News Archive
All the oldest stories referring to Stuart Vallantine and this website (Page 2)
Contents
East of the M60
New blog launched.
Thursday 24th August 2006
Accompanying this very website is a new web venture, 'East of the M60'.
'East of the M60' is the official blog of Stuart Vallantine himself, with due focus on transport, technology and his area.
Lovingly created using Wordpress, an open source blogging content management system, this blog includes opinions on television, transport and the like by yours truly [the author of this website].
The web address for 'East of the M60' is http://mancunian1001.wordpress.com.
When Stuart met Donna
The Travelling Poet meets fellow wayfarer Donna Williams in a Sheffield church.
Thursday 10th August 2006
On the Saturday before the second May bank holiday, I met up with fellow comrade Donna Williams, during a lecture in a Sheffield church.
Her lecture, 'Autism as a Fruit Salad' was well received by an audience of nearly three hundred persons. As well as the talk itself, she was supported by Philippa Rogan, who had a 15 minute slot comprising of her own musical compositions. Regular readers of this section will remember Philippa from my previous article on my Sunfield talk.
Donna enlightened the three hundred strong audience with her description of autism being a 'fruit salad' of several splinter conditions of varying degrees rather than one homogenous condition. Her vocal delivery was augmented with descriptions of her life experiences sourced from "nine books including four autobiographies".
Prior to her talk, I was ordered by Donna herself to read one of my poems, 'Celebrating Differences' (which appears elsewhere within this site) and give a brief description on Auties.org, a useful directory for persons on the autism spectrum to showcase their talents from fine art to web design.
Sunfield Success Story
The Travelling Poet inspires in soirée on himself, his poetry and visual arts
Tuesday 7th March 2006
Last Wednesday's talk at Sunfield School proved to be a success for the Travelling Poet, his peers and their audience.
This full day event celebrated the artistic endeavours of persons on the autism spectrum, with lively contributions from Philippa Rogan (with an excellent poem on Jegsy Dodd), Zoe Garrett (with an illuminating talk on living with autism, and her charitable deeds), and Keith McKenzie, whose contribution was the culmination of a two year survey on the needs of persons with Asperger's Syndrome.
The afternoon was reserved from Wendy Lawson, who spoke about living with Asperger's Syndrome, a misdiagnosis of Schizophrenia and monotracked information processing. Her two hour lecture was most interesting, open, humorous and honest.
My contribution included a description about myself, some sample poetry and artwork. On a personal note, I received some great feedback via message boards and emails after this event.
Sunfield Superman
Live from deepest Worcestershire, the Travelling Poet.
Sunday 22nd January 2006
The Midlands has assumed second home status for myself, due to following the mighty Stalybridge Celtic and other recreational activities. To confirm this even more, I shall be doing a talk at Sunfield School on the 1st March 2006 (St. David's Day), along with three other persons on the autistic spectrum, including the author Wendy Lawson.
This will be a full day event, celebrating the artistic endeavours of persons on the autism spectrum. Also, the year 2006 is the 25th anniversary of Dr. Lorna Wing's translation from the original German to English of Hans Asperger's paper on Autistic Psychopathy (his words!) into what we now know as 'Asperger Syndrome'.
Tickets are available from Sunfield School at £50 for professionals and £20 for parents and carers.
Seven Days in the Life of www.stuartvallantine.co.uk
The Honeymoon Period Reviewed and Further Improvements.
Tuesday 31st January 2006
Since its launch on the 26th January 2006, the Stuart Vallantine website has seen positive reactions from friends and family alike. Fulfilling its remit to showcase the visual and written works of Stuart Vallantine, the site will remain a "work in progress", with the site seeing new articles, artwork and poetry.
As proof of this, I have now beefed up the drawings section. Following comments concerning the small size of the images, I have addressed this, by enabling users to see an expanded version.
In my opinion, all websites are "under construction". They do not have to say "under construction" on certain pages. This is a sign of manana. A website should be a living breathing unit kept alive by a dedicated team of coders, designers, one person bedroom outfits and adequate network facilities (be it dial up or broadband so fast that the page loads up before you write "http" on your web browser address bar). An "under construction" statement is a death sentence towards improving site accessibility with search engine directories and people browsing at their home or office.
At last
The wait is over, after a lengthy gestation period of five years.
Tuesday 24th January 2006
The super soaraway Stuart Vallantine website is fit for public consumption and perusal. Its aim is to provide a showcase for Dukinfield's very own performance poet and visual artist.
Accessible and W3C compliant
The wait is over, after a lengthy gestation period of five years.
Tuesday 29th November 2005
The all singing all dancing Stuart Vallantine web experience is W3C compliant. Most pages within this website are now compliant to W3C standards, supporting the HTML 4.01 Transitional Document Type Declaration. The whole of this site has also been tested using browsers other than Microsoft Internet Explorer (such as Mozilla Firefox and other Open Source browsers) for maximum compatibility.
