Archive for April, 2011

A few weeks ago we said goodbye to our product designer Josh as he moved on to metaphorically bigger and better things (that means his new company isn’t actually better, I’m just being poetic).

We were doing a half Otley Run or so was the plan but it turned out to be a half Otley Run in more ways than one – half of us actually bothered dropping by each pub, the other half simply drove straight from the first pub, all the way to town. Still it was nice to get round a few of the old haunts.

The evening really brought home how much Josh will be missed in the office. Not for the work he does, because he handed that all over to Jason two months ago and nobody really knows what he has been doing since then, but because he was a true bastion for Pub Club, always up for a pint and a hunters chicken baguette. While myself, Jason and Disco will attempt to carry on in his absence I rather fear Curry Club will never be the same again and West End House Wednesdays will at best be a romantic man-date only featuring myself and Jason.

In any case, I wish him the best of luck at his new job at MadeByPi.

Fonze having missed most of his birthday meal, we headed down to The Elbow Room to shoot some pool.

What looked like a slightly disappointingly stocked bar when we first approached, turned out to actually offer a great selection and we were soon enjoying some Ketel One vodka. I’m not a fan of the American style pool tables as their ridiculous size pockets mean that it’s very demasculating every time you don’t pot anything and the white goes in on almost every shot.

However we struggled on none the less and having taken the first game I suggested Fonze and Elina have a game, after all we had the table for another forty minutes so that was plenty of time for them to play and still get plenty of other games in.

Turns out I was quite wrong about that ;). A fun night none the less though.

With the anniversary of Arthur Fonzarelli having arrived once again, I organised a birthday meal at Piccolino. As it happened Fonze turned up late to his own birthday shin dig so we ended up eating the main course without him, but never the less we didn’t let his tardiness spoil our fun.

The restaurant was a reasonably up market place and this was evident from the pitiful amount of change I received back from my £10 note having ordered myself and Elina a drink.

The staff were friendly though it was sometimes a little hard to get their attention. Some of them didn’t seem to speak very good English which I always find a good sign in restaurants as it can often be because they’re actually from the country that the restaurant’s food style is based on, though of course equally it could be a placebo effect.

The food was nice, the portions were small but I didn’t come away from the meal still feeling hungry so no concerns there. I had the crispy duck for main which wasn’t actually that crispy but the sauce was excellent and duck is a fantastic meat in general. Piccolino’s real strength seems to be in it’s desserts however.

I enjoyed the meal, but given the above average bill which didn’t translate into above average food, I think I would pick one of the multitude of great restaurants in the city centre rather than heading back there any time soon.

On April 3rd, Humanist Community returned due to popular demand. Back in February we had announced that the pilot project was coming to an end and while we had enjoyed our time, we did not intend to continue the project. But after the number of people who announced that they were deeply disappointed in this we decided to extend it’s life to see it’s continued development over the coming months.

At the April meeting, much of the discussion focused around an article featured in The Guardian, written by Deborah Orr claiming that the Census Campaign (the campaign to get those with no religion to actually tick no religion rather than CoE) was militant secularism in action. Surprisingly enough, most of the attendees didn’t agree.

A few weeks ago Oli was in Leeds so we decided to hit the town for a meal. Having meaning to get myself over to Cafe Guru for quite a while I suggested it would be a great lace to grab some dinner.

We entered the restaurant just after 7pm, which being a Saturday night I expected them to be quite busy – especially as last time I had tried to get a table on a Thursday evening and had been turned down. However, we walked in to find we had the entire restaurant to ourselves.

It certainly wasn’t what I expected. In my mind I had somehow conjured up a small cosy traditional Indian restaurant, based on what I had seen on their website and that it was based at Brewery Wharf. What we actually found was a modern, possibly even futuristic style restaurant, almost entire open plan and capable of seating over a hundred people. It didn’t fit with the Indian food.

The food itself was good, though it isn’t the best Indian I’ve ever had. The spicy starter I had was rather more spicy than I had anticipated which would have been fine but unfortunately they weren’t particularly fast bringing us our drinks, which at this point I was still waiting on despite the only other people in the restaurant by this point being one other couple who had only just arrived.

The wine was horrible. And by that I mean, even worse than the high levels of tolerance you usually extend to house wine.

In the end, the restaurant simply lacked the atmosphere and character I was hoping for. The staff were friendly and the food was nice, and severed promptly (though again, you would expect so given we were the only people in there), but there was a real sense of charm distinctly lacking from the place. At least we got mints with the bill though 😉 .

This evening has been rubbish. I got home, exhausted and haven’t really done anything. I’ve done a bit more work on some grant applications, answered some emails, done some more planning. But by 8:30 I was already giving up on being productive and went for a power nap.

I’m now fueling up on chocolate and Red Bull so I can get something done, but I wonder if there is just a better way.

For example, I always really enjoyed working nights at McDonald’s. There was actually something really satisfying about working twelve hours until 4am, then (after a quick picnic in the Tesco car park) heading home and just going to bed, knowing that you didn’t have to be up again at some irritatingly, and quite frankly painful, hour in the morning.

Of course, that isn’t really achievable in the real world because of the whole 9-5 office thing, even with the flexitime we have at work it still doesn’t grant me that kind of flexibility. But how about a whole different approach. What if we should shifted our day pattern to accommodate this?

So, let’s say that I sleep seven hours a night. I’m at work from approximately eight until six including travel time, so that takes up ten hours of my day. That gives me seven hours per day of free time. Instead of getting up at eight and going to work, I could get up at one in the morning, spend the morning doing productive stuff while I’m still in the mood for it, go to work at eight, which doesn’t matter how tired I am because it’s work so it’s inherently self-motivating (because it’s not voluntary so you don’t have to choose to do it, you just do it), come home at six and go to bed.

Of course there would be lots of problems with this strategy, notably that because society is geared to holding evening events, half the time I would need to be up when my new schedule says I should be asleep. It also means being awake in the middle of the night when it will be dark but then during winter it’s dark in an evening anyway.

The former I think it really an insurmountable problem in the long term, though I do think it would be fun to try for a fortnight. If nothing else, it would probably make an interesting YouTube documentary.

A few weeks ago, myself and our office manager Rebecca were engaged in a casual conversation about life, the universe and everything. We ended up on the topic of universal justice and how the only way we could really ensure that was to have some kind of vigilante system, like Batman.

She agreed, so I asked if we were to get her a Batman costume, whether she would wear it to work. She launched and said she would, if it were a Batgirl outfit.

So half an hour later I arrived in the Snooty Office (that’s the other side of the building where the business development team sit who are far too above coming to the pub for lunch) with a tin full of money – it’s amazing how the office really come together in donating to a good cause.

At the end of March, we headed over to The Original Oak for Simon G’s leaving do.

Unfortunately, what we hadn’t factored in was the amount of end of term Otley Run’s which would be in there. Still, as time went on they moved on to later pubs and actually gave us chance to get somewhere near the bar.

It was disappointing to see Simon go as he had really come out of his shell since handing in his resignation and was actually a treasurer trove of interesting stories – not nearly as entertaining as those told by Disco Dave but then you get the sense that when Simon was telling a story, it was actually true (not that I’m saying Dave didn’t have a gunfight with a drug dealer in Nottingham…).

Having miserably failed to get an iPad 2 on launch date, I had back ordered one and quoted a time of 2-3 weeks. I was thus very pleased when I took a phone call the next Wednesday telling me that my iPad 2 was now really to collect.

First impressions have been great – it’s not the lightest device in the world but it is so amazingly thin (at 8.8mm, it’s .5mm thinner than my iPhone 4 – the world’s thinnest smartphone!) and the battery life is excellent. The screen doesn’t have smudge when you’re using it, but you can’t tell when it’s turned on so the display is excellent.

It’s fast – things that I have to weight to load on my iPhone 4 come up almost instantly and the graphics power for something so thin is bordering on witchcraft.

I’ve fallen in love with Garage Band. I can’t play any music instruments, despite trying to play the guitar on and off for five years (mostly off to be honest, I have no commitment to it, on purpose, but that’s a whole different story) so having the “smart guitar” which has the chords pre-defined into it is amazing.

Overall though, I see it more as a practical device than a toy. Being able to check my emails in bed, on a reasonable sized screen is fantastic and it means I can have access to a computer without having to lug my laptop to the pub.

I recently attended a workshop organised by the Community Development Foundation along with Leeds VA-L and funded by Leeds City Council (this was emphasised because of how rare that is 😀 ).

The workshops were useful and interesting though what really struck me is that very little of it was new information – and yet most of us all needed to hear it.

We all know for example that we should have up to date accounts ready, a business plan, a written fund raising strategy, we should read the guidance notes, read the entire application form before starting, the list goes on. We all know all of this. Yet, if you ask people about it, and they’re honest, a lot of us don’t always do this.

Why? Because it’s really hard, and really unproductive. We have a lot of this in place now but every time I spend any time of this kind of stuff it always annoys me. Why? Because I want to be out there doing stuff. Writing grant applications, preparing annual reports, newsletters, etc isn’t an end, it’s merely a means to do the actual good work that as charities we all want to do.

So while it is an amateur mistake to not read though all the eligibility requirements or start filling out a form before they have read through everything, I do at least understand why people do this.

Along this topic, one tip I have picked up which turns out to be a time saver as well, is to be concise. All the experts say a word limit is a limit, not a suggestion. If you can answer a question in a few sentences, keep it short! Just say “we’re going to organise cricket games for underprivileged kids for ten weeks” rather than dressing it up in several paragraphs. Get straight to the point and say concisely what you’re going to do. It’s quicker, and it improves your chances of success.