This weekend, in search of a nice day off from my university work, I decided to have a go at a bit of DIY.

The problem: I now have a bike, and nowhere really to keep it. So far, I've just been bringing it into the house, but this both takes up space, and brings mud in. The solution: a bike shelter for my back garden.

Now, I'm no woodworking genius or anything (hated CDT at school) but this seemed like a project worth having a bash at. So, a trip to the DIY shop and three or four hours later, and I have this little bike shelter round the back. Nice.

And here's how I made it...

For those people involved in working with free software, the FSF has launched a new jobs directory. The announcement is here and the site itself is here.

At first, I wasn't sure if it was going to be particularly North American focused, but it seems that there are jobs from around the world present already, plus some which are more "location independent".

I like camping. I always have. And luckily, my girlfriend Marla likes camping too. This tends to lead to lots of camping.

We have a plan to try a bit of backpacking camping, whereby everything we need will be carried by us. To this end, we've bought a nice lightweight tent, stove, sleeping bags etc. We've also been experimenting with ways of carrying and preparing food, such that it is light to carry, nutritious to fuel all the walking, tasty, and also requiring minimal cleaning afterwards. (Take a look here for one method.) Basically, we've been trying to consider all the things which we might need.

One of the things about this kind of thing, however, is where to go. There are obviously a number of well-known long distance routes around the UK, such as the Pennine Way, Offa's Dyke and Hadrian's Wall. But, what about off the beaten track?

Well, perfect time to find a small article in the Guardian this weekend, discussing Scotland's variant of the UK-wide "right to roam" legislation. The Mountaineering Council of Scotland produce this helpful little leaflet explaining how wild camping is now, subject to a few sensible rules, by default permitted all across Scotland!

Time to plan a trip I think...

So, I've got some tomatoes growing nicely, but they're taking up rather a large area of my breakfast room right now. I'm also starting off a few runner beans indoors. I'm running out of room!

This weekend then, I decided to have a go at building a small lean-to greenhouse in which to grow them. These things can cost quite a bit of money (as much as £400) if you buy them ready-made, which I don't have spare right now. Plus, I always quite liked the idea of being able to build something like this myself. People always say that the more effort you put into growing your food, the better it tastes!

I feel quite pleased with myself.

Fellow Birmingham blogger Andy Pryke has recently written about the right to photograph in the UK. He points out that this BBC News article, including its quite interesting comments I might add, describes a worrying increase in the number of mis-informed police officers attempting to illegally stop photographers from taking pictures in public places. In some cases, officers even demanded that the photographer delete their images.

As pointed out by Linda MacPherson, a lecturer in law at Heriot Watt University, taking photographs in public is, except for a few specific exceptions, a right guaranteed by law in the UK. She has produced this rather useful factsheet for photographers, which can be carried around and checked up on if and when the police start making demands.

Austin Mitchell MP has tabled an Early Day Motion in the House of Commons calling on the government to clarify to police the law on the right to photograph, according to the BBC article. Andy Pryke also points out that there is an online petition in support of such a clarification, which can be signed here.

I think that the production of compost has to be one of the nearest things to magic that exists in the world.

I was lucky enough that upon moving into my house, nine months ago, the previous owners left two almost empty compost bins behind in the garden. Ever since then I've been adding my raw vegetable scraps, tea bags, coffee and the odd bit of paper and cardboard too. One of the bins had filled up by late last year, and except for a bit of turning with a fork, I've left it be since. This week, I opened it up to see what was going on inside.

And wow, all those onion peel scraps and carrot heads have completely dissapeared. There wasn't a single tea bag in sight. Instead - and to be honest I wasn't really expecting the whole thing to work - was some rather good looking brown compost, all evenly mixed up!

Until now I've been buying compost to add to the soil in my vegetable patch but this was an opportunity too good to waste. So this evening, taking advantage of the ever increasing hours of daylight, I knocked together a compost sieve out of some old wood and a bit of mesh (instructions here), and started sieving the compost out into the wheelbarrow.

The result... lovely fine warm compost.

Considering that this stuff costs a fair bit of money at the garden centre, this is a rather cool way of getting it for free I think!

Following the idea being mooted at the recent Birmingham bloggers meet-ups, today is the first decent attempt at coworking in Birmingham. I haven't blogged about the bloggers meet-ups myself, mainly since everyone else seems to have done a pretty good job themselves. I've only been to two out of the four meets so far, but they've been a nice informal gatherings of bloggers, social media people, journalists, techies and artists.

The basic idea of co-working is that people who often work alone from their laptops, from home or an office, get out, go somewhere else together and work in proximity to each other. Instigated with Simon Hammond, today we're having a co-working crawl of various cafes and other places offering free wireless internet around the city. We began over a hearty breakfast at the Kitchen Garden Cafe in King's Heath, and are currently enjoying tea, coffee, chilled Afro music and free wifi at Jibbering Records in Moseley (who incidentially have computers running Ubuntu). Rooty Frooty at the Custard Factory is next...

If you want to track us, or come and join in, then follow the #brumcoworking tag on Twitter and take a look at the Birmingham coworking wiki. I'll also be streaming the occasional live video on my newly created Bambuser channel.

All in all, I think today's coworking crawl was a big success. After the last post, which I wrote in Jibbering Records in Moseley (nice coffee), we took the number 50 bus up into Digbeth and set up camp in Rooty Frooty (£1 pastries and lightening fast internet) at the Custard Factory. Despite the initial confusion about which electric sockets worked and which didn't, it was actually a pretty good place to work, with plenty of space and comfortable seating. We all settled down to some decent work at Rooty's, and stayed there for the rest of the day. Despite allegations of "coslacking" in the comments on my previous post, work did in fact take place; I managed to get a decent chunk of coding done.

Five of us took part over the day; Simon Hammond and Pete Ashton had already met up by the time I arrived in the morning, and stuck around all day. Mike Voong joined us for an hour or so at Jibbering Records, then we later met up with Stef Lewandowski, who was already at Rooty's when we arrived.

There's already talk of more events such as today, and some discussions took place about more semi-permanent homes for future coworking sessions. Keep tracking the #brumcoworking tag on Twitter and keep your eye on the Birmingham coworking wiki for future occasions. All welcome!