Michael Nolan » Liverpool

Liverpool One Wheel

Mike Nolan — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 22:45:07 +0000

Went for a ride on the Liverpool One Wheel last night. Great views ovet

Gary Younge Lecture

Mike Nolan — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 08:00:53 +0000

Tuesday night I went along to the Edge Hill University Jesse Jackson lecture by Gary Younge. It was a really interesting talk about Obama’s “significant but inadequate” first year in office. Video will be available soon and I recommend you take a look.

The lecture was held at the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool. Not somewhere I’ve visited before but I’ll be making sure I go back for a proper look around soon.

“Snow Day”

Mike Nolan — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 22:05:46 +0000

This morning I – like most of the North West – woke up to a not-insignificant quantity of snow. Having put off getting out of bed for as long as possible (it’s far too easy to turn nocturnal over Christmas) I headed out to work. Took an hour or so get half way to the motorway before getting word that the campus had been closed and everyone sent home.

So I turned around, parked up in Allerton and headed to Costa Coffee. Acquired a latte and free wifi and checked in with work. A few hours later and as battery power was starting to drain away I headed home and popped out to Sefton Park for a little wander in the snow:

This evening I’ve spent a few hours updating the website, the @edgehill Twitter account and Facebook pages. It’s shown there’s a few things we need to do to get up to speed for situations like this. Alison Kerwin from the University of Bath blogged about their experiences of using Twitter this time last year when Bath was hit by snow. I’m hoping to follow up sometime, but not now – I’m too busy working my way through a box set of Harveys of Lewes beers:

Santa Dash 2009

Mike Nolan — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 10:00:53 +0000

Following yesterday’s post about the Boxing Day swim in the docks, another video from Christmas in Liverpool. This one is from the start of the Annual Liverpool Santa Dash. I particularly like the blue Everton Santas and check out my brother about half way through:

Liverpool Boxing Day Swim

Mike Nolan — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 10:00:28 +0000

For ten years some friends of mine have been going down to Liverpool docks on Boxing Day for a little swim. This year I caught it on video:

That video was taken using a Flip Ultra HD. I also recorded using Qik on my iPhone so you can compare the quality:

It also seems I wasn’t the only one there with a video camera:

Dream Director at FACT

Mike Nolan — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 18:46:43 +0000

Last night I went down to FACT for Dream Director – an interactive art installation where they pump sounds at you while you sleep. The whole event was really interesting – kicking off with a short talk from artist Luke Jerram showcasing some of his previous projects and from Chris Alford of UWE talking about the science of sleep.

I recorded five dreams throughout the night and while none of them seemed related to the sounds I was played, that’s far more than I have normally. Two of the dreams were related to the event itself, being woken in the middle of the night to perform some task – listening to a banjo playing band to spot the difference between two pieces of music in one case, and to play a game of rounders in the other. Unfortunately neither of these things happened in real life.

At the end of one dream I believed someone had stolen a pack of steak but on checking in the fridge it was still there, so I wrote my name on it in blue marker pen just to make sure. And on that note I’m going to have steak and chips for dinner… as long as no one has stolen it.

Update: also check out the video from 2007 to see it all in action:

BarCamp Liverpool

Mike Nolan — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 22:41:10 +0000

Today I published the write-up of my BarCamp Liverpool session on the Edge Hill Web Services blog. Here are the slides:

Create a better seach engine than Google

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: edgehill edgehilluni)