Audio!!

Hello all!

As promised - we now have audio on the blog!! Whooohoooo!

It's taken me FIVE attempts this evening to get this on here...temperamental html I tell you!

Anyway - please scroll down to underneath the blogs to find some highly interesting and informative audio - as well as some rather amusing stuff!

Please note however, the website I've had to use for hosting (which has been suggested to me by one of my MA tutors) sometimes has some, what I consider, inappropriate adverts...I can't do anything about this rather annoyingly.

So unless you really do want to meet some 'hot' girls...please just ignore that bit!!

(they aren't even very pretty - so sorry for the disappointment...but there are some good gambling tips too...bonus...?!)

But anyway - it is a shame about this website, but it is the only one that will support the files which I wanted to upload (capacity-wise) without charging me extortionate amounts of money to do so...and I'm poor..I'm a working journo!

Lovely - well enjoy and again, let me know what you think!

Tutty-bye for now!

It is done!

The documentary is done, finished mixed and mastered and mesmerising - well, one can hope...!

I didn't quite finish it off during the week discussed below - but I was very close! Since then I've been nit-picking and fiddling with it - it's like a rash you just can't leave alone!!

I'm very pleased with the documentary - I think it's gone well. Quite how it's going to be marked I don't know - now starts the nervous wait to results day (I don't know when that is yet...!)

The deadline is next friday - yes - NEXT FRIDAY! (I don't think I've ever finished something so far away from a deadline!)

I actually completed everything Thursday night - with officially a week and 15 minutes to go (it was a quarter to midnight!)

But, like I say - I have been double-checking things and just minor adjustments and now I'm satisfied!

Went back to work last Monday so it's all been done when I get back - hense the late nights...but now I must go to bed as I have work in the morning...and have to get up at 5 am - no rest for the wicked eh?!

Thank you to all of you who have made comments so far, it's very kind of you!! Keep it up if/when you have time - it's great to hear from all of you! And...remember - spread the word!

Just one final thing - audio will be appearing on my blog very soon - like little examples of what music we made over in America etc. etc. and I've also got to check whether I can put a listen again feature for my documentary on here for you to listen - but there may be some copyright issues with that - I don't know.

Right - bedtime.

Happy Happy Wee Nat

Well slap my thigh and envisage Freddie Mercury in drag hoovering!

Solved the problem! Did a little bit of housekeeping on my computer!

Do the shake n vac and put the bloggies back - do the shake n vac and put the blo-oggs back!

SIGH OF RELIEF!!

Oh, and I'm back from physio - ow! Not as big an ow as before, but still - ow!

That woman is a genius though - my muscles don't quite know what's hit them - but no pain, no gain!

hmm, need food - hungry and achey!

Look at the date - does it match this date - Monday 8th September OH YES I THINK IT DOES!!

Ah ha ha ha ha haaaaaaa!! Je suis up-to-date!

My fingers may be burning, my eyes may be blurring, my speech may be slurring, but my blog says the day that I'm actually writing on - thank God for that!

Of course this couldn't happen without it's difficulties - oh no, that would just be too good to be true.

I'm still trying to sort out the problem my blog has decided to acquire overnight - but I'm working on it - posting manically desperate messages on various blogger help forums (to which no-one has replied yet ~~willing someone to reply~~)

For some reason, every blog that I've written today isn't appearing on the first page of my website...it seems to be stuck on yesterday. I mean I know I wrote some good stuff yesterday - but there's no need to be clingy about it!

What I've had to do unfortunately is change the Blog Archive bit to just listing the months and numbers of blogs written within that month, and then the ones I've done today are miraculously appearing.

This is annoying - because, as I extrapolated earlier - I need people to be grabbed by the titles and things to read on and down the page - and it means the blog titles now don't appear in the blog archive and therefore, you can no longer just click on one particular blog and read it - which is upsetting to say the least right now!

Like I said, I am trying to sort it, I have no idea why it's doing this - but hopefully we'll be back up and running properly again soon.

For the meantime though - please scroll down! I'm going to get a wiggle on with the audio now, which means decamping upstairs to my mocked-up studio, where I have no internet...the penalties of living in an old house with walls too thick for WiFi...!

I'm then off to see my back-breaking physio again today, so hopefully she can try to sort me out a little more. Quite how I'm going to feel later and tomorrow I don't know - but I think it's going to be pain-killer a-go-go because I CANNOT stop working now.

Cue: inspirational 'Lord of the Rings'/'Braveheart'/'Gladiator' style battle pep-talk.

Concurrency is so close I can taste it!! Sunday 7th September

I've writen the most complicated blog today - it has taken me a while! I love the fact that I've tried to tackle the ontology (what is) music and also the concept of 'understanding'!

As if I needed anything else to think about - today has just reinforced how much I want to do a PhD.

Plus I have the initials for a PhD - Natalie Oram, N.O ----> Dr. NO - blatently has to be done!

What's really great about this blog is that all that stuff I've written today could never even get a vague mention in my actual documentary - but by teasing people online in the documentary - they can enlighted themselves to a whole back-story and my gargantuan ramblings! Verbosity doesn't lend well to broadcast, but it does to blogs - phew!

Hopefully there are some things that I've written which will spur some interesting debate as well - so, again hopefully, people may come across my blog and comment - I hope so!

I did want to get completely up-to-date today - sadly that hasn't happened because of the complexity of writing that massive blog, and also another couple of things I had to do...and yes more things which are stealing my time away - the little time imps - we don't like them!

I'm going to another gig tonight which ironically again has a similar idea behind it with the whole 'let's throw a load of musical strangers together and see what happens' kind of thing.

So again - useful for my MA. It is also in a licenced establishment, and I'm off my tablets now - so yes I will have a drink or two - I think I deserve it!

I've got lots of pieces of paper with my blog address on it too - so looks like I'm forcing myself to go because I have to effectively mail shot people in a pub...pub shot maybe...?!

Got to dash - leaving in a minute!

And so my 9-day MA completion tour-de-force begins - Saturday 6th September

As you may have seen - I have blogged like there is no tomorrow today. I am so close to being up-to-date and ACTUALLY BLOGGING ON THE DAY I'M WRITING ABOUT!! How exciting!

I've also spent a little bit of time trying to jazz up my blog page too - so cunningly I've finally worked out how to get a slide show on here, and once I'd worked that out - I've decided to have 2.

Also, something that was really annoying me was that the right-hand side of my blog, when you start scrolling down the blogs is just empty and black - I didn't like it!

So, where I was originally going to put everyone's biographies as separate blogs, I also worked out a way to get them running down the right-hand side on every page.

It just balances up the page nicely - and highlights the people involved permanently on the page - which I think is important.

I'm really pleased with what it looks like now, especially as the biographies span the entire length of the page to match the lengths of the blogs (virtually) so it's nice and neat and logical to the eye.

I have been thinking about trying to make my blog as pleasing to the eye as possible - as I'm conscious that people may get bored with a big bulk of text, especially as there aren't too many things which I can link to (i.e. external links to other websites) because the project IS the project and sits within itself. We don't have any external links, we are self-supporting, and this type of project is at the vanguard of it's kind - so I can't even link to similar items.

Personally, I think that having lots of things to click on, or look at or whatever to make a page interactive is really important to sustain someone's interest - so as I can't link to too much, having the biographies running down the page is a more than adequate substitute.

The only thing that is a little annoying, which I can't do anything about is now with the slide show at the top - you don't see any of the text/blogs until you scroll down a little. If I make the slide show any smaller however - it'll kind of lose the point I think.

So, I'm sticking with what I've done as I think it looks good.

Another thing that I've spent quite long on today is the order of that right-hand column and playing around by trial and error with exactly what should come where. I've settled on having the blog archive at the top, purely because you can't see the blogs straight-off when the page loads up.

Then I figure a picture of me, and a quick 'welcome to my blog' and explanation of what the blog is about naturally wanted to come next (particularly with my stupid cheesy smile - it's so 'Have a Nice Day!!') Then my little biography, then a tease for people to continue scrolling for the rest of the biographies, and finally the biographies in alphabetical order.

For the members of the team who have websites - I've linked those websites from their profile pictures within the biography list - so some of the photos are interactive at least.

Finally, I'm also particularly pleased with the layout because people generally want to know about people (because, regardless of how much we may protest this - we all are a little bit nosey!) so by having the biographies there - it teases people to scroll down, I've then made my titles as grabbing as I possibly can (and sometimes that was really hard when the stuff I'm talking about is mainly me saying I don't have any time!!) Also I've made sure there are moving avatars and pictures in most of the blogs - which hopefully then should lead people's eyes across to the left to read the blogs.

I hope!

Aaah, the psychology of the publicist and advertiser (and supermarkets!)

Sell Sell Sell!! Wednesday 6th September

Just very quickly - I had a chat with my News Editor Gareth about how I might be able to sell my MA project today.

A problem that I may, and probably will have is because I already work for GCap Media/Global, under my contract I won't be able to sell my project anywhere else other than GCap - and they don't really have programmes which would include this type of thing, well, documentaries in general, because of time - documentaries tend to be quite long (i.e. my documentary is about 6/7 minutes per episode, or will be once I've actually done it!)

We did come up with one option though - I could always try pitching it to Classic FM - they may, just may want to pick up on it.

Fingers crossed.