Chris Worfolk's Blog

We’re pleased to announce a brand new open source project which we are launching, SocietasPro.

SocietasPro is a community group management system which allows you to easily manage your society or community group. It’s currently under development and once finished will feature a members database, mailing list, events system, blog, content management system and more.

The project is open source meaning that anyone can see what we have done and take inspiration from it. We’ll be supporting the project with financial investment, technical resources and developer time. You can keep up with the project’s process here, and you can also follow the project on Twitter, @SocietasPro.

Last month, we announced the Worfolk Lecture 2011, as the second annual event since we established an annual public understanding of science lecture last year.

This year’s talk was delivered by Dr David Jenkins and was entitled “From Rutherford to the LHC”, looking at the last one hundred years of atomic research.

Last week, Sheffield Skeptics invited me down to present a talk on Ray Kurzweil, and his book The Singularity is Near.

I’ve been to the group before to see Richard Wiseman speaking and they’re a really nice group. They’ve now become so popular that they’ve taken over the main bar at their arena and have a great projector setup and sound system.

The talk went quite well from the feedback I gathered, I took out a lot of the more technical site that was originally in the talk when I delivered it to Nottingham Skeptics in the Pub in July, so I think I’ve got it about the right level between factual and not too technical now.

This month’s Wendy House happened to fall on Viv’s birthday, so following some pre-drinking where we finally got to use the shots roulette wheel, we headed to The Old Bar for some birthday cake, before heading into Wendy House.

This month at Leeds Skeptics in the Pub, we welcomed Dr Andrew Rae presenting a talk on “Dealing Reasonably with Irrational Fear.” The talk turned out to be fantastic, probably one of the most interesting we have had this year!

With Si heading down south like a coward, we recently headed over to Little Tokyo for a meal.

Having asked for a knife and fork last time and been provided with kid’s chopsticks, I decided this time it was best to take my own, just in case. Luckily I ordered the steak and that comes with a knife and fork, so problem solved :D.

Hurray :D.

Recently, I had to pull out of the opportunity of a lifetime, to go and work in Palo Alto, in the heart of Silicon Valley, due to health issues.

It was undoubtedly one of the hardest decisions I have ever had to make. Not least because I had already paid for Elina’s flights and as a Yorkshireman, the idea of not being able to obtain a full refund on anything I’m not going to use makes me feel physically nauseated.

So, the war is on. I promised myself I would take Elina to Disneyland (and by that I mean I promised myself a trip to Disneyland, and Elina would be there too) and by god I’m going to get there somehow.

I’ll see you in Anaheim.

Last Thursday, Brian Quinn gave a talk to the Humanist Society of West Yorkshire on superstition. It turned out to be a brilliant talk, both entertaining and informative with Brian pointing out that superstition is actually wider spread than religion even though it’s even more nonsensical.

Last December, tickets for Rihanna’s next tour became available. It was ten months away, but I really wanted to get floor tickets, so I went onto the priority booking site to ensure I got some of the elusive standing tickets.

Ten months I waited.

Then, I was ill :(.

To avoid entirely wasting the £40 ticket I sent George with my camera instead. Still gutted though.