Yes, you read that title right. And why not? I’ve liveblogged Eurovision before, after all.

Anyway, I’m late, so will get started…

I’m here, the pizza’s here, and the telly’s on. Tonight, the UK’s Eurovision entry will be decided by Terry Wogan and Co, who may or may not manage to announce the right result this year.

So… five minutes to go, and we’ll be underway.

18.59 We’re kicking off early by my watch! Terry and Claudia have entered a cheap-looking studio with a horribly pixellated back screen, surrounding by a possibly drunk crowd.

19.03 The show apparently has a baffling new format this year, in which bizarre categories of acts will compete to be picked to go through to the public vote by John Barrowman, Carrie Grant, and Terry Wogan, followed by another wildcard act being put through. So essentially, the judges are discarding two of six acts in an overly complex way.

19.06 The Beeb don’t quite seem to have decided whether this is a serious search for the best representatives for the UK, or a camp comedy show. But, enough of the introductions, girl groups are up first – Firstly, Love Shy, whoever they might be.

19.11 This girl ‘group’ appears to be what may popularly be known as a ‘duet’. They’re not very good, though that may possibly be more related to the fact that there were two singers but only a single melody line, making the whole thing very karaoke. Or summert. Ooh, have to move on quick, the next act is up now – The Revelations.

19.14 These guys seem to be hindered both by an awful song and the fact that they’re struggling to sing it. All three are wearing identical oddly cut dresses in different colours. Which can also be said for the first act. How odd.

19.18 It seems that neither John nor Carrie liked either of the first acts, which is quite amusing. Terry thinks its a tough decision. Love Shy were clearly better, it would be disappointing if they didn’t go through. Oh. Carrie and John both went for The Revelations. Terry contributed the same joke he had earlier about Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s commode, and mentioned his ‘wildcard’ which was clearly not supposed to be mentioned until later in the show. All going well so far, then.

19.24 We’re now looking at former Song for Europe programmes. What fun. Moving swiftly on, it’s Joseph vs Maria – Joseph being Rob somebody or other and Maria being Simona whatserface. Oh, how far they’ve come. I thought Maria/Simona had shunned music for straight acting now? I’m confused. Now Celine Dion is blasting, presumably because she once did Eurovision. Rob McVities thinks he’s following in her footsteps. I don’t want to shatter that illusion. Is he really named after a biscuit? Apparently not. It’s McVeigh. Disappointing. Time for him to sing now, I think.

19.26 He’s certainly singing like he means it. I don’t especially like his tie, though. That’s a negative. Oh, and the song isn’t great, either.

19.28 There’s a possibility that you’re wondering why something which calls itself a political blog is commenting on Eurovision. Frankly, that’s a question I’m asking myself right now, too. But that’s the situation I’ve got myself in. Simona Armstrong is up now. Can you have somebody from Romania representing England in Eurovision?

19.31 A quick recap: Currently, Romanian Simona is singing in a tutu (as Simona, not Maria) in the Maria/Joseph category to win the support of the judges to represent England in Belgrade. The judges might choose her now, if they don’t then they might choose her later, and then the public have to decide if they want her. I think all that’s right. Saturday night TV is confusing these days. It’s a bizarre song called Changes. I don’t know whether it was good or not. Frankly, I’m no longer sure of my own name.

19.35 John wants to pick Simona based purely on her Romanian heritage, which I’m sure must be against some kind of subclause of a BBC Editorial Guideline. Carrie likes her because she and her song are equally weird. What?! Terry is, once again, not contributing anything other than saying he won’t say who he’d have voted for, but that he really, really liked Simona. Rob looks sad. Awww.

19.38 Now they’re doing ‘The Terrys’ (Terries?), and ill-though out feature in which Terry tells us the top three acts from the history of Eurovision in a number categories, showing clips with dipped sound whilst he commentated. So, for example, we were treated to the ‘best lungs’ in Eurovision without actually being able to hear the singing.

19.41 Next up is Andy from X-Factor. No idea what the category is supposed to be, but given that both contestants are black, and given the comments about Simona, I wouldn’t be overly surprised if it was, actually, the Blacks. The good news is that he’s actually not a bad singer, and the song isn’t terrible either. The same can’t be said for the pelvic gyration, but we’ll forgive him that.

19.44 Michelle, of Grange Hill and Eastenders fame, is now taking to the stage in a grass skirt with a song called Woo.

19.45 Turns out I spoke too soon. It’s not a grass skirt, it’s a grass-skirt style dress. If you’re not near a TV, trust me that it really is as bad as it sounds. This seems to be turning into a Fashion Blog tonight, and that might not be the best idea. After all, it is me writing. This is a truly awful song, with even more bizarrely terrible dance moves apparently based on the Birdie Song. I still haven’t recovered from ‘Something Kinda Ooh’ from Girls Aloud, so a ‘Woo’ is the last thing I need right now.

19.52 Carrie thinks Andy can sing, the song matched his voice, and he was excellent. John thinks much the same. They agree that Michelle’s number was crazy, frantic, and slightly manic. So they’re putting Michelle though. Eh? Terry is being useless again. But now he’s picking a ‘Wildcard’.

19.57 He’s picked Andy. Very good. Now the lines are open for public votes, preceded by a lengthy pre-recorded spiel about how to operate a phone and a long recap of the performances.

19.59 It’s finally over. For now. It and me are back at 9.30pm. See you then!

21.31 Ninety minutes and a costume change later, we’re back. I haven’t changed costume, you understand, rather Claudia has. Into a sparkly number. Ooh. The phone lines are frozen, and we’re about to find out who’s going to go head to head. Again.

21.34 It’s Michelle Gayle and Andy X-Factor. They’re now going to sing again, after which the phone lines will re-open. Terry’s desperately trying to fill, and is failing so badly that he’s now admitted he’s filling. Now there’s another pre-recorded spiel about how to use a phone. And it’s over to Andy.

21.39 Andy’s doing very well. It’s just unfortunate that the song has a similar chord progression to The Disco Inferno, which creates some dodgy moments where you desperately want a ‘Burn, Baby, Burn’ which never materialises. Nevertheless, it’s a good song, and a great performance. I’d quite like to see it win.

21.43 Michelle’s back with the ‘Woo’ one again. The one with the birdie dancing and enthusiastic arm-flinging. I’m concerned that this might win on the ‘weird’ Eurovision ticket, which Scooch won on – much more comprehensively and competently – last year. It’s actually painful to watch and listen to. And what’s going to fill the 15 mins between this performance and the end of the show? Please tell me it’s not anther awful, poorly conceptualised VT.

21.48 The answer appears to be that they’ll spend most of the time explaining how to vote. Oh, they’re squeezing in a poorly conceptualised VT – showing the songs chosen by other countries whilst talking over them so we can’t actually hear the entries. Terry isn’t funny enough to sustain a comedy monologue on primetime TV – he only works as Eurovision commentator in a knowing, ironic way, not at all in the way he thinks he works. And then we get treated to a VT of previous UK winners. Yipee.

21.51 Just to demonstrate how out of touch anybody voting for Michelle Gayle is, they’ve now got Katrina (minus the waves) performing her 1997 winning number.

21.53 Now another Terries/Terrys VT, as poorly thought out as the last.

21.55 The lines are now closed. Carrie thinks Michelle should win, John thinks so too. Grief. The public have chosen…

21.59 Andy Abraham! That was a pleasant surprise. And that’s it. Andy’s singing his song for the third time this evening, which frankly might be pushing it a bit. I know I said I quite liked it, but maybe not that much. Still, all’s well that ends well, I guess, and he was very much the best on the night. Congratulations Andy.

Thanks for joining me tonight, and I hope you enjoyed the LiveBlog. Serious political comment and normal service will be resumed shortly 😉

I’ll be liveblogging the Eurovision Preselection thing tonight from 7pm. Hopefully. If I’m home by then. And if that’s what time it actually starts – I’m relying on my increasingly frazzled brain to remember.

Presentations are now available in Google Docs – finally! Hurray!

So, as something of an experiment, I’m now going to LiveBlog my first thoughts on the system… my first ever LiveBlog!

09.39 I have a lot of presentations on my computer, as I’ve done quite a few in my time as a medical student, so I’m now uploading them to Google Docs, where they can finally join the rest of my work.

09.41 I’ve uploaded six presentations so far. The size limit is generous, 10Mb, but the system only accepts PowerPoint files, which I guess will be a disappointment for those using competitor’s products. The conversion is pretty excellent – I’ve only come across one instance of some misplaced text, and there are a couple of issues with my original presentations using non-standard fonts, but other than that, they’re importing brilliantly.

09.44 My main gripe so far is that I have been unable to find a function for adding notes to slides, which is a shame, as most of my presentations have pretty extensive notes. The mini-slides on the right of the screen also don’t render properly – they’re approximations of the full-size slides, but often text is placed somewhat differently.

09.51 The print function seems quite good – in fact, it removes slide backgrounds more effectively than PowerPoint itself. However, another minor gripe is that whilst it will import AutoShapes perfectly from PowerPoint files, there’s no way to add them to files online, which is quite an annoying feature if trying to make slides look pretty. I maybe should have pointed out that most of the presentations I’m uploading are on this very website, here, so you can see the sorts of things I’m working with.

09.56 For some reason, Google won’t import my Acute Confusion presentation. Looking at it here, you’ll see it’s one of the simpler presentations I have, so I can’t understand why that one, of any of them, should fail to load. Another problem is that there’s no transitions or animations available, which sort of ruins one of my presentations. And, as with Spreadsheets, multiple spaces are displayed as single spaces, so where I’ve used them to line things up with diagrams (yes, I know that’s bad practice, but it’s common), it just hasn’t worked.

09.59 Scratch what I said about spaces – you can put them back in to line things up, but the uploading engine appears to remove them all. The logic of that decision is lost on me.

10.05 I’m now up to about 12 presentation uploaded, and I’m still noticing oddities. For example, you can upload presentations with different themes for different slides, and they import fine, but you can’t create them. In natively created slideshows, all slides have to have the same theme. It also occurs to me that, particular on slideshows I’ve uploaded, a slow connection would be useless. Perhaps it’s because my slideshows are naturally quite graphically intense, but it does take quite some time for all the pictures and backgrounds to load. Whether the native backgrounds are smaller files that would be quicker to load, I’m not sure, but I certainly hope so.

10.13 I’m still going, but just wanted to let you know that you can read more about the launch here.

10.17 The Hip Fracture presentation (view it here), which I thought would be a nightmare to upload as it’s very graphically intense and has quite complex layouts, has uploaded almost perfectly – very little tidying up needed, in fact only one correction on the title slide.

10.23 It’s actually quite fun looking again at all of these old presentations.

10.30 It occurs to me that the File menu across the three different applications is completely different – they should probably make that a bit more consistent some time. And I also note that the Presentations application does the same odd thing as the Docs application, whereby underlined text is always underlined in black, regardless of the text colour.

10.43 Well, I’ve played about with this new toy for over an hour now, uploaded a whole load of presentations, and feel that this LiveBlog has gone as far as it can go. Just for completeness, I should say that the system has now accepted my Acute Confusion presentation, but I don’t know what’s prompted the sudden change of heart.

Google Presentations is a good idea and a good system. I wish it’d been around when I was still writing large numbers of collaborative presentations. It imports PowerPoint slideshows effortlessly. However, the editor is very basic, lacks some straightforward expected functionality (shapes, transitions, etc). It’s already suitable for basic collaboration presentations, and it seems a good tool for giving presentations over the web, but much more work is needed if this is to become one of Google’s trademark ‘killer apps’.