After what’s been over 12-months work I finally launched the new Barnsley Hospital website 5 days ago:

For the full inside track on the launch check my post over at the Evolve blog which details some of the new features and what had to be cut in order to launch on time.

So it turns out Ben Folds is running a fan memories contest on Facebook. I’d love to enter, but my prized Ben Folds possession was lost a few years ago, here is the story:

Bottled Ben

Back in the 1996 Ben Folds Five toured the UK. They played the Sheffield Leadmill and I went along with 2 friends. It was a great gig by all accounts, in fact, the 3 of us still look back at it fondly today because on the way home our car broke down and I was left having to walk 1/2 the journey home – good times

Anyway, back to the gig – anyone who’s been to the Leadmill will know it has a very open stage area. You can, for most shows, walk right up and grab the feet of the band (it used to be great for stage diving before all the new health & safety laws banned it).

Because of this layout I was able to get really, really, really, close to Ben’s piano. And for the final couple of songs, while being crushed down the front, I spied that he had taken a few swigs from a bottle of water and left it by the side of his piano leg (it was a baby grand).

After the show when the audience died down and the lights came up I seized my chance to jump on stage and grab the 1/2 drank and pretty messed-up bottle as a souvenir! I now owned some of Ben Fold’s spit! Pretty cool no?

Well, some may say weird (a few did) but I thought it was great (I’m sure some Elvis fans have done weirder things). I kept the bottle on my shelf in my teenage bedroom for many years until it came time to move out to my own house about 10 years ago, this is when the story takes a turn for the worse because during the move, the bottle was lost

I was devastated when I couldn’t find it, my last memory of it is on my CD shelf at my mums old house still 1/2 full of a mixture of spring water, spit and sweat – a magic combination.

I can of course imagine how it ended up being lost. After all, it was an old, battered, 1/2 drank bottle of water and someone would have seen it as junk and probably threw it out with the rest of my teenage memorabilia (posters, magazines etc).

So that’s it! Needless to say, if I had kept hold of my magic Ben-bottle my chances of winning the competition would be pretty high.

Friends and followers will be aware that I’m a regular at the South Yorkshire WordPress Meetup or #SYWP for short.

The event takes place at the Sheffield-based GIST Lab and all WordPress-ers are welcome!

Xmas SYWP!

So if you have nothing planned for Tuesday the 13th of December (about a weeks time!) why not pop over to Sheffield for the Xmas SYWP where I will be personally be doing a shorter version of my popular ‘WOW Plugins‘ talk titled ‘Mini-WOW Plugins from 2011‘.

Sheffield + WordPress + The GIST Lab = Awesome

For those new to this event, here’s the brief: Each month we try to bring together a mix of WordPress Q&A, general WordPress advice, a bit of hands-on and some project insights.

There is generally a structured time-line but we throw in an open forum at the end and best of all the PUB after for any follow-ons

Book your South Yorkshire WordPress goodness for December 2011  now!

I spent most of today volunteering for the GO ON Barnsley campaign. Basically wearing a rather fetching t-shirt and badge (see above photo) and bestowing the wonders of this new fangled ‘internet’ thing to anyone who would listen.

It was a lot of fun and I’ll be doing the same again twice this month. I even helped out designing the ‘Barnsley’ version of the GO ON logo:

The GO ON Campaign, getting people online