I have enjoyed the past few years working for a range of wonderful clients and hope to stay in contact with them all in the upcoming future.

For anyone who is wondering what civil engineering actually is (I get asked this a lot), here’s a little video that should explain it a little clearer.

Okay, so I have decided to make my first open-source e-commerce theme. I was originally going to sell it but simply decided: hey, I may as well give it away! Well… something like that anyway.

It’s basically a clean, easy-to-use and highly adaptable theme that can be used for just about any kind of online store. Installation instructions are included in the ZIP.

It’s designed for the latest version of Magento (1.5), which is available to download for free at www.magentocommerce.com.

I would kindly ask that if you like it, please do put a link back to my site in the copyright area!

Online demo

Download

A product made in the labs at mflow, it’s their new application through which they’re hoping to win some of the market. They’ve turned their efforts away from their original browser-based offering, which I think is a good decision. Spotify has always won here as it’s got a brilliant interface, is highly reliable and works outside of the browser. This, coupled with the offline mode available by upgrading, has always been one of Spotify’s greatest perks.

Bloom, however, offers all of this and more:

• Offline mode. By ‘borrowing’ tracks, you’re able to listen to them whenever and wherever.
• Radio. Spotify isn’t great at this, and this is something the mflow team have picked up on. You can choose from dozens of (well-chosen) channels – from brit-pop to progressive rock – and have it stream to your heart’s content.
• Artist radio. Listening to an artist you like? You can choose to see similar artists, or listen to music like artists of your choice.

Left to right: a view of the player with the ‘borrow’ feature; the search feature

The interface is pretty interesting as well – it features a bee just about everywhere, and is bright and colourful (you may have noted from my site I’m a fan of colour….).

All in all it’s looking very promising. I’m definitely going to be keeping an eye on it, and as long as the price is right and the issues are fixed (it’s in beta so some are inevitable), I’m very much looking forward to using it.

Have you used Bloom? Or have views on streaming? Let me know your thoughts.

The Ghanaian children’s enthusiasm has continued to amaze me, and whilst we went there to teach, I think we too have a lot to learn from them. It’s undeniable that people in Africa are far less materialistic than those in Western countries, but it also seems apparent that they’re happier than us. It does make you ask the question of why we are so obsessed with money and success in countries like England, when this seems to have no correlation to happiness.

Anyway, back to teaching! This week I began with teaching transformations, which includes reflections, translations and rotations which I planned with my friend Stuart. These were the first lessons that I had taught alone since arriving, and I have to say I really did enjoy the challenge this brought. Whilst team-teaching can allow you to focus more on individuals, working alone does provide better value for money as the teacher is teaching a larger volume of students. I tried to make these lessons as interactive as possible, through getting them to complete and design mazes to discuss translations, and reflecting the pupils outside. They seemed to take to this well, and also appeared to be enjoying it.

The next lesson I had prepared was a bit different. As I study Civil (& Structural) Engineering, I wanted to show the applicable elements of Mathematics and Physics through a tower challenge. In groups of between five and six, the pupils had thirty minutes to design and produce the highest tower that could support an egg (and not drop it!). They all got into it, and I have to say some of the designs were actually quite impressive! The cheers at the end clearly showed they enjoyed the lesson, and the fact that some of the towers were able to hold the egg at some height showed they were able to work out solutions that worked. This was pretty great, and I was incredibly happy that the lessons this week had gone so well.

On rolled Friday, our final day at La Bawaleshie. We decided to hold a sports day, where the day begun with volleyball and cricket, and later rolled onto egg and spoon races, sack races and ‘over-and-under’. As expected, this was great fun, and the children (along with us!) had a great time. As always the Ghanaian pupils got somewhat competitive, and we had to try to settle a few arguments that arose from supposed cheating! Though in the end, Anna’s and my team won!

So then came the emotional farewell, and we left the school with a number of boxes full of books to start their library along with all the sports materials we had brought from England for these school, paid for by Warwick in Africa. The pupils were unbelievably excited by this, and I think this reminded all of us how something like this, which may not seem like much to us, can make a huge difference to the children here.

We spent our final few days seeing the remaining sites in Accra, as well as relaxing on what can only be described as an incredibly beautiful beach. We were all incredibly sad to leave in the end, and I am sure we’re all going to miss Ghana an absolutely massive amount.

To explain exactly what we have been doing, we’ve been running Summer schools in some schools located near the capital – Accra. Whilst we were previously told we should be running the school from 8.00am to 1.30pm, the headmaster requested that instead we ran lessons from 9.00am to midday. For me this didn’t feel anywhere near long enough, though apparently these were the times the parents had expected it to run.

Whilst we have been team-teaching in our school for the past fortnight, for the final week two of us will be going to a different school, Anumle, as the number of pupils attending has been much larger. Such changes are happening in all three schools, so we’re all looking forward to meeting new children and working alongside different students.

So coming back to the challenges we faced at the start of this week, in our second Maths class on Monday the class… were somewhat troublesome to say the least. This came as quite a shock to both myself and Stuart, who is the student I have been running the classes with. After talking to our PGCE colleagues, we came up with an action plan as to how we could get the pupils back on board, and we put our ideas into action first thing on Tuesday. Our plan was to make the lesson fun and enjoyable as usual, though as soon as one would step out of line we ensured they knew where the boundaries were. Luckily the plan worked and for the rest of the week we had a lot of fun with the class!

On Friday we had to say goodbye to half of the group, where the teachers (who came here to run continual improvement classes to Ghanaian teachers) headed back to England. We all found this quite sad, as over the past few weeks we got to know them all very well and are all missed lots! This weekend we spent the Friday night out at a restaurant/bar (which we also visited at the beginning of our time here), where live music is played until late. Once again we all had a fantastic time, and met some people who showed us some pretty interesting dance moves!

The next day we went out to the Accra Mall, where we ate at a Nando’s wannabe called Barcelos. I have to say, I was actually very impressed, though am starting to get a little tired of eating chips most days and actually am beginning to miss home food! We then headed to an African market where wooden carvings and paintings could be bought.

That brings us up to today, where we have (for once) done nothing! One more week to go, and whilst I am starting to look forward to returning home, I know I’m going to miss being here a huge amount.

Last week we left England to head to Accra, Ghana to teach summer schools with Warwick in Africa. So far it’s been an amazing experience, where I have gone from only teaching a handful of maths lessons in Birmingham to leading lessons each day in Summer schools in Africa.

One of the most surprising elements of the teaching for me so far has been the enthusiasm the pupils have for learning. In England, extra work is generally avoided wherever possible and homework is seen more as a punishment than a help. Over here, the pupils ask for homework, get excited by lessons and really do want to learn. It reminds me just how lucky we are back home, where high quality teaching is seen as the standard.

This weekend we headed to Cape Coast on the South side of Ghana, a four hour drive from the capital. Here we saw a very different side of the country, where the standard of living was far lower. On the Saturday we headed to the rain forest where we went over the canopy walkway, and then headed to the hotel we were staying for one night. Well, I say hotel, apparently a ‘botel’… A place where going on a pedalow in crocadile filled waters was standard…. It was fun though!

On Sunday we went to the Elmina Castle, which was renowned for it’s significance in the slave trade. It was incredibly saddening to hear about what had happened a few centuries ago, and was something which we all learnt a lot from. Afterwards we headed to the beach, and then back to Accra.

So, so far it’s been amazing, and we have two whole weeks left!

Over the past four weeks I’ve been working on site at a fire station being built in Gloucestershire, known as GFRS Cheltenham Road East site. It’s been a great experience, and I’ve learnt a lot about construction over a relatively short period of time. The fire station is one of four being built across the county as part of the scheme, with this one featuring a community centre using Glulam – a laminated wood veneer structure.

The site is just finishing working on the sub-structure of the station, where they are putting the drainage in across the site, and over the past few weeks the steel super-structure has been erected, and first and second concrete floors have been set.

So, my next move now will be to shoot off to Ghana, Africa for three and a half weeks! I will be teaching Maths as part of the Warwick in Africa scheme, where we are hoping to make a big difference to the children there through running Summer schools. Whilst I’m incredibly nervous about it all, I know it’s going to be a fantastic experience and really cannot wait.

Not too long ago, Mailchimp released a new design that allows you to easily create new designs for your admin area, which is great for agencies that might do work on behalf of clients. They call it co-branding.

Though why exactly would you want to do this? Well, a few reasons for you are:

1. If you’re doing work for a client (like building them a new Mailchimp template), it can be something good to go along with it. It integrates the designs together, leading to some form of continuity.
2. You may wish to use your branding to remind them of you every time they use it! (though that might become a bit annoying after a while)
3. It can make it look nicer, or you might just want something to do for a while.

So how do you go about doing it? Read on…

How to go about doing it

I’m going to assume you know how to register and moderately have some sort of idea as to how to get around Mailchimp (if not, it’s very simple!)

1. Go to Account > Co-Branding (or just click here).

2. You’ll be presented with a screen like the one shown below. Basically, here you can either choose a company name (that will appear if there’s no logo added), and some colours to go with it.

3. If you want to customise the colours further, go on to ‘Create a Custom Theme’. Here, you can select exactly what colours you want and these will be used all over the admin area, leading to full continuity for your backend.

Easy!

So hopefully this will act as some good guidance as to how to use Mailchimp. Let me know how you get on with it, and if you think there’s anything else that should be added to this (hopefully simple) guide.

Oliver Newth is a certified Mailchimp Expert, who can help on a range of Mailchimp projects.

I’ll be raising money for Warwick in Africa – a charity that sends a number of us Warwick students over to South Africa, Tansania and Ghana to raise the quality and standards of teaching. It’s had huge success since it’s launch five years ago.

Please watch the video by Lenny Henry below to read more about it, and it would be incredibly appreciated if you could spare a few pound towards the cause.

Quick note: most applications don’t open until around February 2012 for the upcoming year, so please bookmark this page for details on when they’ll open… 

I thought it might be useful to some people to have a concise list of where you can go to work at the festivals this Summer. Hopefully below will act as a starting point to what might be the best moments for you this Summer!

To all those who missed out on Glastonbury this year, unfortunately there’s no 2012 festival due to toilets and police heading over to the Olympics, but why not have a look at other festivals like Bestival?!

Most of these will require a deposit of about £200.00, and also will need you to be over 18 with the right to work in the UK.

Paid work

DC Site Services
Stewarding at pay rate between £4.50 – £6.00. Shifts can be between 8 hours, or more usually 12 hours. They’re also responsible for fire towers, and as you don’t get that much choice in what you do, you should be happy to stand on top of a tower in the rain for a number of hours! I should point out, you do get to switch with others every hour or so (or whatever you decide).

Green Stewards
Mostly paid, though some unpaid positions. I really enjoyed working for them as they’re one of the more relaxed and smaller companies, and they do some great festivals including Secret Garden Party.

Citrus Event Staffing
They do a range of events such as Bestival bar staff. See if there’s any positions you might be interested in here.

Big Choice Group
They’ve still got places open for festivals this Summer, including Isle of Wight, V Festival (though I have heard this one can be a bit rough….) and Radio 1′s Big Weekend. All applications are closed for 2011, though keep your eye out for future years.

Oasis Carnival
Now full for 2011, though look out here in future years.

Stuart Leisure Security
A security company that security and stewarding work at a range of the big festivals.

Cash and Traffic Management
They, surprisingly, do both cash (security) and traffic (steward) management.

Voluntary places

Oxfam
Easily the biggest voluntary festival recruiter, it’s usually lots of fun and you get a free ticket and free food out of it!

Hotbox Events
They do Reading, Leeds and Latitude, all voluntary.

Festaff
A huge range of festivals, with loads still open for applications. Some of the best include Creamfields, Download and Oxegen. Just £25 deposit to leave as well for their pretty large variety of positions available! I’m afraid that after my experience this year (which I have since heard many too have had), I would strongly recommend against working for Festaff. I will be writing a blog post about this in the near future, though as many others have too said, I would never work for this company again.

Workers Beer Company
One of the biggest employers for bar staff, raising funds for Labour and other charities. They donate £6.50 of every hour to the group you’re representing. You do need to be a member of a trade body which they accept, however.

Actionaid UK
Another charity where your purpose is to spread the word about their cause.

Festive Lizards
Traffic management at Glasto.

Shelter UK
Volunteer for this charity at Glasto.

Environmental Justice Foundation
Another Glasto only one here, apply early when it’s next on!

Seed Staff
They do some of the ones like Beach Break Live, and you can also get experience in roles like working backstage or as a runner. A few jobs are paid as well, at £6.50 an hour.

Festival Volunteer
Only a few smaller festivals like Rockness and Glade available, but still work a look. Just two 6-9 hour shifts and a free ticket plus a free meal and 2 free drinks with every shift! Not bad, you could say…

VInspired
Quite a lot of volunteering positions are posted through V Inspired, so keep your eyes open here.

Good luck with any applications, and keep in touch with how you get on!

Also, please let me know if you’ve seen any I’ve missed off.