I guess there’s no rational reason to feel a twinge of excitement when one’s car odometer reaches a figure like this… but it still happens!

Those readers who view my posts directly on this site can’t have failed to have noticed a few design tweaks over the last couple of days. I’ve been attempting to improve the readability of the text, and make it easier to delve into the archive. There are a few graphical changes too, to make things look a bit more modern.

A lot of the changes are really tiny – text sizes, contrast and line spacing, for example – but some of the more obvious ones are the improved handling of archive pages (which now show full posts rather than lists of titles), the ability to flick through the blog chronologically, and the vastly clarified “calls to action” under posts on single post pages.

The latter includes one-click access to similarly tagged archive posts. Unfortunately, few of my posts actually have tags, as they’ve never had any practical function from the front-end until now, but I am determinedly ploughing through the archive tagging away.

I hope the changes are to your liking – as ever, I’d be delighted to hear your feedback.

This has been sat on my kitchen table for a few days now… and yet I’ve only just noticed the word in the cover image. Duh.

Morrisons in Killingworth seem a little over excited by their use of CCTV.

The lake in Paddy Freeman’s Park is frozen today – which is a bit surprising, given that it doesn’t feel nearly as cold as it looks.

This is the second paragraph of this Susanna Rustin article, putatively about “the rise and rise of radio”, from today’s Guardian.

I didn’t look at the photo and clicked on “unfollow” straightaway so I wouldn’t see any more of Dale’s tweets. Holding this woman up to ridicule in front of the 26,000 people who follow him was abusing his position, I thought.

I love the Guardian, but this article is awful from start to finish. It starts with the above assertion which feels like holier-than-thou nonsense: how did the writer know that a woman was being “held up to ridicule” without looking at the photo? How could she be sure this wasn’t a joke? And is she always so reactionary?

And that’s not to mention that the Iain Dale incident has precisely nothing to do with the popularity of radio, which the headline suggests is the thrust of the piece. Indeed, she doesn’t get onto radio until paragraph seven.

She then goes on to give piss-poor reasons for the popularity of radio, beginning with the assertion that “the licence fee is the obvious first answer”, as though radio is exclusively popular in the UK).

Then, further along, she attempts to classify radio as an “old” or “new” medium (as though this dichotomous, rather than a spectrum), and, working for a newspaper that employs Aleks Krotoski, one of the foremost academics on the subject, turns to Wikipedia for the answer.

Is radio old or new media? The Wikipedia “new media” definition doesn’t mention radio at all, perhaps uncertain whether to lump it in with printing presses or mobile apps.

Then, in the final paragraph, there’s the assertion that the Desert Island Discs archive was opened last weekend. Of course, regular readers of the foremost newspaper for media coverage will know that the online archive actually launched last year.

In any other newspaper, this kind of article would be par for the course. But the Guardian isn’t any other newspaper: it’s one that should strive for first-class journalism, not lowest-common-denominator page-filling tosh like this. It’s really quite disappointing.

Newcastle Airport is brilliant, but – like any airport – it’s at its most pleasant and least stressful when it’s virtually empty!

The punning name of this local sandwich shop rarely fails to raise a smile!

Admittedly, this is a fairly rubbish photo, but it is supposed to show thousands of cars lined up near (I think!) the Port of Tyne. I had intended to take it with a ship in the background, but by the time I got to taking the picture, the boat had, quite literally, sailed.

It wasn’t until I spent time at the HPA that I became aware of quite how much shipping goes on in this country. I mean, it’s fairly obvious that a lot happens given that we’re an island nation, but I’d never really considered the scale or logistics before.

All of which reminds me of this fascinating article from Wired.

As currently featured on my kitchen table…!