December 5th, 2011
The Space.
So, you may have heard about one of the myriad new Arts Council funding pots called ‘The Space’. At Opera North we have a few ideas that we are considering pitching for funding, however, as always, the ACE criteria seems confused as to what it’s actually asking for.
On the one …
Read moreNovember 21st, 2011
Culture Hack North: Leeds 2011 – thoughts
So, the weekend before last we held the first ever Culture Hack North at NTI Leeds. We played host to about 35 developers, 7 speakers and 30 talk attendees. I think it went incredibly well, of course there are things we could’ve done better/different and I’m determined to be ruthless …
Read moreNovember 12th, 2011
Culture Hack North: Leeds 2011 – live blog
The entire event is being live-blogged (partly by me, partly by some entertaining people who can write) here http://culturehacknorth.co.uk/
Read moreOctober 31st, 2011
Culture Hack North: Leeds 2011
I spend a lot of time moaning about things so I thought it was about time I put my money where my mouth is and did something constructive. As a result I have spent the last few months putting my energies into organising Culture Hack North.
What’s a Culture Hack? Well, …
Read moreOctober 6th, 2011
Digital success…?
NESTA recently announced the beneficiaries of their £500,000 Digital R&D fund (details here). I’m not sure exactly what the aim of this investment is (the stated aim is for the projects to “harness digital technologies for the benefit of the arts and cultural sector” which is suitably woolly as to cover …
Read moreAugust 8th, 2011
Useful stuff #2
I had intended these to be far more regular than this, must try harder. A mixture of tips/tools/reviews/articles that you’ll hopefully find useful, I did.
20 cheatsheets for designers and developers http://designshack.co.uk/articles/freebies/weekly-freebies-20-awesome-cheatsheets-for-designers-and-developers/
Review of cross-browser testing tools http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/08/07/a-dozen-cross-browser-testing-tools/
3 rules of thumb for web development http://my.opera.com/karlcow/blog/3-rules-of-thumb-for-web-development
How loading times affect your …
July 29th, 2011
Content is king
I have pulled this post out from the archives of my personal blog, I originally wrote it towards the end of 2009 (I think), I believe it still holds true:
“‘Content is king’, how many times have you heard that? Well when it comes to the web, in my experience, it …
Read moreJuly 26th, 2011
White label app development
Someone sent me a link to the Royal Opera House’s app the other day (http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/royal-opera-house/id449056230?mt=8), interesting – does all the things an app should do i.e. presents content, listings, allows you to buy tickets (to a degree).
I then did a bit of research into the app developer, CloudTix, …
Read moreJuly 25th, 2011
QR codes
People in the UK seem to be getting more and more excited about QR codes. When I say ‘people’ I really mean ‘companies and brands’, I’m convinced that for ‘people’ the use of QR codes at present is either baffling, goes unnoticed or is mildly irritating.
If you do want to …
Read moreWhat I do
I like to think that I create clean, hand-coded sites. I work predominantly in HTML/CSS/PHP/Javascript and have recently started to dabble with Ruby.
I am currently organising Culture Hack North and I am also the Digital Communications Manager at Opera North, based in Leeds.
I like to talk about new technologies, the use of 'digital stuff' in the arts, content creation and strategy, usability and integrating technologies/platforms/APIs and things like that.
Contact
If you've got something you'd like to discuss/tell me/ask me then drop me a note.
ash@bigthingsandlittlethings.co.uk