Grey cat

I used to live on a terrace that was frequently visited by a grey cat. We didn't think it belonged to anyone, as it was oddly skinny and hung around even in the rain.

As it turned out, the cat belonged to someone a couple of streets away, who put up a message on our terrace's community noticeboard asking people to stop feeding him so he would come home. This resulted in a snarky response from one of the residents who was close to calling the RSPCA about the cat, as it didn't seem to have an owner.

I don't know whether my neighbour continued feeding grey cat, but he visited lots more and seemed to enjoy posing for me.

Grey cat rolling around

See more photos of cats (and things that aren't cats) at my Flickr page.

Dublin

Hello!

I went to Dublin a couple of years ago to visit my cousin, who was studying for a PhD there.




Trinity College Library



Lion door

See the full Dublin album on Flickr.

356 photo project

Hello!

After imploring my poor bashed-up phone to work properly for a few weeks, I finally gave in and bought a new one. I've moved away from Windows now and got an Android phone (partly because of Pokémon Go, partly because there are apps that I want to use that aren't available for Windows).

Now that I've got my new phone, I can post to Instagram again. My last phone would just crash when I hit the button to throw my image at the internet, which scuppered my plan to start a 365 on my birthday last month.

My definition of a 365 is taking a photo every day for the next year. The photo will document something from that day. I'll then post it on Instagram with a bit about what happened that day.

You can check out my 365 project at my Instagram page.

Here's a photo of a sleepy cat that didn't make it to Instagram (thanks old phone):

Film photos

Hello!

I have an old film camera that belonged to my dad. It's a Yashica that was purchased some time in the late 1980s. I've dabbled in film over the years, but ultimately always gone back to my SLR.

I finally got a roll of film developed and couldn't remember what was on it. It turned out that the photos were from 2013 and 2014. Quite a lot of them were of the Gromit sculptures that were in Bristol in 2013.





Golden Gromit by Julie Vernon

I particularly liked this one because it was shiny and I'm secretly a magpie!

Look at the full set of film photos on Flickr.

More recently we had sculptures of Shaun the Sheep around the city. The sculptures weren't just for fun though; they were auctioned off for the Wallace & Gromit's Children's Charity that raises money for sick children in the UK.

Back to film: at the moment I've got a roll of black and white film in my camera, but I prefer using black and white in the winter when there are fewer pretty colours around. I might try taking some photos of the balloon fiesta with the film camera this year, as I now have piles of them in colour from my SLR. The perks of living high up with a great view of the skyline!

Small rabbits

Hello!

It's time for a story.

A friend of mine (who designs the odd t-shirt or so, take a look at Lilsquiggle Tees on Facebook if you like t-shirts) owned two boy rabbits. The rabbits were called Twiglet and Oreo and they got on very well. VERY well.

It then transpired that Twiglet was a lady rabbit, and possibly had the beginnings of smaller rabbits ensconced inside her. Soon enough, Twiglet and Oreo became the proud parents of many tiny rabbits.

Naturally, we decided to take lots of photos of the kittens (yup, that is what baby rabbits are called). Here's a few from the set:






See the full set of kitten bunnies on Flickr.

Jacobs Wells Community Hub website

Hello!

I've been working on a volunteer basis with a local community group to help them set up a website. The Jacobs Wells Community Hub (JWCH) is aiming to get a community space in the Cliftonwood and Hotwells area of Bristol. They're also holding events for local people and generally trying to improve things in the area.

They already had a Facebook page, which meant they could keep people up to date and share events quite easily, but they wanted a website, partly to meet accessibility needs. Some people in the community aren't Facebook users, while the small text and extra clutter around the Facebook page isn't helpful for people with poor eyesight.

The Jacobs Wells Community Hub website

As they wanted to update the website themselves with minutes from meetings and events, I decided to go with Wordpress. From their point of view it would be simple to use, while the wealth of support and plugins would be really ace for me as a developer!

In my previous job at Bristol SU I set up a website for the city's Love Where You Live campaign, also using Wordpress. I used the Pictorico theme because it was very visual and the square boxy layout fit was in line previous Bristol SU projects.I showed this to JWCH and they liked the look of it, so we decided to use the same theme for their site.

The Love Where You Live Bristol website

I did a bit of customisation as the original theme has some slidy effects that aren't the most user-friendly thing in the world. They also wanted the group's main aim to be quite prominent, so I had to make room for it in the header.

Most of the tweaks I made were CSS based, but I had to fiddle about with some of the PHP as well. I've never learnt PHP and when I've used it before it's been with someone holding my hand, so I was little scared that I might break everything. The syntax isn't too awful when you're just dropping the odd statement into some HTML, so I managed to get it to do what I wanted.

I've got a few little changes left to make to the site but it's pretty much complete now. Take a look at the Jacobs Wells Community Hub site and let me know what you think!

It's been a nice change working on this. My day job no longer involves any coding at all, so I'm going to have to work on stuff in my own time so I don't get rusty. Next project will be rehauling this website. It doesn't look anything like what I want it to look like and the colours aren't very user-friendly. So stay tuned for that!

Digimakers

Hello,

I've just uploaded another batch of Digimakers photos to Flickr. Digimakers is a series of workshops in Bristol to teach young people about cool things they can make and do with technology.

I took these photos for my master's project about outreach in Computer Science. You can read a bit more about Digimakers in my previous blog post about it.

Here's a couple of photo highlights:


Etch-a-sketch


Raspberry Pi programming with Sonic Pi

Take a look at the full set of Digimakers photos on Flickr.

Cats and food

Hello,

A long overdue update from me...tackling the photo backlog again.

Last year I volunteered for BBC Radio 4 and photographed an event that was part of Bristol Food Connections. There were lots of happy people trying out tasty food in the beautiful spring weather:



You can look at the full set of photos from Slow Food on Flickr.

I also met a couple of beautiful cats that day.

One was relaxing in the sun:



The other was very intrigued by something but I couldn't see what it was looking at:

Life update

Hello!

Here is a Shaun sculpture, which is part of the Shaun in the City Bristol trail:

 

I'll update with more words soon, but here is an overview of what I've been up to over the last couple of months:

• Started a new job at Bristol City Council - mainly writing and editing content. I now know more about bins and parking than I have ever wanted or needed to know.
• Did jury service, which involved lots of waiting around and reading, although I did get to sit on two cases.
• Found lots of Shauns (the one above is just one of 70 in Bristol).
• Began working on a local community website and learning more Wordpress (it's coming soon, hopefully will make it live this afternoon).

Residents' parking: Clifton traders march in protest

Traders from Clifton Village marched to City Hall in protest of the council’s proposed residents’ parking scheme, which they believe will lead to the “death” of the village.

Protestors are worried that the introduction of parking meters and time limits on parking will result in fewer people visiting the village, leading to Clifton losing its character. Alison Bracey from business group BID Clifton Village, who organised the protest, said: “We don’t feel residents’ parking is going to benefit the businesses.

“There’s a lot of businesses in the village that have a high number of employees. There’s actually no way that those staff can get to work. Some of those businesses have around 90 employees. If they can’t get their staff to work, then they can’t operate and that’s actually really scary.”

Tony Golledge, owner of The Mall Newsagents, echoed these concerns:

Ferguson responds

Mayor George Ferguson has been responding to queries about the scheme on Twitter:

Good question @missionverdana It's fear of change. General experience is that residents parking schemes improve place & increase turnover.

— George Ferguson (@GeorgeFergusonx) April 3, 2014

Although campaigners are worried that parking will be limited to an hour, Ferguson has replied saying that there will be three and five hour parking bays available a short walk from businesses:

We have @CSwinscoeHair @Paulnuk there is 3 hours within 3 minutes walk. Campaigners fail to mention this for reason best known to themselves

— George Ferguson (@GeorgeFergusonx) April 4, 2014

Proposal maps released by the council show different restrictions on each road, with some roads only catering for residents or traders with permits.

However, people on the streets of Clifton are unhappy about the proposed changes:



The new parking measures will be introduced in Clifton Village on Thursday 1 May. A review of the scheme will take place six months after it is launched, which will give the council the opportunity to change the scheme to make sure it still meets the needs of the community.

The following area will be covered by the Clifton Village residents’ parking scheme:



It is clear that traders in Clifton Village are unhappy about the introduction of a residents’ parking scheme, but it remains to be seen whether the changes will actually impact the area negatively.

Objections to the proposals can be made in writing or sent to the council via email until Friday 11 April. Please quote reference CAE/NMT/P/888 and include your name and address.

Related links:

Bristol City Council: Residents’ parking schemes (RPS): how new schemes work for residents

Bristol City Council: Residents’ parking schemes (RPS): how new schemes work for businesses

Story by Rajitha Ratnam

Clifton Residents' Parking

Hello!

I'm catching up with my backlog again. Last year there were a number of protests around the Residents' Parking Scheme proposed for Clifton Village in Bristol. I went along to one and covered it for my Multimedia Journalism coursework.


 

Local business owners and residents believed that the changes would be the death of Clifton Village's character and vibrancy as people would no longer be able to get to the area easily without being able to park.



As part of the assignment I also made a video package:



I've just spent the day on a stall for the University of Bristol's open day so my brain is a bit melty and not wanting to write words, so I've uploaded the full article I wrote about the parking protests back in 2014 instead. Enjoy!

Bristol Zoo

Hello!

It's been a while since my last post as I've had some very busy weekends, including going to my first multiday LAN! (A++ would go again.)

My gloriously cheap student Adobe CC subscription ran out last month so I've bitten the bullet and got a Photographer CC subscription (which comes with Lighroom and Photoshop) so I can continue editing photos. I was tempted to go for the full CC suite but my free time is limited and it was expensiiiiive.

I've got a tiny batch of photos to show you this time, from another trip to Bristol Zoo Gardens. There were baby meerkats but I couldn't get any good photos since they were basically being sat on by larger meerkats. Never mind, have a golden lion tamarin instead:



Check out the full set on Flickr or look at my photostream for photos of other things (both zoo and non-zoo related).