Birthday surprise Interview

This is a short Interview that I conducted with my Mum. Within the content she discusses her plans to shock my Dad with a weekend trip to the Catalan city of Barcelona, as a special 45th Birthday present.

Dipity Timeline of the Afghan elections.

The Afghanistan Election 2009. on Dipity.

Map of Preston news.

View Untitled in a larger map

For the Map skills test on my Digital Newsroom module at University I have embedded a map containing the areas of four prominent local news stories in the City of Preston on 21 October 2009.

Each of the pointers contains links to the web version of an LEP story and another relevent link, plus a brief summary as to why the area was in the news on this day.

Button is F1 Champ - but is he a great?

Over the weekend Jenson Button became the latest driver to win the Formula One Drivers Championship title.

In doing so he retained the British grip of the Championship previously held by Lewis Hamilton last season.

His success is all the more remarkable when you consider that his construction team, Brawn GP, struggled to secure the finances to compete in this years event and were on the verge of folding just days before the seasons first race in Melbourne.

Button becomes the first driver to win the Championship having taken over 100 career races to secure his first victory. In fact, previous to this campaign he had only one solitary race win to show for 9 seasons of racing.

The chart below has been compiled to delve into just how tough a ride Jenson has had this season and how his haul of Championship points compares to all of the other F1 champs from down the years:

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/datablog/2009/oct/19/jenson-button-formula-one-championship-winners

Related links and websites:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenson_Button#Complete_Formula_One_results

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula_one/default.stm

http://www.formula1.com/

Editing Pictures for the Web

This is a copy of the origional image I took of Lancashire County Council:

As part of a task for a Digital newsroom assignment I had to edit this picture into a 100x100 pixel thumbnail picture:

I also had to change the dimensions for a 400 pixel wide X 300 pixel High version:

Finally, I then had to create a version of 200 pixel wide X 500 pixel high, by again using crop and edit features on photoshop:

5 rules for breaking news

I have converted an article about headline writing for the web, by Jakob Nielsen, into five easy to remember (and implement) rules:

1. Use a maximum of five words, keeping the title short and concise.
2. Make sure the title can be understood out of context, in order to suit search engines.
3. Be sure to convey the article's most important point in the headline - to grab the 'scanning' reader.
4. Use numbers wherever possible (e.g. 5 not five), as people prefer this method on the web.
5. Start with the keyword first, e.g. the name of the celebrity or country being written about. Again this is good for both search engines and the 'scanner'.

Three sites which show these rules to be both useful and operational include the following:

• http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8294365.stm
• http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6284424/Barack-Obama-surprised-and-humbled-by-Nobel-Peace-Prize.html
• http://english.pravda.ru/news/hotspots/01-10-2009/109614-tsunami%20-0

The first of these links shows the use of both a celebrity name and numbers to grab the readers attention, whilst the second link shows that the scanning reader can be drawn in by using the familiar name at the beginning. This is also good journalistic practice for suiting search engine requirements. Finally, the last headline uses the keyword first 'earthquake' to clearly convey the stories most important point from the outset. This way the reader can get the gist of the story without even needing to read on any further than the headline.

In conclusion I believe that the 5 rules are a useful tool and can be implemented into web headlines fairly easily - although not all at once!

Susan Boyle is not Flawless!

Over recent weeks Simon Cowell must have been rubbing his hands with glee over the attention that the media has afforded his show 'Britain's Got Talent'.

The main talking point, and focal point of the media hype, has been of course a certain Susan Boyle.

If you are not aware of either the show, or of Susan herself (where have you been?) she is a middle aged Virgin, who proclaims to have "never been kissed".

She wowed the judges with her unexpectedly good singing voice, and has shot to stardom with celebrities such as Demi Moore paying her praise.

However, throughout the process I have always felt that the real talent of the competition so far has been dance troupe 'Flawless' from North London. Their act is perfectly coreographed and performed. You could say they live up to their name!

Furthermore, it also became apparent on Monday night that Susan Boyle does not have a world class voice, she has a good one yes, however people have hyped her up far too much and she is struggling to deliver.

She blamed some early bum notes on Monday night on a cold, which is ironic as it would appear the pubic too are now going cold on her and her moment of fame is abrubtly coming to an end.

Which is why my tip to win the Final this weekedn is Flawless. If this is the case, remember you heard it here first!

Well, it could be worse...

After taking several days to calm down and reflect on the implications of my team Newcastle United being relegated to the second tier of English football, I have reached one conclusion.

And it's actually a positive one!

It is this: Things COULD be worse...

...at least we still wont have to play hosts to the thugs of Leeds and Millwall next year!

The start of a beautiful new era?

Well, there’s never a dull moment with the toon is there?

As a hardened Newcastle United supporter, I thought that by now I had reached the stage where nothing in this world could surprise me any more.

And yet Tyne and Tyne again they somehow manage it!

Yes Mike Ashley, the gambling man has taken his latest, and perhaps final, roll of the dice. As an avid supporter I just hope to God he scores a perfect six…

Only last Sunday Nicky Butt gave an interview to a national tabloid in which he stated that confidence and morale within the club had hit rock bottom, that the club needed someone to come in and “sort the club out right through from top to bottom”.

Rumours were doing the rounds that NUFC was a club which was fragmented, the players weren’t happy with the management and Michael Owen has in recent months increasingly looked like a lost soul.

Then at 11pm last night, all that changed. Alan Shearer has taken the mantle at the helm of the football world’ infamous “poisoned chalice”. If any appointment could save this great, proud club from relegation to the Championship then this was the one.

Lets get one thing straight from the off shall we? I am a massive Alan Shearer fan. He is my all time hero – as a young boy I can recall running around the streets kicking a tennis ball about wearing the “Shearer 9” Newcastle Brown Ale sponsored black and white stripes and dreaming about one day becoming a Newcastle legend just as he is.

I always believed that he would manage the club one day, probably sooner rather than later. But for some reason I didn’t expect that time to be now. However there is never a perfect time to join a club as manager – as for whatever reason the new man is given the job, there is always a reason for why the previous bloke needed to be replaced.

This could just about be the best possible time for the Shearer era to begin though.

Expectation levels of the supporters are at an all time low; we no longer expect big name (or big money) signings, title challenges, or trophies. We would be happy just to have a club to be proud of, that was consistent and with a settled management and good honest, hard working players.

It may be the case that the saviour has arrived too late to save us this season, but if that is the case, there will be no blame put onto “Big Al”, after all he’s only got eight very difficult games left – starting with Chelsea at home.

It is important that we supporters remember that we will possibly only get one chance to make it work with Shearer as manager – and we have to make it count.

So much now plays into Shearer’s hands – the supporters will always give him time and by now Ashley must realise he is in the last chance saloon and to chase another messiah out of the toon would be as bad as suicide, the supporters would not take it.

And so it would seem that after 9 permanent managers in the last 13 seasons we have now reached the point where we have finally found the right man to give longer to get it right. It will take time, five years at least for Shearer to get us back up there and challenging for honours – but if any one can do it, it is Big Al.

If we do stay up incidentally then I would like to make my predictions for the summer early (tempting fate maybe):
Owen will sign a new deal (lets face it he’s Shearer’s best mate and who else would offer to match his wages) – Shearer could do for Owen’s career what Sir Bobby Robson did for his own, in my opinion.
Rob Lee will be made Shearer’s assistant manager.
Shearer will sign a new deal as permanent manager – Again lets face it, if he keeps us up there’s no way the Toon Army will let him get away again that easily!

Come on the Toon – KEEP THE FAITH!

Football is not as important as life and death...

...Some people would argue it is much more important than that.

Those people would be wrong.

One person more qualified than most to vouch for that fact is Sir Bobby Robson. He was first diagnosed with the deadly disease back in 1992, and has since gone on to fight off Cancer four times. However his latest fight, his fifth, he has readily admitted could well be his last.

Last year Sir Bobby was diagnosed as having Lung Cancer, and initial newspaper reports suggested he had only months to live. However one year on he is still fighting strong and has managed to raise more than £500,000 for Cancer charities in the North East of England.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/article3646265.ece

He has spoken of how he wants to make the treatment of the disease in his native North East not only the best in the Country, but also the best in Europe.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/international/article5774695.ece

I am lucky enough to be able to say I have met the man, who is one of my all time heroes. He is a truely remarkable man and always comes across as likeable and approachable. Indeed, it is a testiment to him that after a lifetime of hard work in such a vicious, competitive and unforgiving industry as football is I cannot remember a single person ever having a bad word to say about him.

His personality is enchanting and it is amazing to see that even in these hard times of battling a life-threatening disease he still has a sense of humour, as he points out about his battle: "I've had longer than a football manager".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7901685.stm

So, at a time when the Country mourns two other much loved celebrities who have succumbed to Cancer themselves in the last fortnight - Jade Goody and Wendy Richards - it is important that we do not forget the white knight of Tyneside and continue to support him as he strives not only to survive his own latest battle, but also to help other less fortunate people at the same time.

Time to stop pampering prisoners.

I have always felt that people who are sent to prison should be punished for their crimes. However unfortunately in recent days it would appear to have become increasingly apparent that in reality this is not what occurs.

On March 3rd 2009, the Sun newspaper published the following story -

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2287480.ece

- in which it highlighted the fact that inmates at a Lancashire prison took photographs of themselves in their cells and posted the pictures on Facebook, for all their friends to see.



Questions must surely be asked. Not only of how and why these 'prisoners' are surrounded by such luxuries as television sets, but also as to why the heck they have been allowed to pose with them so arrogantly and, quite literally, stick two fingers up to us law abiding citizens!

Who provided them with a camera?

Why were they then allowed to publish the picture on a social networking site?

These questions need to be answered.

Not that we should be suprised though, this has become a nation that has learned to glorify criminals.

Just last week Lodon celebrated, yes celebrated, the opening of a new movie - Bronson - which is a look into the life of Britains most notorious criminal. And what better way to open procedings than with a promise from the great man himself. "See you at the Oscars" he told the audience, which raises another question. How has a man who has spent the last couple of years in solitary confinement managed to film a message to the public?

Prison should be a punishment - not a holiday camp. Things need to change.

Is the 'Credit Crunch' merely survival of the fittest?

Ok, so this is my first blog - so I thought I would start with a nice easy topic...

Therefore I will attempt to explain the causes of the global recession, with reference to comments by PM Gordan Brown, high power business moguls and most importantly of all my Mum.

Historically reccessions have come about in the UK once every decade (so I am told), except at the start of the naughties when, apparently, the economy continued to rise steadily, rather than collapse into the abyss.

Only it didn't did it?

When you think about it on 11th September 2001 the American stock exchange closed for the longest period of time since the great depression (which I was suprised to find was 1933 and not last week). Upon the reopening of the markets on the 17th September share prices across the Dow Jones had plummeted by on average 7.1%. That represented the largest single day decline on record. Ever.

Over the course of the entire week, $1.2 trillion had been wiped off the Dow Jones - so even though this didn't take place over two successive quarters of a year, surely such significant losses represent a recession of some sort? Something to ponder perhaps.

Anyway, back on topic. The reason we are in the mess we are at current is simple (as far as I am concerned) - over the past decade or so our economy as a nation has thrived and we have all reaped the benefits in some way or another, be it through more money being made available to the NHS, education system or somewhere else. Only there is one thing that the so-called 'Greatest Chancellor' the UK ever had forgot to do...save some money for a rainy day.

The Australian dollar has historically been inferior to the pound, however during it's last significant period of growth the Country put a large amout of money away as a contingency fund, for when times weren't so great. The Government paid off it's debts and as a result the Country recorded a 1.9% growth in economy for the first quarter of the 2008/2009 financial year, a figure our own country could only dream of at the moment it would seem...

Another explanation of the Credit Crunch that i heard recently came from a member of Dragon's Den (I forget which one),anyway, speaking to BBC news he told how he believed that the recession was natures way of ensuring Darwin's theory of evolution (also known as survival of the fittest) occurred. This means in other words only the strongest and most worthwhile businesses survive and prosper, whilst the less useful or meaningful fall by the wayside.

This brings me to my Mum...

When we were out in town shopping at the weekend my mother turned to me and said "It's depressing all these shops shutting down isn't it", when i asked her to elaborate she continued "Well soon there'll be nowhere for me to shop".

I asked her to name the shops that had shut down in town and she listed them off for me: Woolworths, Peer, Barratts...then I asked her when was the last time she actually bought anything from any of those shops and she said "Well i don't, but I like looking in them though"...

I think it would be safe to say that this particular comment sums up why the shops closed indeed. No one shopped there. Thus, it would appear that bloke on Dragons Den was indeed correct. The fittest will survive, the others will not...