Deb Bassett - Urbanwide

GeekUp Leeds - Tomorrow, 6pm, The Lounge

This month after all the festive cheer, we’re back to our regular format of beer and 20:20s. We have two talks lined up:

• “How to PR yourself - online and offline” - Richard Hamer
• “How many geeks does it take to paint the matrix?: my personal experience of creativity and computing” - Helen Harrop

… and a big thanks to Helen for stepping in at the last minute!

Do tell us if you’re coming

More »

7 Things

Eep, Lorna just tagged me. I’ve not done this before but apparently this means I have to say 7 random or weird things about myself so here we go:

• I once worked a whole summer in a battery chicken farm in Shropshire, my job was to pass very ill chickens, by their legs, upside down, 5 in each hand, down a human chain to a van, to be taken to be slaughtered. I haven’t eaten chicken since (and Hugh’s Chicken Run was nothing compared to what actually goes on).
• Most people in my family are giants in comparison to my mere 5ft 6 existance, apart from my nan who is 5ft 3. Some of my friends call my Dad the BFG (although he doesn’t know this, I don’t think, but I’m sure he won’t mind because it stands for “Big Friendly Giant”) and my Dad calls me shorty (as does Rob now).
• I like cheese, lots. My favorite snack is called “cheese on a plate” which is sliced Cheshire or Wensleydale arranged on a plate and microwaved for 2 minutes, served with tomato ketchup and 2 slices of white bread.
• We, like Lorna & her chap, live in a 100+ year old house over 4 floors with 4 bedrooms. We’ve lived there for 8+ years now and in that time the house has been re-wired, new heating installed, new kitchen, new bathroom, new plaster, new flooring, complete redecoration. Now it’s roughly about time to start again or move, which we tried last year but failed 2 days before the move (having sold the sofas and packed everything up).
• I went to a Catholic all girls school (also like Lorna, damnit). I am now naturally quite weary of girls & Catholicism but wondering if I like techie stuff more because of the girls only bit. Most techie girls I have met went to a girls school (really).
• I’m from a family of hauliers, and when Rob and I got married last year, I got driven to the venue by my Dad in a Bassett’s truck.
• I’m from a town called Stone in Staffordshire and now live in a town called Otley in West Yorkshire. I noticed recently that the town I live in now is pretty much demographically the same as the one I moved from but 100 miles north.

So alls that is left for me to do now is to annoytag a few people. I pick: Nige, Josie, Richard, Jag, Heva, Paul & Ross

So the rules are:

• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post - some random, some wierd.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

Cardboard Christmas tree project

Probably a bit late for this now, but I thought my cardboard Christmas tree project was worth a quick post as it’s been mentioned on a couple of friends sites now (cheers Recycle This & The Daily Chump) so I thought it deserved a home.

Here’s some background: a couple of weeks ago, I decided it would be quite cool to make a cardboard Christmas tree out of a very large cardboard box we had left over after buying a new mattress for our bed. The idea appealed for a few reasons:

• we had a big box and it seemed a waste to take it to the tip
• going out to fetch a real tree also seemed wasteful: a waste of petrol, time and also not forgetting it being a total waste of tree
• I couldn’t face hoovering up pine needles daily
• Richard Garside & I have a related ongoing project called “Cardboard Laptop Stand” (watch this space) so making cardboard versions of things tends to seep into my mind quite readily

It took about 3 hours to make the tree, and I felt super victorious after it’s construction was complete.
Stuff you need to make your own:

• a very large cardboard box
• a very sharp Stanley / craft knife and cutting board
• a metal edged ruler
• a diagram of the shape of your tree
• a pen
• lots of floor space
• hair grips to secure your decorations, although they mostly stay on on their own

As I was making the tree, I took photos of each step and uploaded them to Flickr, with annotations - essentially forming step-by-step instructions on how to build your very own Cardboard Christmas Tree

• Flickr set showing how to build your own Cardboard Christmas Tree