Last winter I volunteered at a night shelter for homeless people and was inspired to get more involved.

I'm currently creating Pilates Street, a London-based project to link up Pilates instructors with organisations working with people living in or recovering from homelessness, addiction and or mental health issues, to offer free Pilates sessions to their clients.

If you're interested in taking part in the project, please visit this link to find out more and get in touch!

As part of the Talking Shop Project we created The Creative Learning Network.

A place for people who want to use their creativity in a multi media driven world.
Learn how to use online tools to promote your own creativity!
Get an understanding of all this talk about online networks!
Find out where to find FREE stuff!! (and it's legal) to build your own profiles and websites!

It's all there when you know where to find it.

Brought to you by The Learning Revolution Transformation Fund, BIS & Staffordshire University Faculty of Art, Media and Design Creative Communities Unit :)

I have been trying to get my head around ssh tunnels lately as I need to be able to access a development web server on our private network that doesn't have an IP accessible from the internet.
It's taken me a while to understand what is going on; it can be pretty confusing.

I'd recommend the following for a good explanation of what ports are used, e.g. when your browser requests a page:

http://www.tcpipguide.com/free/t_TCPIPClientEphemeralPortsandClientServerApplicatio.htm

And I thought this was probably the best single page explanation of tunneling:

If you are looking for a speaker for your next event or meeting, an article for your blog or magazine or an advisor to help you with a study or report, I can help you.

My media kit gives you some more information about who I am, who I support and what I can do.

I am currently taking bookings for events, so please get in touch today.

MediaKit.pdf

The way most people get to hear your music is by somebody somewhere telling them to listen to it. It could be friends, family, people on websites, promoters, radio pluggers, journalists, bloggers, A&R executives, graphic designers, record shop owners, music teachers, instrument manufacturers, brands, bar staff in gig venues, people at gigs, record producers, advertising creatives, filmmakers and TV shows producers. It’s highly rare that somebody will just stumble across it, yet marketing is something that few bands and artists ever do well. Apart from the successful ones.

project management note

Self-study tutorials to help you learn Linux fundamentals and prepare for system administrator certification.

The Pareto principle, more commonly known as the 80/20 rule, is the idea that roughly 80 percent of activity will be accounted for by 20 percent of the participants. Vilfredo Pareto’s initial observation at the start of the 20th century, that 80 percent of Italy’s land was owned by 20 percent of the population, has become a common rule of thumb in business, but does it hold up when tracking activity for the U.K.’s most popular social networks?

I've set myself a challenge.. which means I need to learn a few things!

The challenge, with my friend Mike, is to join the 'Mongol Rally' in July 2010, driving 10,000 miles from the UK to Ulaanbaatar, capital of Mongolia. The point of the exercise is to have fun and raise money for various charities.

But to make it work, I'll need to learn a few things:

* Most critically, some basic car maintenance! We intend to drive a second hand verhicle of some sort, which we can be almost certain, is likely to breakdown various times.

ProXalt is still offering its Flash based 35 hour course for the Project Management Professional exam for only $35. The thirty five hours are required by PMI - the Project Management Institute - when applying to sit for the Project Management Professional (PMP) certification exam. PMI requires proof of 35 hours or more of coursework in project management.

UKUUG is the UK's Open Systems Group and the Summer Conference is the highlight of our year. It brings together Free Libre and Open Source Software developers and users from all over the UK and Europe to share knowledge and discuss the latest trends in Free Software.

I will be running a Drupal workshop on the Friday.

New from Clarity Marketing, out Marketing Strategy Training & Coaching Programme, especially designed for small business owners who need to stop meesing about and get their marketing strategy straight. 3-months of bespoke training and coaching aimed at making a real difference to your business.

Businesses with 2-249 employees could be able to get grant funding towards the cost of the programme.

More information on the programme at http://www.clarity-in-communication.com/marketing-services/marketingtraining.htm

Another great article from Seth Godin who talks about how we should all have a super power, particularly in business. The example he gives is the Wasp
“I’m the Wasp. I have the ability to shrink to a height of several centimeters, fly by means of insectoid wings and fire energy blasts.”
Some fancy marketers might call this a positioning statement or a unique selling proposition. Of course, it’s not that. It’s just her super power.

Nice post about the perils of building or buying IT systems. Lots of good lessons learned.

Online directory for East Midlands women who work for themselves. Another great palce to create a free profile and promote yourself online.

Here is my presentation on how we are building School of Everything's hosting infrastructure.

One of the things I really like about Folksy.com (the UK-based crafts marketplace) is the cool stuff they make to promote the site. Looking through their Flickr stream, there are plenty of other examples of them getting involved with the community of people who make and sell stuff through the site.

There's lots of inspiration there for us at School of Everything - and for any other startup that's trying to find playful ways to spread the word about a useful service.

Slashdot had a great comment thread on helpful/stupid linux commands the other day - "cd" is one of the most basic commands in linux and one of the first you learn, but I never knew that "cd -" would change your directory back to the last one you were on.

The best comment though was the Russian Roulette method to delete something (the original had rm -rf / of course):

[ $[ $RANDOM % 6 ] == 0 ] && rm some-file-to-delete || echo "You live"