After 14 years and about 200 followers I’ve left X/Twitter. It was feeling pointless and I rarely used it.
I decided to try out Threads and it just felt friendlier, and then as I tried to post to both apps, X seemed more and more boring. Endless silly questions about where you went to school, were you around during the moon landings? Do you know one word that explains making bread? Trivial stuff. I’m not saying my new choice will be any better, but I’m giving it a go.
Anyway it’s nice not to be supporting Musk. X(kiss)
When a billionaire takes over a social media company what do we expect? Impartiality? Caring? compassion?
Seeing what’s happening recently I am trying to decide whether to leave it. X I mean. Seeing him standing next to the Orange one on a stage is worrying. If he is endorsing right wing politics and banning investigative journalists then how many voices will be silenced? There is also a loss in the value of the company since it was bought by Musk. Doesn’t that indicate it’s changing status?
I’m not a big X/twitter user, I barely have any followers, which does make me wonder why I’m on it. I posted a bit of art and sometimes try and add witty replies, but is anyone even listening? Thinking about it.
Someone on twitter asked ‘what do you know for certain?’ so I had a think about it and came up with something I remember from my human biology class.
The names of the bones of the hand, scaphoid, lunate, triquetral, pisiform, trapezium, trapezius, capitate, hamate. The mnemonic to remember it is : Spanish ladies take pills that they can hop. I guess it worked because I still remember them!
After twenty four hours and over 13000 votes Penkhull’s flag finally won out over Tiree in Scotland by 51.5% to 48.5%. So very very close. I couldn’t resist going on twitter every few minutes to check what was happening, through most of the night! It’s silly but I’m very proud of our little village in the city.
The flag institute who ran the poll was amazed at the number of votes that were cast. The lead swapped backwards and forwards between us and Tiree. A wonderful feeling to have actually won!
I live in Stoke-on-Trent and the village at the top of our hill is called Penkhull. It was mentioned in the Domesday book and was a Royal Manor from 1086 to the time of Edward the Second. It is a village in a city and people like it so much that they had a competition to design a flag.
The flag has a golden Cockerel symbolising the weather vane on top of the church steeple. It stands on a blue ground which is for the blue of Spode, the old pottery firm in nearby Stoke-upon-Trent that manufactured ceramic products including the willow pattern pots that became synonymous with the factory.
The yellow oval and lines radiating out are for the road around the village green and the four roads each leading downhill from the village.
The green is to show that is a green place in the middle of a city. The whole design was approved by vexillologists (no I didn’t know that word before the competition) from a charity called the flag institute.
So why am I up? Penkhull is taking part in a competition being run by @theflaginstitute on Twitter. It is in the #WorldSeriesOfFlags and is up against the golden rays of barley from #tiree in Scotland. This is the final. I have not been able to sleep since I saw that Tiree had got ahead of us in the final they are on about 51.8% and we are on 48.2%? Something like that. Its very even between the two places.
Don’t know if I can get back to sleep…. The vote on Twitter ends at 11am. I think I’m in for a long night.
Penkhull flag is in the semi-final of the @flaginstitute World Cup of flags today till 11am tomorrow. This is part of the vexillological festival to make up for not having many sporting events this year.
Penkhull was in the doomsday book and was then called Pinchetel. Penkhull means ‘Hill hill’ and is a very steep basalt volcanic plug that sits above the majority of Stoke-on-Trent. It is known as the village in the heart of the city.
The flag was only designed recently. The green represents the village green at the heart of Penkhull, with four roads leading up to it. The Cockerel (also know as a rooster or chicken) sits on top of St Thomas’s Church that is in turn on the green.
The flag was created for a competion run by the residents association to raise community spirit. I’m pleased to say that I partly helped to design it.
So if you would like to join in and vote you can find the vote over on twitter. Look for #penkhullflag #WorldSeriesOfFlags
I helped design this flag with about seven other people in a competition to design a flag for the village of Penkhull, part of Stoke-on-Trent. I didn’t realise till last week that it had been entered into a national competition to choose the best flag design in an FA style set of votes.
After weeks of tension we reached the final and fought against Preston today.
The result was very close. After Preston took an early lead, votes for Penkhull overtook them. At the end the result was 52% to 48% in favour of Penkhull!
We are a village of about 6000, in a city population of about 250,000. Apparently around 6000 voted on twitter for the penkhull flag which equals 100% of Penkhulls population!
Things are changing on planet Mallaband-Brown so you might notice a few tweaks here and there thanks to my friend Mike from @staffsdesign.
I wanted to update my social media and make it easier for people to follow me. Being an artist has made me a lot happier and nows the time to try and make it work.
I didn’t realise amalgamating all my Web pages and sites would be so complicated and I’m so pleased to have had someone to sort everything out.
This is also a test to see whether it posts to my new Facebook page.
You should be able to follow me on the Internet at @mallabandbrown !
Mallaband-Brown 