I went to Record Store Day at Rough Trade East, just off Brick Lane E1, yesterday.

Amongst the live acts performing in the store was Little Boots (pictured), who played a great short set comprising of new songs mixed with some old favourites.

I went to meeting number eleven of the WordPress London local group on 19 April 2012.

Areas covered were:

• Dan Thornton and Robert Rhoades gave a presentation on their Jigoshop WordPress ecommerce plugin – an area of plugin development where improved usability is definitely required.
• Steve Jones gave an interesting talk on using PHP classes for plugin authoring.
• Lee Rickler led a lively and informative WordPress Q&A session
• And finally I gave a quick presentation on WPUK and the forthcoming WordCamp Edinburgh UK 2012; slides (55kB PDF).

Afterwards it was (inevitably) beer at the Sutton Arms.

WordPress London meets on a monthly basis – many thanks to Keith for organising the gathering.

If you’re not based in London, see if there’s a WordPress local group near you on the WPUK wiki.

The television analogue signal was turned off in London yesterday, and to commemorate the change an impressive light show took place at Crystal Palace transmitter last night, where I took this picture in somewhat drizzly conditions.

The light show, and associated event, was organised by transmitter owner Arqiva.

Although I have my doubts about the quality of DVB pictures on Freeview, especially when too much compression is applied to some of the channels, this is a major development in UK broadcasting as part of the process of turning off the analogue television signal after seventy five years.

Here’s a brief update on the WordCamp to be held on held on the weekend of 14-15 July 2012 in Edinburgh.

The event site, currently under development, is scheduled to be launched on 29 April 2012 to include a range of information about the event.

Ticket sales are planned to start on 6 May 2012 – initially they will be early bird discount tickets, similar to the process followed for last year’s Portsmouth WordCamp.

In the meantime, content ideas for the event can be posted on the WPUK planning wiki.

To post to the wiki, you need to be a registered user. To register contact me, detailing your name and website URL, with the subject line “WPUK wiki registration request”.

The process of renaming WordCamp UK to WPUK has been completed with the final stage of introducing a new WPUK mailing list, which replaces the old WordCamp UK list.

If you have been a subscriber to old list, and have not received an email automatically subscribing you to the new list, you should manually subscribe to the WPUK mailing list.

I attended the annual Wetherspoon 2011 Spring Real Ale Festival at various JDW establishments across London.

The Festival, which ran 14 March to 1 April 2012, featured 50 real ales and 10 ciders.

Five of the ales were by international brewers but specially brewed in the UK, shown by [international special] below.

Here’s the beers I sampled over the two and half week festival, along with marks out of ten and a brief comment:

• Cairngorm Red Mountain – 8/10 steel [international special]
• Caledonian Coffee Porter – 8.7/10 rich
• Celt Experience Newmans Spring Cottage Biscuit – 7.8/10 buscuity!
• Franklins Brighton Rock – 8.7/10 just mowed
• Highgate Bee-Zone – 8/10 golden
• Holts Two Hoots – 8.4/10 refreshing
• John Martin Pale Ale – 7.5/10 copper [international special]
• Nøgne ø Bitter – 7.75/10 lightly smooth [international special]
• Smuttynose Murrikan Mild – 7.7/10 lively
• Springhead Willy’s Wheatbeer – 6.5/10 fragile
• Titanic Nine Tenths Below – 7.5/10 brassy
• Wood Hopping Mad – 8.3/10 new woodland
• Wooden Hand Parte’s Gold – 7.7/10 lively
• Wychwood King Goblin – 8.5/10 deceptive
• Zululand Zulu Blonde – 8/10 golden [international special]

Full details are given in the festival tasting notes [6.7MB PDF].

Rain washes out Easter Monday in Acton at 1940 on 9 April 2012.

Royal Festival Hall at 2003 on 16 March 2012.

Acton Old Town Hall at 1743 on 7 March 2012.