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

I noticed this optical illusion when I was siting in Druckers in Birmingham’s Bullring. I was looking at it absent-mindedly for a while before I spotted it. Directly outside the window, which looks out over the pedestrian area and down towards St Martin’s Church, are wrought metal railings. Their bars are squared rather than rounded, [...]

I am very sorry to have had to cancel my cookie law event in Birmingham. Please accept some links as compensation. The cancellation is a big disappointment. The key speakers could no longer make it so we tried to find someone else at short notice to give a neutral, authoritative overview of the legal situation. Sadly, without [...]

Yesterday I told you I was to be liveblogging with a couple of cabinet ministers. Well, I did it. The result below is not a comprehensive account of the session, but I got as much down as I could. 5:37 Andrew Mitchell telling us how great Birmingham is, and how the Tories enjoy coming here, and [...]

This morning Nick Booth and I had intended to blog from Moseley for Birmingham’s Big City of Culture 24 hour blog. We failed spectacularly. However I did interview Nick eating an ostrich burger. He goes on to say how Farmers Markets are a nice cultural thing. Or something. Have a listen anyway: Listen!

For months I’ve been having conversations with people about how we should set up a Rails beginners group in Birmingham, so now I’m actually going to do it. I realise that even among beginners there will be a wide range of expertise levels. Therefore I ask attenders to have at least started trying to write [...]

Yesterday I was lucky enough to be invited round the new mac before its official opening next weekend. I was really very impressed. I hadn’t been particularly struck by the outside of the building, but now I’ve been inside I see the external fabric in a much more forgiving light. The interior is completely unrecognisable [...]

A lot has been going on recently with regard to digital inclusion and civic engagement. People keep publishing reports that I really ought to read for work, but just don’t have the time to; and even if I did, many of them are pretty impenetrable. So I’m going to spread the load. In April I’ll [...]

A while ago I chewed over the problem of making it easy for members of the public to leave useful contextualised information for others in spite of opposing commercial incentives. Whether their developers intended it or not, foursquare could be the solution. I had been incensed by a cashpoint in Birmingham’s International Convention Centre. It [...]

The Custard Factory in Birmingham has become a bit of a joke. It’s looking run-down, and suggests no-one really cares anymore about promoting it as a vibrant space, and no-one really goes there (except for loud music at weekends). Simon Gray just tweeted a small but important change that would vastly improve accessibility for visitors: [...]

Some time ago it occured to me that the stalls in Birmingham’s outdoor market resembled table-tennis tables, and what a waste it was that they were unused a lot of the time. I made the mistake of thinking this out loud in front of Nikki Pugh, who has a habit of making things come true: [...]