My hero

WEDNESDAY 2 APRIL

BLOGS
One of the truly awesome aspects of the internet is that there ALWAYS seems to be something new to explore, new places to go, new things to find out and new lives to ‘lose yourself’ in. Anyone with an addictive trait - such as yours truly - could waste an awful lot of time just cruising around, following link after link just to find out what’s - or who’s - at the other end. Believe me, I have to be very disciplined indeed - and self-discipline is NOT one of my (very few) strong points. Take this very blog....

A couple of years ago (when I first tried a personal blog and generally failed miserably) I discovered that if I click on any of the things I list amongst my ‘interests’, Blogger comes up with everyone else who’s listed the same thing. I tried it with ‘Istanbul’ the other day and discovered some positively beautiful blogs written in praise of that astonishing city by people who live there, or who love it as much as I do - or, of course, both.

From there, it’s possible to email the blogger or attach comments to their blogs - much like we do here. I’ve made a good ‘e-friend’ in Denver, Colorado this way. We share a love of Saint-Saens (the unfairly neglected French composer); David had visited The Great Man’s grave in Montparnasse Cemetery and was able to tell me exactly where it was so that I could visit it myself and pay homage to one of my heroes when I visited Paris two years ago.

You don’t even need to go that far. On the Blogger homepage - down the right-hand side - is a list of ‘notable blogs’ for you to explore and enjoy. Take it from there.

The internet is a magnificent gateway to the world. Enjoy it - and report back if you come across anything interesting and/or fun!

THE NIGHTSHIFT QUESTIONNAIRE
If the second question in our awesome series was ‘Which words and phrases do you most often overuse?’ then I guess my answer would have to be ‘awesome’ and ‘I guess’, I guess.

CONTACT ME
Post comments on this blog or contact me in any one (or more) of these ways....
ian.robinson@bbc.co.uk
ianstuartrobinson@googlemail.com
text 07786 200954 (while the programme is on-air)
call (between about 0545 and 0630 Monday to Friday) 0191 232 6565
Ian Robinson, The Nightshift, BBC Radio Newcastle, Spital Tongues, Newcastle-upon-Tyne NE99 1RN

NOTE
Please bear in mind that the views expressed in this blog are my own and NOT the views of the BBC.


6 comments:

gillian said...

ian...?on the subject of blogs you are right ....interesting how many people are out there..
ive been visited by a writer of crime...

ian..? the new pic...
youve changed... a lot...
i wouldnt have recognised you if id bumped into you by the electric board..

Hildie said...

Ian, it's honestly usually yourself who sends me on a little flit around the internet. Two recent examples being when you asked for more information about the man they couldn't hang ..... that sent me off on an interesting journey of discovery! Secondly, just the other night when you were doing 'Kev's Averages' you mentioned that left-handed people didn't live as long as right-handed people ..... that sent me off on another one! Fascinating, the things I read about left-handedness.
They are just two of my recent jaunts - but, as you say, it pays to be quite strict with yourself or you could easily be be surfing for all eternity.

Kev said...

Here's a statement about averages.

"Half the people employed by the BBC are below average intelligence."

Discuss.

gillian said...

kev..? have i missed something?? and wheres maureen? hope she,s ok.
seriously i,m worried about her...

Kev said...

Gilly, (a quick lesson in statistics)
When you hear someone talk about an 'average' you should be wary.
There is not one average, but many, each with a different meaning.
When you think of an average, you naturally think of the 'smoothed out' value. This is called the Arithmetic Mean.
Another is the Mode - this is the number that appears most often; and yet another is the Median - this is the middle number of all the values. This means that half of the items are below the Median and half are above it.
So half the people are below average intelligence, if you take the average to be the Median.

So don't take everything at face value
Take care

gillian said...

thanks kev..heavens above..
thats something to ponder over...!