Web Blog of Greg Mathews

Orientation Training at Wembley Arena

Yesterday saw my first Training session as a Games Maker for the London 2012 Olympics and Parlympics.

I left early and drove down to the edge of London and then got the tube into Wembley.  I was early, arriving about 10:15am, fortunatly another Games Maker who I have befriended on Facebook posted she was sat in the corner of Maccy D’s and another was already hanging around the front of Wembley Arena not knowing where to go too kill time. So we both headed to Maccy D’s and had our first face to face meeting. Within about half an hour there was nearly a dozen of us stood around in the corner sipping Coffee.

At around midday we headed to Wembley arena to meet up with others who had said they would meet us there and some from the morning training session.

I must thank  Melanie Chad for letting me use her pictures in this post, I didn’t take any as I am not great at taking pictures as well as fact my phone died.

Paula then asked every GamesMaker to sign her London2012 Flag, this is going to be a great souvenir for her.

As the morning session ended other Games Maker friends from Facebook joined us :

 

It was great to meet up with fellow Games makers at this point, informal and fun but it was now time for us to leave those that attended the morning session and enter the Arena. There was a long queue but we was in within about 20 minutes but then we still had about an hour before the session was going to start.

At first I thought it was strange that we had such a long wait but then in hindsight I think it was to encourage you to meet and communicate with others sat around you. If this is correct then it worked well, I was sat next to one lady who had travelled down from Liverpool, on the other side a lady from near Southend and then next to her a young man from Leeds area who is actually going to be  based at same place as me although doing a different role. He is the first person I have spoken to who is based at the same place as me.

We are asked not to give details of the actual training session but I can say that comedian Eddie Izzard was there doing his bit.

A few of us then met up after the event to discuss whether or not to grab a drink but it started to snow so a couple of ladies and I decided to head off to the tube station and get going before the snow got heavy.

Unfortunately the snow had started north and move south, I was starting south and driving north. The drive was slow as the snow had come down so fast you couldn’t see the  road surface on the M1 motorway and when you could it was down to one lane. There was a number of cars that had hit something abandoned on side of the motorway as well as cars just parked up on hard shoulder. Not sure why it was obvious the snow wasn’t going to stop any time soon.

I did get home eventually at about 21:30, which wasn’t too bad as only took me an hour longer than normally.

It was a good day all in all, met some great people and am buzzing with exitment and can’t wait for the London 2012 Olympic games to start. Please help me get there http://www.gofundme.com/c1rq0

Note : All photographs within this post are published with the permission of the photographer Melanie Chad and are not to be reproduced without her permission.

Gamesmaker Funding

I have been trying to raise funds to help with the costs of Transport and Accommodation during my time as a Games Maker at the 2012 London Olympics. As well as trying to raise funds using Crowd Funding I have also been looking to see what other help there is out there. I have found the following which may be of interest to other Games Makers, unfortunately at time of writing none are applicable for me.

If you are a Games Maker for the London 2012 Olympics there is the expectation from the Games organisers that you commit to the following:

• ten days volunteering, over a potential three-week period;
• personally arrange and cover the cost of their journey to any applicable training and Games Time Venue; and
• personally arrange and cover the cost of their accommodation

If you are a Games Maker from Northern Ireland then you may claim for financial assistance from the NI Volunteers Bursary Scheme, if you are a British Civil Servant and a member of CSSC Sport and Leisure then you can claim 50% of your travel costs plus help of upto £20/night for accommodation for upto 10 nights.

If you live in Leicestershire then you may be able to claim up to £500 from Inspire Leicestershire.

I am still looking.

Moving servers again

I do enjoy the challenge of moving servers but this has been done due to costs.

Once everything has been checked and double checked I will be back blogging

Please do check out my GoFundMe page.

Thanks

Greg

82 Inch 3d TV for Joby

A good friend of mine in the US has entered into a competition to win an 82 Inch 3D tv, please take a look at his blog post http://thebaldfatguy.com/2012/01/03/82-inch-3d-tv-hell-yeah/ and like his video.

Thanks

Greg

Just a quick thankyou

This is just a quick thank you to those that have made a donation to my gofundme appeal. I thank my Friends of off Facebook, some of whom I haven’t seen in 20+ years since leaving school.

The latest donation has come from a fellow Blogger and Entrecard dropper, Doug of ‘Doug’s Missoula Montana Lifestyle‘. I thank you sir for your kind donation and have posted a link on my gofundme page to your blog as a way or saying thank you.

 

I hate video

Well I hate making them should I say.

As my regular readers know I am giving Crowdfunding a go to raise funds to allow me to volunteer as a games maker in the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games. Well today I had a go at making a video introducing my self and what I am trying to do.

I am not the most videogenic person and my Cerebral Palsy does not help but I did it anyhow, please take a look :

If you like what you have just watched then if you can make a small donation please do so on my Gofundme site.

Crowdfunding rewards – help needed

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned the idea of Crowd funding to raise funds to cover costs of accommodation during my Games Making shifts at the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games.

Well yesterday I created my own GoFundMe page, this allows anyone to donate as little or as much as they like.  I was so surprised that within just a few hours I had two small donations.

My next job though is to set some ‘rewards’, this is common practice in Crowd funding, to offer something to funders in return for their funding/donation.  Offering rewards are optional but as I don’t like asking for ‘hand outs’, I want to offer some kind of reward to those that donate to my fund but I am not sure what I can offer.

I can offer five reward levels on my GoFundMe page, my idea’s are:

£5 or more – a thank you on the GoFundMe page.

£10 or more – as £5 plus mentions on Twitter and FaceBook

£25 or more – as £10 plus Ad on my blog and Sponsor a Games Maker for a year

£50 or more – as above plus hosting for a year on my server

£100 or more – as £50 plus 5 page web site design

My problem with this is with the last 3, they probably would not appeal to a large number of potential funders and they are not related to what the fund  is for nor the London 2012 Olympic Games.

If anyone has any idea’s do please let me know.

New year, old memories

Happy new year to every one.

I am not sure how the subject started but over the holiday period the words ‘do you remember’ where said by someone. I recollected my first every computer. It was a Sinclair ZX 81, which I got 30 years ago this past week. It was marketed in the US as the Timex Sinclair 1000.

The ZX81 came with just 1kb of memory although you could get ‘expansion packs’, I had a 16kb expansion pack, that plugged into the back (yes that is kb and not mb).  They didn’t have ‘proper’ keyboard but a touch key pad. Keyboards where available from third parties but they needed to be ‘hard wired’ into the computer.

My kids find it hard to accept that a computer could run on just 1kb, I told them I actually remember when a certain Mr Gates said ’640K ought to be enough for anybody’, at the time I was programming in Basic on an Amstrad 1512 (Sinclair PC5000 in US) at work and thought wow, it wont get much better than this.

What do you remember from yesteryear that would appear unbelievable to the younger generations?

 

Crowd Funding

It has been suggested to me in response to myI am a Games maker post it has been suggest that I look into crowd funding. Crowd funding means that you ask many to give small amounts rather than trying to find a one or two large ‘sponsors’.

Have you used crowd funding as a way of raising money for a project of some kind? If so did you use a Crowd funding site? How successful was this method of funding?

Before I can use any of the Crown Funding sites I need to make a personal video setting out who I am and what I am doing. As a disabled person this is not something I am looking forward to but if I have to then I will.  I have set my ‘target’ to about $1000, this should cover the most of my accommodation costs without needing too many funders.

If you feel you can spare $10 in the mean time then please feel free to leave a donation at Sponsor a Games Maker or if you have your own blog it would be really appreciated if you could blog about my plea.

Thanks

I am a Games maker

I am proud to confirm I am a ‘Game maker‘ for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games, I am not based at any of the sporting venues which is a bit disappointing but needless to say I am happy to have been selected.

Now it’s time to sort out accommodation but there are two problems, the first is we have  not yet been told what our shifts are going to be so we have to either wait or book now for the full 2 weeks for each of the games and pay for accommodation we don’t need, the second  problem is the costs. Obviously prices are determined by demand and there are going to be an awful lot of people/tourists in London during the games and this is reflected in the prices being asked. There are councils and camping clubs taking playing fields and charging £20-£30 (about $32-48 USD) per person per night.

Unfortunately this prices are making it difficult for us Games makers, if  I book now for just the Olympic games (14 nights) then we need to pay out £280. If I wait until I get my shifts in a few months time then the chances of finding somewhere available will be more difficult.  As I am a Games maker for the Paralympic as well then the costs could be between £400-£500, on top of that I need to get to London and back.

Do not get me wrong, I will not be pulling out or anything silly but i have created a site ‘Sponsor a Games Maker‘ in the hope that some one might be able to sponsor me by donating somewhere I can park the camper van or some other accommodation during the games.

If you know of anyone that may be able to help please give them the url above.

Thanks