Hebdens other project of note; Fridge but I found this gig really hard going. I mean, the guys on the stage were masterful at what they were doing but I definitely think at the end of my week I wasn’t mentally ready for the bombarding that my ears and mind took. I’m pretty familiar with most of Four Tet/Fridge stuff, but on Friday it was all about improvisation and so nothing sounded familiar. Nothing wrong with that of course, just I personally felt like I wanted to hear something safe and recotlgnisable! I’m still glad I saw ‘em though, but the whole event felt like I was trapped in a Hawkwind intro. When would Lemmys vocals kick in? “I just took a ride in a silver machine…“

That’s the name of the current LCD Soundsystem single by the way, this isn’t the beginning of a xenophobic rant. I popped across the pennies yet again (this time on a bus; thanks to some genius envisaging that a rail link between two of Britain’s biggest cities isn’t particularly important at the weekends) to meet up with a fine young bunch of Mancunians who accompanied me to a very busy gig at the Manchester Academy. Quite an interesting crowd were present; the most annoying of which were people on pills and the (so stereotypically true to form, it hurt) MySpace hipster-types. Both seemed to spend most of the gig facing away from the musicians. This was either through confusion or through obsessive chimping, respectively (the likes of which I’ve not seen since I saw Death Cab for Cutie a couple of months back *shudders*) [thoughts on the gig itself after the jump...]

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I could of done a ‘my favourite albums/films/gigs/rude things you can do with grapes’ list, but I didn’t. It’s the cowards way out of a year. Lets move on, okay? My Christmas was spent at home with family and friends. Nothing amazing, just nice to see ‘em all. Well, mostly. A nice break from my job although barely two months in, I’m still loving it. I’ll mention what gifts I got for Christmas as I watch/read my way through them. I made some new years resolutions. Nothing heavy; read more, write more (here and elsewhere), got some other stuff I wanna sort. Sorry I can’t be more exciting. Going to keep a journal (diary) again too. I did this in my final year at uni and it really helped me to pull through some of the bullshit that decided to drop on me during that time. Still makes for pretty funny reading at times now though.

Back in Sheffield: James, Ellie and I are being joined by new house-mate; Zoe. When we first met her she mentioned that she fancied having a cat about the place. So did we. As a result, we now have Slick and Intel, two 1 y.o males we took off a fella called Mike who couldn’t look after all of their brothers and sisters any more. They’re a bit sheepish around the house at the moment (yeah, I’m aware they’re not sheep), but their confidence is increasing. I’ve already got a favourite, but it wouldn’t be fair to say who, would it? Predictably, I’ll probably be uploading pictures of them to my flickr account. Anyway friends, lurkers, countrymen, happy new year.

…is what it should of been called. I’ve been a big fan of DJ Shadow for a while. It’s through his collaborations with people like Mos Def that I got  listening to a whole range of hip-hop and other electronic music. To me, Endtroducing is one of the most important albums ever. Shadow has released a hell of a lotta stuff (a great deal of which I’ve listened to) and he always kept it fresh and exciting; working with different MCs and experimenting with different styles. A musician can’t dwell on his first album but to much of his fanbase (who managed to close down his forum due to excessive angst) his new album, The Outsider, is disappointing. Sure; he did something different, but imho it was mediocre at best. Embracing the ‘Hyphy’ bay-area hip-hop sound meant that the complex, lush, alt-hip-hop soundscapes that fans loved Shadow for were replaced by… god knows, basically. It just sounded like any other bling-heavy hip-hop trash and I nearly didn’t bother getting tickets when I found he’d be performing near my new home in Sheffield.

I’m glad I did. Very glad. As were my two mates; Ed (who bullied me into buying tickets) and Ste. We got into the venue; the Sheffield Octagon, in time to catch the last couple of songs by the 1st support. Not worth mentioning here. The 2nd support however went by the name of Akala and from the start seemed determined to put us in a good mood…

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So, it’s been a while. I just spent 3 weeks without a home PC; pretty tough for a geek. Brought my IBM laptop with me, but the undulations on the roads to Sheffield destroyed the HDD. Pah! I’ll get over it, it was 2nd-hand anyway.

So? What’s the haps? Well, I’m well into my new job. I’m learning new skills and actually feel like I’m helping to produce stuff of some importance, which is great. I’ve finally moved into a shared house with a couple of pretty decent folk, which is good; I feel settled now (hence a return to bloggin’!). I’ve already been into town to see a band whose name I can’t remember, but that probably says more about me than it does about them (far too much new stuff to take in right now). The city hasn’t been checked out properly so that’s something for this weekend (along with a rather fine looking record shop I’ve spotted nearby). It’ll be my first weekend since moving here that I don’t have anything major (i.e. moving, packing, visiting folk elsewhere, etc.) going on.

In the world (read: outside of Yorkshire) there have been some mid-term elections in the US. I’ve yet to take in the complexities of it all, but it seems like Bush & Co have received at least a mild bruising. Rumsfeld even resigned! (link to nerd-friendly explanation) Perhaps young Marines in body bags are starting to niggle at many in middle-America. I figure the US being the US, the real effect this’ll have on the planet won’t be as great as many would of liked, but at least we can console ourselves by laughing as ‘Comedy Racist’, Rick Santorum’s family breaks down in tears on CNN. Hell, I’m looking forward to 2008.

Well, it’s finally happened. I’ve got a job. No… more than that, I’ve got a job I actually want. I’ll be working for a small Sheffield company called Rocket Science. They make websites and I’ll now be responsible for helping them do this. What seems exciting about them is that they have the similar passion about creating the sort of standards-compliant, accessible sites that I do (please don’t go and attempt to validate my page now and see it failing, that’ll be terribly embarrassing). Of course, this all means that I have to once more relocate myself to the other side of the Pennines, back in Yorkshire. Last time I did this I ended up in Hull, but Sheffield isn’t quite that far. I’ve been to Sheffield a number of times (the best visit was when I saw Belle & Sebastian supported by an as yet unknown Franz Ferdinand) and it seems to be a pretty decent city. Still, I admit to being a bit intimidated by it all. I’ve moved away from home before, sure. But that was university! Everyone’s in the same boat there and lets face it, for many it is a 3 year drinking binge (myself included? maybe not). This is different. I’m trying to find a house/flat share and this is pretty hard work. I visited on Wednesday and saw a few places (one of which was worse than the worse house I saw whilst a student in Hull) and I’m visiting tomorrow to check some more possibilities out, one of which is temporary. Fingers crossed ‘eh? I want a place sorted soon, because I’d like to get working and make myself part of the company, I don’t like the situation I’m in now; seemingly strung between two towns and without very much to do.

Anyway, hopefully I’ll be busy but not too busy to let you know how I’m getting on. Wish me luck!

I’ve just returned from a terribly pleasant weekend in Manchester. It’s a city that’s tantalisingly close, yet is just far away enough from me to be inconvenient to visit. A pal of mine, Ste, is a resident and like me is a recent graduate from the University of Hull. He (or perhaps more accurately; his unbelievably accommodating parents) were kind enough to put me up all weekend (or should that be ‘put up with’?). Aside from visiting Ste, the reason for visits to Manchester usually revolve around one thing: seeing bands.

The band in question this time were biro-artists extraordinaire, ‘Marmaduke Jinks‘. They were friends of Stes, but I’d heard very little of them. Still, they turned out to be one of the most delightful bands I’ve seen for quite a while. I always feel somewhat uncomfortable trying to describe bands by comparison and I know I really shouldn’t do it, but hard cheese. I’m going to; It was all rather Belle & Sebastian meets the Divine Comedy… oh, y’know what? I think I had someone else in mind but I’ve completely forgotten. Sod it. There we go, another clumsy comparison. Regardless, they were pretty damn competent musicians and their songs were genuinely funny. Well, I giggled anyway. I wouldn’t completely rule out some real success, they certainly deserve it (doubly so since we ended up at the bassists house, drinking his beer). Being a fiercely anti-Murdoch sort of chap, I’m not planning of making a habit of this, but here is a link to their MySpace page on which you can listen to some of their songs. Do so. Perhaps whilst sipping some red wine and nibbling on a bit of camembert. That’s a serving suggestion by the way.

The rest of the weekend involved meeting some of the lovely, friendly, but perhaps the slightest bit crazy, folk of Bury. I’ve been a bit nomadic recently (Gloucestershire, Derby, Nottingham), where next? I feel the mighty H calling again….