A few weeks ago I was given the chance to light a production of little shop of horrors which was being put on by the drama society at Teesside University. In the past I have lit productions before, but nothing at this level or standard. The show went really well, and I was told that it was the most successful production that the society had put on with over 100 people coming to see it on the final night.

I was brought in to operate lighting at the last moment due to certain reasons, which on one hand could have been stressful, but it turned out to work really well. I sat down with the director and worked through the show cue-by-cue setting up the lighting for each scene. What made this show different was that I had my 4 scanners on the rig, along with 2 brand new RGB par cans which the society. This presented new challenges for us as we had to run extra cables around the venue.

On the last evening I added some extra lighting cues to make the ending more magical. I also operated the finale from my iPad as every member of the technical and backstage team joined the cast on stage.

I was really happy with the outcome of the show. The hard work and dedication by every member of the drama society is something which just amazes me every time. I am now really looking forward to next year, and developing my technical skills even further.

Just over a year ago, I set up the first version of Whitley Bay Junior’s website. At the time, it was a bit of a rushed job to get it all set up and working in time for the 2010/2011 ice hockey season. That is why I decided it was time to do a re-design of the website. I also wanted to improve the club’s image online as the club is just going up and up.

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Dropbox is my favorite web application at this current moment in time, and has been for a good few months. I first started using Dropbox when I was completing my A-levels last year.  Prior to this I would just connection to my files at School through a bit of software but this wasn’t very reliable so i turned to Dropbox for the solution.

Dropbox stores all of your files in the cloud as well as on local devices. This is the key area which makes the service incredibly appealing to me. I can save a file on my PC, access it on my Blackberry, Laptop and also access it on the web. Read the rest of this entry »

When I was approached by Craig from 56th Upton Scouts to help with their new group website, I was more than happy to help with the whole process! The project brief was simple, To implement the ‘everyday adventure‘ wordpress theme which I used on my Scout District’s website. The reason for using the theme which I’ve modified is because Craig felt it had some better features that the original theme

I started by copying the theme and installing it on Upton’s website. I then modified all the file paths to ensure that the directories matched those of Upton’s website. I set up the basic news page with an additional sidebar so that widgets could be different on the news pages compared to the rest of the site. Read the rest of this entry »

After all the work of the past two years at School, last Thursday was make or break for me in deciding if I would get to go to university. It was also whether I would get into the uni of my choice which I put down to be Teesside. Of course, the good news was that I did get the grades I required. This also meant that I had been accepted into Teesside Uni – yipeeee.

So what now? The big move of course! In just under a months time I will be moving away from home for the first time in 18 years. This is something which doesn’t worry me too much as I know I will be fine. The thing which does worry be though would be how my family will cope without me being there to fix everything that goes wrong! Read the rest of this entry »

The WordPress Broken Link Checker plugin by Janis Elsts is one of those essential plugins which I just couldn’t do with out. I tend to use it on more of my dynamic websites where links could be broken. The plugin automatically scans all of the links in your WordPress database and checks them to make sure none are broken. Read the rest of this entry »