James West's Blog

Save Darlo

2012-01-22T15:43:00.000Z

I'm not a football fan, and I certainly can't call myself a Darlington FC supporter. But I work in the town and would hate to see the end of the Quakers.

So me and Jack went to the Northern Echo Arena yesterday to watch their game against Fleetwood. Loads of people were tweeting from around the ground, which made me think I should curate some of them into a Storify.

So, starting on Wednesday when the club was lost for ten minutes, here it is.

The story is so long that it doesn't fit on this page anymore, so it's probably best to view it on the Storify website.

PS: Hi to everyone coming over from Darlo Uncovered.

Storified: Matt Baker rides his rickshaw in North Yorkshire

2011-11-15T15:02:00.000Z

Once I'd heard that Matt Baker was going to pedal his rickshaw through our village for Children in Need I had a fun day stalking him as he rode from Barnard Castle to York on the fourth day of his challenge

Scottish holiday part 3: Skye

2011-08-30T16:51:00.076+01:00

Leaving harbour
Originally uploaded by westy48

The CalMac ferry terminal at Mallaig is the Gateway to Skye. We left the campsite at Arisaig and arrived at Mallaig well before check-in time, and so we drove round to East Bay where there were plenty of campervan sized parking places. Mallaig is a busy little place, and a coach loads of tourists were exploring. There was a fairly large Co-op so we stocked up on essentials for the cupboards - biscuits, crips, stuff like that. Then it was time to go back to the van and get in line for the ferry. Unloading the previous shipload and getting us on board was as efficient as it had been for the previous ferry crossings we'd made in Scotland and we were soon ready to cross the sea to Skye.

The trip over to Armadale was only about 40 minutes which gave us time to grab a coffee and buy some playing cards in the onboard shop. On deck it was so windy that the froth was blown from my cappuccino and splattered on a bulkhead, narrowly missing the woman behind me. But the views were spectacular, certainly better than any you get crossing the channel by ferry.

On Skye there was a definite island feel to the place, and as we climbed inland the cloud descended and the wind picked up. Our campsite had claimed to have a "nearby swimming pool' so we drove straight past the site entrance into the village of Kyleakin. I popped into Saucy Mary's coffee shop and found friendly staff who guided me across the bridge back to the mainland where the pool was in Kyle of Lochalsh. It seemed a bit of a cheat to leave the island so soon, and by bridge, but Jack and Edward fancied a swim and the weather wasn't up to much else so off we went.

Kyle of Lochalsh playground
Originally uploaded by westy48

The carpark at the pool was just big enough for us - I managed to get turned round and then occupied four bays with the campervan. The pool was smaller than the one in Oban, but me, Jack and Edward enjoyed our dip while Lucy sat this one out and read a few chapters of her book. When we were done the weather had brightened up and we went into the playground outside the pool which had just reopened after a big refurbishment. Edward was in love with the pirate ship, and I managed to remember some of what I'd learned from Mr Poole during PE lessons as me and Jack monopolised the basketball hoop.

When we went back to the campsite we found no sign of the owner, but a notice with our name on it was next to one of the pitches, so that was where we parked up. Ashaig campsite was the most basic we stayed at, but it was also the cheapest. Everything was clean and well organised and all the campers seemed happy. We broke out the cards we'd bought on the ferry and taught Jack how to play pontoon, using the Connect 4 counters as chips. He really enjoyed that.

The next morning we drove up to Portree, stopping when I found a puddle of signal on O2 to call the Torvaig campsite where we booked in for the night ahead. This was just a mile beyond Portree so we went straight to the site and staked a claim on a pitch with a bit of a view. This campsite was beautifully maintained and was quite different to the one as Ashaig. Again we got a friendly welcome and good value. We walked into Portree, coaxing a tired Jack down the hill into town. Portree is a busy town with lots of shops and cafes, a big school and a harbour. In Tobermory most of the activity was on the harbour front, but in Portree the main drag was above the harbour, which was much quieter with just a few seafood restaurants at the waterside. We bought lunch at the chaotically busy Stuart's fish and chips shop, and dined on the picnic tables outside. There were a lot of shops in Portree, but they seemed expensive and served the international tourist trade, including a cruise ship that was in the bay when we arrived. We added a couple of DVDs to our small collection. The TV aerial on the campervan was totally useless and although we had a variety of iDevices and my trusty Apple Dock to AV connector we were getting ready for a change of viewing.

The campsite was packed when we returned, and Edward made another friend from the Netherlands. The next morning was gloomy with low cloud and drizzle hanging in the air. We drove down into Portree and had coffee and waffles at Cafe Arriba which is clearly where the trendy young things hang out in Portree. Obviously we felt right at home.

This was the closest we had to a wasted day on holiday. It was only forty minutes to the next campsite at Staffin, and we arrived there early hopeful that the day would clear up. But the weather was set and the day remained dark and dank. The warden described Staffin as a village with four churches and no pubs, so it didn't seem worth getting drenched to go and explore its charms. We spent the afternoon playing Uno, Connect 4 and card games and were glad to have the extra couple of DVDs we'd got the day before in Portree.

It was a windy night and I lay awake for much of it wondering just how string the wind has to be to roll a campervan over. We rocked quite hard on the suspension but survived in tact. At one point I peeked out of the curtain and saw lights on in lots of the tents; it must have been a really uncomfortable night under canvass.

Staffin Bay
Originally uploaded by westy48

But the wind blew the clouds away and when we emerged the following morning there was a view of mountains and the sea that we'd never expected after the previous day. So after breakfast we drove down another narrow road to Staffin Bay where we found rockpools, a pier that seemed much to big fir the single boat tied up to it and stunning views across to the mainland where we could see some dramatically steep mountains.

We explored the rock pools and enjoyed the clear skies before heading off again to circumnavigate Skye's most northern point. It was more miles on a single track road, and we were surprised to find our journey disrupted by roadworks. You expect cones and delays on the motorway, but not out here. Because of the long wait at the lights we found ourselves in quite a convoy of traffic, but this thinned out as we made our way around the north of the island.

Farthest north
Originally uploaded by westy48

From this road around the northern shores of Skye you could look across to the Outer Hebrides, which are a just one tempting ferry crossing away from Uig. But we resisted that temptation, and made for the Skye Camping and Caravanning Club Site near Edinbane, where we were booked in for the next two nights. It was two o'clock by the time we were checked in and we were ready for a late lunch. The Warden suggested we go to Dunvegan and look out for the Dunvegan Bakery on the right past the Post Office.

This was a good tip. Dunvegan has a small but campervan friendly carpark with a view over the narrow end of the loch (Loch Dunvegan, obv) where a heron was posing for photographers with longer lenses than mine. We walked up the little street to the Bakery where we had lunch (sausage sandwiches for me and Ed, prawn sandwich for Lucy and the ubiquitous portion of chips for Jack) in their cosy cafe. Lunch was delicious and as the shop hadn't sold out when we'd finished we bought some bread rolls, scones and sausage rolls to take back to the campervan which formed the basis of breakfast and snacks the next couple of days. Across the road there was a village store so we picked up some more supplies there and then went down the road to Dunvegan Castle. Or at least their car park.

Seals
Originally uploaded by westy48

We'd been told at the campsite to walk down the road past the castle and follow it along the lochside where we'd be able to spot seals. We weren't sure at first if we'd found the right road, but it wound down to the shore past a beautiful little cottage to reveal a view back to the castle and out onto the loch where there were several small islands dotted in the water. It was easy to see where the seals were living because a succession of boats made trips out from the castle to get up close and personal with them, but we enjoyed the early evening walk and looking out across the water to see family groups of seals lazing on the rocks. Dunvegan was definitely my favourite place on Skye. It's little street of hotels and shops, the fabulous bakery, and the lochside walk all came together to give it an atmosphere that I hadn't felt elsewhere. It was also very peaceful, when Jack and Edward weren't making a racket.

The next morning we followed our noses onto the Waternish peninsula. Stein looked like an interesting coastal village, but we drove around the end of the peninsula at Trumpan first where again we found some amazing views and narrow roads. Coming back into Stein we drove down the road and parked at the end of the village by the slipway. We put on our coats and went onto the rocks at the waters edge where we had a chance to interact with the wildlife.
There were two scallops just sitting on the rocks, waiting for the tide to come back in and rescue them. Stein is home to two seafood restaurants, which have fresh ingredients right on their doorsteps! We'd planned to go to one of these restaurants for lunch, but the Stein Inn had a notice on its door which informed us that they were closed to allow them to prepare for a wedding reception they were hosting that night.
So we went next door to the gallery at Dandelion Designs where we enjoyed looking at some of the works on show and bought some pressies for the folks back home. The very nice lady behind the counter suggested we go across to Glendale where there are a couple of cafes and a toy museum, so we went back to the van and pottered off to Glendale, which was a bit further that we thought. Everything on Skye is further away than you think, and takes longer to get there than you expect, but we were on holiday and it didn't really matter.

We wanted to go to the Red Roof Cafe at Glendale which we'd seen advertised and had heard good things about. But the car park was full and there was nowhere nearby to park the campervan so we turned round and headed back to the junction where we'd seen another cafe with an unfathomable Gaelic name: Ceiteag's. Katie's was a proper old fashioned tea room where we had a beautiful lunch.

Cheesecake
Originally uploaded by westy48

And Lucy had cheesecake. She needed a doggy bag because although it was the best cheesecake ever it was also a massive slice. After lunch we walked up to the toy museum. The rain was coming straight into our faces, so when we arrived our fronts were wet through, but our backs were bone dry. The Glendale Toy Museum occupies the front two rooms of a large house. The room to your left as you enter is home to the older exhibits and the room to the right houses the newer ones. The hallway is a small, low pressure, shop. Terry and Paddy who own the museum are retiring next year, which means you've got to go there before the end of the season in 2012. Then find them eBay where they'll be holding a rather large auction. Terry has a great line in patter and knows everything there is to know about toys. It's a very hands on museum with children, and grown ups, encouraged to play woth lots of the toys. The closure of the museum will have an impact on the cafes and other small businesses in this small community which support each other, but hopefully they'll all have had time to adapt their plans to cope with the change. Glendale was lovely, and certainly worth the effort of getting to, with or without the toy museum.

And that was the end of our last full day on Skye. Well, almost. Our neighbours on the campsite the night before had told us about the Coral Beach which we'd find right at the end of the road along Loch Dunvegan where we'd been seal spotting the night before. So we took the van down and found a car park which we partially blocked. But it was only another campervan we were obstructing, so I wasn't too bothered. It was still lashing down with rain, and the signs indicated a mile's walk to get there. Jack and Edward weren't keen. I thought I'd better stay with the van in case I needed to move it to let the other one out. So Lucy set off alone to find the Coral Beach, while we played Connect 4 in the warm and dry. By all accounts the beach was amazing. The black rocky shore suddenly gave way to a pinkish-white beach made up of tiny shell fragments.

Real Food Cafe
Originally uploaded by westy48

The next day we left Skye over the bridge, stopping briefly at the playground in Kyle of Lochalsh, and returned to the campsite at Tyndrum where we'd stayed on the second night of our holiday. It was a good stopover on the way home, but most importantly it gave us a chance to return to the Real Food Cafe. This time we ate in, rather than having a takeaway and sat under the awning on what must have been the forecourt of the former Little Chef. I had a rather nice homes made scots pie which came with with a generous jug of meaty gravy. Everyone else had fish and chips and me and Lucy shared a bottle of Chardonnay, which was nice.

On our final day we drove down the shore of Loch Lomond to Glasgow and picked up the M74 to head south to the border and home. Overall we covered a little over a thousand miles in the fortnight, which wasn't overdoing it given that we did more than 200 miles on both the first and last days. The photos are all here, and the first two parts of the the holiday blog are here and here.

We had a great holiday and I can only recommend Scotland and campervans.

Scottish holiday part 2: Mull and Ardnamurchan

2011-08-19T18:35:00.161+01:00

Tobermory harbour
Originally uploaded by westy48

On Thursday morning we drove down the coast from Invercoe to Oban, and went straight to the ferry terminal. There we were guided into a lane for the Mull ferry and having parked the van we went inside to collect our tickets. The journey we'd booked was made up of three crossings, Oban to Craignure on Mull, Tobermory to Kilchoan back on the mainland and Mallaig to Armadale on Skye. We'd be leaving Skye via the new road bridge. For each crossing there were five tickets, one for each of us and one for the van, so it was quite a long strip of card that was printed off for us. As we had about forty minutes to kill before the crossing we hoped to find a coffee shop in the terminal, but there was just a huddle of vending machines in an alcove dispensing hot and cold drinks and a few snacks. Still, we got a drink to take back to the van and went to wait for the ferry.

When it arrived the MV Isle of Mull was quickly unloaded and we were guided on and into place on the car deck. We were on the 14:00 crossing, and although we'd had a late breakfast it was definitely lunch time, so as the ferry slipped out of the harbour we went to the onboard restaurant. The food was surprisingly good. Jack and Ed's chicken nuggets were cooked to order and the caesar salads that me and Lucy had were fresh. It all came in generous portions and wasn't too expensive, all together a better value and better quality meal than I'd expected.

Once we'd eaten there was time to venture out on deck and take in the views of Mull as we approached the land-fall. Duart Castle loomed out of the mist at us, looking like a location for an episode of Scooby Doo. Edward loves ships and was very excited, and very bossy. He was quite disappointed that the stairs leading up the bridge were behind a keypad-locked gate and he wasn't going to get to meet the captain.

Soon the tannoy blew the news that we should return to our vehicles, so we went back down to the car deck and settled back into the van. From Craigbure it was only seven miles to Fishnish where we'd booked into Balmeanach Park for the night. This was a much smaller campsite than we'd come across before, but the welcome was just as warm as any we'd received before. The facilities were a little more basic, but everything was clean and tidy. This was the first place where we saw lots of midges. There had been a few at Tyndrum, especially near the stream, but we'd not got many bites. By the time I'd hooked up the power my legs were covered in little black specks so I changed my shorts for jeans and we made sure everyone had lots of insect repellent on.

I got the bikes down off the rack and went with Jack to explore the area, while Lucy and Ed had a bit of a rest. We pedalled down the quiet road to Fishnish. There was a ferry due and we were passed by several commuters dashing to meet the ferry and leave the island for the day. By the slipway was a little hut, which was home to the Secret Kitchen Cafe, which has seating inside and out. We got a small tub of Orkney ice cream each and loafed around as a few more cars arrived. When we spotted the ferry half way across the sound we rod around the bay to get a view of it landing and Jack was fascinated at how the ramp unfolded from the bow (or maybe stern) of the MV Loch Fyne. Once the ferry had unloaded and the waiting vehicles had driven on we rode back up the hill to the campsite and Jack was ready to join the others vegging out for a while. We needed to restock the cupboard so I got back on my bike and went back down to Craignure in search of a shop. It was a great ride, bombing downhill on the quiet road which followed the coast back to the little ferry port. The Spar at Craignure was open, and I picked up most of the things on my list and improvised most of the rest. I even managed to cram it all into my panniers. I wasn't really looking forward to returning to the campsite as it was mostly uphill, the mist was turning to drizzle and I haven't ridden much recently so I'm not as fit as I perhaps should be. Having said all that I was back in the van sooner than I expected and was rewarded with a cold beer and being let off cooking.

Midge bites
Originally uploaded by westy48

The next morning was brighter and we drove up to Tobermory. Our hosts at the campsite warned us that most of the roads on Mull were single track, and told us the best place to park the campervan once we'd arrived in town. Jack and Edward were excited to be arriving in Balamory and we all thought the brightly coloured houses along the harbour front looked amazing.

We mooched around the various shops, buying postcards and Balamory goodies in the Tobermory Corner Shop and enjoying the variety of goods from power tools to telescopes and toys to whisky in Brown's.

By now we'd worked up an appetite (theme of the holiday?) and browsed the various options available on the main street, opting in the end for the MacDonald Arms Hotel, which wasn't the most salubrious prospect. But we were welcomed in and although the menu wasn't spectacular the food was good. Me and Ed had eggs and chips, each getting three runny eggs on a mountain of chips. An owd feller at the bar was having a pile of macaroni cheese and chips, and everyone's plates went back to the kitchen empty.

My legs were getting really itchy now, and I'd been bitten quite badly by the midges. It's not painful, just uncomfortable. When I was up and about I was distracted enough not to be bothered, but when I was trying to sleep it was most bother. Also it was quite annoying that I was the only one in the family to get bitten...

We spent two nights at the Tobermory Campsite (use the top gate to avoid the narrow bridge in your long campervan...) where Edward made friends with Jenning, who was camping in a tent with his family on holiday from the Netherlands. They didn't have a word of language in common but seemed happy in each other's company.

Tobermory playground
Originally uploaded by westy48

On Saturday we walked the mile or so in to Tobermory with a basket of washing which we left in the machines at the marina before exploring the top of the town where we found a playgound. The slides weren't very slidey and the boys weren't going fast enough down them until Edward improvised a helter-skelter style mat out of his coat and acieved escape velocity at the bottom of the smaller slide. There was also a playing field where I kicked a footy around with Jack. On the way back down to the main drag we spotted the hotel that had been Josie Jump's yellow house, now a more earthy orange but clearly recognisable with its tower.

The next morning, Sunday, we were due to leave Mull and planned to get the one o'clock ferry from the slipway at Tobermory. But we'd been told by a couple of people that we should go to Calgary Bay, so we turned left as we pulled out of the campsite and followed the narrow, windy road through Dervaig towards the west coast. It was a spectacular drive, and I'd later be glad of the warm-up, and took the best part of an hour to cover the twelve miles to Calgary. We parked at the art gallery and tea room, where it seemed rude not to have a cappuccino and hot chocolates. Behind the gallery was a workshop where a wood-cutter made sculptures and other pieces of art, many of which were displayed along the walk through the woods to the beach.

Calgary Bay
Originally uploaded by westy48

It was definitely worth the drive, the walk through the woods and inevitably getting the later ferry because the beach at Calgary is amazing. Fine white sand, shallow clear water with a hint of blue, green fields sloping down to form the cove and a couple of beautiful white houses which must have the most sunning views. We all took off our shoes, rolled up our trousers and had a good paddle. I was a lovely morning and Edward enjoyed running in the waves while Jack collected shells. Me and Lucy walked the length of the beach, which Ed thought must've been "very romantic."

There was a little green two-masted sailing boat called "Ruddled" moored in the bay. Edward was fascinated and desperate to wade out and climb aboard. Once he'd been talked out of that he tried to persuade us that we should buy a boat just like it. Reluctantly we went back to the campervan and wound our way back to Tobermory and the ferry. Once we'd parked at the top of the slipway I just had time to nip out to the harbour and get us fish and chips from the van on the pie, which bore a Les Routiers badge and had also been recommended to us. I just managed to run back in time to drive onto the ferry before they raised the ramp. The ticket collector let us take our lunch into the lounge and so we ate our late lunch as we crossed to Kilchoan back on the mainland.

This crossing brings you to Ardnamurchan, one of the most remote parts of mainland Britain. And we took a diversion to Ardnamurchan Point, where it's even more remote and six miles west of Lands End. The drive out to the point was interesting, along miles of single-track road with some tight bends. The last couple of hundred yards is a twisty section rocky outcrops on one side and a low stone wall to keep you out of the sea on the other. I was worried at one point that I might get the van stuck, but we got through and found space to turn around and park at the end.

Ardnamurchan lighthouse - campervan full of win
Originally uploaded by westy48

Apart from the breathtaking views - keep a close eye on your children by the cliff tops - there is a surprising amount to do at Ardnamurchan Point. There's a gift shop where Jack bought a small tub of fart putty, not that he needs help making noises like that, and we got coffees and tickets for the museum and tour of the lighthouse. Or maybe that should be tour up the lighthouse?

The museum was interesting, informative and had plenty of interest for grown-ups and children. It told us some of the history of the local area, and the story of the lighthouse. The tour allowed us to spiral right to the top of the lighthouse (36 metres above ground and 52 metres above sea-level). Our guide was the former lighthouse keeper who used to climb the steps at least four times a day. He knew everything there was to know about the lighthouse, and explained how it's now all controlled and monitored remotely from Edinburgh. He was happy to answer questions and gave us plenty of time to take pictures and soak in the view.

We'd been on the 4:30 tour, the last of the day, and had quite a way to go to get to our campsite at Arisaig. We retraced our steps to Kilchoan and then pottered on to Salen where we found the A road where we thought we'd be able to get a move on was still a single-track road. The only hairy moment was when we met an articulated lorry coming the other way and had to reverse to let it thought. Most of the time people got out of our way, but this time we had to give way.

We were obviously going to be late arrivals at the campsite, but neither of us had any signal on our phones to ring ahead and warn them. Never mind, it was the most spectacular drive along the shore of lochs and twisting over passes between the hills. Eventually Lucy got through and then we hit the main road between Fort William and Mallaig which runs along the Atlantic coast, sharing space with the railway so you twist under arched bridges several times. Eventually we arrived at Sunnyside Croft, bought potato cakes from the shop for breakfast and relaxed with a well earned drink. We'd spent longer on the road than we'd planned 24 hours before, but getting to Calgary Bay and Ardnamurchan Point had more than made up for it, as had the views we'd seen during the drive.

The next day was Monday, which promised a 7 mile hop up the coast to Mallaig and a trip over the sea to Skye.

Scottish holiday part 1; Stirling to Invercoe

2011-08-16T16:16:00.104+01:00

The first day was all about getting as far north as we comfortably could. We picked up the motorhome from Busby Stoop garage on Monday and took it home to load up, then set off at about 12:30. Our route took us across the A66 and up the M6 into Scotland. We'd booked into the Witches Craig campsite near Stirling, which had been recommended by a friend of Lucy's who'd recently stayed there. On arrival we were directed to our pitch and given a key to the washrooms, and more importantly the key to the free wifi that was available all around the site.

The welcome at Witches Craig was really warm, and at reception I was also able to order milk and bread rolls for the morning. I also picked up a Visit Scotland map showing almost 300 campsites around the country, and a brochure for the ferry company Caledonian MacBrayne.

Feeling pleased that we'd managed to get to the campsite without crashing the van and had successfully got power connected we poured a drink, looked at the map and booked a site for the next night, not too far away at Tyndrum.

That night we learned that the success to happy camping was not to make the children go to bed as early as usual, but to let them stay up late and sleep in longer in the morning.

On Tuesday we had a relaxed start to the day and after packing up hit the road again for Tyndrum. After the luxury of wide motorway lanes and not many single carriageway roads the van felt wide and long, but wasn't actually too tricky to drive. We had a coffee stop at the Trossachs Woollen Mill where they served Costa coffee and a good slice of home made caramel shortbread.

Pinetrees campsite
Originally uploaded by westy48

We were in Tyndrum soon and after topping up the diesel at the garage we checked into the Pinetrees campsite and received another key for free wifi. With phones, an iPad and iPod Touch to support this was looking promising. We took the bikes off the rack and made our way up the village to find lunch. The Green Welly Stop where we'd refueled the van looked promising, and we got sandwiches at the Snack Stop there.

Back at the campsite Jack and Ed explored the playground and paddled in the stream. There were lots of children for then to make friends with as the campsite was busy with lots of walkers on the West Highland Way as well as caravanners and campervans like ourselves, We made plans to head into Oban the next day to visit the Calmac office and book some ferry tickets. We also booked our campsite for the next day on the shores of Loch Leven.

Jack had spotted the Real Food Cafe while we were out earlier, and we rode up to get take-away fish and chips for tea. The atmosphere in the renovated Little Chef was buzzing with families eating at the long tables while the queue to order snaked around them. The food was good too. We had collie which was cooked to order like everything else on the menu.

The car park in Oban was by the leisure centre. Seeing this made Jack and Edward decide we should go swimming, so we went swimming. The swim session currently running was full, so we had 20 minutes to kill before we could get in the pool. Just time for a quick Starbucks from the cafe at the pool, then.

The swim was fun, and Edward plucked up the courage to have his first go on a water-slide. After much faffing around he found that it was actually really exciting and we had a hard time getting him off the slide when it was time to get out of the pool.

Oban was busy and we did the shopping we needed to do but didn't have time to get to the CalMac office before we had to head to Invercoe.

Ed, Jack and Lucy on the pier at Invercoe
Originally uploaded by westy48

At the campsite we were led to a waterside pitch with a fantastic view of Loch Leven. We were just a hundred yards or so from a stone pier and slip way where people were paddling and playing in the loch. There were crabs and other sea creatures in the clear water and the tide rose quite quickly. Within a few hours the pier was submerged and a horde of children stood on it, knee deep in loch but surrounded by much deeper water.

It was a beautiful evening and as I tended the barbecue I rang CalMac to book an Island Hopscotch ticket that would get us to Mull and Skye.

Where've you been?

2011-08-15T23:43:00.000+01:00

Scotland, actually.

I love Flickr, and have it set as the homepage in my browser. But the mapping is terrible. I've always wanted Flickr with a more Google Maps-ish looking map. And since some-one, probably on Twitter, linked to this how-to I've been having a look.

I think it works really well, and is a definite improvement on Flickr's implementation.

Oh, and there are more photos from Scotland to come.

View Larger Map

Rupert, James and Rebekah at the Culture, Media and Sport select committee

2011-07-20T14:47:00.002+01:00

The transcripts of the appearances by Rupert and James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks before the Culture, Media and Sport select committee are now available online.

I took the text of the two sessions from the Guardian, and stuck the straight into Wordle. Then, because I didn't like the results, I took the words "James", "Rupert", "Murdoch" and "Mr" out of the Murdoch's session and the words "Rebekah" and "Brooks" from that transcript and tried again.

Here then for your enjoyment are yesterday's sessions as word clouds. The bigger the word, the more often it appears in the transcript.

Rupert and James Murdoch - click to go to a larger version.

Rebekah Brooks - click to go to a larger version.

Press regulation: what's to fear?

2011-07-11T21:40:00.000+01:00

One of the likely casualties of recent events in the media is the Press Complaints Commission.

As a regulator it's been, well, pants. The Express group of papers - which really do need regulating - have been allowed to drop out, and many breaches of the PCC code go with relatively little comeback on the publisher. Self-regulation hasn't worked for the national press.

Broadcasters are of course regulated by Ofcom, which has statutory powers. And news broadcasters seem to manage alright under its jurisdiction. One of the star news services of the past few days has been Sky News: from it's fantastic hour at six o'clock on Thursday evening to Adam Boulton tonight describing the future of his own channel as "in the balance" as spotted by Richard Jones

Odd to see Adam Boulton on Sky News saying that the future of his own channel is "in the balance" after today's developments.less than a minute ago via HootSuite Favorite Retweet ReplyRichard Jones
rlwjones

Unlike the News International controlled press they've given space to this story, and haven't been afraid to interview people who've been critical of Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. They've been across the story, covering it with balance and vigour. And all of this under the control of a regulator.

Journalists need some freedoms to do their job, but the loss of self-regulation doesn't mean the sky will fall in.

Apple computers: are they good value?

2011-06-07T19:15:00.003+01:00

MacBook battery
Originally uploaded by westy48

I've just replaced the battery in my MacBook. Not with an official Apple battery, which costs £101, but with this one from Play.com which was £36.90

The Apple battery clearly costs a lot more, but if it holds a charge for longer and endures more charge cycles would that make it better value for money?

That's the balance we're striking when we talk about value; it's not just what an item costs, but how well it does the job you need it to do.

Which brings me back to my MacBook. There are loads of articles all over the web where people have found similarly specced Windows and Mac OS running computers and seen what the price difference is. I'm not going to do that.

What I will say is that my MacBook is over four years old (it came in may 2007 after a blackcurrant related incident I don't like to talk about), it sees daily use and runs the latest version of OS X with ease. Software on OS X is, with noteable exceptions, really good and this is one of the main reasons why I still prefer Macs. But I reckon the cost of running the MacBook has been fairly cheap.

Hardware wise I've added 1GB of RAM from Crucial.com/UK/ which cost me £28 and upgraded the hard drive from 80 to 320GB which cost £73, but I've kept the old drive in a USB enclosure and use it daily for work. (I should probably start backing that up).

As for software upgrades go I've paid for upgrades to OS 10.5 and 10.6, which is going to be a bit more than £100 (I know I'll be tempted with Lion, but my MacBook will be one of the lowest spec machines capable of running it and I don't want to take a big performance hit).

So, sound off and let me know what you think about the value of spending more.

Five things that parent bloggers do better than me

2011-06-04T07:52:00.000+01:00

It's a well known fact that parent bloggers are giving the internet a bad name. Well, it is since yesterday.

But some of them are also very good at what they do. Here are five things you can learn from the cream of the parent bloggers.

They post regularly. Writing often helps you find a voice, allowing you to settle into a "house style." The expectation of regular new content also helps to build an audience for your blog.
They're focussed. By regularly blogging around a theme or topic they make sure their readers know what to expect from them and make sure they regularly meet this expectation.
They read and comment on other blogs covering similar topics to build awareness that they're there and help feed traffic to their own blogs by leaving links.
They join the debate beyond the blog. By following readers on Twitter and other social networks they are part of their readers' online lives even when they're not blogging. This can lead to tip offs and ideas for future blogs. It also makes the blogger closer to becoming one of their reader's friends. This is good because we trust our friends. If I read your blog and think of you as my friend I'm much more likely to give credence to what you say.
They use social media to help spread the word. They tweet and tweet again about the day's article and link to it on Facebook. They'll also spread the word about fellow bloggers' work. This can be a genuine endorsement of posts they've enjoyed or feel strongly about, but it also increases the likelihood that their own work will be retweeted and promoted by others.

How else have parent bloggers shown the way for the rest of us online?

Parent bloggers - giving the internet a bad name?

2011-06-03T05:14:00.001+01:00

I know I shouldn't have done it, and actually I blame Nicki Cawood:

Brilliant article on @Tots100 http://bit.ly/k73jg5 Should PR Agencies pay Travel Expenses For Bloggers?less than a minute ago via TweetDeck Favorite Retweet ReplyNicki Cawood
NickiCawood

My gut reaction to the question was to snort "No!" and leave it at that, but then I made the mistake of clicking through the link and reading the article. Still working against my better judgement I left a comment.

Before I get ahead of myself, the gist of the piece is that PR companies should pay the expenses of bloggers that they invite to attend events. Then there were eight comments in agreement with the blogger. I felt it was time for some balance, so left a dissenting comment. It wasn't an attempt to be controversial, I just happen to disagree with the post and commenters so far. My comment got a couple of responses and I replied to some of them, but there is more to say about this and I don't want to appear to be a troll over at Tots100 so I'll marshall my thoughts here.

So - should bloggers expect to get travel expenses to attend marketing events paid by PR companies?

No. If you really want to go find a way to pay for it. Otherwise, don't go and write about something else. As I said in my comment, you've decided to go it alone as a parent blogger and you have to live with that choice. If you want to work for a media organisation with a budget for travel then go and do that. But it's better to make what you're doing work for you. If you attend the same product launches as everyone else your blog will be just like everyone else's. Surely an advantage of running your own blog is the freedom to write about what you want, when you want, how you want? Don't be a mouthpiece for big business; do your own thing.

But we're only hobbyists, we're not running a business here.

I know. My hobby is photography and if I want to go to London to take photos I don't expect to get train tickets sent in the post by the London tourism board. If it's your hobby, it's kind of the idea that you pay for it yourself.

PR agencies who did an occasional blogger outreach out of London would get a lot of kudos (and probably some good write-ups for their clients).

Yes, but your review of something should depend on the quality of the item, not how well you're treated by the PR company.

What I think is saddest about this is that the bloggers are letting themselves be partially driven by the agenda of the PR circus. Blogging should be about doing your own thing, writing what you want to write. A day spent making a six hour round trip to London for a thirty minute event could be spent finding local contacts. There will be people making stuff near you, there are baby groups you could visit, and local newspapers who might want columnists. Rather than be driven by the marketeers use some of that initiative you showed when you learnt to self-host WordPress, get out in your communities (real or virtual) and bring in your own stories.

In Manchester football journalism really is dead.

2011-05-25T19:56:00.000+01:00

Oh dear. Yesterday I blogged about Sir Alex Ferguson's heavy handed response to Rob Harris' question in a press conference. I suggested that football journalism is broken because of the balance of power between the media and the clubs.

Forty-seven minutes into today's PM programme (iPlayer link) there's an illuminating interview with Peter Spencer, the Sports Editor from the Manchester Evening News. Spencer basically says he doesn't want people coming into press conferences rocking the boat and upsetting the clubs; and he puts the pressure of filling pages above his reporters' right to probe a bit.

I'm not suggesting that journalists abandon commercial realities. Of course papers need filling, but we need to be honest with our audience. In countries where governments are hostile to the media or where correspondents can only travel with a state "minder" it's not unusual for the restrictions and conditions placed on the journalist to be made clear.

It'd be great to see sports journalists being as candid as their colleagues in hostile nations about the restrictions their working under, whether self-imposed or not.

(Thanks to Andrew Glover for giving me the nod about this interview)

Press injunctions: maybe it's Fergie's fault.

2011-05-24T20:03:00.004+01:00

In the same way that Apprentice candidates have to call Alan Sugar "Lord Sugar", you're meant to call Alex Ferguson "Sir Alex", but he does little to deserve that respect. Manchester United, and Sir Alex in particular have a relationship with the press that's based on fear and loathing. He's scared of them and he hates them. Considering that the Reds just pocketed £60 million pounds via the Premier League from TV companies you'd think that they'd be better disposed towards the media, but not so.

Fergie thought he could ban a journalist from Associated Press who asked a non-injunction-busting question about Ryan Giggs at a press conference, where journalists are supposed to ask questions.

Rob Harris simply asked this: "The most experienced Champions League player in the team's obviously Ryan Giggs, it's the fourth final for him, how important for the team is he on Saturday?"

But for Fergie it was too much and he set about planning to ban Harris from the pre-match press conference on Friday. A press conference which is managed by Uefa and that United have no control over. I had been wondering how Giggs could have been so badly advised about managing the media recently, but if his boss behaves like this you can see where his influence may lie.

Football journalism is actually broken in this country. Newsrooms are scared of being denied access to clubs. They shy away from stories that show the clubs in less than glorious colours and don't ask difficult questions because they fear becoming persona non grata at the training ground or in the press box. I'd like to see a sports desk take the risk and if they're declined further access then tell it like it is and inform their audience what's gone in. In 2011 there have to be other ways of reporting football that don't depend on attending the regular press conferences anyway. I know it won't happen, but I'd love to see it.

Podcast round up

2011-05-15T10:08:00.001+01:00

I do like a good podcast. I subscribe to several that are a mix of UK radio shows I can't listen to live, US public radio that's been recommended to me, and podcasts that aren't made by traditional broadcasters. I usually listen to these in the car during my 40ish minute trip to work.

First up is Answer Me This which is having a spring break while Helen and Martin the sound man get married. Answer Me This is a simple idea, done well. Sometimes a bit smugly, but well. Listeners send in questions, asking Helen Zaltzman and Ollie Man to "Answer me this..." Helen and Ollie use all the knowledge available on Wikipedia to provide answers and gently mock the questioner. I've been subscribing for about a year and it's the podcast that makes me shout at the radio the most. Which is probably not the interaction they're aiming for with their audience, but it makes me happy. When the podcast comes back Helen and Ollie are going to be smugger than ever as they've just won a Gold for Best Internet Programme at the Sony Awards.

Desert Island Discs is brilliant as a podcast. With shorter musical inserts (for contractual reasons) the castaway's story suffers from less interruption. Kirsty Young is very, very good interviewer able to move easily between chapters in the castaway's life and clearly enjoying every minute of it. The castaways themselves aren't always well known public figures, but are always interesting. Recent favourites have been Johnny Vegas, Lawrence Dallaglio and Alice Cooper.

I'm sure that Steve Martin won't mind me describing the Earshot Creative Review as being a podcast for radio anoraks only. It's a review of creative content made for radio: jingles, promos and adverts. Steve knows his stuff and brings in a range of contributors each month from commercial radio and the BBC to play stuff they've made and been inspired by and talk about why it works. It's often recorded on location somewhere, is always well made and is much more fun than it sounds.

Radio 4's Friday Night Comedy Podcast allows you to catch up with the Now Show or The News Quiz, depending on which show is having a current run. The News Quiz is the radio precursor to Have I Got News For You, presented by Sandi Toksvig and The Now Show is a Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis vehicle with an eclectic roster of extras and guests. Whichever show is running you'll get half an hour of satire based on the previous week's news. It should be essential listening for news junkies and comedy fans alike.

I'm going to bundle the next two together. Media Talk and Tech Weekly both come from The Guardian's impressive stable of podcasts. They take advantage of The Guardian's expert journalists in these fields so Media Talk's regular presenter Matt Wells will be joined by the likes of Maggie Brown and John Plunkett as they round up what's going on in the media. Tech Weekly sees Jemima Kiss, Charles Arthur and other Guardian tech heads in the studio with Aleks Krotoski.

Karl at work suggested I try WNYC's Radiolab. It's a fantastic, but sometimes frustrating listen. Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich present each hour long episode which will feature three stories loosely linked by the edition's theme. It's sort of science based - because it's a Radio Lab - but the storytelling is more important than the science. The programme has a distinctive style which is where I sometimes fall out with it. It's higly edited, and sometimes the presenters will talk over a contributor to precis what they've said and move the story along. To me this is an example of form triumphing over content and it causes more shouting at the radio. That said it is something different to anything I've heard on radio in the UK and does feature some brilliant stories. The fortnightly episodes are an hour long, but the podcast feed also includes "Radiolab Shorts" which are bitesized extras where you can hear material that didn't make the cut, pieces inspired by the longer episode and sometimes responses to earlier programmes.

99% Invisible is another programme from US public radio. It's presented and produced by Roman Mars, the man with the best name ever. It describes itself as "a tiny radio show about design"and recent editions have included Soviet design classics, concrete furniture and Nikko the Concrete Commando who scratched his name across a city. Roman is a droll host and each five minute episode is made with as much love and care as each hour of Radiolab.

So that's what's in my Podcast library in iTunes. What do you think of my selections, and what do you regularly download. Let me know in the comments.

Audition CS5.5

2011-05-13T22:46:00.001+01:00

When the public beta of Audition 4.0 for Mac came out I downloaded it straight away and blogged about my first impressions. Since then I've enjoyed having a version of Audition on my MacBook, and now that the final release has come I've taken advantage of a generous education discount and bought the full version.

I was surprised to see the new version of Audition included in the CS suite, because I thought Soundbooth would stay there and Audition would be on it's own branch. However it does make much more sense to bring Audition in with the other pro apps. Soundbooth has been discontinued, so there's no budget audio editor from Adobe: it's Audition or nothing.

There's not a massive amount more to say. I haven't given it a full work out yet, so can't tell you too much about the functionality. Visually the final release is very similar to the beta; a History palette has been added to the bottom left of the screen, and you can search for help in the top right corner.

There are a couple of other things I've noticed that are different to Audition 3.0, and probably were in the beta too. In the multitrack view you used to be able to drag a clip out of the files panel and move it across to the right hand end of the timeline prompting everything to move left and allowing you to find the end of the previous clip. This was really neat for quickly putting together radio packages and doesn't work in the new version. I also liked the "Autoplay" tick box in the open/import audio file dialogue box that allowed you to preview files by clicking on them which was handy if you had a large directory full of sfx or other files to browse through.*

In the beta there was no "Generate" menu which in 3.0 allowed you to create tones and noise. This is still missing, as is the ability to group clips in the multitrack view.

For a full list of what hasn't made it through from previous versions into Audition CS5.5, or what's been renamed have a look at this page on the Adobe website.

Over the next few days and weeks I'll explore the package further. If you've questions, or things you want trying out (mainly from a broadcast production point of view, I'm not planning on recording an album) then leave a comment and I'll do what I can to help.

*I've just remembered that in OS X you can use Quicklook to get a preview of files in dialogue boxes by clicking on the icon, which is almost as good as Autoplay. How you can replicate that in Windows is another matter.

Shiny like Chrome

2011-05-08T20:01:00.000+01:00

Earlier in the week, for reasons that I've not been able to work out, Safari died on me. Clicking bookmarks in the bookmark bar froze the program. Deleting preferences, clearing caches, resetting the application and other suggested fixes didn't fix it.

I've stuck with Safari since it was a beta, and have been happy enough with it - we're only talking about a web browser after all, and it's the content that really counts, not the conduit.

I've had Firefox installed for the odd website that didn't play well with Safari, but in contradiction to what I've just said, I never really liked it much and don't fancy using it all of the time. So I've installed Chrome and I have to say I'm quite happy with it. Rather than trying to import settings and bookmarks from my sick version of Safari I started at scratch.

The first thing I set up was the Save to Delicious bookmarklet, because I store most of my bookmarks there and just use what I can fit in the bookmarks bar locally. (Delicious is great, and seems to have a better future now that Yahoo! have sold it. If you've never looked into Delicious, you should). Then I added extensions for bit.ly and Evernote. I don't like the default setting of new tabs opening next to the current one, instead I want to open at the end of the tab bar, like Safari, and there's an extension for that too.

I subscribe to one or two RSS feeds, and although they're all in Google Reader I don't like that interface and prefer to read them in NetNewsWire. Chrome doesn't seem to have native support for sniffing out feeds and subscribing to them, but a bit of Googling brought me to these instructions and the RSS subscription extension.

And I think that's all the tweaking I've done. What have I missed? What are the extensions you like and use the most?

Thirsk fire

2011-05-03T23:44:00.000+01:00

I heard about Storify a while ago, and it's now gone into public beta so I was keen to have a play.

Then tonight there was a big fire in Thirsk, so I had a little play.

If you're not familiar with Storify it's a way to curate content from various social media sites to help tell stories.

How has the BBC doubled the TV audience for the Australian GP in only two years?

2011-03-29T14:26:00.000+01:00

Earlier this afternoon Jake Humphrey, presenter of F1 race coverage on BBC television, tweeted about the viewing figures for the weekend's Australian Grand Prix:

You guys are amazing. In 2008 less than a million got up to watch the Australian GP live. On Sunday it was OVER 2 million at 6am! #bbcf1less than a minute ago via webJake Humphrey
jakehumphreyf1

2008 was the last Championship that was covered by ITV, in 2009 the BBC took over, so the clear implication of Jake's tweet is "We've more than doubled the audience!!" Which would be something to shout about.

But with viewing figures it's never that simple. How can you be sure you're comparing like with like?

In 2008 the Austrailan GP started at 15:30 local time, meaning that British F1 fans had to be in front of the telly at 04:30 to catch the start. This year the red lights went out at 17:00 local, which meant viewers had to be up at 07:00 to see the start and 06:00 to see the build up to the race (although it would feel an hour earlier with the change to BST overnight).

For what it's worth I think the BBC coverage is better than ITV's was* but it's not so much better that it will have doubled the audience. There are only so many F1 fans and even if the programme is better now it can't create more fans from nowhere - although having had a good couple for years for British drivers and constructors in 2008 and 2009 won't have hurt.

Grands Prix used to start at 13:00 local time wherever they were held, and European viewers had to get up early or watch races into the evening. Now Bernie Ecclestone has done deals to get races on screen at better times for us in Europe, in order to get higher audiences and more sponsorship revenue.

If you're on telly at 04:30 you really are only going to get the die-hards, if you're gifted a more civilised start time you're going to get better figures.

*When ITV won the rights from the BBC in 1997 they too did a much better job. Programmes stagnate, teams get stale and ideas run out. A new contract should result in a better show, for a while at least.

Tits on the Radio

2011-03-08T20:13:00.001Z

Swearing on the radio is a funny business. Radio in the UK has no watershed, so if you can justify it, and get clearance from the appropriate senior editorial figure, you can say fuck in the middle of the afternoon in a Radio 4* drama.

I'm writing this having listened to the Radio Academy's Radio Talk podcast about late night phone-ins, where about 25 minutes in the talk turns to swearing. There's a discussion about why radio and TV differ in their use of bad language.

But generally, radio is much less sweary than the telly. I think this is a good thing. There is an argument that says that our listeners will be swearing in their day to day language, so why not swear on the radio? Good radio is meant to be conversational, and what could be more conversational than slipping in the odd fuck?

I think there are big differences between radio and TV, how the programmes are constructed, and how we consume them. Radio is a much more intimate medium than TV. As a presenter if you swear on the radio it's like you're swearing directly at your listener. And for good radio presenters it is the listener, they're communicating to one person, not many.

On the other hand telly programmes are aimed at mass audiences, and a TV presenter isn't swearing just at me, but to the crowd. It's a much more indirect insult.

Also, and I've only instinct rather than RAJAR and BARB figures to support this idea, I suspect that radio listening is more likely to be done alone whereas television viewing is a more social activity with groups of people watching together as friends or families. So again the swearing on the radio is directed at me whereas on the telly it comes at us.

I like it that there's little swearing on the radio, and wouldn't like it to change. I don't buy the argument that swearing more on air acts as some sort of leveller between presenter and listener. But am I wrong - what do you think?

*UPDATE: Thanks to Justine Potter who suggests Radio 3 is a better bet to get your really bad language on the air in daytime.

Lock 'em up and throw away the key to the ballot box?

2011-02-11T00:05:00.001Z

Prison. What's it for? Punishment or rehabilitation? Do convicts merely lose their liberty or are their human rights taken away too? Do we differentiate between people in for a few months for minor offences and those locked away for longer terms.

What if you happen to be inside when an election is called? If you were sentenced to time in a British jail today you'd have to be expecting to serve more than four years to still be there when the next general election happens. In Scotland the average sentence (not including life sentences for murder) is over nine months (281 days).

Today MPs voted by a margin of 234 to 22 (where the hell were the rest of them is this is so important?) to defy the European Court of Human Rights' decision that inmates should be enfranchised.

This isn't a simple issue, it's not black and white. There's a whole rainbow of shades of grey between the two extreme opinions. If you believe that convicted criminals lose their human rights and should be left to rot then it's clear cut; how can you let these people have the vote? Of course you can't.

But I think that prison is about more than punishment. Convicts lose their freedom. Massively. And so they should. But we shouldn't forget about them. One way we judge a society is by how it treats its prisoners, and it's important that however long they're sentenced for that they're prepared for what will happen when they're released. Teach them functional skills, prepare them for work, keep them busy to avoid the fall into drug use and the "university of crime." As the end of a sentence approaches and we're trying to prepare a convict for life outside again, why not let them have a vote if an election comes around? Inmates preparing to be released should be encouraged to take an interest in the society that they'll be re-joining. Let them engage by voting.

On Wednesday Eric Illsley, the MP for Barnsley Central pleaded guilty to charges of fraud relating to £14,000 worth of expense claims. He's due to be sentences in four weeks. If he gets more than 12 months the Representation of the People Act 1981 will cause him to be disqualified from parliament, his seat will be declared vacant and a by-election will be called. If he gets less than a year he doesn't have to give up his seat. How he'll represent his constituents and where he'll hold surgeries is a bit of a mystery. It's grossly hypocritical to have laws that allow MPs doing time to keep their jobs, but to stop convicts from voting them out of office.

So where do I stand on this? Well, not all prisoners should be allowed a vote, but perhaps those in open prisons preparing for release should get their place back on the electoral register, or maybe those serving less than a year. And what about prisoners on remand who are yet to face trial?

It's not easy, but sometimes being a small-l liberal means you have to support things that aren't popular.

That Fox News map of the Middle East

2011-02-02T19:09:00.000Z

All over my twitter stream for the last few days have been people tweeting and re-tweeting this screen-grab of a map of the Middle East from Fox News.

Egypt is in the wrong place, it's where Iraq was when I last looked.

Everyone's getting hot and bothered about the channel's ignorance and the poor grasp of geography shown by American as the crisis in Egypt unfolds.

But it's not a new image. Do a little Googling and it soon becomes clear that the map dates back to July 2009, as these sites explain.

And just look at the picture. If it was anything to do with the current story wouldn't Egypt be one of the highlighted countries rather than Syria, Iran, Jordan and Israel?

And who's to say that it hasn't been Photoshopped? If it was a photo of a telly with the map actually on-screen I'd be much less dubious, but a clean graphic like that could easily have been tinkered with and who'd know it?

Last week I read this excellent blog post from Paul Bradshaw about verifying online content.

With some justification we're told not believe all that we read in the papers, but we should also remember that things are even easier to spoof online. As well as reading Paul's post it's worth being aware of snopes.com which is a great site for dispelling urban and internet myths, and a good way to waste hours of your time.

Driving the desk

2011-02-01T19:10:00.001Z

In music radio in the UK there's a group of people who believe you can't be a real presenter and connect with the programme, really feeling the music, unless you self-op. That's not a euphemism, it means you have to push all of the buttons yourself. It's called driving the desk.

It's one of those things that can be tricky to explain, is actually quite simple, and in total contradiction of myself is really bloody hard to do well.

Most people can learn to do it adequately in a day or so. But some should never be let loose near a fader.

This man is one of those...

(via someone on Twitter who re-tweeted @ricksimmonds)

Audition for Mac: vertical zoom in multi-track view

2010-12-15T12:15:00.007Z

Audition Track Headers
Originally uploaded by westy48

When I blogged last month about my first impressions of Audition for Mac I wasn't able to make it zoom vertically in the multi-track view. I accidentally discovered that this is actually quite easy. All you have to do is scroll up or down while hovering your mouse over the track headers and you'll be zooming in and out to your heart's content.

Surf's Up

2010-11-24T13:42:00.001Z

All those years ago when I was training to be a Studio Manager I remember someone - probably Paul Hedges - saying how useful white noise could be for creating sound effects: waterfalls, seawash, jet engines and generally whooshy stuff like that.

I filed that piece of information away but never had the need to try it out. But now some of my students are working on an assignment where they'll need a sea wash sound effect, and this seemed like a great chance to have a go. Of course I'd need to work out how to do this before letting them loose. Here's what I did, using Adobe Audition v3.0

1: Start in the Edit view. Make a new stereo file, set sampling rate to 48kHz, channels to Stereo and bit depth to 16

2: In the Generate menu select “Noise”

Set Color to "White", Style to "Independent Channels", Intensity to around 30 and Duration to 20 seconds

3: Switch to the Spectral View and using the marquee tool select everything above 17kHz.

Press “Delete” on the keyboard to remove these high frequency sounds. This will just take away some of the fizziness.

4: Return to the waveform display and go to the effects menu. Choose Stereo Imagery and then Doppler Shifter

5: In the presets choose Large Track. Set the radius to 250 and click OK. You've just made your first wave. These can be strung together to create the sound of the sea licking up on the shore as you enjoy a celebratory beverage.

And here's the sort of thing you'll end up with. It's not the finished article, but isn't a bad place for the students to start from and tweak a bit.

Listen!

Twist Our Words

2010-11-15T12:38:00.002Z

Twist Our Words from Channel 4 is a lovely little toy that let's you drag words in a fridge magnet poetry kind of way and get then turned into a video featuring a host of C4 celebrities.

There's a gallery of recently made and best Twists, and Channel 4 say they'll be putting the best ones on the telly.

What a nice way of sending a message to the one you love.

Adobe Audition for Mac OS X - first impressions

2010-11-10T14:09:00.004Z

Side by side
Originally uploaded by westy48

When I bought my first Mac in November 2002 I had no trouble getting software to do what I wanted, except for editing audio.

There are plenty of sound editing programs for Mac, Bias Peak, Logic, Pro-Tools, Soundtrack, eventually even Garageband. But none did what I wanted. What I wanted was for them to be Audition. After a brief dalliance with Sadie, I was brought up editing on Cool Edit, Cool Edit Pro and eventually Audition; editing everything from straight voice reports to docu-dramas and Christmas carol concerts. Nothing else felt quite the same. I even mixed some radio packages in Final Cut Express, because it was the best tool I had at the time.

But now Adobe have released the Beta version of Audition for OS X. It's free to download from here, and will run until the first full release comes on sale. System requirements are a multi-core Intel processor, OS 10.5.7 or later, and at least 1 GB of RAM. (Although you may be able to squeeze it onto lesser systems).

This is Beta software, and not a reflection on what will finally ship. There are a few features that I like in Audition 3.0 for Windows which are missing, but Adobe may add these before releasing it for sale so I'm not too worried. Indeed, as this isn't the final version of the software I'm going to talk about what I like and a few obvious changes rather than worry about minor omissions and glitches.

If you've downloaded the beta you're likely to want to get some files into it so you can play. Audition for Mac doesn't support .ses files for multitrack sessions from the Windows program, but in 3.0 you can save sessions a .xml files which the Mac version will open nicely. I see this as a signpost from Adobe that the days of the .ses file are numbered, and in future versions of Audition for Windows I expect we'll see support for it drop too. If you haven't already, start using .xml for your multitrack sessions. It's the future. Audition's .pk files are also a bit different, being saved as .pkf files on the Mac. This isn't a big issue, but I imagine it's another peek into what might happen with future versions of Audition in Windows.

When you switch to Spectral frequency display in the Waveform view there's a small version of the wave shown at the top of the window.

This is a nice touch, and makes it a lot easier to locate the section of audio you want to work in amongst the mush of bright colours. Now that I'm teaching I find that I use this view more and more with students, and wish I'd investigated it more when I was actually working in the industry.

Back in the Multi-track view projects with video files work as expected, except that the 16:9 video in my session was displayed at the wrong aspect ratio so everyone looked tall and thin. In the Windows version this is played back properly so I'm sure it'll be fixed by the time Audition for Mac is on sale. For people using Audition as part of a video production workflow there's something new that'll make them feel right at home. Non-linear video editors tend to let you use the J, K and L keys to control playback. L plays forwards, K is stop and J plays backwards. If you press L twice the playback speed increases. It's a nice way to scrub through content and it now works in Audition too, in both the Mutlitrack and Waveform views. Adobe have also thought about Mac laptop users. In Multitrack you no-longer have to right-click and drag to move a clip, it's just click and drag. Strangely this feels perfectly normal, even though it's against years of learnt behaviour.

Clips in the multitrack view now have a title bar which shows whether you're editing the volume or pan envelope, which should help my students, and as the volume envelope has been moved down from the very top of the clip you can now use it to boost the level of sections of the clip.

Briefly, a couple of things I haven't been able to do: there seems to be no vertical zoom in the multitrack view and I can't find out how to generate tones or white noise.

So far I think this is a great release of what's already an iconic piece of software (Iconic? is that a bit OTT?). If you use Audition, but are never going to put your hands on a Mac I think it's important for you too, because if Audition is going to be truly multi-platform with files being platform-agnostic, then Audition for Windows is going to learn a lot of these new tricks too.

Darlington Civic Theatre

2010-11-03T19:32:00.002Z

Darlington Civic Theatre
Originally uploaded by westy48

Edward's class went on a school trip to Darlington Civic Theatre today, and with a few other parents I went along to help out.

It was brilliant.

I love going behind the scenes and seeing places from an unusual point of view. We're used to being in busy theatres, buzzing with the energy of a performance. To see the Civic with the lights on full and no-one else around was fascinating. Our guide was Peter Tate, the House Manager who's responsible for everything that happens front of house. He's been at the theatre for 14 years after being a police sergeant in Richmond. He's very knowledgable about the theatre and its history, and clearly loves his job and the building.

In the Gods
Originally uploaded by westy48

Peter told the children about the first manager of the theatre, Signor Pepi, who's ghost is reputed to haunt the theatre. Signor Pepi had arranged for Anna Pavlova to come and dance at the theatre, but he never got to see her performance. Pavlova took to the stage on a winter's afternoon in 1927. That evening Signor Pepi died at home of cancer. We didn't see Signor Pepi, or any of the theatre's other ghosts, but we did get to go onstage and have a look about in the wings at the prop tables laid out for Beauty and the Beast.

Later, up in the Gods, Peter answered dozens of questions from the children. My favourite fact was that there are 1500 light bulbs front of house, and that each one is checked before each performance. The chandeliers in the ceiling are on winches and can be lowered down to the stalls when the bulbs need changing. We also learned that the theatre today seats an audience of 901. When it opened in 1907 it could accommodate around twice as many. Peter painted a vivid picture of what it would be like in the unventilated theatre amongst that crowd. The upper classes in the Dress Circle would be wearing white tie and tales. They'd be dropped off be their horse drawn carriages and would never see the working classes about in the Gods or below in the stalls. Downstairs the stalls had around ten rows of seats with a pit behind where there were benches for the rest. Above in the Gods there were again benches and the audience might arrive "early doors" to buy a more expensive ticket for a better view. The cheapest tickets for the Gods would be a couple of pennies, whilst a seat in a box would cost a few shillings - forty times as much as the lowest price charged.

There was no ventilation and most of the audience wouldn't have bathed for weeks. The auditorium would get very hot, and the smell, along with the smoke from the cigarettes and cigars that everyone would smoke throughout the performance would all rise to the top of the theatre and make the experience in the cheap seats quite nasty.

The children were impressed by the visit and took a lot of ideas back to school that they can use when they come to do their next school production. They all enjoyed going on stage and seeing what it's like for the cast members coming on from the wings. I found the history and behind the scenes elements fascinating.

Darlington Civic Theatre is under threat as a result of the cuts following the Spending Review. It would be a real shame if Darlington loses its theatre after 103 years, but councils everywhere are making tough decisions. If nothing else we need to support the arts if we want them to survive. I'm going to book some panto tickets now. Oh yes I am.

In case of emergency...

2010-10-04T16:49:00.004+01:00

LEGO Twitter Fail Whale, originally uploaded by tveskov.

This is a boiler plate blog post intended for use in case of emergency only. In the event of your followers on Twitter all disappearing then please refer to the notes below.

1) Don't panic. Twitter is flaky. It's a lot better at the moment than it has been, but now and then odd things happen. If your followers and following counts all drop to zero just shrug it off.

2) Check your timeline. Are you still seeing tweets from people you follow? Yes? Then they're still there, even if Twitter says they're not. And they can still see your tweets. The value in Twitter comes from the people you follow. Your followers are only there for your ego. As long as you can see incoming Tweets normal service will carry on.

3) Don't tweet about the Twittergeddon. The world isn't coming to an end. The back ups will kick into life and everything will soon be returned to normal.

Spooky tweets

2010-09-18T17:52:00.002+01:00

Someone is running a black op on the internet.

Write a tweet mentioning "Spooks" or including hashtags like #BBCSpooks and one or more of the regular main characters from the series will follow you and may well reply to your tweets.

From the boss, Harry, to agents like Ros, Lucas and Dimitri and Ruth who rarely gets away from the Grid your favourite Spook is now just a tweet away.

Given the content of some of the tweets I doubt the BBC are running the campaign.

@zutek Bastard....less than a minute ago via webHarry
SirHJPearce

@Lucas_North You're a little shite, Lucas. Have I ever told you that? #Spooksless than a minute ago via webHarry
SirHJPearce

I suspect this also rules out Kudos who produce the series.

Whoever's doing this it's fun and creating a bit of online buzz around the start of the new series on Monday.

Counting down the days

2010-09-13T17:54:00.003+01:00

Planning Calendar on My Wall, originally uploaded by Chris Campbell.

How's your working week? Your Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 routine? Can you last it out until your next couple of days off? There's a drivetime presenter on a local radio station near me who regularly counts down the days until the weekend.

At twenty past four today he said: "You're nearly through Monday, well done, only four more days 'til the weekend." Well, thanks.

I've heard him do similar links before, at various times in the week, and less than an hour later he again congratulated me for making it through Monday. Of course he's trying to connect with the listener, but isn't this a bit misguided and maybe even old-hat? What about people who enjoy their work, have a laugh with colleagues and escape from their families for a while?

To suggest that we all dislike work, and will feel solidarity with a man paid to talk a bit in between the records, seems to me to be underestimating your listener a bit.

And then what about shift workers getting ready to leave for night duty or who work over the weekend? Continuously counting down to the traditional weekend doesn't seem to fit in with the way that more and more of us are working outside of the nine to five.

And if you do work a vanilla five day week, do you really need reminding on a Monday afternoon that your week has only just begun?

GridPoint GB

2010-09-12T14:44:00.002+01:00

Maps are cool. Being able to read a map is even cooler.

We're lucky in the UK to have the Ordnance Survey making beautiful, useful maps. Compared with maps elsewhere, such as the yellow covered Michelin maps available in France, OS maps are elegant and easy to interpret. Having a local map can make a day out so much more interesting, and you have the added bonus of being able to use the map to actually help you find your way around.

Being able to find places on a map, or tell someone else where a location is on a map requires you to understand and be able to use six figure grid referencing (link to pdf file). This isn't too tricky, and most of the time when you're outside you can use landmarks around you to work out where on the map you are and so get a grid reference. But when the weather's bad or it's dark or there aren't many useful landmarks it can be tricker. This is where GridPoint GB comes in.

GridPoint GB, originally uploaded by westy48.

GridPoint GB is a free app for the iPhone that takes GPS data and converts it into an OS grid reference. It's simple and easy to use. Yesterday we were walking on the coast between Whitby and Robin Hood's Bay, and I wanted to know where we were. I narrowed it down to two places a few hundred meters apart, and GridPoint GB confirmed which of the two spots we were at.

GridPoint GB overlaid on OS map, originally uploaded by westy48.

It's a good little app that simply does its job without trying to be too clever. Out and about with a map it's a useful extra tool to have in your pocket. Obviously, given that it uses OS data, it's only useful in the UK.

GridPoint GB (iTunes Store link)

From Rocket to Bullet

2010-09-06T09:08:00.004+01:00

We were at the rather excellent National Railway museum in York yesterday. It's one of the children's favourite days out, and like most museum's entry is free* so it's also one of my favourite days out.

I'm always impressed by the red polo shirted Explainers who are on hand to tell you about the exhibits, whether as part of a formal talk or as they're accosted by curious visitors wandering around the cavernous exhibition spaces.

Yesterday we saw a performance of From Rocket to Bullet, a 30 minute long science talk explaining the physics that make it possible for different types of trains to move. It really was a perfomance too, with lively presentation from the duo of explainers involved.

The talk was a canter through Newtons 3 laws of motion, with interesting demonstrations of each and how they apply to getting big heavy hunks of metal (or trains) to move. Elephants were catapulted, (small) explosions were set off and Barbie was shot out of a steam cannon. Twice.

The watching children were absorbed by all this, and the Explainers involved their audience in most of the demonstrations - apart from the ones involving fast moving doll projectiles. The museum often has unexpected events and activities for children and adults to take part in, especially during the school holidays. Unexpected if like us you just turn up and don't plan your visit, but the Museum's website does have information about all the demonstrations and events. Summer may be over, but there'll be more at half-term in October.

Remembering happier times in Pakistan

2010-08-25T13:42:00.001+01:00

Busy street, originally uploaded by westy48.

In January 1997 I went to Pakistan to do technical things for the BBC's coverage of the general election there.

After a couple of days in Islamabad I was sent to Larkana in Sindh province, to meet up with a reporter. On polling day we travelled around the area, visiting polling stations in the towns and villages outside Larkana. Wherever we stopped small groups of smiley boys would follow me down the street practising their English with calls of "Hello, how are you?" At every stop we were offered tea, and at every stop we drank it.

Now I can't help but wonder how those smiley children are doing after the floods. They'll perhaps be parents themselves now, with families to try to look after. If the pictures on the telly haven't persuaded you about how bad this is have a look at Mudassir Ejaz Khan's photos here.

If you haven't already done so, please consider making a donation to help the people in Pakistan. There are plenty of places where you can do this online, here are a few choices:

The Disasters Emergency Committee
Unicef
Islamic Aid

What does Martin Parr know?

2010-08-25T08:22:00.005+01:00

Gathering dust, originally uploaded by westy48.

With a Bank Holiday looming the Guardian printed some advice from Martin Parr about how to take better holiday photographs. I really like the main thrust of the piece that your photo collection should not just be positive propaganda of family life, but should also reflect the fed-up children and moments when your holiday doesn't seem quite so good. Now that we're (almost) all shooting digitally this makes sense. With film each shot cost money, but taking more digital pictures is effectively free, and even if you fill a memory card new ones are cheap and a re-useable resource.

The last paragraph of the piece, however, doesn't fit in with how we use photography now.

And the other thing you must do is print them. We are in danger of having a whole generation – and this will continue into the future – that has no family albums, because people just leave them on their computer, and then suddenly they will be deleted. You have to print them and put them in an album or a box, otherwise they could be lost. And write captions. You might think you are going to remember what is happening in a picture, but you probably won't in 10 years' time.

I don't agree with the need to print. I'll admit that there is something satisfying about handing round a packet of 36 photos, but with laptops, smartphones, iPads and digital photo frames we're always close to a screen to view images in a new shared way. We've got drawers full of packets of Jessops prints, and a box under the bed with more. I definitely browse the old photos on my laptop a lot more than I rummage around in the box under the bed.

Parr's statement that "people just leave them on their computer, and then suddenly they will be deleted" is a bit odd, or maybe badly subbed. How will they suddenly be deleted? I'm no more likely to delete the photos off my computer than I am to chuck the wallets of 6x4s in the bin. Yes, my hard drive might fail, so I run back-ups. I'm not a back-up zealot, I don't have a daily or even weekly routine, but I do make back-ups and especially make the effort after loading a big new batch of photos from the camera such as after a holiday. I also have a Flickr account where my favourite photos go. As a paid account holder I could put all my pictures on the cloud for a full remote back-up which would be neat.

As for writing captions, well I used to scibble a not on the wallet of prints with a date and location (Northumberland 1994), but the meta-data with digital photos exceeds that by a country mile. Date and time, camera used and then in iPhoto I can tag who's in the pictures and add geo-location data too. I can find digital images very quickly, and have "Smart Albums" in iPhoto that help sort the 8,898 items (16.3GB of data since you asked) into usefully small collections.

I make a trip once a year to the photographer in town to get a few prints made to enter in the village show. That's it, the rest is staying digital. Am I right or wrong?

Scottish compassion doesn't just apply to high profile cases

2009-09-21T15:50:00.003+01:00

When Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi was released from a Scottish prison on compassionate grounds it caused a lot of passionate feelings to come forward. Radio phone-ins, online message boards and newspaper letters columns were full of people venting opinion both in agreement and against Kenny MacAskill's decision.

My feeling was that the Scottish Justice Secretary had got it right, and that our society is better for showing such compassion. Of course conspiracies abounded and unusually there was some truth to this as Jack Straw has said that oil and trade considerations played a part in setting up a Prisoner Transfer Agreement with Libya.

I did wonder how common it was for prisoners to be released on compassionate grounds, and whether the nature of their offences affected this at all, but I hadn't seen any information about this anywhere. So I went to www.whatdotheyknow.com and used the guidance available there to make my first request under the Freedom of Information Act. I wanted to know how many prisoners in Scotland had applied for release on compassionate grounds, how many were granted their freedom, what crimes they had been convicted of and how long their sentences had been. To provide a limit to the scope of the request I asked for information going back to the start of the Scottish Parliament in 1999.

Today I got a response, exactly 20 working days after making my request.

The headline is that 33 prisoners applied for early release on compassionate grounds and that 26 had this granted (79%).

Five of the 26 were serving life for murder and one for culpable homicide.

15 were due to be in jail for five years or more - assuming they'd serve their whole sentence.

So what does this add to the debate? It looks as if Mr MacAskill was acting along the line of other such decisions made by theScottish government, and Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi certainly isn't the only person to be treated with such compassion by Scotland.

Reporting Statistics - when 25% isn't 25 out of 100.

2009-09-14T19:55:00.006+01:00

Statistics often raise problems for journalists. Clearly some journalists don't get numbers, or find the concepts involved difficult to communicate.

Drive on BBC Radio Five Live today ran an interview with Jillian Satin on this story linking depression with reduced cancer survival rates. It's on the iPlayer here for the next week or so (about 2 hours 52 minutes in).

At the end of the interview I didn't feel much more informed than before. Some of that has to be down to Anita Anand who did the interview, but the contributor didn't do much to help either. For instance, when asked about the significance of the increased risk, she said "When we hear 25% we think of 25 out of 100, and that's not the right way to interpret it."

That made me stop and think for a bit, and put me off the rest of the piece. What I was hoping for was a clear explanation of how I should think of this 25% increase in probability. Unfortunately that wasn't forthcoming. Part of this is a problem with the format - Five Live tends to favour brevity, but on this occasion the item, and contributor, deserved more time.

As a listener I felt let down - the story is interesting and deserved a proper explanation, but Jillian Satin's answers didn't help explain her work and Anita Anand's questioning didn't give her the opportunity to tell the story.

Radio 2 to pre-record Jonathan Ross's show.

2009-05-22T11:33:00.003+01:00

The BBC really needs to work out what to do with Jonathan Ross. I happen to like him as a broadcaster. Yes, he takes risks, but he's funny. Friday Night with Jonathan Ross is a good show, with guests I'm often interested in and frequently great musical perfomances. It's also pre-recorded, which hasn't in the past stopped the show causing offense to some viewers.

The Sachsgate row came about after Jonathan's contribution to a pre-recorded programme. That caused thousands of complaints to Ofcom, although most seemed to come from people alerted to the incident by newspaper reports rather than by actually hearing the show. (As a side issue, I wonder if so many people would have been offended if the messages had been left on the answerphone of someone who was less of a national treasure.)

Yes, the BBC has tightened up the compliance process, but clearly pre-recording shows (with or without Jonathan Ross) does not stop you making programmes that people will be offended by.

AudioBoo on air?

2009-04-30T20:15:00.003+01:00

This post is inspired by a tweet sent to me by @richardberryuk

He spotted that I'd been using AudioBoo and wanted to know if it would have any use in radio broadcasting.

I sort of replied, but the 140 character limit imposed by Twittter didn't really help me make a coherent response.

Hopefully I can fix that now.

If you haven't come across AudioBoo it's an iPhone app that lets you record short audio clips and and send them off to the internet - if Twitter is micro-blogging this is micro-podcasting.

I've really only played with it, but there are definitely situations where AudioBoo could help a broadcaster.

First of all what are the limitations? Well, at the moment it's iPhone only (although there is a beta test going on that lets you post Boos on the telephone). The built in mic on the iPhone isn't fantastic, but the one on the headphone lead is better.
Listen!

The Boos are saved and published as mp3 files, which is fine for the internet, but some people may be squeamish about using such a lowly format on the radio (although I've filed quite a few pieces from home as mp3s and never had a complaint). The website doesn't allow for direct download of the mp3s, but does provide RSS feeds for each user and a button that subscribes to the feed in iTunes. Once you've downloaded the files in the feed it's easy to get them into your sound editing app of choice or load them up for playout.

There's an adage in photography that the best camera is the one you've got with you, and it may well turn out for radio reporters that the best recorder is the Boo they've got with them. At the scene of a breaking story if you've got AudioBoo on your iPhone you're ready to record interviews and send them back to the newsroom for broadcast. AudioBoo can also synch with your Twitter account and there are lots of options for for multi-media operations.

The Guardian used AudioBoo extensively in their coverage of the G20 protests in London, including this interview with Mark Thomas.

Listen!

What about me? Well here's my first Boo interview, I don't reckon much to the reporter but the guest is great!

Listen!

Fliggo's multiple personality disorder

2009-04-23T18:57:00.003+01:00

My FdA Journalism students are doing a video journalism assignment. I've set up a private room on Fliggo for them to upload their finished pieces to.

This afternoon there were several students on the site and as they clicked onto a new page their identities would change. Even though they were individually logged onto the college network Fliggo couldn't work out who was on which PC and returned random identities to the students.

This was a bizarre and frustrating for the learners. I've emailed the college IT team about to see if they can sort it out, but I wonder if anyone here has any ideas?

UPDATE: Chrys Bader from Fliggo responded to my tweet very quickly - he suggests the issue might be caused by "proxy caching" on the college network, which gives me something to offer to the IT dept. A great response from Fliggo which I'm really pleased with.

Free range, but not trouble free.

2009-04-22T20:11:00.003+01:00

When we moved to the countryside almost three years ago one of the benefits was definitely going to be letting the children have more freedom than we could have expected to give them in Wigan. (That's not to knock Wigan - we really enjoyed living there and enjoyed good neighbours and a friendly community.)

We now live on the village green, and imagined Jack and Edward playing there after school on long summer evenings. But now Jack is beginning to explore his new environment with the support of his friends and wants to be out more and for longer. The evenings have been bright and the local children are out playing. Each time I let Jack go and join them I feel a pang of parental guilt - I wonder if I'm being irresponsible. But I do believe that giving him this freedom will help him develop physically and socially. The scrapes he gets falling off his bike and tumbling of walls will heal, and the lessons learned in earning those scars will stay with him for a long time.