Mike Hurley RIP

You either loved it or hated it. Mike Hurley’s Saturday morning show, Hurley Burley, divided the audience. Mike was loud, witty, angry, funny, sarcastic, talented – very talented. His show worked by ridiculing the medium in which he worked and the audience which was his lifeblood. Local Radio in his mind was trivial, incompetent, staffed by idiots and listened to by people who had nothing better to do. 

He mocked Commercial Local Radio even though his voiceovers were heard daily on radio commercials. If ever there was a society for biting the hand that feeds you and getting away with it, Mike Hurley could have been its president. Or perhaps that position should have been given to Bill Bore, a character he created to rant about things a BBC  presenter couldn’t say in his own skin. Continue reading

Do you twitter?

I haven’t really got into this text message social networking. Perhaps these tips will help me. I twitter as barstep

twitter « On an e-journey with generation Y
10 Tips for newcomers
· Find someone who might be able to jumpstart you with a few good people to follow.
· Look on your favourite blog sites to see if a twitter username or icon is given.
· Do not expect to part of the fold immediately.
· Watch and listen so that you get an idea of the proceedings
· Join the conversation when you can with a prompt or a reply.
· Explore the site thoroughly. Click on avatars and wander around.
· Remember that the most popular tweeters may not be interested in following more people.  However it is still useful to read their conversations.
· Find a level you are comfortable with and move on when ready.
· Once comfortable, be pro-active in seeking more to follow.
· Take care as it can be extremely addictive

Dots and dashes

Radio Waves

I’m a radio junkie – not surprising for a broadcast journalist and former BBC Local Radio editor, but my interest in radio began with what many call Ham Radio although the UK hobbyists prefer to call it Amateur Radio. I still have my call sign, G4VRU, which was secured through a series of exams which included tests in morse code and the fine detail of the GPO licensing laws as well as technical tests.

Last week I received an invitation to renew my membership of the Radio Society of Great Britain. My membership probably lapsed in the early 1980s so my knowledge of the hobby is at least 25 years out of date.

Continue reading

Success

The appearance of the links entry is witness to the success of my tinkering with the delicious function daily blog post. I have to thank another blogger Natalie Downe for posting her guide. Thanks Natalie

Posting links

Mmmmm … this is proving more tricky than the delicious site implied. So far each attempt has fiiled the report page with error messages. Having trawled the advice of a number of WordPress/delicious users I think I may have stumbled on the solution. I’ll have to wait until after 7pm to find out if I have it right. There is no way to force delicious to post the links, I have to wait for the next hour as post times can only be incremented an hour at a time.