Citizensheep. "Michael Grimes lives in Birmingham (UK). This is his blog about anything that he fancies."

Well, the pilot digital engagement discussions are over. Should we do more? I only organised three and still haven’t managed to blog about two of them yet. Still, they were good: Simon Whitehouse talked about ‘Policy options for geographic information from Ordnance Survey‘ and Ordnance Survey OpenData, I looked at the Hansard Society’s recent report [...]

On the train this morning I had with me my laptop, iPhone, Flip video camera and Zoom audio recorder. But my brain wanted pen and paper: why? It wasn’t that I couldn’t use what I had, but that in order to get my thoughts out of my head relatively intact my brain needed another conduit. The thing [...]

At primary school we were told a moral story that seemed to me so ridiculous that I still remember it almost thirty years later. I couldn’t believe that anyone could be quite so stupid and quite so demanding as the story’s protagonist. Last night I was talking to Paula Tew about how shifting demands placed [...]

We’re seeing a lot of it lately, in the run-up to a General Election: one party does something bad, the other party jumps on it; then it happens again, but the other way round. But does this bickering do them any good? I for one am put off voting at all, let alone for the [...]

I didn’t make resolutions this New Year because I knew I’d not keep to them, then feel bad about it and give up. One that I didn’t make was to blog more; as I didn’t make it I can’t feel bad about it, so I’m not giving up: I’m starting it now. My lack of [...]

When I went to the doctor a few years ago complaining of tinnitus I was told there was nothing he could do, so I didn’t bother him with it again. In fact there’s no point complaining to anyone: as no-one else can hear it they can’t possibly empathise. So I’ve attempted to re-create mine as [...]

Dogs Dog’s breakfast Dog’s dinner Dog’s life Dog days Dog tired Dog-gone Dog’s b@ll@**s Doggy style Cats Cat’s whiskers There must be more than that for cats. Help me redress the balance.

What happens when paid-for news content online becomes sustainable and influential, but a significant chunk of people who are currently engaged and informed get news from other sources? (This is a very under-developed thought; I’m only putting it here because it’s too long for Twitter.) I never buy the Financial Times, but I used to [...]

Yesterday my iPhone stumbled upon a wireless network with a very vulgar name. It made me think: if someone found that offensive, could the owner be charged with public indecency? It’s a curious (albeit pretty boring) question: because the network owner would, I suspect, presume that their wifi name is confined to the privacy of [...]

On Thursday I ‘lost’ my Twitter avatar (a sheep); by Saturday afternoon it had been found lurking on someone else’s blog. I had been playing around with QR codes and wondered if the QuickMark iPhone application would be able to recognise them in a Twitter avatar. So I replaced my long-standing picture of a sheep [...]