Look what Wendy’s bought me! It seems so unfair that it can’t be counted as one of my five-a-day!

Every now and again, I find myself moaning to Sky News about some report or other they’re running, usually on a medical topic. This might put me in the same box as the green-ink angry brigade of old, but I kind of hope it doesn’t.

Sky News is normally the outlet on the receiving end of my moans because Wendy likes to watch Sunrise in the mornings, so they tend to be the ones to irk me when I’m sleepy-eyed and vulnerable. Usually, they’ve misunderstood the findings of some piece of research, or are giving advice that needs a little more nuance. Generally, I fire off an email to them, and they correct either their script or package pretty quickly, or else get back to me to explain why they won’t. I actually think I have a pretty good relationship with them.

A few years ago when the whole MTAS debacle was kicking off in the medical world, I helped Channel 4 News with some of their reporting, and also found them really helpful, willing to listen to my explanations, and good at accurate reportage.

Until a couple of weeks ago, I don’t think I’ve ever complained about a BBC News report. But then, the BBC News website published this article about the Queen’s faith role. This couldn’t be further from the stuff I’d usually moan about, but the report was based on a COMRES poll, and originally opened with the claim that 80% of the population supported the Queen’s faith role. I didn’t believe this, and so checked out the original data on the COMRES website, which revealed that 80% responded positively to a question about whether the Queen has a faith role. This is, of course, different from giving support – it’s a question of fact, and, as the Queen is the head of the Church of England, it seems pretty undeniable that she has a faith role, whether or not it’s supported.

So I fired off an email. And, within hours, the article was changed to the current version, which reports the actual survey findings more accurately. What I hadn’t anticipated, and hadn’t had from any other outlet, was that the Religion Editor gave me a call. We had a great chat in which he explained how the article had come about, how the mistake had been made, and also a general talk about the complex rules that the BBC has around commissioning surveys. This was fantastic.

So what’s my point? Essentially, any time I personally have moaned to a media outlet about a factual reporting error, I’ve received a positive response. Granted, it would be better that the mistakes weren’t there in the first place, and it’s probably true that not all sections of the media are as responsible as those I’ve been involved with.

But journalists are humans too. They make mistakes, and many of them seem happy to have these corrected. Leveson might give the impression that all journalists are unethical idiots, and Blair might think they’re feral beasts, but some journalists are just doing a bloody hard job as well as they can, with the utmost professionalism.

I know it’s not a popular view at the moment, but maybe we can consider giving journalists a break sometimes? Just a thought.

I’ve never seen this coffee cart in action, but I’d be intrigued to see how they’ve managed to squeeze everything in… and you’ve just got to love the name!

I spent five years at university studying medicine, yet somehow remained completely unaware of the existence of referencing software. I don’t know how this came about, but I manually referenced every single assignment I did during my medical degree – and so did Wendy. How the existence of EndNote in particular passed us both by, I’m not entirely sure.

By the time I embarked on my Masters in 2010, I was aware of EndNote, but we were far from friends. The couple of times I’d tried to use it, I’d had nightmarish corruption errors, and had always quickly reverted to referencing by hand. With the prospect of a whole load of Masters assignments and a dissertation looming, I thought that there must be a better way. And I discovered Mendeley.

Mendeley is an excellent free reference manager. It stores your reference library in the cloud, so that you can (should you so choose) even access it via an iPhone app. I never really found a use for that feature, but Mendeley did see me through a number of Masters assignments. But Mendeley, like Endnote, has an occasional irritating moments of stubbornness, where it will claim that a document connection has become corrupted, or some such nonsense, and will require a bit of sorting out. Generally, copying and pasting the entire text into a new document did the trick, but the frequency with which this happened make me nervous.

Then, I discovered Papers 2. It’s completely brilliant. I actually don’t really understand how it works, but it doesn’t rely on flaky plugins, or any requirement to use specific word-processing software. It just works, has fully cite-while-you-write functionality with a global shortcut, and is a joy to use. It isn’t free, but does have a free trial, and offers a generous academic discount for students. It has an iOS app too, but I’ve never used it, as I still don’t understand why I’d want that functionality. It’s available on Windows as well as Mac, though I’ve never tried that version.

Before using Papers 2, I’d thought that the whole software category of reference managers was, by definition, flaky and unreliable. Yet I don’t think I’ve ever seen Papers 2 crash, and it has certainly never messed up the references in an actual written document.

Papers 2 is a total, total joy to use, both for organising papers, and for citing them. It’s an app I cannot recommend highly enough for anybody who does even vaguely academic writing. It’s completely brilliant.

I love Wendy very dearly, but even she will admit that she isn’t always the best at sorting and putting away her washing. The situation has reached a level this week where I’ve had to start labelling the piles…!

I suppose it’s just a reflection of how hard she works and the crazy hours she does… or, at least, that’s what she tells me!

I’ve just finished watching the complete West Wing again, and I’m experiencing that odd withdrawal / mourning feeling that so many of my friends describe, and that I had most acutely back in 2006 after my first run-through.

It seems incredible that it’s 12 years since I first saw The West Wing, and six since it ended. It’s a really fantastic series, and if there’s anyone left in the country that hasn’t seen it, you really must buy it now.

One of the best things about living in Newcastle is that it has a thriving city centre, but fantastic greenery surrounds the city: Weetslade Country Park, as in today’s picture, is just seven minutes from our front door.

When I last visited I got soaked, but today Wendy and I had a lovely stroll in the sunshine!

Hall One is acoustically astounding, and also looks gorgeous. Unfortunately, a photo can’t really show acoustics, and my bad photography makes the hall look pretty dull (though the decision to drape a black curtain in front of the rear of the rear of the stage doesn’t help).

Nevertheless, Wendy and I really enjoyed seeing Ramin this evening, and as we left the Sage, we saw the Tyne Bridge looking twinkly and pretty.

It may be an apocryphal tale, but I understand that the Vermont Hotel, in response to Council cuts, paid the electricity bill for the lighting of the Tyne Bridge for to benefit its guests’ views. If it is true, the owners will no doubt have celebrated when the current LED lighting system was installed, as I’m sure it cut the bill substantially…

Though, having said that, the hotel recently went into administration. It’s since been sold, and is now anticipating a £3m makeover. Hurrah!

If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll know that Wendy and I were evacuated from the Handmade Burger Company at the Metrocentre tonight after our meal was rudely interrupted by the restaurant setting on fire…!

One of the downsides of the open kitchen is that the flames were quite clearly visible. Initially, we were told to ignore them, as the gas had been turned off and they’d soon subside. But we were warned that our chips might be delayed.

As the flames persisted, the chef produced a fire extinguisher, which also failed to extinguish the flames.

We were reassured that everything was fine, even as the fire alarms were blaring… it was only when the sprinklers started that the staff decided the time was right for an evacuation… of the whole centre. We didn’t even get our chips!

The picture shows the fire engine that came to the rescue. There may have been more than one, but Wendy and I walked across to the McDonalds on the nearby retail park as soon as we were out – we were hungry!

I guess you could say that our whole evening was flame-grilled, not just out burgers!

This is a bit of the 2.9km A19 Tees Viaduct. It was built to cross the Tees at an appropriate height for big ships to pass beneath, yet since the port at Stockton was virtually disused at the time the viaduct was built, that specification probably wasn’t necessary. Only 15 years after it opened, the nearby Tees Newport Bridge was fixed in its lowered position, blocking any river traffic anyway.

Most days, mine is one of the almost 90,000 cars that use this 37 year old structure. It’s the largest bridge of its type in the UK, but is prone to frequent congestion at peak times as it’s operating at a capacity way that for which it was designed.

Mini-steps like ramp metering and CCTV monitoring have been taken to try and deal with the congestion, but with more and more vehicles using the viaduct each year, it seems likely that something more drastic will have to be done before too long.