Links for August 29th
Some links for you:
- Light House Media Centre Events - Why hasn't Birmingham got a place with as diverse and exciting a programme of events as the Light House in Wolverhampton? Gallery, bar, training, events and most of all a superb cinema line-up. Buster Keaton's The Navigator with live organ accompaniment - 25th Sept.
- Eight Eyed Sea Bass win international prize // News - Birmingham company (based in Big Peg, Hockley) win international computer graphics prize. Well done!
- The Press Association: Workers union to launch TV channel - Communication worker's union launches its own TV channel. Makes sense.
- Isle of Wight with Martin Parr | The School of Life - Go on holiday with photographer Martin Parr. What a great idea! Apparently if you mention Birmingham-based photography agency Rhubarb Rhubarb when booking you'll get £100 off.
Take a run at the sun
A week in a dull, foggy and sometimes drizzly north Devon has left me invigorated on the running front. We had a four day break in a caravan near Woolacombe Bay which was lovely bar the weather (total sunshine in four days: about 45 minutes). It was great for running in however and I managed three runs in successive days - a rare event for me.
Day one saw me dropping down from the caravan park to the beach and then back along the dunes - about 5 miles. The next day I got lost in some woods and then found myself trying to get back via the coastal path from a tiny place called Lee. I only covered about 7 miles but it took me over an hour with lots of tough climbs. My final run took me along the famous Ilfracombe Branch Line except that I went too far and a planned 40 minute run ended up being 75 minutes.
Despite getting lost I can heartily recommend Croyde Cycle maps as the most detailed way to find your way around that bit of North Devon be it on foot or on bike. They only cost a couple of quid and include the kind of detail that OS maps don’t. Namely, the phone numbers of local pubs and restaurants, how often the buses run and even how muddy a particular path gets.
All this mileage is in aid of my so far rubbish training for the forthcoming Birmingham half-marathon which I’m pleased to see has a blog.
Finally, the title of this post refers to one of my fave summer-type songs. I found a nice video on youtube that sets the song to someone’s Super 8 footage of their summer hols. I plan a Super 8 related post soon so this seems apt:
Links for August 22nd
Some links for you:
- Mail announces Birmingham’s Digital Family - Birmingham Mail - Birmingham gets a digital family who are rewarded with plenty of free gadgets.
- Urban Walk: Follow bank holiday hedonism - Birmingham Mail - The Mail recommends a Digbeth pub crawl as a useful way to spend the Bank Holiday
- Relationship model of e-government | The Place of Social Media - Digital Birmingham gets some praise in an article on e-government examples
- Raj TV removed from Sky Digital; future in doubt - Birmingham-based Raj TV goes off-air.
Links for August 21st
Some links for you:
- Jobs and skills to grow in the Glasshouse thanks to £9million funding from Advantage West Midlands - Advantage West Midlands put money into new Glass industry centre in Stourbridge
- edublogs: Innovation 101 (or, “Hoping you see the irony…”) - List of organisational traits that kill innovation. Some seem a bit familiar
- Troubled Waters « Pixel-love - East Midlands media consultancy reports on increased action being taken on computer games piracy
- Channel 4 hires Ofcom’s Tom Loosemore to drive £50m digital fund | Media | guardian.co.uk - Ex-BBC and Ofcom man to head up Channel 4’s 4ip fund.
Links for August 20th
- Hidden Innovation in the creative industries - Research Reports - Publications - Policy & Research Unit - NESTA - Note to self to read this one. “Innovation has been a subject of serious academic and policy interest for several decades. The ‘creative industries’ have been studied for a shorter period of time.” Published in July.
- Data Design Interactive - Just making a note that not all the West Midlands Computer Games companies are in the Warwick/Coventry/Leamington triangle. These guys do Wii games out of Stourbridge
- Time Birmingham had less of a Brum deal - TravelMail blog - Daily Mail travel writer gives Brum a bit of sympathy: “there is no questioning the revitalisation of a city whose landscape is increasingly impressive”
- Mike Owen bids for GCap West Midlands stations « Paul McNally • Freelance media reporter - Some interesting local radio stuff. Turns out BRMB is up for sale and Mike Owen (stalwart of local radio scene) is one of the potential bidders.
Staying on topic
I’ve been feeling guilty about those of you who subscribe to the RSS feed of this blog. You may be reading this because you find I’ve got something useful to say about the Creative Industries. In fact the amount of subscribers went up a notch after I discussed 4ip which is great but now you poor souls get everything I write sent to your RSS reader - even the pictures of giant courgettes.
So now I’ve created a feed that only contains items from the Creative Industries category. The link is over in the sidebar on the right hand side. If you find it useful then please add it to your reader. If you still want to read everything I write then carry on using the main feed. Of course you may hate that creative crap and just love the stuff about running and gardening. Well I haven’t listed it on the sidebar but there’s even one for you as well. Any more niche than that then you can go do what I did and create your own feed.
If you haven’t got a clue what on earth I’m on about then you need to learn how to use RSS feeds - they’ll change the way you use the web. Go read Andrew Dubber’s straightforward guide to RSS.
links for 2008-08-18
-
Screen WM Chief Exec starts blogging
links for 2008-08-17
-
Both Dare teams who developed thier games in Birmingham come away with prizes at this year’s Dare to be Digital competition. Contrived and Dark Matter Designs were both housed at Birmingham City University’s Screen Media Lab
-
Channel 4’s head of drama reckons 4ip can fund drama
-
Scotland’s new 4ip commissioner has an impressive web 2.0 background. Expect an announcement on the West Midlands’ commissioner soon.