I just thought I should put up a quick post to say what fun I've had on a couple of afternoons this week reading all the Westminster blogs from other journo students (these can be accessed by the Westminster site weblink).
I have been blog surfing under contraband time (breaking my self imposed plan to get my a*se in gear and finish the magazine proposal that I've been dilly-dallying over all week), so I haven't had the chance to leave any individual comments. But, I have really enjoyed reading all the different writing styles, fresh ideas and quirky takes on life.
There is lots of impressive stuff coming from the blogs and its great to have an easy tap into it. I can see a lot more time being eaten up in just the same way in the next few months. Shorthand or blog watching - hmmm dilema?!
I have a couple of bits to post about monks full of 'The Force' and an interesting snippet I found to add to the 'Is print dead' debate, but have banned myself from any further blog contact until my magnus opus on Practical Poultry (it's a chicken magazine - don't ya know!) is finished. So that will have to wait until the weekend....
P.S. I am laughing now as the spell check on blogger.com doesn't recognise blog or weblink! Strange!
Friday, October 27, 2006
Sunday, October 22, 2006
History Matters
I've posted a copy of the blog I sent to History Matters below. If you haven't heard, this is a mass-blog that is going to be turned into a historical archive at the British Museum - cool.
The idea is for everyone to write a blog about what happened to them on Tuesday 17th October and how history might have affected them on that day. You can still submit a blog until 1st November at http://www.historymatters.org.uk/output/Page1.asp - do have a look if you haven't seen the press coverage.
Unfortunately I am banging on about websites again! After this post, I promise to diversify into pastures new. :-)
"Technology and history have hovered around me today while a crisis unfolded!
I’m building a website (as part of a post grad journalism course) about the regional press in the UK. Building the site has been tricky as I have little experience with techno-stuff and am not naturally gifted in the area. However, learning about how the British press is using new technology to communicate with readers has been fascinating. Blogging, citizen journalism and video journalism seem to be big talking points for the press at the moment.
I’m new to blogging and have only started in the last week or so. Despite being new and innovative, I think blogging has historical overtones. Writing diaries and letters are now often seen as lost arts, but blogging and email have opened up new ways of tapping into these traditional skills. The language of the net is also fun, vibrant and living. Shakespeare would be a blog-addict were he alive today.
All these thoughts about communication and language, past and future, faded in and out of my mind as I dealt with the biggest technical problem I’ve had while building the website. Pictures, links and just about everything else on the site stopped working, all made worse by the pressure of a looming deadline. I soldiered on trying to fix the problems for a few hours and eventually conceded defeat, imagining the worst.
However, back at home things improved quickly. A chat with my techno-whizz boyfriend had my website demons identified in no time (my boyfriend thinks I should write ‘daemons’ here as a techno-pun, but I’ve no idea what he’s on about…again!). A rogue forward-slash in front of all my links had been the problem. A tap of the back-space key and the site worked perfectly again! How had something so small caused so much stress and frustration? Thank goodness for people and their much needed input.
When times get tough, history has taught me to rely on those important people in my life who fix me and keep me smiling."
The idea is for everyone to write a blog about what happened to them on Tuesday 17th October and how history might have affected them on that day. You can still submit a blog until 1st November at http://www.historymatters.org.uk/output/Page1.asp - do have a look if you haven't seen the press coverage.
Unfortunately I am banging on about websites again! After this post, I promise to diversify into pastures new. :-)
"Technology and history have hovered around me today while a crisis unfolded!
I’m building a website (as part of a post grad journalism course) about the regional press in the UK. Building the site has been tricky as I have little experience with techno-stuff and am not naturally gifted in the area. However, learning about how the British press is using new technology to communicate with readers has been fascinating. Blogging, citizen journalism and video journalism seem to be big talking points for the press at the moment.
I’m new to blogging and have only started in the last week or so. Despite being new and innovative, I think blogging has historical overtones. Writing diaries and letters are now often seen as lost arts, but blogging and email have opened up new ways of tapping into these traditional skills. The language of the net is also fun, vibrant and living. Shakespeare would be a blog-addict were he alive today.
All these thoughts about communication and language, past and future, faded in and out of my mind as I dealt with the biggest technical problem I’ve had while building the website. Pictures, links and just about everything else on the site stopped working, all made worse by the pressure of a looming deadline. I soldiered on trying to fix the problems for a few hours and eventually conceded defeat, imagining the worst.
However, back at home things improved quickly. A chat with my techno-whizz boyfriend had my website demons identified in no time (my boyfriend thinks I should write ‘daemons’ here as a techno-pun, but I’ve no idea what he’s on about…again!). A rogue forward-slash in front of all my links had been the problem. A tap of the back-space key and the site worked perfectly again! How had something so small caused so much stress and frustration? Thank goodness for people and their much needed input.
When times get tough, history has taught me to rely on those important people in my life who fix me and keep me smiling."
Friday, October 20, 2006
The Book's Gotcha
Life at uni is about to enter 'the writing' phase - exciting times.
The website I've been putting together is finished and for a while my mind is free of thinking about html, links and whether things will still be working when I turn the computer back on (naughty cyber-pixies creep in at night I'm sure!).
So, the first writing exercise, a book review. Apparently reviews should not express personal opinion. Instead they should explain whether the book meets the objectives it sets for itself.
I hadn't found this out when I wrote the review below. However, it's nice to indulge in a bit of personal opinion while I still have the chance. The book is definitely worth a read if you can find one of the elusive copies still doing the rounds (try amazon or the library).....
"Peter Chippindale and Chris Horrie’s ‘Stick It Up Your Punter’ made me laugh before I’d even bought a copy!
It’s a hard book to get hold of - this does not mean, like me, you can’t have some fun trying. Shop assistants will smile quizzically at you, with a glint in their eye, when you tell them the title before politely replying that it’s not in stock.
Say the title out loud and the syncopation of the words hints at the direct, funny and often darkly satirical language throughout this entertaining history of The Sun newspaper.
The book covers each stage of the Sun’s growth and development, from the early days when Larry Lamb and Rupert Murdoch re-launched the paper, to the infamous period when Kelvin MacKenzie was editor at the ‘Current Bun’.
If you haven’t heard of MacKenzie before reading the book, you are likely to be intrigued by him after. MacKenzie stands out as a typically Dickensian character, a dark and omniscient presence at Fortress Wapping, the paper’s docklands base from the eighties.
MacKenzie is passionate about The Sun, a workaholic and a gifted tabloid editor (still often hailed as one of the greatest). He leads the paper into an era of record sales, however MacKenzie is a flawed hero, lewd, crude and a risk taker.
The book documents the drama surrounding MacKenzie's more infamous headline stories, offering an intriguing insiders account of daily life at a British tabloid paper.
Like most stories about flawed, eccentric men with power, the book makes for compelling reading. MacKenzie’s vocabulary and management style, similar to that of an East End gangster in his prime, make the story all the more addictive.
If this book were not a factual account of The Sun’s history, its authors would be recognised for their witty portrayal of a cast of brilliantly over-the-top characters contained within a fast moving and addictive plot line. However, this is not a novel and on reflection the book draws out darker undertones as it describes the excesses of tabloid newspaper culture.
Stick It Up Your Punter leaves you informed about its subject while also stimulating a healthy curiosity to find out more. I have unwittingly become curiouser and curiouser about MacKenzie and his Machiavellian overlord Murdoch, ever since finishing reading."
The website I've been putting together is finished and for a while my mind is free of thinking about html, links and whether things will still be working when I turn the computer back on (naughty cyber-pixies creep in at night I'm sure!).
So, the first writing exercise, a book review. Apparently reviews should not express personal opinion. Instead they should explain whether the book meets the objectives it sets for itself.
I hadn't found this out when I wrote the review below. However, it's nice to indulge in a bit of personal opinion while I still have the chance. The book is definitely worth a read if you can find one of the elusive copies still doing the rounds (try amazon or the library).....
"Peter Chippindale and Chris Horrie’s ‘Stick It Up Your Punter’ made me laugh before I’d even bought a copy!
It’s a hard book to get hold of - this does not mean, like me, you can’t have some fun trying. Shop assistants will smile quizzically at you, with a glint in their eye, when you tell them the title before politely replying that it’s not in stock.
Say the title out loud and the syncopation of the words hints at the direct, funny and often darkly satirical language throughout this entertaining history of The Sun newspaper.
The book covers each stage of the Sun’s growth and development, from the early days when Larry Lamb and Rupert Murdoch re-launched the paper, to the infamous period when Kelvin MacKenzie was editor at the ‘Current Bun’.
If you haven’t heard of MacKenzie before reading the book, you are likely to be intrigued by him after. MacKenzie stands out as a typically Dickensian character, a dark and omniscient presence at Fortress Wapping, the paper’s docklands base from the eighties.
MacKenzie is passionate about The Sun, a workaholic and a gifted tabloid editor (still often hailed as one of the greatest). He leads the paper into an era of record sales, however MacKenzie is a flawed hero, lewd, crude and a risk taker.
The book documents the drama surrounding MacKenzie's more infamous headline stories, offering an intriguing insiders account of daily life at a British tabloid paper.
Like most stories about flawed, eccentric men with power, the book makes for compelling reading. MacKenzie’s vocabulary and management style, similar to that of an East End gangster in his prime, make the story all the more addictive.
If this book were not a factual account of The Sun’s history, its authors would be recognised for their witty portrayal of a cast of brilliantly over-the-top characters contained within a fast moving and addictive plot line. However, this is not a novel and on reflection the book draws out darker undertones as it describes the excesses of tabloid newspaper culture.
Stick It Up Your Punter leaves you informed about its subject while also stimulating a healthy curiosity to find out more. I have unwittingly become curiouser and curiouser about MacKenzie and his Machiavellian overlord Murdoch, ever since finishing reading."
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Studying journalism and other stuff
So, this blog is FINALLY up and running! Why do I always seem to be typing away at midnight these days – work overload. Anyway, I’ve set this site up to write about my year of zinky days studying journalism at Westminster uni and any other bits of life that I manage to squeeze in around that.
First seminar at uni, our course leader gives a slightly satirical and very amusing definition of dinky life (double income no kids yet). I chuckled as, despite hating to be a marketing cliché, it wasn't a bad description of my life until three months ago. After years of working in recruitment in the city, I decided the time was right for a change. I’d studied English at uni eons ago, was tired of city life and really liked the idea of getting back to writing. Hence I’m entering a year of ‘zero income no kids yet’ territory.
It’s been fun so far! It’s great to be doing something intellectually stimulating again, if at times intimidating. The first few weeks have flown by in a whirlwind of new technology and new ideas, not to mention shorthand. The new ideas are great, the new technology has been scary. I’m one of those people who is enamoured by technology for the simple reason that its inner workings are like magic to me – I have no idea what’s going on to create those strange whirring sounds from my laptop! So building websites, blogging, vlogging and all the other grand techno-visions we’ve been learning about have been a lot to take on board.
Despite all fears to the contrary, it does look like my first website will be up and running soon (touching much virtual wood – I’m superstitious) and I’m even giving this blogging malarkey a try. I’m still not entirely sure what on earth I’ll write about, but I guess we’ll see where the trail leads.
Hopefully I may even find time to start reading again sometime soon, when this haze of deadlines passes. We’ve been pointed in the direction of Orwell who is one of my favourite writers and still the only author whose ‘collected works’ I have conquered (I think!).
Now I’m off to write a book review. Nothing like more more tap tap tapping......
First seminar at uni, our course leader gives a slightly satirical and very amusing definition of dinky life (double income no kids yet). I chuckled as, despite hating to be a marketing cliché, it wasn't a bad description of my life until three months ago. After years of working in recruitment in the city, I decided the time was right for a change. I’d studied English at uni eons ago, was tired of city life and really liked the idea of getting back to writing. Hence I’m entering a year of ‘zero income no kids yet’ territory.
It’s been fun so far! It’s great to be doing something intellectually stimulating again, if at times intimidating. The first few weeks have flown by in a whirlwind of new technology and new ideas, not to mention shorthand. The new ideas are great, the new technology has been scary. I’m one of those people who is enamoured by technology for the simple reason that its inner workings are like magic to me – I have no idea what’s going on to create those strange whirring sounds from my laptop! So building websites, blogging, vlogging and all the other grand techno-visions we’ve been learning about have been a lot to take on board.
Despite all fears to the contrary, it does look like my first website will be up and running soon (touching much virtual wood – I’m superstitious) and I’m even giving this blogging malarkey a try. I’m still not entirely sure what on earth I’ll write about, but I guess we’ll see where the trail leads.
Hopefully I may even find time to start reading again sometime soon, when this haze of deadlines passes. We’ve been pointed in the direction of Orwell who is one of my favourite writers and still the only author whose ‘collected works’ I have conquered (I think!).
Now I’m off to write a book review. Nothing like more more tap tap tapping......
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