Today at work the laptop fairy (or, more precisely, The Post’s Editor of Production) handed me this little beauty.
What’s more I get to keep it! This is like a second Christmas!
It’s a HP Compaq 6710b and this post is brought to you by its mobile 3G connection.
The reason that I have been given this will be the subject of a later post. For now, I’m off to play!
My poor, over-used, budget laptop has gone on strike.
I think (hope) it’s just the powerpack – when I plug it in the computer doesn’t charge – but until I get it sorted new posts may be a little thin on the ground.
I’m going offline for (only) a few days, so I just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Chirstmas and to thank you all for turning what started as a little experiment back in September into a major obsession!
Seriously! I love this blog. It has been a great thing to write for and it is wonderful to get the comments that I have. It’s all been very exciting.
I’m now hooked on blogging and I hope it will help make 2008 just as interesting!
J.x
(Pic taken at Birmingham’s Christmas Market by Tim Ellis. Check out the Birmingham Flickr group – it’s a thing of beauty.)
Now I hear that Hong Kong is the place for all things electrical, so I am am hoping to use the excuse of Christmas to pick me up a new little gadget.
Top of my wish list is a camcorder, so that I can play around with making my own videos. The problem is I haven’t got a huge budget (£200 max.).
Is there anything small and whizzy that I could get for that price? It doesn’t have to produce the best quality video, just something that wouldn’t be horrible to view on this blog.
Ideas?
Well, Mr Scotney may have evaporated from the blogosphere (I am assured it’s temporary, with a new blog due in the new year), but now Post journalist Rhona Ganguly has stepped up to the plate and launched her own independent blog.
Community Affairs in the Second City deals with the issue of social cohesion in Birmingham – a subject I know Rhona feels very passionate about.
One of her first posts is a thoughtful response to an appalling story that appeared on the front page of the Daily Express some weeks back.
The headline was: Migrants take ALL new jobs in Britain. (NB. The story has been removed from the Express website. The link above takes you to a site which also provides a bizarre photo library of international passports!!!)
Not only does the article make ridiculous and inaccurate statistical assumptions, but it is also inflammatory and, above all, an insult to journalism.
Grrr. I find it hard to write about such things as it just makes my blood boil. Luckily Rhona is far more clear sighted.
Thanks Jon
It has been said that I am a lucky little blogger to get the comments that I do.
When I started blogging (a little over two months ago) I was fearful of trolls and comments akin to those on YouTube.
Yes, I have been lucky. No more so than this week with the explosion of fantastic responses about The Post website. Taking the opportunity to both paraphrase and name drop, the thing has taken on a life of it’s own.
Yesterday, the blog was even hijacked by my editor, who was sourcing revenue-generating ideas for the new site.
It was quite an odd moment reviewing and approving his comment and, at the same time, realising just how unusual this whole thing is. I will, of course, encourage him to set up his own blog!
So here’s another thing I’m trying to get my head around:
After picking up on “Anyone want to help design the Birmingham Post website?“, journalism.co.uk must have felt that I was a credible source. They wrote a story about The Post website and quoted directly from my blog.
It hit me that, actually, that is quite an interesting thing to have done. So much has been said about the danger of blogs being potentially unreliable. Yet something made me quote-able. What was it that gave me credibility in their eyes? Context?
But, whatever it was, it was not enough to give the blog the same credibility in the eyes of holdthefrontpage.co.uk. Yesterday, they phoned me up to verify what I had written on the web and to ask for more details.
Two interesting points here: One is that I probably would have adopted the same approach as holdthefrontpage. I think I’d be happier speaking directly to the author of a blog, rather than just wholesale lifting what they had said in a post.
Second is that when they phoned me, I clammed up. I took the journalist’s name and number and said I would pass it on to Marc to deal with (which I did).
I guess the upshot is that I didn’t feel comfortable being a spokesperson for The Post or for the website project. The daft thing about that though is I already became a spokesperson by having free reign to blog about it!
There’s something illogical going on here…
So, there I was: ploughing through my Google Reader in an attempt to find something to blog about.
I found something on Martin Stabe’s site about the NUJ possibly admitting their first full-time blogger.
“Ah-ha!” thought I, “something that would work as a blog post”.
Then I realised what I was doing.
It’s all gotten the wrong way around. The thing is this whole blogging marlarkey was meant to be a repository for the thoughts I was having during my day-to-day life. It was NEVER supposed to be a hungry monster that I had to feed with new material.
I think the problem has arisen because (through uncontrolled events) this blog appeared on the radar of Post & Mail bigwigs rather early on. Too early on, to be honest (sorry, to those I know may be reading this).
I had hoped to keep it relatively quiet for a few weeks, maybe months, to find my feet with it. Perhaps that was a bit naive really.
And, to be honest, it is great how supportive and enthusiastic everyone has been and how happy they are about letting me get on and do my own thing.
BUT, of course, knowing that these people are reading the blog has sort of messed up my perception of it.
It’s gotten even more complicated since I blogged about the NUJ and started appearing on their radar. Don’t get me wrong, the debate has been fun – I’ve always longed to have the opportunity to thrash out my views in this way.
But the result is that it’s changed the way I approach the whole blogging thing. I realised the “let’s blog about the NUJ story”, was me doing what I’ve been trained to do – writing specifically for those people I think are reading.
That’s turned my blogging into out-and-out publishing and I don’t like that at all.
There are things I like – the Any Qs and Answers for example. But I don’t want to feel bad or guilty about blogging about fireworks, my cold or something someone said on the bus. They may be the last thing other people want to read about, but then this wasn’t really done for anyone else.
I’ve liked the fact that I feel part of a community of people online, but I’m starting to wonder if maybe I should have blogged anonymously. I don’t really know, maybe I’m just trying to have my cake and eat it.
After 50 days of blogging, I’m back feeling angsty about the whole thing. 🙁
It appears WordPress’s spam filter has raged against my blog – I found four comments in the spam inbox today.
Apologies to all of you who thought I wasn’t approving your feedback – I wasn’t given the chance!