Bookbinding progress

May 24, 2010

I haven’t had much time to spend playing with all the new bookbinding-related toys I got for my birthday, but I have managed to get a couple of new booklets made. Here’s a look at how I’m progressing. I really do need to get on to a one-day course soon to make sure I’m not […]

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The Big Tasting 2010

April 6, 2010

Via new Twitter friend Robert McIntosh, Kevin and I find ourselves taking part in The Big Tasting 2010, an online/live tasting event from Waitrose and Vini Portugal (on Twitter as @VPwine). The big day itself is Monday 12th April, with live streaming of the tasting from Lords Cricket Ground at 7pm. Oz Clarke will be […]

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ALD10: Maggie Philbin

March 24, 2010

Photo by Benjamin Ellis If you were a teenaged geek in the 80s, you were probably glued to the TV set every week for Tomorrow’s World. It was certainly unmissable viewing in our household. The idea that we might perhaps catch a glimpse of the future was tantalising, but not as tantalising as the fact […]

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Eyjafjallajokull

March 22, 2010

A couple of days ago a volcano called Eyjafjallajokull in Iceland erupted in a classic ‘curtain of fire’. The photos and video of the event are pretty, as well as pretty impressive. There are some fab photos on Flickr too, and more footage on the BBC. It’s times like this I really wish I was […]

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Second attempt

March 20, 2010

Inspired by the How To Bind A Book video (sadly not embeddable) and the books I bought, I had a go at my first hard-back pamphlet this week. I sewed two blank paper signatures and trimmed them square (-ish, as I don’t know where my set square has gone to!) to form the innards of […]

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Bookletisation

March 19, 2010

Making a blank booklet is one thing. Binding a book full of text and pictures and stuff is definitely the other, mainly because you need to get all your pages in the right order. Unfortunately, the right order is not 1, 2, 3, 4, 5… If you think about an 8 page booklet, made of […]

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From end to end

March 13, 2010

A few weeks ago I went to The Story and listened to Cory Doctorow read aloud his The Story So Far, about stories, books, publishing and bookbinding: She’d clearly bound them herself. Someone had taught her to really sew, her gran, maybe. You could see it in the neat stitching that ran along the binding […]

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Two weeks to ALD10!

March 10, 2010

From the Ada Lovelace Day blog… There are just two weeks to go until Ada Lovelace Day 2010, and we still have a fair few bloggers, Twitterers, podcasters, web comic artists, and videocasters to recruit. We have 1114 pledgers and need 1958 more people to sign up. That’s a challenge with only 14 days to […]

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Cat lift

March 4, 2010

The entire ensemble is operated by the cat, via sensors: I am sure Grabbity and Mewton would love one of these!

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The Story: Cory Doctorow (Neil Gaiman) and Sydney Padua

February 20, 2010

Although I really enjoyed many of the talks at yesterday’s The Story event, it wasn’t really possible to take notes. One highlight was Sam Conniff from Livity talking about Jody McIntyre, a young man with cerebral palsy, a wicked sense of humuor and a desire to do stuff that is truly inspirational. I also loved […]

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The Story

February 20, 2010

Yesterday I went to Matt Lock‘s event, The Story, at The Conway Hall. The day was billed thusly: The Story is a one-day conference about stories and story-telling, to be held at The Conway Hall, London, on Friday, February 19th, 2010 The Story will be a celebration of everything that is wonderful, inspiring and awesome […]

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Time to sign up to Ada Lovelace Day 2010

February 8, 2010

Last year, over 3500 people pledged to support Ada Lovelace Day, the international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science. Over 1200 people added their link to our map mash-up and we got lots of coverage in the national press and even appeared on the BBC News Channel. Women’s […]

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Unpacking my first Graze box

January 20, 2010

I’ve just joined Graze, a service that mails you a box of fruit, nuts and other goodies for the princely sum of £2.99 per box (P&P included). A friend of mine suggested it the other day and I was so curious I signed up there and then. My first box came yesterday, and this is […]

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Experimenting with Kachingle

January 13, 2010

In April last year I wrote about a start-up called Kachingle for The Guardian. I explained Kachingle thusly: After registering with Kachingle, users decide on a maximum monthly donation, currently set at $5 (£3.50). When they see something they like, they simply click on the Kachingle “medallion” to initiate a donation. Kachingle tracks their reading […]

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Last day for UK post: 18 Dec

December 13, 2009

If you are interested in buying something from my Folksy shop, please remember that the last day for posting in the UK is 18th December. That’s just five days away!

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