Whey hey hey!
I’m now a blogger for Shiny Media over on their Big Brother blog, Available for Panto.
Please do go and visit, and comment on my (and everyones) posts.
(The irony of it all is I will soon be live-blogging. Despite this. Still, as they say, morals don’t put food on the table! Not that I’m blogging in order to eat or anything. You get what I mean.)
Tonight jBlog will be live-blogging the BBC’s Springwatch Nightshift.
Buckle up.
(Top to bottom)
00:39am – Well here we are in what appears to be a box, but I cannot be sure.
00:41am – Bob in Wolverhampton writes: “Yes Dave, it is a box.” Keep those emails coming in folks.
00:43am – In what looks to be a barn now (can we verify this, Bob?). There are owls. A small one appears to be eating its foot.
00:45am – No, not his foot. It’s a mouse. An emails begins to scroll across the screen – a viewer writes: “Great television. The owls seem happier when they’ve eaten.” Immediately afterwards, a soft, sarcastic round of applause breaks out across the country.
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00:46am – “CHIRP CHIRP CHIRP!” – tensions erupt in the barn. Jade retreats to the opposite side (to visit the diary room, I’m guessing).
00:47am – Back to the box. Nobody has moved.
00:48am – Excitement! We’ve cut to a highlights segment. Earlier on Springwatch, erm, some animals sat in a box and ate something.
00:49am – Viewer: “It’s really great to see animals in their natural habitat. It’s almost like being there.” I never knew badgers lived in pre-fab boxes, but there we go.
00:52am – Owls. A loud noise has developed, sounds very much like someone hocking up phlegm to do a big spit. Has Springwatch discovered a new breed? The Chavvy Owl? Gripping television.
00:53am – Scrolling text informs us that we can expect to see “Badgers, bats, owls, in fact anything that goes bump in the night!”. Nightclubs will be shutting soon – may the fun begin.
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00:57am – Grass! Everywhere. Another highlight from earlier, this time, we see a badger walking.
00:58am – Still walking. Stopped. End of highlight — we’re back live.
00:59am – An owl is looking straight at the camera. We’ve been rumbled. Run Bill! Runnn!
01:02am – Colin from Devon asks: “Where does the BBC stand on racial bullying within the owl barn?” Well Colin, I’m not too sure calling a fellow barnmate “Tawny Prawny Owl” is strictly racist. Please, don’t burn any flags (or owls).
01:05am – Scrolling text: “You’re watching Springwatch Nightshift. The animals aren’t going to bed [they're animals for crying out loud, they don't have beds - ed] so we guarantee some surprises! Don’t go away!” How can you guarantee surprises on a live nature show? Unless they plan to stick someone in a badger suit and let him run amok for five minutes. Watch this space.
01:09am – Viewer: “Don’t go to bed Trevor and Justine! Stay up and watch badgers with us!!” What kind of sick perverts are watching this thing?
01:11am – What I’d give for a pack of starving wolves to come screaming through right this minute. I’ve had enough.
(Ok, ok, this is a joke. But I’ve come to the conclusion that live-blogging is a) not very live b) not very accurate c) not very good. With Big Brother starting soon, I thought now would be a swell time to, you know, take the piss. Spread the word: Down with live blogs!)
Yes, yes, it was a completely diabolical final, but I don’t want to talk about that (after all, real football is found in the lower leagues, everyone knows that).
But I’d like to raise a glass to the BBC sports team. There isn’t a youtube clip yet — I’ll find one soon — but if you saw the efforts of Garth Crooks and Jonathan Pearce on the pitch after the final whistle I’m sure you’ll agree it was a hilariously brilliant moment.
Garth runs off like an excited squirrel, screaming “John! John! Well done John!” as he tries to grab John Terry for an interview. In the next shot, Pearce waddles up to Didier Drogba, struggling to keep hold of him.
The producer then switched cameras, but then soon returned to Pearce who literally had hold of Drogba in what was almost a WWE-style headlock. He got his interview, but Drogba could say nothing of interest, unsurprisingly.
Great viewing. Well done Chelsea (you gits).
UPDATE: And hats off to Sky Sports too. After the final we turned to a bit of cricket. Ramdim had just got his fifty for the W’Indies, prompting this gem from Michael Holding: “He’s not a bad player. In fact, he’s a good player.”
Commentary gold!
ANOTHER UPDATE: See the Drogba interview here. Doesn’t quite capture the glory of the goings-on beforehand, but you’ll see the end result of Pearce’s hard graft.
I don’t know why I didn’t do it sooner.
Today was my first ‘Open Day’ at uni. A day when all the fresh-faced (and terrified!) potential students come for a look round at what’s what.
I was rather nervous at first. We had to give tours, do talks and be generally happy and lovely, and I wasn’t sure I was cut out for a full day of all that*.
But I had a great time, and I realised two things.
First, my lecturers can talk and talk and talk about their profession and experiences within it.
And second, so can I.
Having questions thrown at you like “Why did you choose journalism?” is an interesting feeling. The first time it happened I gave the answer of “I’m not too sure”, and then reeling off about two hundred reasons why I chose journalism. Of course I knew. And I’m quite astonished, really, that my reasons for choosing journalism before I came to uni still exist today. I still love it, I still want to do it, and, best of all, I am doing it.
By the end of the day I’d decided in my head what I wanted to do next year. Bigger Linc, a radio show of my own, more work experience — paid! — … pretty much everything I should have done this year but didn’t.
I will do it though.
In the mean time, here’s some good reads from today.
[COMMENT IS FREE] Shannon Kyle – Mums for Madeleine
Poor, poor Madeleine. This article takes a look at another emotional strain the parents of missing Maddie are feeling: are they bad parents?
[EPIDEMIX] Why does Wikipedia suck at science?
Here’s an interesting one. Wikipedia is often criticised for being too unreliable. Here, though, it’s accused of being too clever! What do you get if you stick lots of clever scientists in one place? Lots of clever science that only the cleverest of clever scientists can understand — which defeats the point of an encyclopedia.
[JEFF JARVIS] Hot dog
This is just funny. I love the way in which the reporter on the phone turns covers his ear, turns round, and then frantically tries to fathom what the hell is going on. I can imagine his conversation with whoever is on the phone: “Er..well, you’ll never guess what’s just come into the office…”
Great debate going on over on Comment is Free.
Ex-footballer Jorge Valdano, has launched a bit of a rant about English football being boring and without flair.
An OK point, but he seems to base much of his opinion on the Chelsea v Liverpool semi-final last week. I say it’s unfair to give judgment on either team on that match alone. There are times when the occasion gets to players, and the football suffers. Which is why most World Cup finals are complete toss.
Anyway, in my opinion, it’s the winning that counts. Ugly football will happen from time to time, and you just have to be glad you won.
The legend that is Ian Holloway describes it best, I think:
“To put it in gentleman’s terms if you’ve been out for a night and you’re looking for a young lady and you pull one, some weeks they’re good looking and some weeks they’re not the best. Our performance today would have been not the best looking bird but at least we got her in the taxi. She weren’t the best looking lady we ended up taking home but she was very pleasant and very nice, so thanks very much, let’s have a coffee”
Wonderful. Read more Holloway quotes on his Wikipedia page.
[WIRED] Virtual rape is traumatic, but is it a crime?
Fantastic read on Wired.com. I tried out Second Life a little while ago and didn’t really get on too well with it (partly due to my PC being almost as old as me). This article is still very interesting though — even if you don’t play the game. My initial reaction was that of course online rape isn’t a crime, but after reading the piece, I’m more aware of what a traumatic experience it could be.
The Webby Awards were announced today.
The BBC won the best news site for the third year running. Good. Interesting to note that the BBC’s design is now pretty outdated when compared to that of the NYTimes or even Channel Four News. Refreshing, then, that people have voted for content over aesthetics.
[RICHARD KEEBLE] What is journalism?
Richard Keeble is our finest lecturer here at Lincoln. This piece is pretty old, but I’ve only just read it, so I thought I’d share.
[GROOGLE] Wikipedia, becoming the largest cyber newsroom in the world?
Interesting post from the Multimedia Specialist at The Sunday Times (South Africa). He writes here about how the power of Wikipedia produced probably the best news coverage of the Virginia Tech massacre. There was over 2,000 contributers – much more than any news outlet could afford to cover the event.
The question still remains over accuracy, but then I’d say the wisdom of crowds would come into play.
[JO'S TOOLKIT] A progressive step to increase readership
This site is co-run by the fella I linked to above — Groogle. It is a site catering for students and student publications, so of course, I found it very useful indeed. My student publication has ebbed and flowed this year, but come next year we’ll be going full throttle. I hope. One can only try.
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