Eating chocolate at Christmas was allowed – as long as I was socialising with family, I took advantage of that. However there have been a couple of failings:

• Early on I ate a McFlurry and two chocolate chip mini muffins
• On Wednesday night this week I was working over night implementing a new website. At 7am a trolley of tea, coffee and biscuits arrived, sleep deprived and without even thinking I picked up a chocolate biscuit and put it in my mouth. I was literally horrified when I realised what I’d done and seriously considered spitting it out. But as I was in a room of people, at a bank, working, I decided I just had to swallow. I’m sorry I’ve let you down. It won’t happen again.

So, if you can forgive me perhaps we can move past this? On the plus side I did successfully implement the largest web project I’ve done to date (take a look www.barclays.co.uk) and I’ve not eaten a single crisp….

In other news I went to see Amy’s Ghost last night who were sounding fantastic, they were playing with MidiMidis in Kilburn, the latter we’re releasing a double A side single with at the start of April. It’s pure 8-bit hit. I love it.

I can’t believe it’s November since I blogged, disgracefully slack of me. As a catch up, I spent most of December going out and drinking, catching up with people the usual pre-Christmas fun, I must have had a good time – I put on 5lbs in December (which I’ve lost again, thanks January).

I’ve also been starting preparations for my new Edinburgh show which has included finding people to work with on design, music and video. I’m delighted to say I’m now confirmed for the Brighton Fringe Festival – here’s the Fringe programme advert for my show :

Here’s the description as it will be in the programme:

Are you obsessed with something? Did climate change end when the financial crisis started? From collecting stamps to checking doors are locked ten times, is life making us all…obsessed?

I think it still needs some work before Edinburgh so I’ll set to that very soon. Thanks to Will for the advert design. These will be the first performances of the new show so if you fancy catching it while it’s rough around the edges these are the gigs for you.

Christmas was spent running around visiting family eating lots of great food. I was pretty pleased with the presents I’d got for people this year which always makes Christmas feel better. Ruth got me a Segway racing present, which I’m hoping to do pretty soon!

January is always a bit of a hibernation month but we found time to head out to Wales to a little cottage for a weekend of walking and bleakness. Work was very busy so I lost some weekend and evening time to that. I did however manage to organise the Josaka 11th birthday gig which will feature The Circus Sands, Special guests White Sunday, MidiMidis and Quiet Quiet Band tickets are on sale now from any of the Reading Arts venues (no booking fees I think if you do it this way) or on 01189 606060 or you can buy Josaka birthday tickets online.

I’ve also been working with My Luminaries to help them with a little bit of promo for their new album ahead of the release of first single ‘Parasol’, they’ve just won the early bird emerging talent competition to play Glastonbury – it’ll be good to see them playing on the Thursday night of the 40th Glasto.

I think brings things pretty much up to date. High tea with our Mums today. A good way to spend a Saturday afternoon!

Jim x

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So here it is…

For 6 months (starting two weeks ago lets call that 25th October) I will refrain from eating crisps and chocolate except for Christmas and Easter when I can eat chocolate.

For the avoidance of doubt Easter includes Holy Saturday until Easter Monday. Christmas includes the period between Christmas and New Year and any time spent with family in the month of December.

Lets call it Lent with a run up, lent starts on Ash Wednesday which, next year is the 17th February. So I know what I’m giving up for lent becasue I’ve already started.

It hasn’t been faultless so far:

• One Smarties McFlurry while very drunk (I should be more worried about the Quarter Pounder with Cheese and 6 nuggets)
• 3 mini-muffins with chocolate chips in, although two people agreed that they didn’t count.

I’ll #tweet to let you knwo how I get on.

End date is 25 April 2010.

Jim x

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It must be said I’m fairly rubbish at updating about what Josaka has been doing which is stupid because it’s lots. The Wookies lovely EP Sparks is released on Monday and has picked up some 6Music play in the last week. Sixty Watt Bayonets got to play Reading and Leeds festival and Ben Marwood has toured !@*# hard  along with Jim Lockey and Oxygen Thief. Josaka put on the Reading tour date – and a thoroughly good time was had by all.

In addition to that it looks like we’ll be doing the distribution for the Circus Sands EP at some point in the next couple of months.

Jim x

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Someone I know recently asked me how they could have two link styles on their website.

Hopefully this tutorial make that a little bit easier. I’ve commented the code throughout so it should make sense.

I’ve made this a text file because the code snippet didn’t display properly. Download this file and rename as a .html and it should work.

CSS-tutorial-1

Save this file to your local machine and read through it. Then resave as a .html file from Notepad and play with the styles to get the link styles you want.

Jim x

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Instead I’ve decided to go back to the less-frequent-but-more-informative blogs actually written in one go by me rather than random 140 character mini-blogs all added together.

Of course I’m still doing those, and infact you can see them on the right hand side of my blog so not-that-much has changed really.

I’ve also given my blog a new theme, I think this theme looks better than the last one and I’ll try and customise it more at some point.

Work (as in day job) has been incredibly busy in the last few weeks. I’ve taken on something new and it has meant some long hours. This has had quite an impact on my progress on my first book…I’ve simply been too tired to make any significant progress. I’m sure Ben Marwood is angry.

Talking of Mr Marwood Broken Tail and Josaka have released two records in the last month one by Sixty Watt Bayonets and a split EP with Ben, Jim Lockey and Oxygen Thief. There have been deservedly great reviews for both.

Plans for doing some comedy shows later this year and having a new show to perform next year are coming together slowly but I’m starting to feel like I’ve got enough material for an hour which is good (as soon as I find time to actually write it down).

The last couple of weeks have been hectic at weekends too – Ben and Jerry’s Festival was great, I ate 7 ice creams in a day and caught up with my cousins (happy birthday alex), I seem to be on a losing run at bowling – much to my dismay (well done Ruth and Colin) good times have been had in Somerset for Philly and Keon’s wedding and today I’m off to see my Dad in Kent.

I hope you’re well.

Speak soon.

Jim x

PS I’m going to come back to this article and add links in. I promise.

PPS I did it.

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