Music Foo Fighters: Preparing Music for Concerts I've been a fan of Foo Fighters for a long time. I was a fan of Dave Grohl even before Foo Fighters were a band. So when the news hit of Taylor Hawkins' passing last year, there was a sense that maybe the band wouldn't continue, Hawkins being just as
Travel Bridlington, May 2023 My earliest memory of Bridlington consists of vignettes blurred by the passing of time. I remember specific arcade games, Street Fighter 2 (of course!), Return of the Jedi which I rediscovered at Arcade Club in Leeds, even the game tie-in with Micheal Jackson's Moonwalker! I remember sitting by the window
Personal Hooking them in... My youngest son has been obsessed with a show called Spidey and his Amazing Friends for a good while now. If you're unaware of it, it's basically a Spider-man show aimed at audiences too young to read or watch the films. Recently, Disney+ also dropped a Star Wars show called
Life in Numbers Life in Numbers: April '23 Do I need to write an intro each month? I dunno, maybe I'll just get straight into the meat of the content... Podcasts: 55 episodes, 53 hours Those following these specific posts will no doubt have guessed that podcasts are my main source of content consumption these days and the
Covid Lockdown longing? I was thinking the other night about the lockdown period. It was horrible being highly restricted in where we could go and who we could see but one thing I realised I missed was the Friday nights. Like everyone, we got into a habit of doing Zoom calls with friends.
Art Trapping shadows I came across this video via This Is Colossal and it's an interesting video to watch. Sculpture is a mystery to me and it seems like magic how people can do it but one thing in this video made me stop and pause for thought, when the sculptor says: "[Sculpting]
Reading A Clash of Kings I've seen A Game of Thrones, the TV series, many times over the years so I know the general story (at least, as it's told through that medium). I'd always heard the books are far more dense and are different in many ways from the show. I read the first
Music John Williams, composer of our childhoods The other day, I came across an article on Classic FM's website showing a short video of John Williams playing a piano but included in the article was a short 15 minute interview and I just felt like a doing a short John Williams appreciation post. Here are some of
User Interface Design Eyes forward Paying attention to what your competitors are doing is certainly useful to help gauge where you're at compared to them but what's critical for me is remembering to keep your eyes on your own path ahead. Recently at work, there was a discussion which I obviously won't post about in
Personal Trying out journalling This month, I decided to start a journal. A real, hand-written journal. I've tried journaling a couple of times before and it didn't really catch on but something about this time is slightly different. I'm trying to take a bit of a step back from actively posting my thoughts to
Bookbinding Making stuff Recently, I've been really intrigued by bookbinding. I've taken to watching many videos on YouTube showing how you can approach various types of books, how to stitch and glue them together, how to make your own book cloth etc. This weekend, I wanted to try something relatively simple and make
Travel Scotland, April 2023 This Easter weekend, we went up to Scotland to stay with my brother-in-law for a couple of days. We mostly did stuff around Galashiels where he lives but on Saturday we took a trip into Edinburgh for a walk around the castle. Here are a few pics I took.
Life in Numbers Life in numbers: March '23 Another month has flown by and we're already heading in to Spring. Summer will soon be here and before we know it, I'll be doing a round-up of the whole year... But before then, here's March: Podcasts: 59 episodes, 61 hours It's been a bit of a mammoth month for
Technology Slowly changing habits Aside from Instagram, there's been a steady decline in my active posting on social media. I'll sometimes have a burst of replying to people on the likes of Twitter but I'm mostly now a passive consumer of the content on there. Same with Facebook, I don't really post anything there
Technology Sleepwalking to ruin? Talk of AI has been rampant for a while on the internet and it seems to have trickled down to the point where it's becoming a regular discussion at work. I have what I feel is a healthy scepticism about AI, particularly AI-generated imagery. We've seen lots of examples in
Be the river, not the rock I came across this great video of illustrator Oliver Jeffers talking through 15 things to think about when it comes to a creative career. His point about being flexible, particularly with rejection resonated with me. I haven't historically done pitches so haven't really had to deal with rejection but I'm
Technology Nokia bringing back the old school This week I randomly came across the Nokia website and learned they've got a whole host of Feature phones on their website. I don't know if they're all refreshed classics like the 3310 or if some are just brand new models but I was intrigued enough to spend a bit
Life in Numbers Life in numbers: February '23 Following on from last month's round-up, this post covers some of the content I've been consuming during February. Podcasts: 39 episodes, 43 hours Last month I put in a league table and said I'd decide whether to include it again. Well, this month I'm leaving it out because if I'm
Personal To skate or not to skate? I spent a lot of time as a kid skateboarding. My brothers and I basically lived and breathed it. Didn't matter if it was hot or cold outside, if the ground was dry, we were off skating somewhere. Eventually (and regretfully), I gave up skating in favour of spending evenings
Personal Thanks, Instagram. No, really! I didn't used to watch Reels a lot. For a long time, I used Instagram old-school-style just scrolling through my feed. But eventually, it got me. I got sucked in to watching all sorts of random crap. Some of it was funny, some of it wasn't but I just carried
Personal So much free time... This weekend, Lu took the kids to see her Mum for a few days. I stayed home because I'd already planned a night out with my friends and someone needed to look after the cat so it all worked out. After spending years working your life around kids, it's a
Animation New appreciation for animation I’ve always loved animation. It’s been one of those things I’ve never really grown out of. I still watch animated films and TV shows without needing my kids around as an excuse. When I was a kid, I used to try my hand at making animation using
Life in Numbers Life in numbers: January '23 The On The Side community has been pretty active this month with lots of blog posts and links to pages on personal sites which cover off ongoing stats for things like health and fitness, films and podcasts. While I debate whether to set up my own dedicated stats page, I
Comics Beorn colour test Back in October '22, I was scrolling through Twitter when an artist I follow posted that he was looking for a colourist: Alright, Monday morning folks! I'm looking for a colorist for Beorn! If you, or anyone you know, might be interested, please DM me with details (samples, page rates)
Comics Why do I make comics? I've been fortunate to appear as a guest on some of my favourite comics podcasts and the question of why I make comics came up. At the time of recording, the question kind of took me by surprise and my answer was kind of rubbish. Thinking back it makes me
