Monthly archives: July 2007

Manchester blog awards

This entry was posted in blogging Manchester Spinneyhead on by

It’s that time again. Nominations are open for this year’s Manchester Blog Awards. I’m not sure I have anything that fits neatly into any of the categories (political blog, personal blog, arts and culture blog, best new blog), though I think I’ll nominate How to Save the World for Free as a political blog and Spinneyhead in the personal and arts and culture categories.

Hard Rain

This entry was posted in eco-building Floods Water on by

Greenhouse gasses are causing shifts in rainfall patterns, leading to summers like this one (so far the wettest since records began). Just to make things more complicated, this heavier precipitation is going to alternate with hot summers like last year, but in entirely unpredictable ways.

Aside from focussing on the root cause of all of this I think it’s time to do some better planning around water use. Perhaps every new build should have mandatory rainwater storage for grey use (toilets etc.) All of those tanks would provide a buffer during heavy rain fall that would lessen run off and thus flooding and save water in dry spells. Whilst we’re about it, how about fines for the fools who concrete over their gardens and/or rewards for anyone who rips the paving up and plants a lawn.

Neither of these measures woudl stop flooding, particularly with water volume such as that seen in the last week, but they could soak up overflow in lesser events, and cut the burden on reservoirs.

Technorati tag:

Catching up on 100 Things

This entry was posted in 100 Things List on by

I’ve just been updating the 100 Things to do list and realised that I could cross a few off.

Producing Memory means that I’ve made a film. I’m doing pre-production (ie writing a script, mostly) on the next Spinneyhead production and looking for actors and others to help out.

I recently crossed the 100 Gbyte threshold of MP3s (though I’m nowhere near owning a thousand albums, that would require far more disk space).

I was an extra for a TV programme earlier this month, and I’ll be looking out for more opportunities to do it again.

I’ve also crossed off Go Guerilla Gardening, which I have done, even if the results haven’t been very successful.

Some of the Things in the hundreds have been drafted in to fill gaps in the list, for the sake of neatness. No new Things have been added, even though I am now below 100 total. However, I am open to suggestions, and offers of help with the remaining ones (particularly from cheerleaders) will be gratefully accepted.

Please subscribe to my Feedburner RSS feed

This entry was posted in RSS Spinneyhead on by

If you read Spinneyhead through RSS (and I know there’s at least one of you who does) could you make sure you’re subscribed through the Feedburner version of the RSS feed. I’m just trying to de-clutter stuff a little, and if you’re all subscribed through the one place it’ll help me know how many of you there are.

Citadel Foundation paints

This entry was posted in Paint on by

Games Workshop claims their new Foundation paints will change the way you paint because of the way they’ll go on as solid colours with just one coat. I may have the robot base for my propellerpunk giant robot project, so I may just buy a few of these paints for the project, see if they’re as good as claimed.

Black Gobbo, the Games Workshop e-zine, has articles on painting vehicles with Foundation paints and painting terrain with Foundation paints.

Technorati tag: