John Kirkham’s Skate Fever Roller Disco’s are kicking off on the 5th July with the first one being held at Xsite at the Xscape Castleford in Leeds West Yorkshire.

I’m so excited have been for weeks and John’s kindly asked Rachael to DJ so no doubt the music will be fly.

It’s the last Thursday of the month and that means GeekUp Liverpool is happening so if your around the Mersey you should pop along for a geeky chat. I unfortunately can’t make this event due to workload but hopefully I’ll make the next Liverpool event.

Event Details

When

6:00 PM Thursday June 28th, 2007

Where

3345 Parr Street, Liverpool, L1 4JN

Description

This Month’s Talk - Unobtrusive JavaScript with Dave Verwer

With every site you visit piling on more and more JavaScript and Ajax, what happens when a user comes along using a screen reader or mobile device that would choke on even a simple alert()? How can we take advantage of the power of these technologies without providing any barriers to users, this session will cover techniques to ensure that you can still serve up rich content without excluding users, all from one code base.

Upcoming

Let us know if your attending on the upcoming.org event page.

Calling Leeds, Yorkshire based Designers/Developers/Geeks!

I’m really happy to announce that GeekUp has arrived in yet another city, this time Leeds. I’m grateful that Deb Basset has agreed to organise the Leeds events. Debs and her partner Rob have been attending the Manchester events non-stop since I met them at reboot last year. They drive a 3 hour round trip to Manchester how much more dedicated could a GeekUper be?

The inaugural GeekUp Leeds

When

6:00 PM Wednesday June 20th, 2007

Where

The Cross Keys 107 Water Lane, Leeds LS11 5WD

Description

The inaugural Leeds event!

Upcoming

Let us know if your attending on the upcoming.org event page.

I’ve uploaded some more photos from last nights Roller Disco at Billie Rox in Manchester to my Roller Disco Billie Rox Manchester set on flickr. Myself John, Dan, Debs and Rob went over after GeekUp. There are not as many shots as usual I was having too much fun skating so didn’t get out the camera much, but there are a few - enjoy.

I’ve been to the Roller Disco in Manchester at Billie Rox a few times this month and have taken lots of photos, some of which you can view in my Roller Disco Billie Rox Manchester set on flickr.

Today I found out from Kerry’s dad about a temporary ice rink in Southport similar to the one in Manchester. The ice rink is located in Southport Town Hall Gardens and upsettingly like the Manchester ice rink closes this Sunday 7th January 2007. I will lucky get to go skating on the rink this weekend, we were originally taking Shannon to ice skating at Blackburn Ice Area but Southport is a little closer and won’t be much longer.

The 400 metre ice rink lets you skate around the giant Christmas Tree in the Town Hall gardens and opens at 11am till 8pm, sessions last one our and cost from £4.00 for children and from £5.00 for Adults its slightly cheaper than Manchester’s ice rink but that’s because its Southport.

In the wee hours this morning while doing some R&D for a new project I started a few days back, I found out about a Roller Disco that happens in Manchester at Billie Rox on Portland Street every Tuesday and Thursday night! Since a collegue at code computerlove told me she had seen a poster around town about a Roller Disco, since then I’ve been trying to find out about it. I’m going to be attending the next event on Tuesday 2nd January and I’m really excited!

Me and Rachael have previously travelled down to London for the Roller Disco in Kings Cross and the London skates from Hyde Park, its great to see the North getting more attention. I hope this is the start of much greater things to come in the Northern Skate Scene.

Manchester City Centre will host a temporary ice rink as part of this years festive programme. The rink will be located in Piccadilly Gardens and will be open for public skating from 17th November till 7th January. The 750m2 real ice rink is to be constructed near in the fountain area of the gardens. The rink labelled On Ice At Piccadilly joins the Manchester Christmas Markets, and the Wheel of Manchester to make up Manchester festive program along with many lighting displays around the city.

At £7.50 for one hours skating I thought that was a little pricey but after looking at Hampton Court Ice Rink and Tower of London Ice Rink we get off lightly. Full details including opening times and prices can be found on the On Ice At Piccadilly event page.

I’m going to try and get a bunch of people from the office together and see if they fancy an outing one evening, and it sounds like it could be a fun night out for the folks from GeekUp we’ve been looking for things to do for the Christmas meet, which will most likely involve a meal and then followed by lots of alcohol and maybe a skate?

I’ve just got back from the first official Pecha Kucha Night in Manchester, which I attended with Dave Verwer. We’ve held Pecha Kucha style presentations quite a few times at GeekUp but I hadn’t until this evening been to any official Pecha Kucha events since I first experienced it during my trip to Copenhagen for reboot8 earlier this year. The minute I found out about the Manchester Pecha Kucha Night I promptly ordered my ticket. The ticket cost me £15 as a non D&AD member or student, I feel the event was slightly overpriced but I’m glad I attended and would like to thank Max Fraser from Pecha Kucha Nights UK and the D&AD for bringing Pecha Kucha to Manchester.

The event took place in Screen 18 at Odeon Cinema in The Print Works, which had a very impressive turn out of about 350 attendees. The speakers in order of appearance, Tim Parsons, Nick Bell, Brendan Dawes, Jai Redman, Nick Johnson, David Fisher, Liz Birkbeck, Emma Booty, Jo and Christoph Shaw, Klaas Diersmann and Sakurako Haino. I’m not going to review each speaker but I was disappointed with the talks by Liz Birkbeck’s which was just a plug for her company Bubble, and the talk by Klaas Diersmann and Sakurako Haino who had not prepared and stood for 6 minutes just giggling to themselves and saying “um yeah”. On a positive note I was impressed with the work by Urban Splash and the talk by Jo Shaw, Christoph Shaw and Kevin Boniface which had me and the rest of the audience in hysterics from both the content and the fact that Kevin wasn’t able to speak properly because of a cough.

After the event myself and Dave grabbed a coffee in a nearby bar and chatted about various things including the projects we’ve both got on the go along with new ventures. One new projects is to contact and convince Kevin Boniface to create a podcast because his work was really great, I’ll keep you posted on how it turns out but you can listen to some of his work over on his myspace page.

I’ve uploaded some photos to my flickr account should you want to have a look, I warn the quality is pretty shocking.

No not my wedding, but GeekUp’s first full day conference and in just a few hours I’ll be the host.

I’m really excited! It’s been a crazy few weeks during the run up trying to get everything organised so I’m hoping it all runs smoothly otherwise we’ll have 40 upset punters.

GeekUp - Ruby and Rails is a FREE, one-day mini conference aimed at people who want to start developing using Ruby and Ruby on Rails. The event introduces attendees to the Ruby language and the Ruby on Rails framework.

The event has limited places so register early to avoid disappointment.

The Site Design

Stuart Frisby and I worked on the site and in what short time we had I’m really please with the result.

If you’ve not busy on the Wednesday 25th why don’t you come join me and some other friendly peeps while we talk about all things geek and other things not so geek. Let us know if you coming over on the wiki event page.

The @media2006 conference was announced today on the vivabit blog, I missed last years event due to a pre-booked vacation. I’m defiantly planning on attending this one, waiting to see if my employer will be kind and send me or foot some of the bill.

Summary

@media 2006, Europe’s foremost web design conference, brings together some of the world’s most highly respected web experts to talk about the latest major happenings, best-practice thinking, and cutting-edge techniques in the world of web design.

Date

15th & 16th June 2006

Venue

The Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, Westminster, London

Cost

£395 + VAT per delegate

Speakers

Andy Budd

Andy Clarke

Cameron Moll

Dan Cederholm

Dave Shea

Eric Meyer

Gez Lemon

Ian Lloyd

Jeremy Keith

Jon Hicks

Molly E. Holzschlag

Patrick Griffiths

Patrick H. Lauke

Peter-Paul Koch

Robin Christopherson

Roger Johansson

Simon Wilddson

Stuart Langridge

Tantek Çeddk

Veerle Pieters

Topics

Keynote Presentation

Beyond a Code Audit

Bug Hunting

Bulletproof Web Design

CSS3: Fact or Fiction?

DOM Scripting: The Next Level

The Fine Art of Web Design

Good Design vs. Great Design

Internationalisation: Awakening the Sleeping Giant

Microformats: Evolving The Web

Mobile Web Design

The New Accessibility Guidelines: WCAG 2.0

Pixels, My Ass

Strategic CSS Project Management

Using DOM Scripting to Plug the Holes in CSS

Went to see Dave Spikey last night as part of his 2005 Tour Living the Dream at the Monaco Ballroom, Hindley, Wigan.

full report…

*Update: Official Photography is available on the Manchester International Festival Website, but you can view the photos in my Flicker Set*

Yesterday evening I had the privilege of being part of history and boy was it fantastic!

Gorillaz Demon Days Live, 1st - 5th November 2005, Opera House, Manchester.

In a world first, Gorillaz’ smash hit second album Demon Days will be performed in its entirety across five consecutive nights at the Opera House, Manchester as part of a series of trailblazing events ahead of the inaugural Manchester International Festival.

The album’s guest musicians will descend on Manchester to take on the task of recreating the 3 million selling Demon Days live onstage. The two-dimensional band members will take a back seat as their musical collaborators are brought together to play multi-million selling album Demon Days in its entirety for the first and only time time ever, in five remarkable and unrepeatable performances.

Code Computer Love where appointed as the digital agency for the Manchester International Festival 2007 the world’s first international festival of original, specially commissioned work. I was lucky enough to be involved in the project and was rewarded with a VIP ticket to the sold-out concert. I was mixing among all the celebrity’s… okay so just the “odd one”:/explained/people/johnny-vegas/. It was at the was absolutely fantastic, enough said. If they perform live again I’ll be first the in queue for tickets.

Special guests on the evening included Bootie Brown, De La Soul, Ike Turner, Martina Topley Bird, Neneh Cherry, Shaun Ryder and Roots Manuva. There was also a tribute to Ibrahim Ferrer who appears on the track ‘Latin Simone’, sadly he died in early August 2005.

Further Content

• BBC Events
• Manchester International Festival Web Site
• More event photos in this flickr set by Brad Barrish