Twit Chat.

Earlier in the week I took part in a “twitchat” organised by The Howard League who campaign for penal reform. This twitchat is where they are conducted an interview with someone in real time on in twitter. Their campaign for “less crime, safer communities and fewer people in prison. ” is certainly a good campaign on one I would urge readers to sign up to.

The first of these twitchats was with Kerry McCarthy MP (with whom I was distinctly unimpressed with her lack of support for the Bristol and District CWU during the keep the post public campaign). However she certainly had some interesting things to say about the campaign.

The twitchat was interesting, and the idea of a public, real time, discussion with which members of the public can join in is great and I look forward to more of the series. Whilst it is clearly limited by the medium (140 characters makes it hard to have nuanced points!)

But this is definitely the kind of use of “nu media” that will enhance political discourse and give different types of people the opportunity to take part. Certainly gets a “thumbs up” form me!

Streaming Spotify.

I am a BIG fan of Spotify, I think it is a tremendous service that allows the internet technology to be used in a way to promote music. (the industry is really short sighted if it goes after such things) but there is for me a major limitation, namely that it was on my PC rather than through my lovely stereo.

However I recently bought a pretty nifty media streaming set top box and via the medium of a wonderful free program called Tversity I have been able to follow this simple guide and now can stream the Spotify to my stereo… this is so awesome I am probably going to get the old premium Spotify now as I this is just the bomb for me!

My Podcast.

Given that I am blogging about Web 2.0 it would be remiss of me not to plug my podcast. We have now done a fair few editions with 12 published so far. Upcoming ones with NO2ID, The Howard League, our General Secretary and the Fair Trade foundation mean there are some good ones coming up.

Must say I am not really sure how to integrate them with my blog…. I am kinda thinking the best bet will be to just do a blog post about any I think will interest people outside of the CWU.

Incidently if anyone reading this has any ideas of good people to do podcasts with please do leave me some feedback and I will see what I can do.

So not a proper holiday, but as I has Friday off as annual leave I thought I would go to Bristol to stay with my brother. I had a few priorities, these centred around wanting to eat nice food, and bake a cake….. I know what a hellman I am eh?

So anyway first order of business was to bake a cake, after much deliberation between coffee or chocolate I decided to go for a bit of both and cooked this great idea and the cake looked pretty nice when we had done it.

Alas it transpires that we had used a cake tin that was slightly too large and although the cake was pretty nice it was a little dry which was a slight disappointment. All the same it was fun making the cake and I am starting to worry that I am frankly getting a bit old if my idea of a fun thing to do when on holiday is to bake a cake!

Anyhow I do recommend trying this, but make sure you use the right sized tin so the sponge is nice and moist. Also I think there is a typo in the recipe as it definitely does not need 4 tablespoons of coffee for the filling.

So the cake was fun and we sat down to a fun filled evening of Crocodile Dundee, football and some nice booze! A foodstuff I most certainly was not disappointment was the Tesco own brand “Thai Sweet Chilli Cassava Crackers”. Cassava seems to be some sort of root vegetable that I had never heard of, but these crackers are really nice. Brilliantly they are gluten free, and my brothers other half cannot do gluten so looks like they are a great discovery.

So anyhow the rest of the weekend was spent trying to optimising the blog, learn how to use wordpress, and watching the Carling Cup final. Much as though it pains me to admit it United were the better side, and deserved to win the game as it was….. But how on earth was Vidic not sent off? Last man, goalscoring chance, ref gives a penalty so he accepts it is a foul… I dunno.

Still a good weekend and nice to come to Bristol actually to see and hang out with my Brother rather than just kipping at his gaffe because I have work in Bristol.