http://readingroars.com Bringing news and views from the roaring capital of the Thames Valley Sat, 28 May 2011 03:18:00 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en After much umming and ahhing I have decided to discontinue Reading Roars!, a blog I started in July 2005. With the last update going up October 2010 (half a year ago), the blog has run out of steam and spluttered to a halt.  This has happened before, but on this ... http://readingroars.com/discontinuing-reading-roars/ [caption id="" align="alignright" width="280" caption="Green Drinks (Flickr)"][/caption] This week, representatives from roughly 190 countries met in Nagoya, Japan, to thrash out an agreement on saving the world's biodiversity.  That's a pretty big deal. Closer to home (and on not such a high level), eco-minded volunteers undertake conservation efforts all the time; scrubbing ... http://readingroars.com/5-monthly-green-gatherings-in-reading/ It looks as if Reading Borough Council have expanded their Twitter presence with two new channels: @Street_care and @readingcouncil. These join @FundingAdvice, launched in July 2009 to help voluntary organisations. @ReadingCouncil, with a suitably burgundy background, have made a tentative start, commencing tweeting on 26 October and posting their second ... http://readingroars.com/reading-borough-council-on-twitter/ Still on the theme of logos, Google today celebrates the 156th birthday of Oscar Wilde with a (rather gloomy) doodle based on The Picture of Dorian Gray. Oscar Wilde was famously imprisoned at Reading Gaol for two years, occupying cell 33, and was moved to write a poem on capital punishment, The ... http://readingroars.com/the-google-doodle-with-a-reading-connection/ A big story last week in social media was Gap's decision to revert to their original logo after customers slammed their new design (right move; their new logo was poor).  This has given me an idea. I've always fancied having a logo for this blog.  Londonist, admittedly a far bigger and ... http://readingroars.com/help-design-a-logo-for-this-blog/ There are some ridiculously smart people in Reading.  They are everywhere: working for big companies such as Microsoft and Oracle Corporation, toying with robotics, doing marvellous things with social media in their free time. Geeks even enjoy a drink now and again (in moderation).   Here are 5 social events in ... http://readingroars.com/5-events-for-geeks-in-reading/ There’s a lot of tat in Reading, a point which is regularly, forcibly, made by some of the lovely people who leave comments on this esteemed publication; most notably on the Ten Things To Do In Reading post (you should see the comments that don’t get approved!). However, as a ... http://readingroars.com/a-couple-of-bands-for-you/ As I write, a pair of freelancing individuals are working, tweeting, demonstrating and exchanging ideas from Reading's Global Cafe.  They call themselves "co-workers" and the organisers of this minor movement are CowCoop (#cowcoop). Co-working is not a clearly defined concept.  But from what I can gather, it refers to microbusiness or ... http://readingroars.com/cowcoop-co-workers-meet-in-global-cafe/ Wetherspoons. That word provokes instant thoughts doesn’t it? Teenagers. WKD. Aggressive young men with pierced ears and VD. Or perhaps it’s other incarnation comes to mind – the day time version of Wetherspoons, full of the retired ale-drinking gentlemen of ‘advanced years’, reading The Sun and flirting with the barmaid. I have to ... http://readingroars.com/the-monks-retreat/ In a recent post, I revealed that roughly a quarter of Reading councillors maintain a blog and just under one-third are on Twitter. Following this entry, I created a Twitter list of Reading councillors at ReadingRoars/reading-councillors (it seemed like a natural next step). Now I've gone a little further.  For fun, I've created ... http://readingroars.com/what-are-reading-councillors-tweeting-about/