Taking advantage of the fine weather, today I photographed the buildings and exteriors of my town of Stoke-upon-Trent (not to be confused with the wider city of Stoke-on-Trent). Stoke old town is the ancient and original root of the city, dating back to the time of the Mercians when the church was founded on the banks of the River Trent by monks from Lindisfarne.
My 126 photo-Flickr set, all Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike, all 1800px on the longest side. There’s a special focus on documenting the independent shops. The Stoke Minster churchyard is excluded from my survey, since that really needs its own Flickr set. It’s all within about a half mile of the town centre, so I don’t stray down towards the river / Boothen / Victoria Ground, or over to the canal and the intercity train station.
The Birmingham Repertory Theatre is asking people in the West Midlands for their photographs of a favourite “Secret Garden”, ideally in the… “weirdest and wackiest places … the more unusual the better”. You could potentially win four free tickets for you and your friends or family, to see the Rep’s new Christmas stage production of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden (1910). Photos may also be shown on the Rep’s website. Deadline: 29th October 2010. Email your pictures, and some brief comments on your chosen site, to: competitions@birmingham-rep.co.uk
Pictures: my photos of David Papadopoulos‘s reclaimed Utopia garden made at re:location in Smethwick.
2nd September 2010
Artist(s)
During a recent investigation into the irregular giving of a cash arts grant to one of their own trustees, it’s alleged that the Arts Council…
“… has failed to keep a proper register of interests of its trustees.”
“The council appears to have failed in its duty to maintain a proper and publicly-accessible register.”
1st September 2010
Entertainment
Why is Amazon’s “Recommendations For You” (top bar on the front page) so dumb? Even after ‘training’ it with hundreds of feedbacks. Has no-one devised a ‘taste-engine’ that’s at least intelligent enough to tell the difference between different periods of Bowie’s career? Just because I own Diamond Dogs doesn’t mean I want Bowie albums from his Laughing Gnome or Tin Machine periods. Just because I like Lovecraft in literary form, that doesn’t mean I want every C-grade horror DVD out there. Liking early Brian Eno doesn’t mean I want to see prog-rock albums from Tangerine Dream. And why can’t I tell Amazon in one click that, although I love The Pet Shop Boys, I already own everything worth having that they’ve ever issued? Of course, ‘owned’ items can be turned off completely, but what I want is for Amazon to use them to make its Recommendations intelligently.
1st September 2010
Cool sites
Greplin is a personal-data search-engine. Nice idea, as long as there’s no marketing data-aggregation cream-off lurking behind the scenes. Plug in your Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, your Google stashes, etc., and then Greplin crawls them all — and presents you with a Google-like search box for finding stuff inside them.
I like the design of the landing page, too. Not for any particular splashy quality, but because the colour is so perfectly pitched to convey: “we’re solid and boring, please trust us with all your personal data”, yet the font adds a nice dash of quirk to its Courier-style blandness.
1st September 2010
Stoke-on-Trent
The London twiteratti’s obligatory dig at the city of Stoke-on-Trent, in the form of a map in the latest Monocle magazine…
The upmarket equivalent of the daily drip-drip of snide little Twitter comments, that appear in Twitter/RSS feeds for keyword ‘Stoke’, from twits going through the city on the train.
[ Hat-tip: Chris Unitt ]
New website and blog for a new group show (Birmingham, 3rd-18th Sept 2010) of the work of eight emerging photographers from the West Midlands.
28th August 2010
Birmingham, Reading
Dates announced for the Midlands’ science fiction convention, which is no longer in its traditional home of Birmingham (although still organised by the Birmingham SF Group). Novacon 40 happens 12th-14th November 2010, in Nottingham.
[ Hat-tip: Steve Green ]
27th August 2010
My photos
Another fun quickie Lovecraftian faux ‘antique’ postcard.
Thanks for the Creative Commons components to: Stuart McKenna (background), daniele_sartori (the jetty), manojmp (the crate), kevcole (the ship), and nsalt (the bud/stalk/tentacle).
26th August 2010
Photographers
Amazingly-clear colour photographs of Russia, before the horrors of socialism. I’d seen the site before, but the Boston article reminded me I hadn’t linked it here. There are many more photographs by Prokudin-Gorskii at the Library of Congress website, and the LoC don’t stint on the file-sizes or formats — big 25Mb TIF files are available.
Jewish school at Samarkand.
The New Optimists : Scientists View Tomorrow’s World & What it Means to Us.
The book is to be launched at the British Science Festival 2010 in Birmingham, and is published by Linus Publishing of Birmingham. There’s a website/blog for the book.
Back in 2007 the annual Edge Question asked a similar question of the world’s best minds: “What are you optimistic about? And why?” My edited highlights of the 100,000 words can be read here.
24th August 2010
Birmingham, Gaming
The Lord of the Rings Online will be genuinely free-to-play from 10th September 2010 — in America, the UK, and Europe. “No subscription or credit card required”. The West Midlands connections are two-fold: Codemasters is a local company, exploiting a fantasy world created by a Birmingham man.
I’ll certainly be taking a peek, come September, if only as a virtual tourist. The developers have had three years to knock off the rough edges that are inevitable with any massive multiplayer game, and the game has gathered good reviews and a strong community.
23rd August 2010
D'log, Reading
I’ve published a new book on H.P. Lovecraft, more specifically on his Antarctica novella At the Mountains of Madness…
18,000 words. Contents listing.
Oh yes, that’ll sort out the city budget deficits. Philadelphia is extorting business taxes from the city’s bloggers…
“For the past three years, Marilyn Bess has operated MS Philly Organic, a small, low-traffic blog that features occasional posts about green living, out of her Manayunk home. Between her blog and infrequent contributions to ehow.com, over the last few years she says she’s made about $50. To Bess, her website is a hobby. To the city of Philadelphia, it’s a potential moneymaker, and the city wants its cut. In May, the city sent Bess a letter demanding that she pay $300, the price of a business privilege license. [...] Even though small-time bloggers aren’t exactly raking in the dough, the city requires [business] privilege licenses for any business engaged in any “activity for profit”.
An intelligent city authority would actually pay local bloggers to write about the city, or support them with targeted advertising.
Of course, we potentially have a similar ridiculous state of affairs looming in the UK — expect people to get their dole cut because they ‘earn’ (if only £10 a year) from their blog or from a few Amazon affiliate links on their website. They’ll be easy pickings for the box-tickers who have been employed to try to track down the real benefit cheats.
Creative Stoke is rolling again after the summer break. Just posted:— 50 new arts and creative industries opportunities, calls, and jobs in the north of the West Midlands. Plus a sprinkling of wider opportunities and competitions, and the most important Birmingham items. Many have very time-sensitive deadlines, so I suggest reading the new update while it’s fresh.
22nd August 2010
Stoke-on-Trent
SHOP, Stoke-on-Trent, Aug 2010. Spode site in background/reflection.
20th August 2010
My photos, Reading
H.P. Lovecraft was born on 20th August 1890, becoming one of the great writers of the 20th century. He’s still widely read for pleasure, more than seventy years after his death. Although a ‘pulp fiction’ writer, his collected works are now between the covers of publishers such as Penguin Classics and the Library of America. At 2010 his fiction has deeply influenced three generations of writers, and looks set to start influencing a fourth. His works have also influenced countless movie-makers, games designers, and artists.
My photomontage tribute-portrait of H.P. Lovecraft. Thanks for the Creative Commons elements to Tracey Olson and the Powerhouse Museum. Only the head/face is actually Lovecraft..
<em>Space Patrol</em> updated