Norman Ralph

Regular readers will have noticed a common theme running through my posts recently, namely that of the AHS. Posts on the press launch and the general publicity surrounding the build up have dominated my blog. This is for the veyr good reason that it has been pretty much all I have been thinking about. Sure, I have been involved in a lot of A-Soc stuff like Galileo Day and starting up Perspective but most of my work has been focussed on the AHS.

I have no doubt that the time spent was worth it, you only have to read the coverage the launch got to see how successful everything is proving to be. Check out a few of the pieces here, here and here. The upcoming xchallenge is to ensure that my work with the AHS doesn’t detract too much from my current commitments. I mean I am currently a student, hold down a (not so) part-time job, am president of Leeds Atheist Society and president of the AHS. All of these commitments could and maybe should be full time commitments, but I am sharing my time between them. Thankfully, I have the support of friends and family (big thanks to Liz et al) and a wonderful team working with me both at A-Soc and the AHS.

In other news, it is now only 7 weeks until Rationalist Week 2009!

I joined the micro-blogging site Twitter just before Christmas so I could utilise its API and have it syndicate on my site, giving me a Facebook style status section – its on the top of the menu bar on the right of the screen for those that haven’t noticed.

While I had no plans to actually use Twitter for anything other than a platform to make my site a little more interactive I have started to find that I am visting more and more regularly to check on other people’s tweets (the slang for updates). There are loads of interestign people using the site, like Stephen Fry, Brent Spiner etc, and because it is all public you can read what they are doing, saying, thinking.

You can check me out on my Twitter page here.

The eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed a couple of cosmetic changes to emerge from yesterday’s decision to revamp the site.

I have finally gotten round to adding tags to the posts – currently all new posts and the archives up to December 2007 have had them added, will get round to the rest of the archives this week hopefully. this should make things gel a little easier and hopefully add a new dimension to the site.

The other addition is the calendar feature, that currently lists all upcoming events for the next 14 days. the final settings for this feature will be sorted out today ideally. Thanks to Kieran for his plug-in calendar app.

I will be adding some more features in the coming weeks and hope to introduce a few surprises in terms of appearence and usability too.

If you haven’t had chance to check out Chris’s new podcasts then you really should!

They are seriosuly funny and so unproffessional that it just makes them even funnier!

Check them out!

It has been a while since my last post and usually I would offer some flimsy excuse, blaming work or revision or illness. This time, however, I don’t really have an excuse except a slight apathy towards blogging recently. I cannot explain why that would be except maybe that with the last few weeks the idea of sitting down and writing a few paragraphs more than I need to has turned me off somewhat. Anyway, here I am, blogging again!

First things first, I am now the president of A-Soc, which means you can rest assured that there will be a plethora of A-Soc related psots appearing here and I will be linking to far more over at our offical website (shameless plugging for the win) and the new national site currently based at SecularPortal.com. The A-Soc AGM went really well, we now have a good sized committee with hopefully enough enthusiastic members that we can really grow up this year and develop into the society that we should be. Our aim is to be the third biggest, by numbers and attendence, faith and cultiral society by the end of 2009/2010 which is quite ambitious, but achievable I think if we work hard and putt the effort in.

Next on the list is moving house. After three very good years here, we are looking to move onwards and upwards – mainly down to the fact that Chris, Sarann and Michelle are graduating and want a better house with more space and generally something more resembling a real life house. We have got as far as generating a shortlist and narrowing down our search criteria, but I think the bulk of the work will be carried out after this round of exams (the last round of exams for our graduates). Watch this space!

Talking of exams, I have a few this time round. I managed a lot of revision whilst at home this week, but I’m still only 80% confidant. It seems the older I get the less good at winging exams I get. This is a little bit of a worry as I have always relied on my adaptability and ability to get to the answer without necessarily knowing the answer. I suppose it just means that I will have to really knuckle down this time round.

This post could be a long one if I included everything that happened at Atheist Society’s Rationalist Week 2008. A pretty good run down of everything that went wrong for us can be found here so I won’t include them in this account. I want to focus on the positive sides and more of the human interest aspects of the week.

Chris, the retiring president, wrote this account of the week, well worth checking out. My version of the week follows here.

The week got off to a bad start, the tent was late and the generator needed fetching, and we were late starting. There were hiccups during the rest of the week, not least of them me being ill, but in general the week got better. A lot better.

We signed up a lot of people, didn’t lose too much money and our events ran smoothly for an A-Soc event but the ultimate success came from within the society. We finally got people involved, found leaders from within our ranks, something we have been sorely lacking the past two years.

We reached a lot of people during the week, I would estimate that we probably developed our brand to over a thousand staff, students and members of the public during the week and that we physically spoke to well over a hundred (excluding all night debate) and signed up a quarter of those that came into the tent. The membership numbers now rival our competitors and should hopefully mean we can start playing with the big boys in terms of politics and campaigning as well as securing some decent funding for the year!

The highlights for me included the CU debate, where again we out argued the opposition and should have come away with the victory had the crowd not been partisan, and the internal debate on the Flying Spaghetti Monster where the key flaws in religious argument were highlighted and exposed. In fact, most of the events went well – especially the evening ones. Once again Mike Lake was excellent and converted some fence sitters.

My personal highlight however, was the friends and friendships that I forged and strengthened during the week. The improved ties we developed with the CU and other societies. The fact that I think our message got across. Atheist Society is not about religion bashing or telling people they are wrong, but to offer an alternative that wasn’t available.

It was a success that didn’t kill us financially.

We finally pulled off an event that was worthy of the work that went into it.

Well done all!

As Chris mentioned here, Si has finally joined the ranks of the bloggers. Check him out here, it is good to see that the last few members of the circle are succumbing to the lure of the blogosphere.

Only Sarann, MC and B left now!

During a routine trawl of YouTube I came across a really funny vodeo about Emos. It is performed by a band calle dhte Lancashire Hotpots a pop-folk band from Lancashire (the clue is in the name). I have posted the spoof video as done by a YouTube user involving Lego figures as I think it adds a special something to the song – not taking anything away from the band’s actual video release.

Anyway, take a look and I believe the single is available from iTunes.