Talk Like A Brummie Day in the Birmingham Mail


by bounder.

Bigger

I often link to Martin Mullaney's YouTube videos with positive things to say, but I think it's only right to also link to this thread on the Stirrer where he reveals the evil bastard vindictive arse side to his character, and not for the first time. It's not a nice thing to see and is such a shame as he's evidently a really good councilor. Ah well.

The Angry Wall



Martin Mullaney shows of a recently revealed wall in Highbury Park built by Joseph Chamberlain out of concrete-filled artillery shells to piss off his neighbours, the pacifist Cadbury family. Either he had an adventurous sense of humour or relations between the two were seriously fucked.

Click for more info and YouTube cips.

Crime in West Mids at lowers rate for a decade. So why, then, is the BBC news feed, not to mention the other news outlets, still scaring the shit out of people with crime stories?

That's a rhetorical question, btw...

I love the phrasing in this Birmingham Post article (emphasis mine):

New Street revamp set for go-ahead

Jun 27 2007

By Paul Dale, Public Affairs Editor

The first tranche of cash for the £550 million redevelopment of New Street Station is likely to get Government approval by the middle of next month.

The man responsible for overseeing one of Birmingham's largest and most important regeneration schemes for decades said last night he expects Network Rail to announce a £122 million package on July 18.

But despite it not actually containing any news as such it does give a nice summary of where things are at regarding the redevelopment and where the money is due to come from.

It'd be nice if they'd release a handy 3D fly-through of the concept though. I'm having trouble visualizing how it's going to slot into the city.

via D'log

Upcoming films at The Rainbow:

2nd July: Point Blank

9th July: Cocaine Cowboys

16th July: City of Violence (I think this is the same as Jjakpae - the IMDB details don't quite match the flyer I've got...)

7.30pm doors, free entry.

We now return to our regular series of reports on free WiFi hotspots in Birmingham.

My favourite at the moment is Rooty Frooty in the Custard Factory where you can get a very strong and reliable signal and, most importantly, a substantial cup of tea for £1.10. The music is of a decent quality and not too intrusive and there's plenty of room to spread out, though it does get a little busy at lunch time, as you'd expect. It's not the best place to crack on with some serious writing but for surfing and email it's great. Apparently the vegetarian food is terrific too but I haven't checked it out yet.

Coffee Lounge on Navigation St (opposite the rear entrance to New St Station) is probably the most blatantly wifi friendly place I've found. In their downstairs (which will presumably be smoke free next week if that's put you off in the past) you'll often see plenty of folks with laptops plugged into the walls working away, and being downstairs there's no distractions from the street. It's as near as you'll get to an office environment, I reckon. Good for a long slog of work. Tea's a bit pricey though and comes in those daft big round cups, but what do you expect from a place that specializes is coffee.

I found myself in the Big Peg's cafe-bar, The Quarter, early one morning and did a wifi sniff. They have a network available but the signal was very weak and I couldn't get online. I could have tried moving around or checked to see if it was even on but to be honest I needed a bit of time without web distractions to get some writing done so I left it. But there's definitely a network there so it'll be worth trying. I'll report back next time I'm there.

For a bit of fun I thought I'd see what wifi connections I could get on the Festival of Xtreme Building site since it's a rather nice place to hang out in the middle of the city. There be signals buzzing around there like flies on shit but none of them are open, or if they are they're incredibly unreliable. It's almost as if wifi is affected by the wind, which is mildly plausible, possibly. Okay, it's not. So unfortunately there'll be no surfing inside the Micro Compact Home just yet.

Any more whiffletips, leave them in the comments.

Previously: The Kitchen.

by *nomiji*.

Spotted in Erdington

by Dr Craig.

Southwest corner of the Jewellery Quarter, apparently.

It's no mean feat for a council to spend significant sums of money restoring a major building thus putting the finishing touches on a section of the city that represents art and culture only to dump this right in the middle of it.



Where do we start? The ostentatious advertising? The plastic backdrop? The ever present bloody giant telly? Or perhaps the reported (I haven't been myself yet) amplified sea sounds which sound more like an aircraft taking off?

I'm prepared to accept that you could have a beach in a city centre and it not be awful. There's nothing intrinsically offensive about sand after all. But this isn't it.

All said, though there's something quite impressive here. That you can take something so valuable and lovely and completely fuck it up in one fell swoop. The dedication and determination to see a bad idea through to its completion deserves some kind of recognition. So well done on that front Whitby.

Getgood books run a curious book stall in Moseley which in turn attracts curious folk, which makes for good blog fodder:

Another lady got very excited upon finding Spenser's Faerie Queene. "This was written in the days people really believed in fairies." I made the mistake of wryly asking if they didn't still. She got even more excited and started waving her arms. "Oh...OH...have you SEEN them?" The resulting lecture on local ley lines was my own stupid fault. Apparently, every time I eat meat, a faerie cries. I wouldn't have minded, but she didn't even buy the bloody book.

They'll be at the Mozfest Music in the Park gig on Sunday, should you fancy being matched with the book of your dreams.

The Last Drag - SAT 30th JUNE - 8pm-2am £4/£5

Bigger

by Cellach.

More photos from the Kings Heath Carnival

Birmingham Corrupt is a quite wonderful thing. Using a MySpace account it appears to be a righteous campaign against corruption in the city.

Their main issues seem to be thus:

Anyone getting funding is corrupt.

People who actually do shit know each other by dint of doing shit. This means they're corrupt.

What makes me very happy is I must have made it in the city because Created in Birmingham is listed there.

Go me!

via the happy campers at West Midlands No!.

Man Scales Selfridges.



Actually, this isn't necessarily that hard. Plenty of hand holds.

via B:INS

Snakecam!



"This webcam shows a pregnant Dumeril's boa, also known as the Madagascar ground boa, at the Birmingham Nature Centre. It could give birth today, tomorrow or in the next few weeks!"

Laura's Gig Guide for this week neglects to mention Devo at Symphony Hall for which I have re-mortaged my bike to pay for. Better be good!

"And the pool was filled with water.."


by moayad.com.

Inside the Central Library


by kate&drew.

Laura's Listings for this week, again giving you a live snapshot of what's happening music wise in the city, along with copious linkage so you can hear what it sounds like.

First in a series of WiFi news, bringing you information about free WiFi hotspots in the city of Birmingham.

First up, The Kitchen bar/cafe in The Custard Factory.

Checked it out at around 3pm on a Monday for an hour. Pretty quiet with no more than 5 or 6 people in there. No other computers than I saw. Felt secure. Plug sockets under at least one table but didn't use it myself. Bought one cup of tea (£1.20) and used WiFi without asking.

Connected to "The Kitchen" network with no authorization required. Lots of other networks detected but didn't try them. Decent speed - about 60kb/sec on download so probably a 1Mbit connection. Tables are large enough to work on without being obtrusive and benches fairly comfy. Potential to also work outside by the pond. Background music - not too loud or obtrusive.

Total score, allowing for the fact I haven't tried any other places out yet and don't have a methodology in place, I'd say 8 out of 10. Give or take.

by Matt Murtagh.

Walk It is a new service that's quite an old idea really. You put in where you are and where you want to go and it maps the route for you. The difference to you standard route planning services is this on is for walking. So far they've got it sorted for London and Birmingham is the next on the list. It's currently in beta so you can test it and feedback to them if it's completely wrong.

Be interesting to know how they're getting their data. I suspect the meat of it will come from people submitting their personal secret routes but there isn't a slick way to do that yet, let alone a motivation for sharing. (For example, if you could store your personal routes and share links to them that would be a motivation. They could then by vetted and added to the database.)

But the general notion is a sound one. Walking, especially in cities, is a rarely considered option because, I think, you can't see the distance so you conceive of it as further than it is. In the countryside you can see across a couple of fields so it doesn't really feel like a mile. Not so when you're surrounded by buildings.

Anyway, they seem very open to any info you have on walking in Birmingham so consider this an invitation to share it.

via Birmingham Words

Did you ever fancy having a poke around people's back gardens? With their permission? Now you can, for a small fee.

It's the Moseley in Bloom Open Gardens weekend this weekend with 30 gardens in Moseley open to the public. Some of them are also serving tea. There's even mention of cake.

And, of course, lots of plants.

Here's the map. Click on it to see which gardens are open.



Are there any other Britain in Bloom entries in the region? I only know about this because I do their website and leaflet delivery.

Birmingham Snow Hill 15th August 1976


by loose_grip_99 who says:

"The ultimate Snow Hill in dereliction photo. I wondered why I had taken so many shots which all looked a bit similar & then I remembered I had planned a panorama & never got round to printing them. Maybe I should just have used a wide-angle lens!

"So after 32 years a view from the staircase down & Wyman's kiosk on the Down arrivals platform on the left to the staircase down on the Up platform on the right. Sorry no King waiting to depart to Paddington but at least no cars in the car park."

Click for bigger!

I've recently become the proud owner of a laptop computer with WiFi capabilities and having exhausted the novelty of working from the sofa and the kitchen I'm about to venture into the city. But where to go?

This directory lists 535 places in Birmingham though their accuracy is a little shonky in places and they don't highlight the free hotspots.

It's not that I'm a stingey bastard. Okay, I am, but I really don't want to get tied into some kind of tedious contract thingy. I want to know where I can pop in and blog quickly with the minimum of fuss in the city centre in exchange for purchasing an overpriced cup of tea. I'm also interested in more longterm places to haunt (where I might well be inclined to pay a fair sum) that are happy to have a floating worker anchored to a table all day.

Any tips? Is there a decent directory that isn't all commercial? Should we build one?

And those wifi sniffer things. Are they dirt cheap yet? (Answer: under £20)

Your Silver Footed Gig Listings for this week.

by loose_grip_99.

Birmingham Fort Dunlop February 1968

Rather late notice but if you're in the area this is a free event.

Bounder B:INS went to the beach at the Bull Ring and was not overly impressed. "It's really just a 10m square sandpit" he says.

I was actually in town today with time to kill and completely forgot about this, but it wasn't all bad. To say the grass in Eastside is lovely on a summer's day.

Blogroll: MethodistPreacher.com has "news, views, links and resources from David, a local preacher in the Birmingham West and Oldbury Circuit of the Methodist Church."

Blogroll: Brummie Tory. He's a Teenage Tory Boy from Kingstanding!

via the Birmingham "no links" Post blog (motto: We Don't See The Need To Link).

Blogroll: OxBrum is the Oxfam Birmingham Activists’ blog who have all manner of campaigns and projects on the go.

Democracy Street is a heritage / environmental blog from Simon Baddeley. Of particular interest is his recent post on Visiting Soho Foundry and the plans to preserve and restore it.

"The Soho Manufactory and the Soho Foundry were part of a Silicon Valley of the 18th century drawing people from over the world to work and live. Matthew Boulton and James Watt needed the foundry to build the steam engines to power the engines of mass production of buttons, buckles,toys, silverware, ormolu and the minting of coins and medals at their Manufactory."

Photo by Ted Rudge

I didn't even know this place existed!

via Bham Conservation Trust

I neglected to mention here that Rich Batsford has a new weblog. It's very good.

From the ever trustworthy PM Petition site:

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to resist any Government proposal to sell off the canals of the West Midlands and Staffordshire for property development.

There has been a proposal that canals and rivers in the West Midlands and Staffordshire could become part of a billion pound sell-off by the Government.

Canals are an amenity for many people living in urban areas throughout the country who have limited access to the countryside. They are rich in wildlife and are enjoyed by walkers, cyclists and anglers alike. They are particularly appreciated by residents of the Black Country who would be unhappy if they were denied access or if the pleasant, almost rural aspect of the canals, were to be destroyed by any proposed property developments.

All very worthy stuff that I'd agree with but no indication of who's proposing this and at what level they are. Some more facts would be nice. But I don't have the time to research them right now.

via

Dufus
KateGoes