Archive for the ‘News’ Category

It’s been ten months since the last edition of the guide was published, but the drought is over. This edition features 14 brand new reviews and is available now in the Amazon Kindle store.

Added

• Almost Famous
• Bem Brasil
• Bird & Beast
• Buca di Pizza
• Bulgogi Grill
• Bundobust
• Byron
• Cabana
• Griffin Hotel
• Kerala
• Meat Liquor
• Teppan 260
• Tharavadu
• The Man Behind The Curtain

About a decade ago Worfolk Online was running a series of web portals that brought a lot of lovely content together from across the web and put it in one place so that we didn’t have to go through that tedious process of typing in the first few letters of URLs before auto-complete finishes it for us.

One of which was Frinks. Then, years later, it closed down.

Since then many people have asked if and when it would return. I mean, they didn’t exactly state it per se. However I could see it in their eyes, hear it in the intonation of their voice, and feel it in their embrace.

Well never fear, because Frinks has indeed returned. It is mostly syndicating large pictures of my face at the moment, making it largely only of interest to Elina, but I hope to expand the content in time.

Yes, it’s official!

If you are in the City & Hunslet ward of Leeds you can vote for me for Leeds City Council. I’m standing as a candidate for the Official Monster Raving Loony Party.

You can find my personal manifesto here.

Someone once told me that polls of people’s favourite authors of all time consistently came up with only one living author. I don’t know if that is actually true or not, because I can’t find a source. Sadly however, even if it was, it no longer is now.

It was only last Wednesday when I sat in a Toastmasters meeting and listened to a speech about Spock. Little did we know that less than 48 hours later his illness would take a turn for the worse.

It only seems fitting to remember him the way I am sure he would want to be remembered…

We’re pleased to announce the launch of the Humanist Action Group 2014 Holiday Food Drive for local homeless shelters in Leeds. Last year we managed to collect over £3,000 worth of donations and this year will mark our fifth anniversary.

We’re looking for donations of food, toiletries and clothing, as well as time and money to run the operation and buy more stuff. Learn more on the Humanist Action Group website or join us on Facebook.

We are making some exciting changes at Anxiety Leeds. Most notably our meetings are going to be moving to fortnightly. From November, we will be meeting on the 2nd and 4th Monday of each month. We are also moving venue. Leeds General Infirmary have kindly agreed to host us, so we will be moving to B36 in the Clarendon Wing.

The group has been doing really well recently with around a dozen people attending each session. With our new schedule we hope this will allow people to be even more engaged with the group.

One of the frustrating things I have found as a beginner guitarist is that it is easy to find out the chords used in a song, but the strumming pattern is rarely discussed.

Worse, if anyone does dare ask about it, they are usually shot down but a swell of unhelpful comments suggesting that they should just “listen to the song and work it out”. This is not a particularly satisfying answer as why would you not assume the same is true for the chords? Surely someone is looking for a tab precisely because they do not know how to play the song.

Video tutorials are often a lot more helpful but do not translate into something that is easy to find. As a consequence, I have started a guitar strumming patterns database. It is very small at the moment but will hopefully grow over time.

I’m pleased to announce that Elina and I are now engaged. We have not made any plans yet. I am very pleased obviously, but to be honest, I don’t really see it as a big deal. I already knew I loved Elina, and I knew that she loved me. The engagement is really just a way to lock that in in case I get some kind of horrible disease or something.

I proposed after a moonlit serenade of The Church’s “Under The Milky Way Tonight”. I have a video of it, though I am not planning to put it online.

As you probably know, it’s tradition that when a Finnish woman gets married, her friends shower her with thousands of euros of gifts per person. I know that none of you will want to be culturally insensitive…

I, like many people, was saddened to hear about the apparent suicide of Robin Williams. Loved by many for his work as an actor in Aladdin, Jumanji, Dead Poets Society, Good Morning Vietnam, Patch Adams, Flubber and above all here in the UK – Mrs. Doubtfire. This is to list just a few of the films he has starred in and to say nothing of his stand-up career.

Williams death has, at least briefly, shed a light on mental health issues in the wider public consciousness. I think this is a good thing. The more light we can bring to it, the better.

However, this only has value if we can capitalise on this attention and use it to make a positive difference for society. Which is why I am going to shamelessly use this opportunity to ask you to donate to Anxiety Leeds. You only get these opportunities every so often, and my pride is definitely less important than working to prevent more people who are struggling with mental health issues trying to take their own life.

At Anxiety Leeds we run a monthly peer-support group. To be most effective, we need to move to fortnightly. We have the volunteers ready, but currently we lack the funds to do this. Can you help us?