Doddington Village Sports and Carnival Blog

Bit of behind the scenes website work-in-progress for you? Ok. So, I wanted to make a bit of a ‘thing’ about the Trophies, Shields and Awards that we hand out each year, and wanted them all to appear on the website. All Awards that we give out to the Winners and Runner-ups on Doddington Village Sports and Carnival. At present, we list the various awards and their respective winners, but I wanted to have a little extra … something for each one. So, just as we were setting up for the Awards Presentation evening, in September 2008, I took my camera along to the Village Hall, and took the opportunity to photograph (to the best of my ability!!) each and every Award. I used one of those fabric-based pop-up studio-style photo boxes, (bit like this one  =>) such that the background on each trophy was white and therefore easier to use on the website. However, as I might have hinted at, I’m not a photographer and far from knowing what I’m doing with a photo studio!  Either way, I t...

A s we in the Carnival Committee are getting ready for the Santa Run 2018 (which is on the 7th, 8th and 9th of December!) I thought I’d share a little about what’s happening from a geeky / IT-perspective. A couple of years ago , a very-last-minute idea popped into my head about us being able to have you, the good folk of Doddington, track our location as we crawl around the village with Santa and his Sleigh, and we managed to get it to work in time.  A little rough around the edges maybe, but nonetheless, we had a working GPS tracking system.  When I say ‘rough’, I mean it wasn’t as brilliant as I had hoped that it would have been, but hey, it worked to a fashion. Last year , we managed to get a live video stream working via Facebook Live, so that, again, the good folk of Doddington, could see what was happening on the Sleigh, whether it was before or after we’ve been around to your houses. THIS YEAR… we’re pushing the boundaries of previous years, building on previous effort...

Some-how, I have been given the role of ‘the Naughty Elf’, which means that I was the one locked up in the back of the truck that pulls Santa’s Sleigh around the village.  (Although saying that, last night’s freezing temperatures made me quite glad I was the one stuck in there!) Essentially, my job during the Santa Run as ‘the Naughty Elf’, is to control the music and microphone levels through the powered amplifier in the back of the truck with me. Different Christmas music tracks need different volume adjustments, but also controlling Santa’s microphone is another job - I’m sure he waits until I’m least expecting a ‘Ho! Ho! HO!’ blast from him, and he catches me off-guard and the levels go through the roof! For years, and irrespective of where I’ve lived at the time, I’ve seen various Santa Sleighs taken around to see the boys and girls, and hadn’t given it too much of a thought about how it all works.  But since joining the Doddington Village Sports and Carnival committee a...