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!

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.

I bought a CD this week. Exciting stuff, eh? It's not worth a mention, of course, except that I thought I'd give a bit more interweb presence to whom I've discovered are quite a good local band. Friends of the Stars are based in Moseley, in Birmingham.

Somehow - I'm not exactly sure of the sequence of events leading up to it - I ended up on their email list, and they started sending me links to tracks and previews and things available online. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't spam, just that I probably signed up and forgot about it. Anyway, after having listened to their melodious folky kind of sound for a while, I decided to buy their CD, Lighting & Electrical. Click, click, click and I'm done, as is how we're used to these days. It should be here within a couple of days, I thought.

Just a couple of hours later, and Craig, from the band, emails me to say thanks for the purchase, and that since I'm only down the road, he'd just pop the CD through my letterbox. Great stuff. This has to be the antithesis of Amazon and CD WOW, the latter of which ships its CDs to the UK from Hong Kong in order to shave a little off the cost.

Nice one Craig, I'm enjoying your tunes very much.

I was recently given a bike by my parents for my birthday. I know that this makes me sound like I'm about 12, but hey ho, they knew that I'd been wanting one for a while and I hadn't got around to buying one. I'm actually really pleased with it.

By most standards, I probably live in one of the best places in the country for cycling (unless you're really into mountain biking or BMX or something else). I live within about a 2 minute ride of a route on the national cycle network and about 5 minutes from the national canal network, which from Bournville, not only goes to university (where I work), but also beyond to the city centre and ultimately the rest of the country.

The ride into university takes about 15 to 20 minutes, which is basically how long it had been taking me by train, given that I usually end up waiting about 5 minutes or so for one.

Now the decision of whether to ride or go by train now seems to me to be an easy decision. As an example of mechanism design, this is how I see it: Each day I get paid £1.80 (the train fare) to exercise for half an hour. It takes up no more time out of my day, and there's none of the expense (and in my opinion boredom) associated with going to a gym.

So, the picture above shows my new route to work. And, as if the benefits already were not enough, instead of being advertised at by the omnipresent telescreens on the train, I instead get to enjoy the drifting smell of chocolate being made at the Cadbury factory, and to watch the ducks and geese flapping and hissing at me as I ride past.

Now I'm just waiting for my first rainy day...

I'm a couple of days late with this post, but voting has now closed for Brummie of the Year 2007, and the winner is John Tighe, of the Spotted Dog in Digbeth! Congratulations John!

For those not familiar with John, his pub was served with a noise abatement order after over 20 years of being a lively and popular venue in Digbeth, prompted by complaints from residents of newly constructed city-living apartments. The campaign to keep Digbeth vibrant is ongoing. Keep up the good work folks!

Just beaten into second place, was serial blogger and key figure in Birmingham's creative scene, Pete Ashton. Well done mate! Somehow though, I don't think he'll mind coming second to John...

Full details of the poll is on the organiser's website: Birmingham, It's Not Shit.

Voting is now open for Brummie of the Year 2007.

Vote here!

I wasn't quite sure that I'd read this properly at first, but the University of Central England (UCE) has now become Birmingham City University. Shocking. I know that they've been looking at a name change for a while now, but it's now official, and this is what they chose. They've even got a blue logo and everything.

Right, the only thing left for us decent Brummies to do is to petition to get the University of Birmingham (my university) renamed to the Aston Villa University, with all associated claret and blue livery. Who's with me? (Okay, I suppose that Aston University has a headstart on that one, but that would be less fun for me...)

Make your nominations here. Voting will begin on 1st November. Courtesy of the Birmingham: It's Not Shit guys.