With limited time before Wendy House takes a massive three-month summer break, we partied hard post-Eurovision.
It came round so fast. Falling on the same night as Wendy House resulted in us having a Eurovision party slash Wendy House night, which meant that we did at least have the same generic music from two different events.
The best entry of the night was clearly that of Finland’s Krista Siegfrids, though it did surprisingly badly in the voting. The important thing is though that it annoyed the whole of Turkey for daring to suggest that gay people should have equal rights – what more could you possibly want from a song?
Last month, Dr Joely Black presented a history of tarot. Joely was an animated and interesting speaker who is well worth going to see. If you missed it, you can watch it online via Worfolk Lectures.
We also tried out the new Leeds Skeptics t-shirts, as James models in the photos.
Watching Star Trek Into Darkness was also my first experience at Everyman Cinema. I’m sold.
I thought the improvement in the experience over your traditional cinema was well worth the extra money. We dropped by for dinner first and the food was good, the sundaes were even better. Unfortunately the restaurant is separate to the cinema bit so we couldn’t pay our bill and buy our glasses at the same time.
Having a bar and being able to take proper drinks into the cinema is great. Everyone was very friendly too – several of the staff commented in detail on how good the movie was (without giving any spoilers) and the ushers show you to your seat when you arrive in the cinema.
The sofas are probably the best bit – it was far more comfortable than regular seating and allowed me and Elina to cuddle up together like we would if we were watching a film at home. There was also plenty of isle room and a ledge and enough room to put your feet up without reaching the row in front.
It isn’t quite how I first imagined it – a sprawling mess of mix match sofas – they are all the same, fairly small for a sofa and in rows like a traditional cinema, but still far better than your usual experience.
They also had carpeted floors that somehow weren’t sticky and unisex bathrooms in which every cubicle had it’s own sink and hand dryer. It was clean and even had rolls of toilet paper out.
All in all, for the amount I go to the cinema (not often) I think it is well worth paying a few pounds extra for the Everyman experience.
Watching Star Trek Into Darkness was my first experience of 3D cinema.
On the whole, I’m not totally sold on the idea. Comfort-wise, it was fine. It was uncomfortable at first, but that was probably because I was expecting it to be and once I settled into the movie, it was fine.
I found the 3D pretty tacky though. It reminded me of pop up books where there are just certain things that pop up – one character would be further forward than another but everything else still felt rather 2D. I also didn’t like the way they would constantly only have one character in focus at a time.
A few of the effects worked quite well though, I think I probably ducked a few times when things came flying out the screen. It was good, but I can’t say I was amazed.
Obviously the new Star Trek films completely ruin everything with their inaccurate depiction of events (you know, when they really happened in the original films). But that being said, I did rather enjoy the new movie.
I imagine there will be spoilers before the end of this article.
I had no problems accepting Benedict Cumberbatch. I struggle with Doctor Whos in other things, but for some reason he isn’t set in my mind as Sherlock. Or maybe I was so distracted thinking about how he looks almost identical to Keanu Reeves playing Neo in The Matrix. That was annoying.
I was also very close to jumping up and screaming “KHAN!!!!!!!!!!” at the appropriate point.
I wasn’t a huge fan of the British girl, who seemed more like she had been added to bring another pair of tits than a deep and meaningful character and it was a bit shallow at times – Admiral Marcus was a bit too much of a stereotypical evil villain.
Ultimately though, any film with a tribble in is going to warm your heart.
Wyrd Sisters is the sixth novel in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. For me, it was the first novel where the witches really came into their own – Equal Rites was good, but the development in Wyrd Sisters really brings them along.
As good as Granny Weatherwax is, I have to say that my favourite character is Nanny Ogg. I wasn’t overly in love with the Macbeth theme, but who needs to be when you have such awesome characters.
Last month, I length my thousandth dollar on Kiva.
This means I’ve now lent $1,000 to third world entrepreneurs who are working their way out of poverty. But the real genius of Kiva is that although I’ve lent $1,000, I’ve only deposited $240.
This is because Kiva doesn’t do donations – they do micro loans. You lend someone the money, usually quite a small amount, and they pay it back when they can afford to. Once they have done so, you can lend it out to someone else! This means that for every $1 I deposit, I’ve actually lent out $4.16 – and that number will continue to climb!
Best of all, Kiva is currently offering introductory loans for free. All you have to do is sign up and you get $25 to lend out to someone without having to deposit anything.
A lot has changed since I wrote my first line of CSS – which is probably going on a decade ago now. Other things have been there all along, but have sometimes been overlooked or neglected. Below is a collection of CSS that it is easy to forget exists.
Selectors
Obviously you can use . # * etc, but there are actually far more options. As well as chaining them (p, div) and specifying them being inside each other (p div) you can also specify they must be the parent (p > div) or immediately after one another (p+div).
As well as checking attributes (input[type=text]) you can also do contains (input[title~=something]) and starting with (input[type|=something]).
We’re probably all familiar with :visited and :hover states, but there are actually dozens you can use – :focus, :first-letter, :first-line, :first-of-type, :last-of-type, :only-child, :empty, :enabled and “checked just to name a few.
Sizing in rem
It’s good practice to use em sizing to make everything relative – that way if a user scales up the page then everything stays in proportion (though modern browsers tend to handle this well anyway). But isn’t it annoying that it stacks? A 2em value inside a 2em value will give you a font size of 4.
You can solve this by using rem. Specifying 2rem will make it 2 x the root (html) element of the document – so you can make it all relevant to that and not worry about nesting.
Gradients
You can add gradients as backgrounds and even create complex patterns with multiple colours starting and stopping at different points.
background-image: linear-gradient(bottom, #22E7D2 12%, #3EFFFC 56%, #2FAB24 100%);
Shadows
It’s simple to add a drop shadow to an element.
box-shadow: 10px 10px 5px #888;
You can add it to text as well.
text-shadow: 2px 2px #ff0000;
Box sizing
Tired of having to work out what width you want something to be, then taking off the padding and the border? Sometimes maybe you don’t even have the option to do that because you want it to be 100% wide. Box sizing to the rescue. Set the box sizing to border and it will calculate the width factoring these properties in.
box-sizing: border-box;
Border radius
Want some nice rounded corners? Easy.
border-radius: 5px; border-top-left-radius: 3px; border-bottom-right-radius: 10px;
Clipping
You probably shouldn’t clip as it means you’re sending an image to the browser that is too big and then cutting it down. However, the functionality to do it does exist within CSS>
position:absolute; clip:rect(0px,70px,100px,0px);
There is a background-clip property too.
Columns
Want to present your text in a series of columns? Theres a property for that.
column-count: 3; column-gap: 5px;
Last month I attended the Toastmasters D71 (UK & Ireland) spring conference in Torquay. It featured the district finals of the international speaking contest and evaluation contest, as well as a fancy dress disco, banquet and a series of workshops.
Torquay was quite a drive, taking nearly six hours from door to door once you include picking people up. I’ve also decided that it rains more often in Leeds than it does in Bristol – because it only really rains once in Bristol, and just keeps going forever. The weather at Torquay was a bit better, but certainly not the sun I was hoping for.
We turned up on the Thursday night, which I thought was just going to be a social. As such, we turned up an hour after the start having been to a restaurant first, and walked in to find a formal sit down meeting – a little embarrassing, but we were soon settled into our seats.
The workshops were very enjoyable. I took plenty from all of the ones I attended and would have liked to see more of them – after all, I imagine there are plenty of Toastmasters who would be willing to get some stage time to deliver one.
The semi finals were interesting too, but things really got interesting when we got to the finals as the big stage really adds something to the speeches. The winner of the speech contest, William Dempster, won with a speech entitled “Scotch, The Way To A Better Life”. It won because of it’s clear purpose and William’s beautiful delivery – must mostly because it’s just objectively true.
Torquay as a place is a bit tired, especially the conference centre. It felt a little corporate too – the big pubs seemed to be a Wetherspoon, a Harvester and a Beef Eater. We stayed at The Grand, which would have been a nice hotel, but is now dating fast. It reminds me of the Britannia in Manchester – beautiful building and huge rooms, but the endlessly creaking floors and ageing facilities make for a disappointing experience. The pool was small and too shallow to swim in properly, but to their credit the staff were very friendly and helpful.
The catering was a mixed bag. I enjoyed both the Friday night buffet and the Saturday banquette, the standard of food was quite high at both. Elina didn’t have much luck with the buffet though as everything had onions in it (which she can’t eat). We didn’t specify it as a dietary requirement as she can just eat the things that don’t have onion in, but in an unexpected twist, they had put onions in almost everything.
Some things you expect it in, but there was onion mixed in with the salmon and the pasta. We weren’t sure about the quiche, so we asked the woman behind the table, but she said she didn’t know – what is the point of her even standing there at a self service buffet when she doesn’t know what the food is? Surely her only job is to answer questions about the food?
There was a lack of younger people there and I wonder if that lead to a bit of a generation gap. I found some of the procedure a little strange – playing the national anthem, toasting the queen and saying grace before the meal. I didn’t take part in any of these and felt rather uncomfortable having them included. One guest even hit me in a “you insulent youngster” kind of way.
I also find some of the comments made by people speaking to be racist or sexist. Examples including Kwame being interviewed, “that’s not a British name – where are you from? How long have you been here? 20 years – that’s pretty settled then!” Or an area govenor being described as having “hot little hands”, down to little things like people refusing to sit down at dinner before the women sat down (needless to say I just sat down) or a steam of jokes that that reinforced inaccurate gender stereotypes on both sides.
That certainly isn’t a reflection on the majority of the conference though, which on the whole was a very pleasant and professional experience. The conference team did an excellent job of organising everything, all the events ran smoothly and you felt you were in competent hands throughout the event. They can be really proud of the event that they put together.
In summary, I did enjoy the conference and look forward to attending further conferences in the future.
