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

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 [...]

A set of very handy lists of online web development tools, neatly and clearly laid out. Covers inspiration and design as well as markup, coding and marketing. Visit Web Design Dashboard

We often make the mistake of assuming that learning how to use a tool will somehow make us good at the job the tool was designed for. I believe our efforts are better spent on first learning the skills and then choosing the tools. Take Quark Xpress, an industrial-strength tool for graphic design professionals. Professionals. In [...]

I find it exceptionally difficult to believe that I have any skills of note, and keep meaning to force myself to try and audit them just to check. So here I’ve spelled out what I do in my day job, and some of the challenges I’ve faced. Although I’m still not sure I know any [...]

Anyone who knows me will know how bad I am at making decisions. Not knowing how to choose can result in procrastination, or – worse – avoidance. That's not good for someone who's responsible for managing an organisation's corporate web strategy. Mind Tools has actually been very helpful for me. Although at first glance it [...]

Professional and amateur photographers were yesterday given the opportunity to share their work and swap photos, at an event organised by Birmingham Photospace. The ‘Flash Swap’ was the group’s first publicity event, intended to raise the profile of their campaign for a dedicated photography gallery in Birmingham. Although hidden away in a dark corner of [...]

I’ve started a fledgling blog to help me make sense of Birmingham’s creative organisations; of the different names and acronymns that crop up when people talk about Birmingham’s various ‘creative’ and ‘social media’ groups (the two seem to overlap an awful lot). This started from a comment I posted on Paradise Circus months ago, and [...]

These are my links for 8 January 2009 through 15 January 2009: Us Now: A film project about the power of mass collaboration, government and the internet – "Us Now is a documentary film project about the power of mass collaboration, government and the Internet. Us Now tells the stories of online networks that are [...]

These graphics can be seen on trains in the UK. The one on the left was seen on First Capital Connect, the other on London Underground. What do you think they mean?