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The below graph shows the distribution of different colours across different photos and objects from 1800 to 2020 from the Science Museum Group. As you can see, there’s a clear pattern: less reds, oranges, yellows and greens, and more greys, whites and blacks. There’s also slightly more blue, but that is far less than the […]

Some people are obsessed with certain celebrities. What they’re doing, the people they’re hanging out with, their politics. Everything and anything about them. Although this is the most visible online, there have been cases in the real world where celebrity obsession has gone a little too far. So please stop obsessing over celebrities. Like them, […]

2025 has begun, and so have the new year resolutions. Many people make them, and they’re usually along the lines of “Go to the gym every day” or “Follow a diet of spinach and carrots for the next year”. At the beginning of 2023 and 2024, I wrote a to-do list with tasks or skills […]

Imagine this scenario: you’ve just finished your GCSEs, A Levels or university degree. Now it’s time to figure out what you want to do next. So you start doing research online for what options you have. But to get all the information you need, it takes hours of searching and reading various articles and pages. […]

The main social media platforms aren’t working for us. They’re addictive, manipulative and exploitative, keeping you scrolling for hours on end so you see as many adverts as possible. Posts made by family and friends are replaced with posts from strangers, and Facebook and Instagram (among others) are starting to become more like TikTok. But […]

The long-awaited general election is finally here, and all political parties are, as usual, promising things like hotcakes. But the question is: will they actually keep to their promises once they’re in power? Every general election, I upload all the political party manifestos here, freely available to anyone who wants to have a peek. Maybe […]

For the last three years, I’ve been studying for a Computing degree at the University of Suffolk. As with everything in life, it’s had ups and downs. It’s safe to say that I’ve changed a lot since I last posted on here back in November 2021. I’ve met many new people, developed more websites and […]

Ballyhoo, a free block-ready minimalist WordPress theme, has been released onto the WordPress theme directory today. I have been working on the Ballyhoo theme in various forms since 2018, so it is a relief to finally have it on the WordPress theme directory. For those who don’t know what a WordPress theme is, it is […]

Here we go again. The COP26 climate conference starts this November in Glasgow, where the world’s politicians will, once again, pretend to care about the world’s climate for a few days, sign an agreement for commitments due far into the future, before heading back to their own countries on their private jets to boast how […]

Today, the largest website I have worked on so far is being launched. Aircraft Buyer is a website that allows people to buy and sell aircraft and aviation services. I have been working on this website since June 2021. This website has been built for a friend’s new online business, so I’m not going to […]

I have just launched a website called Fake News Checker, which can check news articles to see whether they are likely to be fake news. This website was produced for my A-Level Computer Science coursework planned and developed from June 2020 until April 2021. I wanted to release it for everyone to use, but I […]

A new Mr Red Blob video has been released today on YouTube. Ellie invites the other three toddlers over for a play date. But when it’s time for the other toddlers to go, Ellie does everything she can to prevent Mr Red Blob from making them leave the house… (For those that are interested, this […]

Local elections are taking place this year across the UK. Cities are electing mayors, countries are electing parliaments (except for England) and councils are electing councillors. This is the first election to happen since 2019 and all the stuff that has happened since then. So, here’s all the lovely manifestos I have managed to collect […]

Over the past few years, I have been taking photos and sharing them with everyone on Facebook, Instagram and my portfolio site. Today, I am announcing the launch of my new online shop, Calum Childs Shop. It currently sells prints and canvases of many of my photos that I have taken over the past few […]

World Book Day is on the 4th March, and to celebrate, I have made three book trailers, which will be released over the course of March. I have made a book trailer before for World Book Day about Silence is Goldfish by Annabel Pitcher but the books I have made trailers about this year are […]

Bring Home the Revolution is a book by Jonathan Freedland about how Britain can become more like the United States. And, no, he doesn’t think we should all have guns or people be able to hunt animals. He writes in the Guardian, but he isn’t as left-wing as some of the Guardian’s other columnists. The […]

A new Mr Red Blob video has been released today. It is a Christmas special, and the story is this: Mr Red Blob is trying to get home to his family on Christmas Eve, but his boss wants him to do something first… Will he get home in time for dinner? If you can’t watch […]

Everything starts somewhere, although many physicists disagree. The Discworld series by Terry Pratchett is strange, funny and, in some ways, educational. There are 41 books in the Discworld series (just a disclaimer: I haven’t read them all!) Unlike many other series, each book can be read on it’s own, in any particular order. Here are […]

I have been spending the past several months making a lot of Mr Red Blob videos (as well as other things, such as updating the Homework Help For Kids designs and apps.) This is the first video I made, which is about what happens when Mr Red Blob and his family go on a walk […]

If the rumours going around the Internet are true, the BBC is planning to shut off BBC Four at the end of this year to save money. BBC Four was always going to be a victim of any upcoming cuts because it doesn’t fit into the BBC’s future vision of trying to attract young people […]

After months of work, the new Homework Help For Kids website and app design has finally been launched. This is the first time both the website and the app (Android version) have had the same design. This was the hardest website design that I’ve done so far. Homework Help For Kids is the website that […]

In the past few years, many people have been saying that the Oscars aren’t diverse enough. That was mostly true at this year’s awards: there was only one non-white actor nominated for this year’s Best Actor award. And the Best Director award contains no women – many have asked why Greta Gerwig wasn’t nominated for […]

Now that we are almost certain to be leaving the EU by the end of this year, politicians will now turn their attention to other domestic issues that haven’t been addressed. One issue that has been raised, mainly because of the news that those over 75 not on pension benefits will have to pay their […]

Now that the election is over, the manifestos that the political parties have made for this election will probably be removed from the parties’ websites over the next few weeks. So I’ve uploaded (nearly) all of them onto my server and put the links to them below. Do whatever you like with them. Conservative Manifesto […]

As I am writing this, at 5.09am, the Conservatives have just passed the 326-seat mark needed to form a majority government. This means that, assuming they pass the deal in Parliament, which they now certainly will, we will be leaving the EU on 31st January 2020. Labour has lost many of their seats in their […]

I think that today’s election will result in another hung Parliament. It seems that the Conservatives won’t have another minority government with the DUP due to the Irish border issue, so if they don’t achieve a majority in Parliament, then Labour will probably team up with either the Liberal Democrats (if they are 10 – […]

At the beginning of 2017, I launched a website for my YouTube channel, The Adventures of Mr Red Blob. I had copied a design from W3Schools. Whilst it looked good, I still felt that it lacked the personality that I wanted for the website. A few months later, I redid the website using Bootstrap (a […]

And… we’re off! The third general election in 5 years has well and truly begun. All sides have started firing their slogans and promises onto our television screens, doorsteps and Facebook feeds. But it seems that there is more at stake for all sides in this election than any other in recent history. Obviously, there’s […]

A general election has been recently called by Parliament and it is definitely going to be dominated by one thing: Brexit. In two hours, I have created a tool that you can use to figure out which political party you may want to vote for, based on your views on Brexit. Try it out! No […]

Outside by Sarah Ann Juckes is about a girl called Ele who has been locked into a tower all of her life. She has never seen the outside world, let alone been in it. In the tower, she has herself, the Others and Him. The Others have been in the tower with her for as […]

As of Friday 22nd March, one petition has gained 3.4 million signatures. It was for revoking Article 50 and remaining in the EU. A day later, there was a large “People’s Vote” protest in London, which hundreds of thousands attended. Staying in the EU or doing a second referendum would be a catastrophe for democracy. […]

Since I finished my mock exams, I have been working on a new portfolio for all of my photography. And it is now ready to view here. Some of you may be wondering, “Why is he making a new photography portfolio? He already has one.” Well, you’re about to find out! Better design My brand-new […]

Theresa May went to Brussels and negotiated a deal which would leave us in most parts of the single market and the customs union until at least 2022. And it’s up to the EU as to when we can leave the customs union & single market. This is the exact opposite of the “strong and […]

For a few months now, I have been working on an eBook about how women got the vote in the UK. Now it is finally ready, and it is available to download below: Download the free eBook  

I’m currently doing my exams at the moment, and the work is piling up. The GCSEs are also getting harder, which is why I need to focus on my revision. Because of this, I’m going to stop writing blog posts for a while. I may get the time to do the odd post once in […]

You may, or may not, have heard of the news that 50 million Facebook accounts were breached a few days ago. But, Facebook was caught posts linking to a legitimate Guardian article about the breach as “spam”. (If you click on the “i” on the bottom right of the article link, a pop-up will explain […]

If you don’t see anything, click the button below: Watch video on YouTube

AI is coming faster than we think. Go onto any social network and login to your account and on the “News Feed”, what you see is there because artificial intelligence thought you would like it. Jobs may soon be entirely taken over by artificial intelligence – especially ones which involve repetitive work. But, how far […]

It’s September, and when we’re out and about, I’m already seeing Christmas cards. Advertisements for Christmas dinner bookings, Christmas events. And as the weeks pass by, I’m seeing this more and more often. From late October, I turn on the radio and hear Christmas songs. Christmas decorations are being sold in shops around early October. […]

In my opinion, Britain needs a new national anthem. Why is that, you may ask? Well, I think it needs changing because the National Anthem is about just one person: the Queen. And she doesn’t need saving from anything: the UK Government give her millions of pounds a year. Another reason I think that we […]

Thanks to humans, across the globe, our wildlife is under threat. Animals are being chained up, tortured and forced to do things that they don’t want to do – all just for our amusement. And that’s just one of the things we’re doing to them. We’re destroying their habitats just so we can grow palm […]

Electric cars are being praised as being a very environmentally-friendly alternative to petrol. But are they better than petrol and diesel cars or are they just as bad? Let’s start with the environmental benefit: Cleaner air Electric cars don’t directly pump out pollution into the air, which is good for those living in cities and […]

I’m not a vegetarian myself – and I’m certainly not going to become one. But I’ve been doing some research, and there are many very interesting pros and cons to becoming a vegetarian. We shall start with the pros: Pros Less animals are killed. When you become a vegetarian, you don’t eat meat so as […]

A bit of film this week. We all know Disney as a film studio which makes films about fairy-tales and other family-friendly films. But recently, the company has started to make some of it’s most iconic films, The Jungle Book (I can understand why they did this as the animals were all animated very realistically), […]

When you turn on the news sometimes, you can see humanity at its worst. Terrorist attacks, crime and climate change are all great examples of how humans can do terrible things without a single thought to those affected. But this blog post is different. Instead, it is going to tell you all about the inspiring […]

Climate change is the result of what humans have done to this planet. And now we should be the ones to stop it. But, how can we solve a large problem that will affect all of us? Those currently in power shouldn’t leave it to the next generation to sort it out – after all, […]

It’s really hot at Britain at the moment. Temperatures are getting as high as 30 C — and even higher. There are quite a lot of people who have been driven outside by the long spell of really lovely weather. And this has been evident when we go to our local National Trust places, which, […]

The (Men’s) World Cup recently ended – one where we could have got to the finals and potentially won had we scored a few more goals. But, you won’t have to wait until 2022 to sing “It’s coming home” again. The FIFA Women’s World Cup will be held next year (2019) in France. Now, women’s […]

Sadly, I’m too young to become Prime Minister. But since this country has been descended into chaos by a bunch of people who’s mental age is 10 years, I’ve decided to put what I would do (about this country’s major problems) if I was prime minister. And trust me, this country would be a lot […]

On Friday 29th June, I went to Hampton Court Palace with my grandad. It took two hours to get there by train (we changed once.) Eventually, when we got there, there was a nice breeze. This was quite a relief as it was very hot that day! It was my second time going to Hampton […]

A few years ago, the education secretary (at the time) Michael Gove said that the old GCSEs were just too easy (to be fair, I have never seen an old GCSE paper, so I can’t really say whether that’s true.) And so he changed everything, including the grading system. Now, like most of Michael Gove’s […]

Many people ask me the question, “What phone do you have?” and are shocked to find out that I don’t have a smartphone, before usually asking why I don’t have one. And this is my answer. Everywhere you look, the majority of people are on their smartphones, not paying attention to the world around them. […]

Do you still listen to radio? I do, but I don’t listen to Heart, Magic or any of the radio stations that play music. (Unless you count Classic FM.) One of my favourite radio stations is LBC, where they discuss current affairs and politics. I only listen to Nigel Farage’s programme, but there are many […]

As a student, my school rewards those who have never missed a day of school, in that term or academic year. Now, many people are against this because the majority who don’t get 100% attendance don’t get it because they may have been ill once or twice (or maybe they happen to be ill quite […]

I went to RHS Wisley today and it is fantastic! All the plants were out in full bloom and it is very beautiful today. There were so many types of plants and there was even a large greenhouse filled with plants from deserts and tropical rain-forests. Here is a few of the photos I took:

The Manifesto on How To Be Interesting by Holly Bourne is about a very unpopular girl who starts changing her personality so she can get more writing material (she wants to be an author.) And how it all turns out is very interesting. What I thought about it I thought that the book was very […]

A few people have asked me now how I made my website since I launched it a few months ago. Well, I haven’t really known how to answer that question. Until now. A whole lot of code Now, I have used code to create all of my portfolio pages. I learnt HTML (used to specify […]

Most of us have been or will start doing their formal exams, whether that be GCSEs, A-Levels or just the normal exam you get round about the end of every academic year. But do you think that formal exams such as GCSEs and A-Levels should take place in the winter? I think they should. Why […]

The Internet as we know it is under threat. Net neutrality rules are going to be scrapped in the USA on the 11th June unless Congress vote against it. But exactly what is net neutrality and how does it affect you? What is net neutrality? Net neutrality means that ISPs (Internet Service Providers) can’t block, […]

Say you live in the USA and you have a friend that lives in Australia. Your family can’t afford to go to Australia – and AirMail is too expensive. But social media can solve this problem as you can chat online as if you were talking face-to-face. But this great tool is also destroying lives. […]

When the weatherman said that it was going to get cooler next week, I thought, “That’s what spring should be like in the UK.” Heatwaves during spring (and there are many more examples of this) are called freak weather (weather that doesn’t usually happen at this time of year)

Hello and welcome to my first proper post on this blog. I still have some of my chocolate left from Easter, and my Lindt bunny partly melted in the sun (once I found out about this, I instantly ate the rest of it!) Anyway, that ties into this week’s post perfectly, because this week is […]

Go and watch the video: calumchilds.com/toysaremagic.

Here’s a video to show you how to create a poppy in Illustrator: