For those of you on RSS and haven’t actually noticed, my hair isn’t the only thing that changed yesterday. I had the sudden urge to change the layout and style of the blog too. Many thanks to Akra for giving up his evening to help me sort it all out.

I hope you like it (and if you don’t… well, that’s just tough, because I love it so ner).

As always, I don’t think I’ve broken anything. At least not anything important. If I have, please drop me a note in the comments or email me at Pewari [AT] may [DOT] be.

I feel really saddened by today’s news that children TV presenter, Mark Speight has been found dead. He took his own life. It appears that after the death of his fiance, he just couldn’t keep it together – he effectively died of a broken heart.

Mark was one of my favourite presenters on CBeebies – despite the fact I have always been completely uninterested in all things arty, Smarteenies amazingly still managed to keep me in the room and watching when it was on.

He had an energy and verve that is very rare – his manic “BIG PICTURE!” segment (once it had stopped scaring the hell out of Li’l Bhaji – I think it used to be the flamboyant hats Mark would wear to mark the transition between the different sized artwork, Li’l Bhaji was always a bit suspicious of people in hats) was the highlight of the show, and we always felt a little bit robbed if an episode didn’t have one.

He seemed a genuinely nice bloke – didn’t come across as fake and posed as some of the children’s presenters can. The sort of person you could relax down the pub with.

My thoughts go out to all his family and friends.

For the first time in about 6 months, I finally got around to having my haircut – found a lovely hairdresser who is a mum of one of Li’l Bhaji’s nursery friends.

I seem to have accidentally gone for the Alison Hannigan look, so I’ll be auditioning for the part of Willow later this afternoon. Ahem.

The fringe is now tucked behind my ears so I can see, but I still feel very glam.

Yesterday on Twitter, as I have a fair few podcaster followers/followees, I asked if anyone could recommend a decent microphone. Expecting a list of brand names and a budget, what I received instead was a very generous offer of a loaned microphone from @bealers – thank you so much!

Akra dropped in after work and brought it home and here it is: the Samson CO3U Podcast Recording Pack. The difference in recording quality to my little tinny headset is absolutely mind-blowing as well as being allowed to borrow a fairly expensive piece of kit.

Must start planning some decent topics to talk about now… *gulp*

This audio post, I am trying to make a concerted effort to relax and not have too many notes. So as a result you can now play “Um and Er” Bingo.

Even better, turn it into a drinking game and have a shot of vodka for every “um” and “er” and I guarantee you’ll be under the table by the end of the two minutes.

If you have any burning questions you want to ask me, feel free to add them to the comments of this entry and I’ll give myself a grilling interview next week some time…

I promise to ask myself all the really hard-hitting soul-searching questions and then give myself lots of evasive answers.

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It’s been a while since I’ve had a podcast of the week, so without further ado, I would like to introduce you to one that has really inspired me recently.

I Should Be Writing is a podcast by the very talented Mur Lafferty.

Its tagline is “the podcast for wanna-be fiction writers, by a wanna-be fiction writer” but to be honest, it doesn’t feel like it comes from a wanna-be. While she may still strive for a few more acceptance slips for her fiction writing, she has an impressive amount of non-fiction credits to her name, so she is certainly no stranger to the profession.

Mur is professional, disciplined but above all comes across as friendly and approachable.

The format of the show includes personal commentary on how she is doing with her goals – we get to share her ups and downs of the submission/rejection cycle. Then she has a specific topic to discuss such as the basics of submitting a story, which writing advice to follow and editing. It finishes with listener feedback and questions.

As a bonus, every few weeks Mur has an interview with a published author to bring another viewpoint in to the topics recently discussed.

Mur comes across as intelligent, witty but most of all supportive. If you’re looking for a little writerly solidarity, or just have an interest in any part of the creative writing process, then this podcast is for you. Most of all, it’s just great as both an inspiration and guilt trip because YOU SHOULD BE WRITING!

Each episode varies in length around the 30 minutes to an hour mark and is released fortnightly… ish.

I’ve been catching up on last week’s episode of This Week in Tech (TWiT) and one of their topics was discussing whether print media is dead.

What interested me most about the discussion though was when it was pointed out just how much we self-select what news and information we receive now. Thanks to RSS feeds, twitter, etc, I know I have a much greater amount of information and opinion at my fingertips than ever before, but this isn’t necessarily a good thing.

Think about it. When was the last time you followed someone whose opinion you regularly didn’t agree with? If someone offends you, then they get unsubscribed in double quick time, in my experience. I skim through news headlines, only bothering to read them properly if they interest me and only subscribing to those news sources that comfortably fit with my own outlook on life.

This becomes an even narrower world view than when we only bought one newspaper with a particular bias and now I’ve stopped to think about it makes me rather uncomfortable with the feedback loop I have created for myself.

So, I’m making a commitment to myself to expand my outlook. To subscribe to more in depth news sites, to expand my reading outside my comfort zone.

The question is… will you?

I made a very exciting purchase today – a new bike!

Akra Jr is now really riding well without stabilizers on his bike, Li’l Bhaji can pedal pretty fast on his little bike and Akra used to commute to work on his bike before his company moved further away – I was the only one bikeless.

Now, I haven’t actually ridden a bike since I was about 14 years old, so it was all a bit scary. I didn’t really know what I wanted except that I couldn’t spend much more than £100 and I wanted it for use on cycle paths & trails for when we went camping.

We first went into Halfords and it was clear that they really weren’t interested in giving any service or information whatsoever. It took ages to get someone to help me and even then they came over grudgingly. I tried to ask what the difference were in all the bike models and it seemed clear that the sales assistant didn’t even know. They didn’t get my money.

Fortunately, Akra remembered seeing a small, independent bike shop in town called Star Cycles so we popped in there. What a difference! He actually listened to what I wanted, thought for a moment, then pulled down one from a high display. Spot on height for me, in budget, really nice build quality (from what I could tell of my zero knowledge of bikes – certainly seemed more robust than one double the cost at Halfords) and just a really beautiful machine. I didn’t look at any others and bought that one.

I also got myself a silver cycle helmet that makes me look a bit of a prat. But then, does anyone look good in a cycle helmet?!

Akra was very helpful on my first trip out around the block when I expressed some unease that I’d be able to do it after 20 years of non-cycling. “Don’t worry,” he said. “You won’t have forgotten. It’s just like… um… riding a bike.” Riiiiiight… thanks dear. I did okay though – a bit wobbly to start but soon got in the rhythm again. But I’m a bit crap at changing gears (I have EIGHTEEN GEARS, ffs. I don’t think I had ANY on my childhood bike. I wanted to go up a hill, then I pedalled harder) – I’ll get used to it.

So here is a quick summary links post.

• Moleskine Notebooks: The Ultimate Guide (and how to rank your addiction) | Put Things Off
  The perfect Moleskine shrine.
• Caring for Your Introvert
  “Remember, someone you know, respect, and interact with every day is an introvert, and you are probably driving this person nuts.” – this may have been written a while ago now, but it’s still essential reading for anyone who wants to know my personality better.

My very first audio post. Not particularly brilliant quality (especially as you can hear the kids talking in the background) but not bad for a first try.

Don’t worry, the whole blog isn’t going to become a podcast – I just might put some audio up every now and then. I’m experimenting.

It’s only about a minute and a half long – took me longer to work out how to get it to display here than it did to record it.

Feel free to skip it if you’re not interested, you miss nothing of major import. On the other hand, if you’re curious to find out what my voice sounds like… click away…

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