HelloCatFood

I’m only mentioning this once, as I get asked about it every year, sometimes by the same people.

In the Summer months I usually steward at festivals with Oxfam. I’ve been doing this since 2005 and it really is a great experience for a great cause. Applications for the general public opened yesterday (31st March), so apply now to avoid disappointment.

Although not my primary reasons for doing this (I’ve supported Oxfam in other ways for years) some of the benefits of stewarding with Oxfam, from my point of view, include:

• By paying a £165 depost you can steward at as many festivals as they cater for (up to ten festivasl)
• You’ll be helping a great cause.
• In my experience of Glastonbury and Reading the separate stewards camping area is safer (though not completely), cleaner (depending on the weather) and you get to know lots of friendly people, ’cause you’re all there for one common purpose
• Free meal tickets! These (usually) equal one ticket for each day of your shifts. It may not sound like a lot, but trust me, it is!
• In my experience of stewarding at Reading we’re allound to walk through the backstage areas to access other stewarding areas, which means there’s a small chance you might meet some of the performers/semi famous people (sorry, had to brag), though don’t count on it, especially at Glastonbury. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t.
• The responsibilities and shifts aren’t taxing, but it’s a great experience if you want to get into running events and such
• You’ll be helping a great cause. DUH!
• When you’re not on one of your eight-hour shifts you’re free to see the festival! In my experience of stewarding at Reading many of the shift posts/locations are actually situated in or near music tents, so whilst you’re on shift you’ll see acts and when you’re not you can see more! However, some shift posts aren’t located in or near music tents.
• I’ll be there
• You get the £165 deposit back upon them recieveing notification that you’ve completed all of your shifts, which is usually around November

By the time you’ve read this the Glastonbury vacancies may have already been filled, but there’s plenty of other festivals to choose from. This is great for anyone who supports Oxfam or who just couldn’t get a Reading/Leeds or Glastonbury Festival ticket.

Oh yeah, it’s all volunteer work, so you wont be paid.

Apply, damn you! If you’ve got the Summer free and £165 to lend you’ve got no excuse

Some artists use paint, others bronze – But for Nathan Sawaya he chooses to build his awe-inspiring art out of toy building blocks. LEGO® bricks to be exact. With more than 1.5 million colored bricks in his New York studio, Sawaya’s sculptures take many forms.
Nathan Sawaya: The Art of the Brick

Stitches and ho’s, originally uploaded by hellocatfood.

Last night saw me and a host of others go to the first Stitches and Hos event at the Hare and Hounds.

I’ve never knitted before and I’ve never really had any desire to learn. However, I learnt quite a lot and think I may take it up as a hobby. You’ve been warned! I think knitting will be the new in thing this season

Come along to the next one on 29th April! A bit of blurb from the Facebook Group:

As seen at Moseley Folk fest, Eastside Green and dive bars all over Birmingham- Stitches and Hos is settling down in its new home at the Hare & Hounds in Kings Heath. A motley crew of enthusiasts for all things knitted, crocheted, cross-stitched or threaded, we will be starting up on the 25th March with free needles and wool and music from the lovely ladies of The Sugarfoot Stomp. Everyone welcome- no experience required!

If only they were cheaper…
Gyration - GO 2.4GHz Optical Air Mouse

Move it!
zerosign.net » PowerGlove Mouse

Gregory Gove at the Downers Grove Public Libray

Stock Image - - at Jupiterimages

I’ve always had mixed feelings towards Tumblr. I really like how you can easily post about anything, but then again I think to myself, can’t “Wordpress do this already”?

I’m subscribed to two Tumblr feeds: The first is one by Tom Davis. If you’re into your literature and photography go subscribe! The other is an online sketchbook from Rill Marchant, listing images that inspire her work. I felt that Wordpress could achieve something like this alongside the actual blog. Why would I want to do this, I hear you ask. I have several reasons for this:

• I want to document my research
  Even though I have Foxmarks installed and also use del.icio.us I still don’t like having millions of bookmarks, so for me this approach of record keeping is better.
• I don’t want to flood people’s inboxes
  I think there’s an unwritten rule/general blogging etiquette as to how many posts you should make in a day. Even though blogs are personal, when you allow subscriptions (via rss/e-mail) you have to start thinking about your readers. If I made ten posts a day of images I’ve found on t’interwebber that inspire me, without context - i.e. explanation of what they are and why they’re posted - they will hold little value to the reader and I think they’d consider unsubscribing or just not reading anymore. That said, I would still want the reader to be able to peer into how my work evolves.

Right, on with the show!

To start off I wanted to replicate the quick posting option found in Tumblr. Enter the QuickPost plugin. Once activated in Wordpress whenever you find something you want to blog about just press the bookmarklet et voila! One important feature is that you can specify a default category to post to. You’ll see why soon. As I wanted to create a sketchbook I set the default category to ‘Sketchbook‘.

The massive hurdle I had to overcome then was to how to stop post under the Sketchbook category from appearing in the blog and, more importantly, in the RSS feeds. Remember, I don’t want to flood the reader’s inboxes. I tried using the Category Visibility Plugin but I think it was conflicting with some of my installed plugins, so I turned to the Advanced Category Excluder. With this installed I set the Sketchbook category to be displayed only in the Search function. This meant that it, along with its sub categories, was blocked in the main blog and the RSS feeds (comments and posts). Brilliant!

Now that I had Tumblr-like posting and a way to block these posts from the main blog I needed a way to display these posts somewhere else, like on a Page. Odd, I know! I had a look for a plugin to allow posts to be displayed on a Page, but lets just say none of them worked, and, after five hours of search you get a little frustrated. I then knew this would require me to do some actual coding. For anyone else reading this, I wouldn’t recommend searching for a solution in the Wordpress support forum. This sort of question has apparently been asked many times, so just read their solutions.

I created a custom template, copied the code from the page.php file from my current theme and inserted the following code before The Loop:

<?php
query_posts(”cat=156″);
?>

cat=156 refers to the ID number for Sketchbook, which is 156.

If this means nothing to you do what I did and do some research!

So, if you check out the sketchbook you’ll see some test posts. OK, so the page is pretty ugly at the moment, but once I remove the category sidebar it’ll be just what I want it to be. Also, under the single post view you still get links to sketchbook entries. D’oh! I’m sure a bit of coding can sort this out

In a useful twist there’s still a feed icon next to the Sketchbook category name, so if people really wanted to subscribe they could (although this can’t be monitored using FeedBurner)

I also added the Category Posts Widget to further inform people that I have a sketchbook and that it’s being updated. I also also also also also use Custom Query String Reloaded to limit the amount of entries displayed on the sketchbook page (have yet to see if that will work)

So, in summary by using a few plugins and a very little bit of coding I now have a blog-like sketchbook that I can post to easily that doesn’t interfere with the main blog. Awesome!

YouTube - Hyperactive - Lasse Gjertsen

Leaves at Lloyds No.1, originally uploaded by hellocatfood.

Tags: leaves, photo, surprise

« Older Entries