BlindFish Ideas

200 word rpg challenge - entry idea "The labyrinthine library"

2017-04-16T08:10:00.002-07:00

For the last few years David Schirduan and Marshall Miller, have run a 200 word rpg challenge. The simple concept is a competition to "Design a role-playing game using 200 words or less." With a panel of judges going through the dozens and dozens of entries. Reading through previous years entries has inspired me to give it a go. Below is my attempt at writing a simple rpg in 200 words. I would love to hear any thoughts people have after reading it.

The Labyrinthine Library

Need

Scrabble tiles, DM & 3-4 players

Players are the Arcanist’s assistants. Sent into the labyrinthine library to find a lost spell scroll. The DM makes up a series of challenges.

Character creation

Characters have 2 HP. Take 2 scrabble tiles. The Letters are your Initials. Make up your names. The numbers give you 2 abilities from list below.

1 = +1HP
2 = nimble
3 = goodshot
4 = brawler
5 = small animal companion (cat/owl/ferret etc)
8 = academic
10 = 1 (DM approved) spell
0 your choice

Challenges are resolved by players pulling scrabble tiles. If player justifies using ability, pick 2 & return 1. Players keep used tiles.

Vowels = success
Consonant = failure
& If

B bookshelves change their layout
C cursed tome opens
D find drinks trolley
F fairytale comes to life
G goblin book thief attacks
M meet forgotten previous apprentice
P poisonous bookmold
T trap!
Y learn something helpful

DM decides if a failure means characters lose 1HP, face additional challenges or simply fail to progress. DM draws a tile to represent NPC attacks. All NPC have 1HP. Successful attacks by players & NPCs remove 1HP.

DM wraps up when all tiles used. Surviving characters use collected tiles to create the spell words.

By blindfishideas

First attempt at a one page rpg system using dominoes not dice

2017-01-30T10:07:00.000-08:00

Restarting blogging this year hasn't gone very well so far but here is something.

I've attempted to write a One page domino based rpg. I was intrigued by the idea of a domino based rpg after reading about Macabre Tales and have heavily imitated their system to attempt to make a one page rpg system myself. I'm sharing this first draft online for feedback for both the rpg system and my attempt to explain the system.

Game design is a big personal aim for my 2017 so I am going to try a number of small projects. I have some rpg ideas, board game ideas and card game ideas. This blog seems as good as place as any to share my working progress.

2017 blog restart

2017-01-03T01:09:00.001-08:00

It's the starts of 2017 and I think I'm going to try and start blogging again. It's been over a year since my last blog. Since then I've changed jobs and got married. Life has been very busy but new year resolutions being something I never do I decided to try one this year.

I think I will blog more short random notes like today and more stuff about board games and rpg. I probably won't have any posts about my RSE work but more general life stuff. At some point I will also redesign my blog, maybe.

Ultra light weight digital photo backup - OTG cable, smart phone & USB drive

2015-07-29T02:10:00.000-07:00

For my holiday to Peru I wanted to find a small cheap and light way to keep my digital photos backed up every day.

When I travelled around south East Asia for 3 months I was paranoid about backing up my photos. I was terrified that something would happen and I would have lost every photo. So I carried a 1.5Kg net book and charger, a memory card reader and a bulky portable hard drive. It worked I didn't loose any photos and when my hard drive was stolen I bought a replacement and quickly backed everything up again. But it was a heavy and bulky amount of tech to take backpacking.

Doing some research I decided the best way to achieve a small, cheap and light back up was to make use of an OTG (On The Go) Cable. This is simply a short cable with a male micro USB port at one end to plug into your phone and a female regular sized USB port at the other end for you to plug a multitude of normal USB devices into. This lets you do things like plugging a full sized keyboard into a phone. Importantly it also lets you plug in USB memory devices.

To keep with the aim of minimum equipment possible I did not use a card reader. But I did test this set up with an SD card reader that worked well. But the Compact flash readers didn't seem to work plug and play and I didn't have time to fiddle.

My system was simply plug the camera via the OTG cable directly into my phone at the end of each day. I set the cameras USB connect settings to Mass Storage in the cameras settings menu. I would then use the pre-installed file explorer programme to copy all the days images onto my SD Card (64GB). Once that transfer had completed I disconnected the Camera and plugged in my USB Thumb Drive (64GB). I then copied the photos onto the thumb drive. I read that android and OTG connections can only read FAT32 formatted file systems. But FAT32 is only meant to be used with memory devices of 32GB of less, be default you cannot format a 64GB thumb drive to FAT32 using the windows standard formatting tool. However, this 3rd party app did the job no problem. It might not work for every drive but it worked perfectly for me.

Sorry about the very low quality image. As both my best camera are in the photo
I had to take it with an older crappy smart phone

I had a 32GB compact flash memory card in my DSLR and as I was only away for 3 weeks I didn't fill the card up. This meant I had 3 copies of each photo. 1 in the camera in my day bag, 1 in my phones SD card in my zipped pocket and 1 in a USB thumb drive that I kept buried in my main bag. If my phone got pick-pocketed I still had the thumb drive and camera. If I was mugged and lost phone and camera, I had the thumb drive back up.

So I used for the back up

Micro USB Male to USB A Female On-The-Go Cable Adapter
SanDisk Cruzer Blade 64 GB

I already was planning on taking my phone with a MicroSD

Sony Xperia Z1
SanDisk microSDXC - 64 GB

And the DSLR camera including lead was
Sony A200

The system worked for me and was much much lighter then taking a laptop and full size portable hard drive. I was travelling with my wife who had an android tablet. So I put a 4th copy on her tablet for extra backups and it was a perfect device for reviewing photos at the end of the day.

I hope this helps if you are looking to do digital photo back ups in the lightest way possible. Just make sure you phone can do OTG (lots of modern androids can do this but not all, and some windows phones but no iphones can use this system) and think about how many GB storage you need. 64GB was fine for me to take several thousand photos but if you shot in RAW or have a different camera you might need more storage.

I uploaded a new video to YouTube!

2014-05-17T07:49:00.001-07:00

10 seconds of spoken word about teenage girl
uploaded by Gareth Cheesman
10 seconds of Meg Cannon doing an awesome spoken word performance about life as a teenage girl. Look out for the full video soon.

http://ift.tt/1o0tMzU

I uploaded a new video to YouTube!

2014-04-16T10:09:00.001-07:00

youth work berks 1
uploaded by Gareth Cheesman

http://ift.tt/1qK4mI1

Sexting Education Resource

2014-02-11T03:30:00.000-08:00

Today I am sharing a free resource I have made to help teenagers think about the type of images they are sharing online and by direct messages. I class this resource as in BETA, it is just my first attempt at making these images and I want to reshoot the photos. Get rid of the cluttered backgrounds and I need to find a male mannequin to use as well. You can find all the images I use at Sexting Images Resources

I have tested these images in a number of lessons for 14-15 year olds. The way I use them is getting the young people into small groups and asking them to put them in order from most risky images to share to least risky. They create a continuum of risk. Then we talk through a number of follow up questions.

Which images would it be ok to share on social network?
Which images might be ok to share by direct message, such as snapchat or MMS?
Which images should we never share?
Which images do you think could get people into trouble with the police?
Which images would be embarrassing if they got passed around school?
Which images would you worry about a stranger online getting hold of?
Which images would you worry about you parents/carers seeing?

Then a key part of the activity is asking the class to think about what is the motivation of taking or sharing an image. From my experience and from what other educators have told me, motivation is key. Young people can make more balanced (and hopefully safe) choices when they have thought about the underlying motivations. Especially the motivations of why people ask for these photos? what do they want them for? Are they likely to share it?

Already I have found some problems with the photos. Firstly they are all female and I need to sort out some male photos. Second I need to improve the quality of the photos. Thirdly I need to add more photos, such as photos smoking/drinking/drugs or doing crazy stunts or breaking a law. These photos will help to widen the activity beyond the focus on sexting to include other online pitfalls.

If you are a schools worker, youth worker or teacher and you would like to use the images, please feel free to download them and use them. The only request I have is to give me feedback. If you create any addition images I would love to see them. Like all my work on this site I have released it under a creative commons license.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial.

New video of my Siberian cat playing fetch

2014-01-18T15:46:00.001-08:00

Siberian cat playing fetch
uploaded by Gareth Cheesman
So our Siberian Kitten started playing fetch this evening. She has not been trained to do this but she just started doing it

http://ift.tt/1fKxGfI

New Year for Blogging

2014-01-03T03:00:00.000-08:00

New Year for Blogging

2013 was a bad year for my blogs, I barely posted. Not sure why. Maybe I was too distracted and busy but also I think I fell in to the trap of thinking every blog post needed to be a long post after lots of reading/research. Like this post in my SRE blog about 50 Shade of Grey in Aug 2012 or this one from my random blog about Cambodian Rice Paddy Fish Keeping in Feb 2012. Both posts took over a week to write with all the reading I did for them. Both posts are some of the most popular post I have written. So Last year I got into a bit of a rut with always wanting to write long posts after lots of research. I started 3 or 4 different long posts that I never posted in the end.

So in 2014 I am aiming to post every week even if it is a short post, like this one.

Enjoy this

Hey There Chlamydia - Parody video

Porn on the Brain - impacting young people?

2013-10-01T04:32:00.000-07:00

My view of the channel 4 show "Porn on the Brain" which is all about how teenegers might be being impact by watching porn online.

I have just finished watching "Porn on the Brain" (if you live outside UK Tunnel Bear can let you watch this) a Channel 4 British documentary by a previous editor of Loaded (lad mag) Martin Daubney. In this documentary Martin looks to try and find out what is the situation of porn and teenagers. Now sometimes the show becomes a little sensationalist with phrases like "The internet brought about the end of innocence" but behind some hype is some interesting stuff. With Martin spending 15 years of his life dedicated to (soft core) pornography with his work in loaded his perspective on the porn industry is not naive, he describes himself as an "wanking expert". Early in the show he makes a judgment of how he views the changes in the porn industry.

"Porn has lost its sense of humour and become something macabre"

Don't let the alarmist sensationalist tone of this documentary distract you from the core message, below I have bullet pointed the key points from my watching I think this show makes. I finish with a couple of paragraphs on my views of these key points

The type of porn being consumed by teenagers has drastically changed in the last 10 years.
Their study using a Functional MRI scan of 20 self declared porn addicts showed an identifiable addiction response similar to substance misuse disorder.
The special nature of the teenage brain that makes it particularly vulnerable to addiction.
If porn addiction is real teenagers are super sensitive/vulnerable to porn addiction due to brain development and natural hormonal levels of puberty.
Their is a longstanding difficulty in proving connection between porn use and a rise in sexual violence.
No evidence that watching porn as a teenagers turns people into a sex offender. but clinically we are sure of a connection.
Internet filters always have holes, they are never perfect. They have some value to help parents reduce exposure but "we can't rely on filter"
Lots of young people turn to porn because their sex education doesn't meet their needs
Parents of secondary school children need to have the "porn Chat"

The type of porn being consumed by teenagers has drastically changed in the last 10 years.
I think this has been clearly evidenced when you look at the history of the porn industry. Porn Land by Gail Dines (who is featured in the show) does a brilliant job of explaining the historical changes in the industry over the last 50 years. The Sex Education Show vs Pornography show (also by channel 4) showed the same. Teenagers are experiencing porn that over 25s have not even heard of or imagined.
Their study using a Functional MRI scan of 20 self declared male porn addicts showed an identifiable addiction response similar to substance misuse disorder.
I have no reason to dispute the findings of this study showing that these 20 people showed an addictive brain response to hardcore pornography. However, the scientist in me must highlight that a study of 20 people is not a large scale investigation. It may be a true representation of a significant proportion of the UK population or these 20 individuals may represent a tiny % of uk population. In summary whilst the results of this study are interesting a larger scale study is needed to prove the hypothesis. In particular I think a study would need to look at people across the spectrum of porn use. Equally i would be interested to see if any such addictive response could be identified in consumers of written erotica or is this just a visual stimulation addiction.
The special nature of the teenage brain that makes it particularly vulnerable to addiction.
If porn addiction is real teenagers are super sensitive/vulnerable to porn addiction due to brain development and natural hormonal levels of puberty.
This section builds on a much broader scientific base, looking at teenage brain development and the fact that young people develop their reward centre before their risk control department is widely accepted. From my study and experience I believe this is undeniable, young people are predisposed to take risks and therefore may risk engaging in more addictive behaviours. But to say that they are at greater risk of porn addiction does require the acceptance that porn addiction works the same as other addictions/risk taking. The shows study was not broad enough to make this concrete but I believe it is likely. Again more study is needed but ethical issues arise when trying to create a scientific study of the impact of porn on children.
Their is a longstanding difficulty in proving connection between porn use and a rise in sexual violence.
No evidence that watching porn as a teenagers turns people into a sex offender. but clinically we are sure of a connection.
I believe scientifically this is the weakest part of the show and the show resorts to anecdotal evidence and emotional stories. This is a real shame as it could be seen to undermine the reasonable scientific base the show was building up. I believe the real difficulty with this topic is exploring what kind of connection exists. I think it would be hard to deny some form of connection, but is it a strong connection or weak. Key to this is the important scientific fact that causation and correlation are not the same thing. I believe their is a correlational link between violent porn and sexual violence but at this point I do not believe we can scientifically say that the link is also causational. It may well be but we have not yet proven this. If and when a causational relationship is proven we will still need further study to understand the scale and scope of porns power. Are all consumers of violent porn on the path to becoming sexually violent and it is just a question of the timetable for when they become violent? Or are only a proportion of the population going to become sexually violent by watching violent porn? Sexual violence existed before internet porn and clearly this is a very complex issue. I am glad the show touched on this topic and was honest enough to say "No evidence that watching porn as a teenagers turns people into a sex offender." but equally we could be watching a growing problem emerge.
Internet filters always have holes, they are never perfect. They have some value to help parents reduce exposure but "we can't rely on filter"
It was a short section of the show but i am glad they made it very clear that whilst internet filters have some advantages, they are blunt tools that never work 100%. For example I am writing this in Starbucks who have an internet filter. That filter blocks out this blog, so I can post new blogs but cannot view my own website. However, it let me watch the complete channel 4 od show which included lots of nudity and porn (I was in a corner, no one could see my screen, I had headphones in and I had the show playing in a small window). Internet filters are dumb, blunt and full of holes. Therefore they should be used with caution and not presented as a magically technical fix for a technical problem. I fear the governments focus on ISPs making filters the default is more of a popularity stunt then a genuine help to most young people. It is a great way to look like you are tackling a problem without having to tackle the underlying issues of bad Sex and Relationship Education in schools and a lack of some parents helping young people make sense of sex and relationships. Its much more popular to blame the internet companies then look at our school system and parenting in the UK.
Lots of young people turn to porn because their sex education doesn't meet their needs
This claim in the show lacks the scientific base of the shows beginning but it is such a constant reality of my work I can not help but agree. Outside of the show we do have significant evidence of the failings in the UK's Sex and Relationship Education. The Sex Education Forum does a great job of researching and collecting evidence of the true sex and relationship experience of most UK young people. It would have been great if the channel 4 show made reference to this body of evidence. I think it is telling that every sex educator I know actively tackling pornography has a common theme, BISH UK talks about how on Planet porn things are different than real life, on the show Jonny Hunt talks about a skewed view of sex from porn and my own lesson is titled "distortions of the media". It's no coincidence that 3 sexual health educators have approached the topic the same way. From the ground there's a desperate need to give young people the tools to recognise Porn for what it is. a Blurred example and a bad teacher of happy healthy sex and relationships.
Parents of secondary school children need to have the "Porn Chat"
I kind of agree with this point but dislike the attitude of having a single one off "Chat" instead I believe all parents need to be willing to have an ongoing frank sex and porn dialogue. It is not a one time hit and run job but a constant and consistent attitude of openness and honesty. Easy to say difficult in practice for many parents.

In conclusion I think this show did a good job of raising an important issue. It was great to see some new scientific evidence (even though the study was small scale) of the nature of porn consumption and the brain. Lots of the arguments about greater SRE in schools have been repeated again from previous shows, news stories and the mouths of school based educators but they do not diminish by repetition. This message must be repeated and repeated and repeated until communities take it seriously.

My MP doesn't explain why he opposes teaching consent in SRE

2013-06-25T06:55:00.000-07:00

On the 11th of June the commons voted against making Sex and Relationship Education a compulsory part of the national curriculum and specifically this amendment including the following

"(1) For the purposes of this Part, personal, social and health education (“PSHE”) shall include
sex and relationship education, including information about same-sex relationships, sexual
violence, domestic violence and sexual consent. "

My MP for Chester, Stephen Mosley was one of the MP who voted against this clause. You can read a good briefing on why this clause was so important here by the sex education forum. This was a key opportunity to get SRE into the heart of what schools need to be providing. But MPs voted not to help young people on this issue and my MP was one of those who voted against. If you want to read more about the no vote, what it means and why it matters you can read Brook here or read this blog post exploring how the clause may still have life in it and the process that is needed.

Today I am writing about my experince in trying to ask my MP why he voted no. It started on Twitter

@mp4chester can you please explain why you voted against helping young people get access to high quality SRE in all schools yesterday?
— GarethBlindfishideas (@blindfishideas) June 12, 2013

after a few more tweets, I got this reply

@blindfishideas @BrookCharity - 140 chars doesn't allow me to give a full reply - please email stephen@chestermp.com + I will reply in depth
— Stephen Mosley MP (@mp4chester) June 12, 2013

Notice how he says "I will reply in depth". So I sent the following email. (Personal details removed)

Dear Stephen,
My name is Gareth Cheesman, I was the person tweeting you @blindfishideas about you voting against SRE. For your information you may be interested to know I work for a Christian charity called Chester Schools Christian Work. I regularly deliver Sex and Relationship Education lessons in the 6 high schools in Chester, we would go into more if we had more time/money.

We deliver lessons on everything from Self Esteem, body image, puberty, healthy relationships (we wont work in schools if they do not want the relationship lessons), STIs, HIV, Contraceptives, Sexting, The distortion of the Media (including porn) and other topics by request. The sexting and porn lessons have gained national interest with over 10000 downloads of my lesson plans and interviews by The Times, The Guardian, TES, BBC Radio Merseyside, BBC radio 5 Live and BBC world service.

We provide lessons for free to schools. Some of the above schools have had staff trained in SRE and found that this training did not give them the confidence to tackle the subjects themselves. Other schools have had no help in meeting the needs. So they have asked us for help. I am happy to explain more about my work if you have any questions. All my lesson plans are open to be viewed at www.SREstuff.com and the NHS supports the work providing free materials for our lessons.

Please can you explain why you voted against SRE being promoted in the new PSHE curriculum. Why did you think young people across the country did not deserve to be taught about " same-sex relationships, sexual violence, domestic violence and sexual consent." Why should they be denied a chance to learn about these topics?

Sadly our adult community has so many confusions about sex we can not rely on parents to equip young people to deal with this difficult subject. So why do you not want schools to tackle SRE?

I look forward to your reply,

Kind Regards

I have put in bold what I consider the core paragraph of my letter. Why did he vote against this clause? I asked on twitter when I should expect a reply he said he aims for within 10 days.

Yesterday I received a letter from him dated 21st June, exactly 10 days after the vote. Sadly this letter falls short in answering the simple question why did he vote no. The letter goes to great length telling me all the good things the current government has done. Many of these I support and am very thankful for. But they are not an answer to the question why did Stephen Mosley vote against this new clause in the national curriculum.

Mr Mosley also makes some simple mistakes showing his lack of knowledge on the subject. For example Mr Mosley writes "As you may already know, sex and relationship education (SRE) is compulsory in maintained secondary schools". This shows how uninformed his information is. Some Sex Education topics are statutory within the Science National Curriculum but Sex AND Relationship Education is not afforded the same status. quoting from the Governments own website https://www.gov.uk/national-curriculum/other-compulsory-subjects

Some parts of sex and relationship education are compulsory - these are part of the national curriculum for science. Parents can withdraw their children from all other parts of sex and relationship education if they want.

The Sex Education Forum makes it crystal clear for anyone who makes the effort to do the research.

The most up-to-date legislation relating to sex and relationships education (SRE) are contained within the Education Act (1996) and the Learning and Skills Act (2000). The requirements are that:

It is compulsory for all maintained schools to teach some parts of sex education i.e. the biological aspects of puberty, reproduction and the spread of viruses. These topics are statutory parts of the National Curriculum Science which must be taught to all pupils of primary and secondary age.

There is also a separate requirement for secondary schools to teach about HIV and AIDS and sexually transmitted infections.

The government does make strong recommendations to also includes topics such as relationships but they are not given the same importance as HIV. To be clear, I am funded by a HIV charity and think it is key that we teach young people about HIV and devote an entire lesson to this one STI. However, in the UK the HPA believe there are about 96,000 people with HIV, about 0.15% of the population. Yet "almost a third (29%) of 16-18-year-old girls say they have been subjected to unwanted sexual touching at school," (statistic from EVAW) but Stephen Mosley voted against making teaching about "sexual violence, domestic violence and sexual consent" the same legal requirement as HIV.

Strangely in the letter Mr Mosley says that "The Government does expect teachers to ensure that all pupils develop an awareness of the issues around physical violence and abuse as a part of SRE". If they Government expects that why not make that explicit in voting yes on this clause? His get out clause is "The Government believes that teacher's professional judgement should be trusted to do so appropriately". I would suggest that with the current Governments focus on Results Results Results few teachers will use their professional judgement to risk their jobs by devoting any time to a non statutory topic. A topic they feel under resourced and under supported to deliver. The fact that schools in Mr Mosley's constituency currently invite outside speakers (me and my team) to cover the statutory aspects, such as HIV, should be a clue. We need to have some statutory requirements if we are serious about helping young people.

The debate about making SRE truly statutory for all young people (academies, free schools?) will rage on and whilst it is happening young people will suffer from not being given the chance to learn about and discuss these vital issues.

What is most disappointing is that Mr Mosley did not give an answer to the simple question. Why did you vote no? I grew up watching Yes Minister and reading the letter sounds like a reading a speech by Sir Humphrey Appleby. Wading through the words, statistics, misdirections and self congratulations I find not an answer to a simple question but an attempt to avoid providing an answer. There are legitimate arguments against New Clause 20 but Mr Mosley did not offer a single argument or explanation. He just avoided the question. I am writing to Mr Mosley again today. Hopefully this time if I am concise I may get a concise reply, in 10 days of course.

Dear Mr Mosley,

Please can you explain why you vote against New Clause 20 on the 11th June?

Kind Regards

Gareth Cheesman

Youth Work Summit Tweet Colletion

2013-05-17T04:19:00.000-07:00

For the Youth Work Summit I decided to attempt some collection and storage of tweets with the #hashtag #yws13. Twitter has a great tool for staying up to date with the tweets as the come in but I wanted to also have a nice document back up which I created with www.ifttt.com. I hope its useful to people at the event and away form the event. Read more below.

Document collecting ALL #yws13 tweets here

Tweets about "#yws13"

This automatic backing up of tweets is possible due to a handle little service called If This Then That found at www.ifttt.com. You sign up for an account and then create recipes for all kind of cool automations. Cross platform posting, getting emails warning you of weather warnings. The digital world is you oyster. Especially using the immensely powerful RSS feed trigger. RSS feeds are amazing ways to share, organise and collect information. Most search engines have an RSS feed built in so that you can get automatic updates when a new search term appears. For example I have some ifttt recipes set up to email me when certain items appear on ebay from the ebay search RSS feed setting. Twitter has this possibility built into its search function Combine that with a google docs account and ifttt.com and you can create an automatic backup of any thing you can search for in twitter. This is the specific #tag recipe I used.

Reflecting on training the trainers of Sex and Relationship Education

2013-05-07T04:26:00.002-07:00

Over the last 2 weeks, for the first time I have taught a full Sex and Relationship Education trainer course. In the past I have helped out on someone elses course and have lead workshops on specific topics at events/conferences. This was the first time I took

responsibility for an entire course. The course I taught is the 4 day Esteem Resource Network course. This was the course I was originally trained in and 5 years and 500+ hours of classroom experience later I was now teaching the course. The course had 10 people and I loved opening up the wide field of Relationship and Sex Education to them.

On the course I had 1 co worker, 1 local church based child and family worker, 2 third year youth work students (one who has been on placement with me) and a herd of 6 second year youth work students. So basically everyone was a youth worker or similar This helped me as it's the group of people I work with the most. I know how to relate to youth workers and know they will have some practical experience of what young people are facing today.

So what did I learn by doing this course? Firstly it was fun, a lot of fun working with 10 people who obviously care about young people and want to learn new ways to help young people have happy healthy lives. Recognising that happy health relationships and sex can go a long way to helping this happen. I get a buzz from training and educating, I enjoy the process and I enjoy the result. It can be exhausting but I think all the effort you put in is worth it. Now I also have a passion for pedagogy and enjoy experimenting with various techniques/styles. I enjoy planning for groups and seeing when they fit into the tracks I have laid out. But I also love the chaos/opportunities when the groups goes off the tracks and the education is more reactive, informal and sometimes much more important. Having a good group is key.

The second thing I learnt from leading the training was that I know more about SRE then I may realise. When asked question by the students I knew the answer. Not because I had a session plan in front of me, not because the answer was obvious but because I have spent the last 4 years focusing 50% of my working life on SRE and from that I now know a lot of stuff that I was completely blissfully unaware of 8 years ago. I forget that it is not common knowledge (for most people) to know which STIs are a bacteria and which are a virus, or what the standard treatment is or why LARCs are so important. I treat these bits of facts as something that should be common knowledge but maybe I have a stronger "Curse of Knowledge bias" then I appreciate.

The training also exposed some gaping holes in my knowledge. At times I found myself saying a sentence and then silently hoping the group didn't ask me "Why?" Somethings I repeat because I have heard them so many times, maybe I have heard it so much I have forgotten the source, maybe I was never told the source. Maybe some facts are more experiences that are so common they look like facts. I still need to learn more about SRE myself. The more I know the more I recognise what I don't know. The difficulty is knowing what area to now focus on. Child development or public health theory? Parenting skills or more about midwifery? So many ways to broaden my knowledge and also always more depth to explore. If anyone reads this and has a suggestion on what they think a SRE trainer should study let me know.

Finally, I think I now believe everyone can be involved with SRE but some people stand out as extra keen/suitable for SRE work. Thankfully on this course I wouldn't hold back on recommending a single person from this group to a school. They all did great and I believe showed the ability to work well in schools in the future. My judgement may be completely off and some of them may surprise me (in a bad way) when I take them into a real school environment. However, out of the group a handful of people stood out as extra keen, extra motivated and extra interested in the topic. It wasn't just the loudest people in the group, it was about the depth of questions they asked. They awareness of the wider issues, from politics to media. An interest in the subject does not necessarily = an ability to educate young people about the subject but it helps. I will keep quiet about exactly who I noticed but I am curious if my mental list of people prove to be the most able in classrooms and future work. I suppose this raises the question are some people born to be Relationship and Sex Educators?

I uploaded a new video to YouTube!

2013-04-11T13:46:00.001-07:00

GarethCheesman Radio 5 SRE The Talk
uploaded by Gareth Cheesman
On the 25th March I was invited on Tony Livesey's Monday night BBC Radio 5 Live talk show. Every Monday night they have a focus on Sex and Relationships. This week they focused on what should young people be told about sex and when and how should parents talk to their children about sex.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUwRQhU-Um4

Stories from a Thai HIV Orphanage

2013-03-19T07:41:00.001-07:00

Today I wanted to share a few short insights into the everyday realities for children and young people living in a HIV orphanage in Thailand. I visited this orphanage, The House of Grace, in 2012 whilst travelling around South East Asia (read my post about it here). Like my work in UK this project is linked with ACET international. Today I received an email from the project and wanted to share a few snapshots of what it is like for children and young people in Thailand being supported in The House of Grace. Funded and staffed by Christians the project provides a hope and a home for alone, rejected and something sick young people victims of HIV. Kitisak is the pastor who has dedicated his life to supporting these children and running the House of Grace. These hopefully give a snapshot of the rough and the smooth.

Arriving - Fah

Nine year old Fah is one of the most recent children to join the House of Grace family. One evening, towards the end of December last year, she found herself literally dumped at the gates of the House of Grace. There she stood crying, not a friend in the world, with just three plastic bags containing all her belongings. Kitisak’s staff found somewhere for her to stay that night. The next day they discovered that nobody wanted her, not even her grandmother who said that she no longer loved Fah and didn’t want her anymore. So Fah came to live at the House of Grace and fifteen year old Pakart was given the responsibility to be her special ‘big sister’. Wherever Pakart went Fah went too. We first met Fah at the Christmas/New Year party and could see that she was already beginning to feel at home.

Seeing a way forward? - Dae

Dae, who will be twelve in July is another very precious child at the House of Grace. The other day Kitisak heard him counting slowly and aloud - “eleven… twelve … thirteen …” Why was this? What was he doing? He was counting the number of steps from the boy’s dormitory before turning left into the dining room! Dae’s is a long story but briefly here it is.

Eighteen months ago it was discovered that Dae was blind in his left eye and that sight in his right eye was deteriorating. In November 2011 he had surgery in Bangkok in an effort to try to save the sight in that eye. This proved effective for a year or so but now he appears to be almost completely blind in both eyes. The other night at evening prayers it was very moving to see his friends finding a chair for him to sit on and at the end of the meeting two other friends helped him, one to put his chair away and the other taking him by the hand and leading him off to his dormitory.

Early next month Papa Kitisak will take him to Bangkok to see if the surgeon can do any more for him. Kitisak is very concerned that if Dae were to lose his sight completely what would become of him. The House of Grace is not really equipped to give him the special care that he would need.

Surprising Joy - Preow

Thailand is known as “the Land of Smiles” but what is behind the smiling face of two year old Preow? In June last year she came from the local provincial hospital to join the House of Grace family. She had been receiving treatment for cancer in her hip and there was no-one to care for her. It wasn’t long before she felt the love and warmth of her ‘siblings’ – everybody just loved her and wanted to hold her! Since then she has had chemotherapy several times but her smile is still so captivating! Last month when it was discovered that the cancer had spread to her lungs Papa Kitisak shared this news with all the
children at the House of Grace and said, “However long dear little Preow lives with us let us make sure that her life is full of joy and happiness”.

A Hope and A Future - Dom and Toey

The House of Grace started way back in 1997 when Kitisak and his wife welcomed two little children Dom and Toey into their family. As orphans from HIV they had been left abandoned, living in a little shack in a nearby village, to fend for themselves. From that moment on, life began to have hope and a future for them. Today Dom, now 21 is studying in a local university to become a teacher and Toey, 19 is gaining valuable work experience in his second year of a local apprenticeship scheme. Dom and Toey are just two of the 69 children at the House of Grace, of whom 38 are HIV+.

There are hardships and problems,

but there is also hope and opportunities.

HIV, Thailand, Orphanage, The House of Grace, ACET, international, Why,

The curse of focusing on overheads in charities

2013-03-11T10:18:00.000-07:00

I think this is a great talk about charity. I work for two charities and live in the frustration of small scale and the desire to keep the overheads low. Now waste in overhead is always a bad thing but I cringe when I hear people being classed as overheads. Yes trim the budget on the travel by making sure people take the most reasonable train option but don't fire your face to face workers. Just because their face to face work involves talking to donors not clients. Your people are the real strength of any charity. please pay them a fair wage. If we believe non-profits serving communities deserve the best people doing the best they can. Then we need to pay a competitive wage. We can not short cut our way to success in the non-profit sector. We need to invest in growth and advertising.

I have two lingering questions from this talk

"Is there a limit on what is reasonable to pay a charity worker or CEO?"
"Can charities increase giving by they way they work or do we need a shift in cultural attitudes? Is it possible for charities to do this?"

I uploaded a new video to YouTube!

2013-02-28T00:04:00.001-08:00

BBC radio 5 interview about a drop in teenage pregnancy rate
uploaded by Gareth Cheesman
on the 27-2-13 I was interviewed by BBC radio 5 about the drop in UK teenage pregnancy rate. Read more about my work at www.SREstuff.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNWD_qfFB_k

Is tech running my life?

2013-02-19T07:36:00.001-08:00

I am a geek, I can not lie. I have always loved science, tech, sci-fi, LOTR, computers and board games. I regularly get teased by my Girlfriend for checking my phone too often. Usually I am checking twitter, (my tech list) lifehacker, the tech and science section of BBC news and other sources of wonderful geeky news and information. But what I am trying to get my head around at the moment is this.

"Is tech running my life or helping me improve my life?"

The tools that are designed to make my life easier and save time take time and effort. There is a huge range in tech in how much effort you need to put in. An example of low input high convenience is my amazon Kindle, kindle is a wonderful light ebook reader. It is meant to keep hundreds/thousands of books at your fingertips in one small device. The device is quite simple to use but you do need to keep it charged and have to get the books on it, Usually through the on board kindle book store or by using the webstore on a laptop. Relatively small effort for the huge benefit of hundreds/thousands of books easily accessible.

On the other extreme you have Linux and RaspberryPi this operating system eco system and coding based hardware are much cheaper and/or free. They promise a way to do tech based things without paying high license fees to either Microsoft or Apple. They promise increased flexibility to get a computer that will do exactly what you want it to do. The RaspberryPi has the promise of linking easier to other hardware and electronics. So if Linux is free and technically more flexible and useful why is it still a tiny percentage of total global computer users? Basically it is a Very High effort tech option. There is an old tech joke of "Linux is only free if your time is worthless". Not only is there a set up effort. Most people don't play around with changing operating systems until they buy a new computer. Some Linux distributions still take a higher level of set up effort but even after set up it takes time to learn a new operating system. This to me is the key reason why people don't want to try Linux. It is too much effort.

So in balance across my life is most of my tech lower effort then benefit or do I put more effort into the tech then benefit I derive from the tech. I'm not sure and to blur the lines some more, i enjoy tinkering with tech. It is a hobby. So tech is definitely important to my life, it takes up a significant part of my life but I do not think it is running my life. I derive more benefit (partly entertainment) from tech then the effort I need to put in. Maybe the only way to find out is to have a tech sabbatical?

Teenagers who read 50 Shades of Grey

2013-02-06T01:36:00.000-08:00

I have started teaching a lesson on the media's portrayal of Sex and Relationship. The lesson focuses on movies, TV shows and visual pornography. But with all the media hype around 50 Shades of Grey I wanted to do a small scale survey of young people I work with to see if the hype had any grounding in reality. Are young people reading it and is it impacting young people?

At the end of a session looking at the Distortion of Media I handed out some small surveys. Just half a dozen questions and a space for general feedback. I did this with two year groups both mixed gender. A group of year 10 students (aged 14-15) and a group of year 12 students (aged 16-17). With the older group I also asked if the book had encouraged them to experiment with "BDSM/fetish/kinky stuff" but talking with school staff it was decided not to ask that direct question to the year 10 groups. Below are some of the figures from my study, please note it is very small scale and may not reflect wider trends amongst young people.

Year group	Total students	Number heard	% heard	Number read	% read	Number experimented	% experiment
10	131	128	97.7%	11	8.4%	-	-
12	205	188*	91.7%*	40	19.5%	4	2.0%

*It should be noted that with the year 12 group 16 people did not

complete the survey fully so I suspect the % for those who have heard

about 50 Shades of Grey to be higher, closer to the year 10 figure.

Looking at these figures I think it is clear that 50 Shades of Grey is impacting young people. Nearly every young person has heard about it. Whilst only 8.4% of students aged 14-15 have read it this figure rises to 19.5% of 16-17 year olds. With a film planned to come out in the future I believe awareness about this specific book (and other erotic novels) will increase. As knowledge and awareness increases of the books I believe it is reasonable too suggest that awareness and interest in all things BDSM/fetish/Kinky will increase.

I think this means a number of things for Sex and Relationship Educators. Firstly we need to get ready to directly challenge some of the stereotyping found in erotic books. Now I know their is huge variation in the style of these books but some themes in relationships may be common. The line between romance novel and erotica is blurred and any form of popular media must be critically examined by consumers to make sure we recognise how it may misrepresent reality I have worked with many young guys who seem surprised to find out women naturally have pubic hair, porn has taught them different. I wonder what will be the sex and relationship myths made popular in erotic novels. I think 50 shades has some specific issues, you can read about my views on them here.

Secondly we need to prepared for questions based in the curiosity encouraged by these books. Just as mainstream visual porn prompts specific questions and ideas. These books will create their own specific questions and comments. Possibly questions about bondage, spanking and other kink activities. This could be a big problem if SRE workers do not equip themselves for this possibility. Equally this will mean making sure we know what is good health advice and not just knee jerk reactions. Along with the physical well-being of BDSM participants we will also need to equip young people with skills to safeguard their emotional health. For example how do you respond to a partner who wants to try spanking but you hate the idea? If you feel completely out of depth in the area of fetish I would recommend Violet Blues book Fetish Sex as a relatively plain English exploration of some of the most common fetishes. Be careful where you get the book out with its racy cover :). To be honest I got an ebook version so I could read it on the bus.

The work with the 16-17 year olds showed that 2% of the group admitted to being encouraged to experiment with kinky things because of these kind of books. Now these books are not the only thing encouraging kinky sex, our old friend visual porn is also encouraging this. It is not the role of SRE workers to make a judgement on someone choice to experiment, if the choose. But it is our job to make sure young people understand how to protect themselves from possible physical and emotional consequences from this form of sexual activity.

I fear I may sound alarmist, I am not meaning to be. I just want to make sure that as a group of sexual health educators we are all ready to help equip young people with the skills and information to navigate this possible issue. I am already thinking my porn lessons needs to be rewritten, to make it explicitly clear that the sex you read about may also be as fake as the sex in most porn videos.

50 Shades of Grey, Sex and Relationship, Sex and Relationship Education, SexEd, Survey,

I uploaded a new video to YouTube!

2012-11-27T03:10:00.001-08:00

Gareth Cheesman talking about Teenage Pregnancy on BBC Merseyside
uploaded by Gareth Cheesman
I was invited to have a quick chat with Tony Snell on BBC radio Merseyside about teenage pregnancy and what we can do about it, especially in schools based Sex and Relationship Education

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVuR7lNCBlw

Mexican Day of the Dead (repost)

2012-10-31T05:38:00.000-07:00

Celebrating the Dead

**An updated, edited re-post from last year**

If you have never heard of this festival before you can read Wikipedia summary or watch this excellent BBC documentary on this fascinating festival.

I tried to read as much as I could about this Mexican tradition and the wider catholic tradition of All Saints and All Souls day. In all my research I was stuck by one over arching idea. Death is not a taboo subject that is feared in Mexico. Death is celebrated as an essential, positive and even humorous part of existence. The festivals seems to have two sides, the remembering of dead relatives (with associated belief of the souls returning to earth) and the celebration of death. Both sides intrigue me but I am hesitant about the belief in souls returning. I am not claiming it is impossible (I think it may be impossible but I'm not certain) I am claiming that the story when King Saul had the Witch of Endor call up the soul of Samuel, (from 1Samuel 28:3–25) makes it clear trying to talk with dead is a bad idea.

However, I feel Dia de Los Muertos is about remebering and celebrating those who have died before us and this is something that I beleive we could do with more in our culture and community, especially in the western protestant tradition. I think we fear death. Twice in recent years I have been at a Sunday church service where it would have been completely appropriate and suitable to spend time thinking about those who had died but instead of taking time to simply 'remember' the church leader felt the need to ignore death and launch a campaign for peace or interfaith dialogue. I felt let down. Why should we forget those who have died

Last year I had the privilege of speaking at my Nan's funeral. At over 90 after a full and varied life my nan was happy to move on. The funeral service was an uplifting event where we all got to remember stories from Nan's life and celebrate her life and faith. It was great and a lovely way to say good bye. Sadly with our British attitude to death we may not often again remember her in this way. Scared of upsetting and causing offence people become reluctant to ask questions or even mention her again. This is not universally true but it defiantly happens.

My Sister, Jayne, died when I was 18 and for years one of the most painful things was people either avoiding me and my family or avoiding even mentioning Jayne's name. I think we don't have any reference points culturally about how or when to talk about and remember the dead. In this vacuum of tradition we end up turning death into this social taboo that should not be named. We run from death and try to ignore it at every corner.

I believe we have a lot to learn from the Mexican way of celebrating death during Dia de Los Muertos. Their attitude and respect for remembering those who have died create a social time where families can naturally come together in joy. Taking time to think of about the good times with departed family members. I think key to this is a much more light hearted attitude towards death. Something the Mexicans seem to have sorted.

Let me finish with a quote I heard on a BBC programme about Dia de Los Muertos, I'll let you decide what it means and if it is a good thing for us to say.

"Life is just a dream, only in death are we fully awake."

My review of BBC3 show, unsafe sex in the city

2012-10-24T15:04:00.002-07:00

BBC3 takes a frank look at how a sexual health clinic operates in Manchester. Following a number of young people as they go through the process of testing, waiting, getting results and then if needed getting treated. Mixing true life stories and high quality sexual health advice this show has the power to do some good. Revealing some shocking attitudes in the youth. Especially in regards to condom use. By both males and females. Plus the voice over guy has some great one liners. You can see the shows official page here and if you live outside the UK and want to watch this show have a quick look at TunnelBear .

"I love dripping willies,

because then you know what they have"

For me the best part of the programme is seeing how the staff are professional and friendly. I really hope and believe that this programme will help increase the number of people going as now they have an idea what will happen. The mystery of sexual health clinics keeps so many people from darkening their doors until it is really bad. Even when breaking the worse news possible they stay professional, friendly and nonthreatening.

The format of the show is to follow a number of people through the stages of getting tested at the clinic and then seeing what the results are both medically, socially and emotionally. All the people are very sexually active and I guess are not an average representation of all people in Manchester. Whilst the actually behaviors might not be average I bet lots of the attitudes from the show are common/average.

Kelvin and Joe

"First one night stand, first time! First time for Gonorrhea ... Now needle in my ass"

Quote from Kelvin

Both Kelvin and Joe are shown as young people who enjoy a big night out and Joe is shown as being very cock sure and very confident in his attitude to women, he even writes a blog teaching other guys to act like him! He claims to have slept with 80+ women. Kelvin on the other hand starts the show in a long term relationship, then he admits he had a one night affair, which he catches Gonorrhea from. They show how he gets tested in graphic detail. For an over confident guy he is pretty scared of the needle they inject in his arse to cure the Gonorrhea. (no tablets for Gonorrhea, higher doses of antibiotics now needed to tackle the risk of drug resistant Gonorrhea).

Kelvin comes back later in the show to double check he is now clear, he brings Joe to be checked. Joe, over confident as ever, makes jokes with nurse Lauren. Nurse Lauren was awesome, couldn't be phased by anything and gave some great dead pan looks at cock sure Joe. By the end of the show Kelvin had been dumped for cheating on his girlfriend and Joe had been given the STI all clear. Kelvin seemed to have learnt from his experience and might make a change in his behavior, Joe I don't think will change one bit.

Courtney

Possibly one of the most shocking attitudes in the show came from Courtney. This 17 year old claims to have had with 33 sexual partners, lost her virginity at 12 years old and is aiming to sleep with at least 7 people in the next 3 months. her Mum is exasperated by the risks her daughter is taking by consistently not using condoms and getting drunk and going back to strange lads house.

Quotes from Courtney
"I don't use protection because it don't feel as good."
"If I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it"
After a STI scare when asked if she will now use protection.
"I will try and use it a lot more, I can't say for definite coz you know"

Her risk taking is huge, both with STIs and physical dangers of being drunk and going home with complete strangers alone. Sadly she seemed to relish in the possible self destruction and risks she is taking.

Tim

One of the most emotional stories was Tim, a guy who is living a high risk life style is getting a regular point of service HIV test. A 30min quick turn around lets people quickly find out if they are HIV+. Tim regularly gets this test but this time the results are different.

"You HIV test has come back positive."

"Has it really? Has it really?"

Tim couldn't believe the result and went into shock. We find out he deals with the news by getting a big bottle of Vodka and getting drunk. Tim's blood is sent away for a more accurate test to confirm the result. Later we find out Tim got a false positive, a very rare event. The nurse did say that this was the only time she had known it to happen. Tim did seem to be strongly impacted by the experience.

Conclusion

This show has great potential for raising the profile of sexual health issues, my fear is that the show will normalise/validate some of the less then healthy attitudes expressed by the people on the show. Their risk taking is huge! The sexual health clinic staff are awesome and good at challenging the attitudes but not sure if it is enough. I can't wait to watch the next episode next Wednesday. I think this is good information being spread in a relevant format for our culture.

#unsafesexinthecity became a trending topic on twitter and it was interesting to read that most of the comments were very judgmental and even aggressive towards the people on the show. Only Tim seemed to get any sympathy but even Tim got some abuse. I have selected some tweets from the stream of comments.

#unsafesexinthecity ''They rip it off me it's not my fault'' oooooh yeaaah course, hope you get aids.
— One Direction♥. ‏ (@HeyItsSabs) October 24, 2012

#unsafesexinthecity That dickhead had no diseases, it'd serve him right if he did.
— Lauren (@_Lolls) October 24, 2012

What did he expect having sex without a condom and being an escort...? #unsafesexinthecity
— Luisa Gottardo (@lu1820) October 24, 2012

That girl that said she never uses protection is rank! #slag #unsafesexinthecity
— sarah (@sarahkaywild) October 24, 2012

Of all the comments I was most worried about this.

if i got told i was HIV positive, your basically telling me i might aswell commit suicide #UnsafeSexInTheCity

— hi chanda :D (@CHANDA__) October 24, 2012

It shows a fundamental misunderstanding that HIV in the UK is a death sentence. That is an outdated attitude from the 80s. HIV should be seen as a serious life long condition not a death sentence. Hopefully this will be addressed in future episodes.

I uploaded a new video to YouTube!

2012-10-24T09:34:00.001-07:00

Gareth On BBC Radio 5 live. Porn in SRE?
uploaded by Gareth Cheesman
Should Porn be tackled in school based Sex and Relationship Education? by who? Read more about my work at www.SREstuff.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V90MPEAWaGQ

Dear Science, Please start work on...

2012-09-23T13:21:00.002-07:00

Dear Science,

Now I know that I don't give you as much attention as I used to, especially compared to when I was a teenager. But I still see you as my friend. You make me smile you make me laugh and you keep amazing me! I hope our friendship will continue for many years and as your friend can I ask a favour.

Please start work on...

Genetically engineered pets

Let philosophers work out the ethics, I want some cool new pets in my home. For starters a dog sized elephant. A perfect intelligent pet who couldn't jump on the furniture (elephants cant jump, but science you already know this, in fact you taught me that). Also micro dolphins/whales for my home aquarium and allergy free dogs/cats. I would start with the dogs and cats, probably has the least ethical concerns. But those are just my 3 ideas I'm sure you will come up with something else to amaze me.

HUD eye implants
I grew up with FPS games and it taught me that you can make decisions quicker when the information is right there. Google glass is a step in the right direction but I think you could think bigger. Why should we have to wear glasses? With the maturation of contact lens technology and the leaps forward in corona implants I'm sure you could make something to overlay the HUD direct. I have some ideas for the user interface but I'm sure we can have some multiple options for the users.

Quantum computers
We both know that computer development is in danger of plateauing. With the improvements in tech general the computer world can not fall behind and quantum computing will keep us set up for years to come. More processing power for less energy use will allow us to make smaller, faster, lighter and better computers. In fact I hope that a mobile quantum computer will be small enough and fast enough to implant into my arm. Link it with the HUD eye implants above and half way to the cyborg you can make me.

Global warming
The debate is over, its happening but I don't think Science you should sit back and just let Earth take a pounding. We can see it coming but step up. Lets not focus on measuring exactly how fast it will happen or who is most to blame, lets get proactive. I believe that you can give us more options. Do some trials and choose the best. Not a time to mess around this is a priority, so make a choice and place your bet on what will save the Earth. I'll back you what ever you choose and if you fail don't worry you made an effort. If you make it worse we get a dystopian future to explore. (Also this is great practice for terraforming the rest of the solar system.)

X transport
Nothing new has really come along in nearly a hundred years. We have newer, faster and bigger cars/plans/trains/boats. But we need something else, something completely new. A new paradigm in transport. Science, we need something that will help with the energy crisis and is a bit convenient. You know what I mean. Taking nearly a day to get from UK to Australia is too long, expensive and troublesome. Come on Science, time to shine.

Linux
Now Science you may think my final request is a bit different. A bit less exciting but let me explain. I think Linux is like a forgotten child and it needs some attention. The software/IT industry is languishing in copyright and patent wars. Its stifling creativity and we are suffering. Science I know you like Linux and use it all the time but us mere mortal humans don't always find it so easy. Linux needs a leg up, something to make it better and more desirable then the current popular OS options. Maybe linking the next Linux direct into the quantum generation. Science, I know you have a trick or 2 up your sleeve to revolutionise the technological world, again.

Science please don't take this letter as a complaint. I think you are doing a great job at amazing us. This list is just a gentle push, a request to try and leap forward into the next phase. Keep Being Awesome.

Yours Sincerely,

Gareth, (long term fan)

P.S. Well done on everything you have done this century, you know, the internet, electricity everywhere, vaccines, moon landing and curiosity. Plus everything I'm forgetting.

Creating a personal internet video channel

2012-08-20T07:31:00.001-07:00

I love internet video but sometimes I find it fiddly to watch the programs I want to watch. So i decided to try and use some online tools to create a personalised video channel of all the programs I wanted to watch. So I made g-geek.tumblr.com. In this post I explain why and how I made this automatic updating website of lots of free geeky programs.

Will Wheaton's board game show Table Top is one of my shows

I think web shows are a significant shift in the media landscape. The internet as the great leveler of the playing field allows anyone to produce material with no budget. With no production cost the focus is on the material. I have a number of geeky interests and others create some great web shows about it. The delivery channel for all my chosen shows is YouTube (but other services like Vimeo can do it). Problem is I kinda hate the youtube interface. For a number of reasons.

It isn't easy to subscribe to individual playlists
You can not filter the videos from people/channels you subscribe to
I have to click off the page to start the content
It just looks messy!

So my aim was to make a simple clean website that I could set up to automatically populate with my favourite web shows. This was only possible because of the awesome website ifttt.com. If you have not heard of ifttt.com then you should give it a go. This website is a fantastic web service that can automate lots of online tasks. For example, copying all your twitter posts to your LinkedIn profile or automatically downloading any pictures from Facebook you are tagged in to a dropbox folder. There are lots of creative ways to use ifttt.com and I have used it for everything from at work auto-posting multiple blogs into a single company blog to getting around the great wall of China firewall to tweet.

To make my personal web channel I made use of the ability to take a RSS feed from YouTube, put it through a filter and then post an embedded video to a tumblr blog. You can see this recipe here. The recipe includes instructions for how to use it but simply. Go to the YouTube channel you want to use. Find the name of the channel in the URL bar http://www.youtube.com/user/twit? Then put that name into the YouTube RSS feed in the ifttt.com recipe. http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/twit/uploads. Next put a filter term in the recipe to select the shows you want. For example put in "The Social Hour" into the recipe and you will post an embeded video blog every Friday evening about social media. But you would not get the "This Week In Google" show. (You can set up a recipe for an entire channel to auto post if you like all their content, which I did do for geek and sundry, Felicia Day's channel)

The recipe will then allow you to link the RSS feed into a tumblr blog you have set up. Sit back and every time the YouTube show you like is posted it will appear on your personal tumblr blog. I also used ifft.com to set it up so that every time I favourite a YouTube video it will post to my tumblr channel. Find that recipe here http://ifttt.com/recipes/51646. This helps me put things on to watch later.

This process works for Vimeo to so this is a way to mix streams. I have set up a post my watch later post to tumblr recipe. I haven't yet found a channel I want to subscribe to yet. But I am sure the Vimeo RSS feed will work in the recipe. Just put this http://vimeo.com/thenextweb/videos/rss into the feed section.

So if you like my channel please feel free to use it, but I suggest you go away and make your own tumblr video personalised channel.

Quick update/addition

if you want to use videos from a specific you tube playlist you can. Just get the RSS feed for that playlist. I learnt how from http://www.hey-ai.com/main/howto/68-youtuberss

"You will need the Playlist ID from the Playlist LINK, it will look something like this: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=121D6A1AA7ADE758

From this link you need to copy the part after '?p=': 121D6A1AA7ADE758

Now copy this code to this link: http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/playlists/YOUR_YOUTUBE_PLAYLIST_NUMBER (e.g. http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/playlists/121D6A1AA7ADE758)"

So far my channel will show the following shows

Geek and Sundry Channel

Flog

Google Hangouts

Written by a Kid

Table Top

Sword and Laser

Twit.TV

This Week in Tech

Tech News Today

This Week in Google

Triangulation