Chris Worfolk's Blog

For my fifth project in the Toastmaster’s Competent Communicator series, I presented a talk entitled “A Humanist Soup Kitchen?”

This referenced my open letter to David Cameron, inviting him to come and see the Humanist Action Group doing its thing, after he had suggested that no such humanist enterprises existed.

Despite the talk creeping up on me somewhat (mainly due to being ill all the previous weekend), I managed to get everything in shape and took home another Best Speaker ribbon. Good times.

Elina made me a pig. I’ve decided to name it Muhammad.

Take a deep breath in, we’ve done it!

Another four more years. Then my mum can retire! Also, there was something else that we were celebrating four more years of, but it slips my memory. Here is a bad recording to remind us why…

If you are trying to run CruiseControl on Gentoo Linux, you may find that you get an error similar to the following.

line 109: /bin/java: No such file or directory

There is due to the Java path. You can find it using the following command.

whereis java

You can then create a symlink to it.

ln -s /usr/bin/java /bin/java

Try running the command again and it should work.

In April last year, the Humanist Action group launched our first set of guides. These were the feed the homeless guide and the organiser’s guide, allowing you to start a Humanist Action Group in your town or city, and get started with a basic programme.

Today, we’re excited to announce that we’re launching our third guide – on running a food drive. This will take you through all the steps required to run your own food drive, similar to our Holiday Food Drive – though it can be at any time of year, and indeed for anyone who needs it.

The guide is available for free to anyone who would like a copy – if that is you, get in touch!

It’s interesting how there is a gradual change between the Gay Quarter where I live, and the Catholic cathedral.

Damn you, Patrick Stewart!

As part of International Men’s Day, an annual event that takes place on 19 November, local Leeds based charity Chris Worfolk Foundation is launching a new Men’s Issues awareness campaign.

The face of the campaign is a new website, MensIssues.org.uk, that aims to raise awareness of some of the issues facing men and boys in the areas of health, education, employment and family.

“This campaign follows on from our long history of campaigning for equality,” said trustee Chris Worfolk. “We have previously been involved in campaigning for women’s rights, and are currently piloting a transgender project, so it was only natural that we would want to get involved with all sides of gender representation.”

The campaign also sees the launch of the MILE Network – Men’s Issues in Learning and Education – providing a support network for those representing men’s issues in an academic context.

“We want to ensure men’s issues are not forgotten by equality and diversity committees,” said trustee Dr Gijsbert Stoet. Dr Stoet sits on the Equality & Diversity Committee at the University of Leeds.

If you’re using YAML in Ruby and have it installed via RVM, you might get a notice similar to the following.

It seems your ruby installation is missing psych (for YAML output).
To eliminate this warning, please install libyaml and reinstall your ruby.

You can solve this using the following commands.

rvm pkg install libyaml
rvm reinstall 1.9.3

You may (or even need) to replace 1.9.3 with your exact version number.

I’m very pleased to announce the launch of the Humanist Action Group’s 3rd annual Holiday Food Drive for local homeless shelters!

For the past few years, we have staged a food drive to bring some holiday cheer to those less fortunate. You can read all about last year’s event here and 2010’s event here. This year will be no exception, and we want to make it bigger and better than ever!

We need…

• Food (that lasts)
• Toiletries
• Warm clothing, gloves, blankets, etc

You can also donate financially, allowing us to buy in bulk, and indeed donate your time too to help us collect more donations and reach more people. If you want to get involved – get in touch!

We also have a Facebook event up and running, and you can find out more on the website, including how to donate!