A timeline of projects I've worked on, things I've achieved, or just cool stuff that happened to me in 2011.
Created by Cskoyles on 15/12/2011
Last updated: 15/12/11 at 17:56
Chris Skoyles - 2011 stuff. has no followers yet. Be the first one to follow.
Finishing off the year as I started it, I had two more poems published in the awesome Sparkbright this December.
http://www.sparkbright.org/2011/12/sparkbright-magazine-issue-7/
As a massive geek, especially when it comes to productivity, technology, and Getting Things Done, I was thrilled to be asked to contribute to Lifehack.org, a productivity blog I've been an avid reader of for a few years.
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/author/cskoyles
For the longest time, I've harboured this great desire to get my fat, broken-down body into shape and run the Virgin London Marathon. This year, I applied, and accept a place to run for the Terrence Higgins Trust AIDS awareness charity. Nervous? Yes, but I can't wait.
http://cskoyles.blogspot.com/2011/10/few-updates.html
We came, we saw, we kicked ass. Working with my brother Stuart and Danny Werner, along with Millstone landlord Anthony, we successfully pulled off a three-day rock festival and received nothing but great praise from it.
http://cskoyles.blogspot.com/2011/09/millstone-rocks-success.html
Had an awesome time watching bands like The Hicks, Colour Me Blind, Jeramiah Ferrari and The Portlands performing in Wigan Town Centre. Really proud of the video I made for it too.
http://youtu.be/SmHCX1Wf5tM
Had a great time hanging out with Colour Me Blind at the Caveman Bash in Preston this July. The video for 'King for a Day' shows how much fun we had.
http://youtu.be/eGJg0IddklQ
The weather was gorgeous, the bands were awesome, and Haigh Fest 2011 was arguably our best event yet.
What a day!
http://cskoyles.blogspot.com/2011/07/haigh-fest-was-awesome-and-so-much-more.html
Jedward, Peter Andre and The Courteeners were the star attractions at this year's Haigh Live concerts.
I know I'm not "supposed" to like Jedward, but I did anyway.
Here's what I wrote in my blog:
"actually had more fun at the Friday night Peter Andre/Jedward show, a show much derided by some people, than I did at the infinitely more cool and credible Thursday night performance by The Courteeners, The Coral and Cherry Ghost.
The fact that I struggle to tell one indie band from another and thus don't care much for their music is mostly irrelevant; I'm no big fan of pop music either, despite what my Vanilla Ice cassette may tell you.
Nor do I wish to take anything away from indie bands, who I'm sure are all very good at what they do and worked hard for their success, or their fans, who probably are very nice people really.
But, and I'll be perfectly blunt here, any bullshit posturing at the indie gig was notably absent at the celebrity pop show on Friday night, and thus it was the latter of the two gigs that was much more enjoyable."
http://cskoyles.blogspot.com/2011/07/why-i-had-fun-at-pop-concert-even-if-i.html
Spent a wonderful week in Hibbing, Minnesota, a beautiful little city where one of my favourite artists, Bob Dylan, grew up.
I became completely enamoured with Hibbing, will be returning there for two weeks in January 2012, and then for at least three months in summer 2012. Can.not.wait.
http://cskoyles.blogspot.com/2011/06/adventures-in-dylan-country.html
Once Haigh Fest line-up was announced, I got on with the task of interviewing a couple of bands who'd played the 2010 event, plus every band (bar one, I think) who were playing Haigh 2011. Had a great time, met some really interesting people and did some great interviews with bands like Jeramiah Ferrari, Faith in Fools, The Lottery Winners and more.
http://www.wlct.org/young-people/linconline/haigh-fest-jeramiah-ferarri-interview.htm
As is tradition, once all the applications were in for this year's Haigh Fest, a bunch of us marched up to Haigh Hall, where we spent the night arguing fiercely over who should play Haigh 2011. In the end we picked an incredible line-up.
http://www.wlct.org/young-people/linconline/haigh-fest.htm
After generating over 1 million page views per year for several years, The LINC Online relaunched, moving to a Content Management System rather than the old Frontpage-designed site of old.
http://www.wlct.org/young-people/linconline/linconline.htm
Applications for the 2011 Haigh Fest went live back in March. We had over 70 applications from bands all over the North West and beyond. Picking a line-up was going to be tricky.
http://www.wlct.org/young-people/linconline/haigh-fest.htm
Not really an 'achievement' as such, but I had a lot of fun doing this. I started on the Internet meme "30 Day Song Challenge" with "My Favourite Song" Pearl Jam's "Alive"
http://cskoyles.blogspot.com/2011/02/30-day-song-challenge-day-1-my.html
Sometime in late Jan/early Feb, I met this amazingly awesome American woman called Stacy. February 13th I asked her to be mine, and we've been happy ever since. I'll not put Stace's photo here, she gets embarrassed about that kinda thing ;)
After going through an old personal website I'd once found which listed a bunch of gigs I'd been to, most of them I had no memory of, I put together the first draft of "The Live List" a comprehensive list of bands I've seen live.
http://cskoyles.blogspot.com/2011/02/live-list-all-gigs-i-can-remember-and.html
For reasons I don't really recall, I decided it might be a good idea to try out a bit of sports journalism and spent several Sundays sitting the press box at the LSV Stadium covering Leigh Centurions home games.
Whilst it was pretty cool, I ultimately decided that sitting outside in the freezing cold, hacking away at a laptop whilst me and my fellow journos turned to each other and asked "who just scored?" wasn't really for me. Subsequent Sundays were thus spent in the comfort of my own house :)
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=leigh%20centurions&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCcQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.leighcenturions.com%2F&ei=zBPqTtvyGs6QswbUo9mVBw&usg=AFQjCNGkimAZjzJEPivzdkbPiC4oT6BHqQ&sig2=KriXaXVU2eJVtgmGLakIsQ
A poem I wrote sometime in 2010 was published in Issue 5 of Sparkbright poetry zine.
The issue actually went out in December, but I wasn't paying attention and only found out in January.
http://www.sparkbright.org/2010/12/sparkbright-magazine-issue-5/
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