Month: December 2008

Happy New Year

/ Raj / Leave a comment

Just a short ‘happy new year’ while my lasagne finishes cooking. Unfortunately I’ve caught a cold over the Christmas season so I’ve not hit the sales as planned or been inclined to blog, preferring rather to persist with Grand Theft Auto IV for the Xbox 360. Too engaging – and distracting – a game…

My online greetings card appears to have been a success so far and a useful experiment in the power of Cli.gs, cross-posting on Twitter and Facebook. This calls for a blog entry and adds to a list of topics I’ve been compiling that I hope to be blogging on in the first months of 2008: MobileMe, openID, re-nationalising the railways (anorak alert) and of course my continued experiments with social media and thoughts on Manchester’s social media cafe.

All this hopefully interspersed with my thoughts as a lifelong southener now living ‘oop norf’.

So, with all that in store (plus a redesigned blog, new server… etc etc), see you in 2009!

Season’s Greetings 2008

/ Raj / Leave a comment

This slideshow is a small collection of pictures from my Flickr stream on the theme of winter, Christmas, family or general celebration to mark the festive season in 2008.

Here’s hoping you all have a lovely – and relaxing – festive season. I will be counting hits to this page until 10 January 2009 and making a 10p donation to the Terrence Higgins Trust per hit, up to maximum of £50.

Click image to play

Click image to play

Manchester’s Social Media Cafe, Jan 2009

/ Raj / Leave a comment
Manchester Social Media Cafe logo

Manchester Social Media Cafe logo

It’s never too early to sign-up for the next Social Media Cafe, being held on 14 January 2009, 6-9 pm. This time, a new format is being trialled with attendees being given a chance to give a session on area of knowledge or expertise – should be interesting.

Sessions so far: Tim Difford will be talking about how social media can help encourage productive multi-location projects; Julian Tait of Littlestar will ask whether GPS enabled (smart) phones are the future of social networking; and Craig McGinty will be talking about that holy grail – ‘earning an income through your blog’.

Looks like an interesting opportunity to draw upon a range of knowledge from Manchester’s digital talent. Are there any public sector digital people attending? If so, leave a comment or add your name to the wiki.

A Goth Priest?

/ Raj / Leave a comment

While poking around on our website at work, I came across this video of a Priest who is also a Goth! I’m pleased to see there are still very open-minded members of the clergy out there, despite some of the negative, closed-minded perceptions that are often reported on in the mainstream media.

The video below (with subtitles, so you don’t need sound) is part of a campaign called Equally Different, which celebrates the diversity of Britain today and what makes us different. It also includes Boris Johnson talking about his diverse past, despite often being cited as the quintessential old-school Brit.

Work in progress

/ Raj / Leave a comment

I really haven’t had any time to set this up. But I realise that I’ve pointed it out on my Twitter background – so welcome if you’ve come from there, and excuse the mess.

Also, fans of Hallulujah, check out this clip from Season 3 of The West Wing that will serve as an embedding test:

Happy birthday!

/ Raj / 1 Comment

Day 1 – experimenting with a wordpress.com blog with domain redirected, while I wait for time to configure the virtual server I have bought from Bytemark.

In the meantime, follow me on Twitter.