鈥楿nder Construction鈥 and 鈥楾aking a break鈥欌
- 19 Dec 06, 12:02 PM
Two phrases that send a shudder down my peripherals and leaves me screaming and shouting at my computer and anyone who just happens to be passing the house.
Under construction
What this actually means is that someone has gone to all the trouble of getting a domain name and web space and have managed to get on to some search engines, but haven鈥檛 actually found the time to write anything for the website.
In the early days of the web such a phrase was usually accompanied by a picture of either a man at work or some flashing yellow and black construction sign.
Some 鈥楿nder Construction鈥 pages had had a lot of work put in to them. But no matter how carefully crafted these pages are/were, they still fail to dispel my total annoyance at wasting my time as well as quashing my excitement when I think that Google has actually found a website about knitting projects for my pet budgie only to discover that all the information I need hasn鈥檛 been written yet.
Did you know that there are out there trying to stamp out the Under Construction absurdity? I鈥檒l sign any petition to stop this practice.
Under Construction tends not to be such a big issue on blogs as most of the freeware ones available are so easy to use it takes no time at all to get a couple of entries posted, so in the time it takes to put up an 鈥楿nder Construction鈥 sign you can post several entries.
No, the scourge of the blog is TABS - Taking A Break Syndrome.
All year long people sit and craft (some irony there) their postings on their blog. Then along comes a holiday season and they feel as though they need to excommunicate their readers and stop posting.
Newspapers and magazines pull out all the stops at holiday time to give their readers bumper editions with extra features. So why do bloggers feel the need to stop blogging? I have a theory.
Most bloggers blog from work. I don鈥檛 have any statistics to back this up, but think about it, why else would you not be able to blog at holiday time (apart from being away) unless your access to a computer and some spare time had gone?
So I鈥檓 going to continue to write 鈥 but not on the 大象传媒 Manchester Blog 鈥 as I鈥檓 sure my many, many readers to my would be distraught and feel withdrawal symptoms if I took a break.
Actually I鈥檓 working on a website now that looks at the whole issue of working and blogging. Sadly it鈥檚 still under construction and is likely to be for some time yet as I鈥檓 having difficulty finding just the right image of a guy leaning on a spade reading something on his laptop.
The Manchester blog will be back on January 2nd with tips on how to overcome the feeling that you鈥檝e not blogged for two whole weeks and you鈥檝e actually found something to do with your time.
Happy holidays!
How to blog
- 15 Dec 06, 10:42 AM
Blogging is child's play. It's the older ones that have difficulty, expecially 大象传媒 Radio Manchester's Eamonn O鈥橬eal.
Eamonn invited 12-year-old into the studio to show him how to set up a new blog.
You can read all about it on the bbc.co.uk/manchester website and you can listen again by clicking here.
Eamonn's new .
Meet the Manchester Boob blogger
- 13 Dec 06, 09:43 AM
blogger Clare Sudbery has been telling us about her blog and why she blogs. You can hear the full interview here including the story behind the name Boob Pencil.
Interestingly Clare says that she sees herself as a bit of a fraud when it comes to her blog being listed as a Manchester blog as she only really writes about herself. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 think of blogging as being a geographically specific thing,鈥 she says, which raises the issue I wrote about a couple of weeks ago about Manchester blogs not blogging about Manchester.
Clare has been here 18 years, 鈥淚 don鈥檛 write about Manchester because that鈥檚 not the way I think鈥, she says.
So Boob Pencil is purely about Clare and she鈥檚 the first to admit that she鈥檚 an attention seeker. She sees blogging as a way of connecting with people 鈥 just as you would if you met them in a bar.
But if you do meet her in a pub don't offer her a handful of pencils with a request for her party piece, you might get more than you bargained for.
Another radio blogger
- 11 Dec 06, 12:50 PM
She claims to be able to hold seventeen pencils under each breast and spent a year of her life taking trapeze lessons. blogger sounds like she should be on the radio. Well she is!
Tune in to 大象传媒 Radio Manchester on Tuesday afternoon at 3.30 to hear her.
You can listen live online if you're out of town and we'll let you listen again right here from Wednesday.
Now, I wonder how many pencils I can get under my man-boobs.
Is it OK to blog while off sick?
- 7 Dec 06, 09:52 AM
It鈥檚 not something I really thought about until earlier this week when I was taken to my bed with a near-death inducing .
Counting the tiles on the bedroom ceiling was driving me insane (13x12 = 156 plus a few part tiles round the chimney, so I鈥檇 say round it up to 160).
Despite the weakness of my arms and legs and uncontrollable urge to sneeze the contents of my nose on anyone within spitting distance of me, I needed to blog. But what if the boss looks at my site. 鈥淭oo ill to work鈥, he鈥檒l think, 鈥渂ut not too ill to blog. I鈥檒l sack that slacker when he gets back in the office. That鈥檒l put an end to his .鈥
So I don鈥檛 blog anything for fear that if the virus (that really was leaving me at death鈥檚 door) doesn鈥檛 get me, my boss will. Of course by not blogging I鈥檓 unable to share my real life experiences with my reader and thus render part of the ethos of blogging redundant.
It was the same, only slightly different, when I went through a spell of .
I was a slave to the computer and the house. Not daring to step outside for fear that it would be at the precise moment the boss would want to speak to me about writing something about . Then, not getting an answer on the phone, he would immediately presume that I was not in fact working at all, but off out to the park all day walking the dog or shopping for antiques or bread. While actually I was just in the toilet. (Of course I avoided using that too in case the phone rang and the whole 鈥榖eing out鈥 nightmare would become a reality).
There were many pluses working from home. I could get up fifteen minutes before starting work and be home before the computer had logged me out. There were days when I could work in my pyjamas and slippers and I could choose what to listen to - music or the radio or next door鈥檚 dog howling (except I didn鈥檛 have much choice in the latter, but the radio drowned him out).
Actually I think working from home meant more time working. None of the distractions of working in an office. And there were days when I was feeling under the weather a little and may have thought twice about dragging my aching limbs into Manchester, but was happy to sit and suffer at home alone. Without any sympathy. At all. (Actually, what was I thinking? I could have been really ill and no one would have known).
Anyway, blogging when you鈥檙e sick. Is it allowed? Is it ok to just post 鈥楽orry I鈥檓 sick and can鈥檛 update the blog鈥 鈥 or is that contradictory? Writing that you can鈥檛 write is like drawing a picture to illustrate that you can鈥檛 draw. Plus the boss may read it even though he doesn鈥檛 read blogs or know that you write one. But there鈥檚 always the chance that he鈥檒l stumble across it while checking for spares on Ebay.
So, blogging while off work being really, really ill 鈥 playing with fire or a part of the convalescing process?
(Just in case the boss does read this, I wrote it in work time, but had the original idea while at home fighting off the . I鈥檓 happy for him to see my germ-infested notes at any time.)
Manchester Wi-Fi Proposal - Good News for Bloggers?
- 5 Dec 06, 11:25 AM
大象传媒 News that Manchester City Council plans to make a bid for money from the Government's Digital Challenge Initiative to create the largest free wireless internet hotspot in Europe. Although not the first UK city to offer wireless internet connections - their network at the end of August - the proposal, initially covering 100 square miles and expanding to as much as 400 sq. miles, would create the UK's largest blanket of wi-fi internet coverage so far.
, for the uninitiated, is a wireless method of connecting to the internet. A base station connected to a high-speed internet connection broadcasts signals through the air, those signals are picked up by compatible computers, and commands made on those computers are passed back to the base station.
So what would this mean for Manchester Bloggers? Well, having been a wi-fi user for about three years myself, I think blanket wi-fi coverage opens up whole new avenues of possibility. Not everyone has highspeed internet at home, nor can everyone afford to pay the often high access charges for internet access offered by many coffee shops these days. At a very basic level, a city wide wi-fi network would help people who wouldn't normally have the resources to get online do so - as long as they have wi-fi capability in their computer. Hopefully this will lead to more interesting and creative people creating and sharing their content online.
As for existing bloggers, it will get easier to take your blog with you wherever you go and you'll be more easily able to blog as you down an egg butty at the local greasy spoon after a hard night out, write posts about the people and places you observe as you sit in the park or in another public place, and to post content live from sporting matches, public meetings or cultural events. This sort of thing is already starting to happen, of course, with increasingly powerful multimedia mobiles with fast data connections appearing - Newsnight's Paul Mason blogged about his recent visit to a Manchester City match where just about everyone seemed to be holding their mobiles aloft, snapping photos and sending videos to friends.
There are also lots of new wi-fi enabled devices appearing in shops - from machines which allow users to compete with other users over the network to that, rather than routing your call via the usual telephone network, can connect your call cheaply (or for free) using high quality voice over internet () technologies such as .
All that's fine and good, if not a bit geeky, but what's it actually going to do? Well, for me at least, all sorts of possibilities have been opened through my being able to connect to the internet from almost anywhere via a combination of my laptop's wi-fi connection at home and public places already offering free wifi and, where there isn't an open network, via my 3G mobile phone's data connection. I can read my RSS feeds on buses or trains. I can post a short entry while I wait for my lunch. I can live blog events, as I did from the Manchester Blog Awards until my battery packed in on me, and show people stuff, look up things, or check up on email from just about anywhere.
A city wide blanket of wi-fi like the one being proposed by Manchester City Council would certainly allow me to blog more often and from more places, but is that a good thing?
Would internet access anywhere, anytime throughout Manchester make it easier for you to blog? Would it affect where you blog from or what you blog about? Will it change your relationship with your blog, your blog's audience, and with the people around you? Will you take your blog with you everywhere or will you leave it at home? Tell us what you think, as people who create and post content online, the pros and cons of a city wide wifi network are for you personally.
[The photo in this entry was originally uploaded to flickr by .]
Julia on 大象传媒 Radio Manchester
- 1 Dec 06, 11:52 AM
Yesterday as I was posting about the 大象传媒 Manchester Blogging Workshop we're organising, Richard Fair (no, that's not him at left) was at Ordsall Hall speaking with blogger Julia Delvaux for 大象传媒 Radio Manchester. Some people get all the good jobs.
It turns out that Julia, whose blog covers literature, art and cinema, is also a . Maybe with a little encouragement we can get her to put that knowledge to some more good use by expanding the for Ordsall Hall which is a haunted, 660 year old, Grade I listed Tudor mansion currently to fund 拢1 million worth of TLC.
We've uploaded Julia's interview but, sadly, were unable to include the audio of Julia's debut performance on the hand-bells as part of our impromptu Tudor band. Doesn't fit very well into our station playlist you see...
(The photograph "Some Tudor bloke in the Medieval Star Chamber" was taken at Ordsall Hall and by . We asked him before using it here. Cheers John!)
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