Monday 23rd September

One of the many problems with Facebook is that there isn’t really anything you can do with it. The profile layout is how it is, and all you can do is change your profile picture and cover photo. Not that it matters, as nobody actually looks at your profile page, relying on information appearing on the home page. Myspace was a different story; you could change that around at your leisure, most people changed their Myspace site’s appearance at least once a week as there was so much you could do, change photo, change the song that automatically started when your page opened, change background (do those sites still exist, and if they do, what do they do now?). Twitter is a bit better in that you can sort your own background, but changing your profile picture is such a monumental ball ache that I give up trying after several days.

Ever since I gave up using not only my Myspace site but also my ‘proper’ website, I have never settled with a blog that I totally like the appearance of. For that reason, I have recently been tinkering again and am now rather pleased with the result. It was starting to look a bit messy and busy with all the stuff going on down the side links, so I have converted everything into a top-tab and that looks a bit nicer. Another tidy up factor was removing all my various radio show and podcast players from the side of the blog and giving them their own page instead. A lot of the links running down the side of the blog were missed by the readers as they carried on once the blog was finished, so now I think it is more level with everything finishing at the same time. Underneath the blog entry now is a huge list of subjects that you can click on to find blogs about that specific subject; this also makes it easier for me to find a link. I haven’t always bothered adding these labels, and am working back through old blogs and adding them.

I received an email a few days ago asking me to fill in a questionnaire about blogs, as part of someone’s college project. Although not what I’d call a probing list of questions, (if you’ve heard me interviewing anyone I imagine a picture of a pot and kettle having a heated discussion about colour has just popped into your head), the sender wanted to know why I had decided to write every single day including Christmas and while I’m on holiday or having a day off. A good question, one that I wish I could give a clear and clever answer to. The inspiration came from discovering (and subsequently interviewing him about it) Richard Herring’s blog Warming Up. He has written every day since 2002, the idea being to combat writer’s block at a time (post-Fist of Fun and This Morning With Richard Not Judy) when his career wasn’t reaching his full potential. This was my inspiration to go daily, which I did in November 2011. The thinking is that if you start the day, (or make it the first thing you do when you sit at your desk) by writing the entry for the day before, then it gets you in the mood for writing properly. When I started writing a blog in 2007 I didn’t have a particular plan regarding subject matter or style, it is literally whatever strikes me about that particular day. It would be really boring to write in the conventional diary style, (woke up, put radio on, had breakfast…) so I tend to pick something that I can expand on. I always aim to go over 500 words every day, (although I was tempted to make this entry 499 just in case anyone checked), and unlike a lot of bloggers I make sure to edit and spell check before hitting the ‘publish’ button. Deep down, I suppose I originally thought that this would lead to an offer of a newspaper or magazine column, but that would mean placing restrictions on what I can get away with saying.  Days when I just sit at my desk writing or recording are difficult to make an interesting entry out of, so an argument with someone on a bus or a bad customer service episode is sometimes something of a gift.

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