Enjoying My McMuff

April Showers In May

Rainbow In Dodworth

Taken with the iPhone

Barnsley Town Centre On A Saturday Afternoon In May

It's Prom Night At Kingstone And What's That In The Sky?

Sheffield In The Sunshine

Shall We Go For Walkies?

Walking From Silkstone Common

Sunday Afternoon at 1300.

Taken with my iPhone. Field full of Rapeseed.
Ben Bank Road, between Silkstone Common and Dodworth Barnsley

Ok Boo Boo.

I've downloaded a new application for my iphone, it's a mirco podcasting app called Audio Boo. Basically the software allows you to record an audio message upto 3 mins long (in broadcast quality) , add a photo, a bit of text and tag the lot.


What I really love about it is that you can subscribe via RSS to a persons AudioBoo with iTunes.

Here is one I did this morning...

Why Radio & Music Industry Sucks Nowadays

Just seen this and thought it was very interesting. Like to know what you think?

What Makes A Great Podcast?

Just a few thoughts on what I think needs to be in place to create a great podcast.
Nothing earth shattering here but there are a couple of key points that I believe the majority of podcast producers forget.

What Makes A Great Podcast?

Content:
• Subject Clarity.
• Subject Authority.
• Subject Awareness.

Creativity:
• Ideas.
• Treatments.
• Engagement.
• Production technical standards.

Connectivity:
• Use the net and applications do the promotional work for you.
• Availability.
• SEO / Meta Data “let people find you.”

Let me know what you think.

NPR's This American Life

I’m a huge fan of “This American Life” on National Public Radio in the USA. I listen to its weekly podcast. It really is the finest radio programme I’ve every heard. It’s brilliant story telling, well produced audio that engages its audience. It must take ages to produce some of the content.

This last weekend I was spellbound listening to an episode called “My Big Break” here are the shows notes:

“Sometimes, getting your big break isn't all it's cracked up to be. A comedy duo lands the gig that can make them famous. A third-grader gets his big chance to please his mother and push his drunken father out of the picture. And other stories. “

The story that grabbed my ears was from “Act One. Take My Break, Please.”

Again here is the show notes from This American Life’s website

“Charlie Brill and Mitzi McCall were a comedy duo back in the mid-1960s, playing clubs around Los Angeles, when their agent called to tell them he'd landed them the gig of a lifetime: They were going to be on The Ed Sullivan Show. The only problem was that their performance was a total fiasco, for a bunch of reasons, including one they never saw coming. David Segal of The New York Times reports. (18 minutes)”

I’m going to repeat myself but it is just one of the best examples of story telling I’ve every heard, mixed with great archive audio and two brilliant subjects who know how to perform and deliver the show biz. Brilliant job, well done by whoever produced it.

I’d love to spend a month with the team at “This American Life” ….

Please give it a try you’ll find it at thisamericanlife.org

16 stone is enough!

I’ve been trying to loose some weight recently and after 3 weeks of much talking about it and not much action I now weigh 16 stone which is crap because when I started I was 15'10". So enough is enough and yesterday I joined a gym, I’ve got my induction at noon today.


What I like about this gym is that its not part of a big corporate organisation like JJB or Bannatynes. Its based in a local schools community centre It has all the same equipment (apart from a pool) of the bigger gyms and that’s all I want. The fees are great ……no minimum 12 month contract, where you have to give at least 30 days notice if you wanted to quit like I had to at Bannatynes. You pay £20 a month for an adult membership and that is it. None of this on / off peak cobblers, when it’s open its open and that’s it.

So this is me now….. in all my sixteen stone glory


And this is my target weight for the start of July.



Aren’t IMac’s brilliant?

Charlie and The Chillout Factory

I've been listening to a great podcast recently from a chap called Charlie North, who I've met and had a couple of business meetings with. 

Charlie is a music and video producer, who is based in a village very close to where I live. If you like ambient / chillout music you'll love his work. Give him a try. You'll find him at thechilloutfactory.co.uk  

You'll also find Charlie at charlienorth.com

The Shops Of Today

"Unless you're a Youth"

I’ve seen a sign on a shop door that I’ll not be using again until it's removed. It reads “Polite Notice: No more than two youths are allowed in the shop at any one time.” In these Credit Crunchy times when a business, no matter how big or small it is, needs to do all it can to make a living it struck me that this was a great way to alienate customers and reduce income.

With 24 hour shopping in two local supermarkets I now have the choice to go somewhere else rather than a local convenience shop.

I have no knowledge of what’s happened at the shop in the past but I live in the real world and I’m aware that “some people” shoplift and that shop workers get abuse or worse are attacked which is wrong and needs to be dealt with, but to be selective just because a customer looks like a youth is not the right way. If this shop’s owners do have a problem then they need to improve their security system, employ more staff or provide better training.

I’d class my eldest son as a “youth”, he’s a great kid, he works very hard at school, he gets brilliant results, he’s not a threat to anybody and I’m very prod of him, but now if he and two mates want to go into Costcutter’s on Pogmoor Road, Barnsley they’re not welcome to spend his (my) cash.

This shop is saying we don’t trust youths being in our shop so sod off. Well fair enough, if my son and his friends are not good enough to use your shop, neither will I. Somerfield will now get an extra 40 - 60 quid a month more from me.

It’s not the youths that need to change, it’s old business practices, ideas and intolerance.

I'm starting to love Twitter!

I've started to use twitter.com a lot more recently. If you're not sure what it is, the best description I've heard for Twitter is that it's a micro blogging application.

What I love about Twitter is that you can find people that have similar interests, jobs or needs as yourself and follow what they are getting up to. Already I've discovered some wonderful stuff and contacts.

One chap that started to follow me is http://dgold.info/radio/ . I had a quick look around his website and began to listen to his podcasts where I discovered a brilliant band called Joey Farr and the Fuggins Wheat Band.

Heres a video of the kind of stuff they do..... Stay with it, it builds and builds.

Let my know what you think?

The Last Few Months.

Hello, well it's been some time since my last blog and lots of stuff has happened since then. Most of the 7 months my family has been dealing with the fact the my dad Trev "Titch" Markwell is no longer with us. He died at the end of November, 19 weeks after being diagnosed with a very rare form of stomach cancer called linitis plastica. 

Surgery was not offered because there was no way of getting rid of the cancer. He'd already made his mind up early on that he didn't want chemo and after the doctors told us what he would go through he'd made totally the right choice.

I made the most of what time we had left. My brother got married two weeks after dad's diagnosis and that was a wonderful happy day for us all. Dad really gave the ball a kick at the evening reception. He could make friends with anybody and that night was no exception.

He was not in any pain when he died which we were all very happy about, I don't know how we would have coped if he had been. He passed away on Friday the 21st of November 2008 aged 72.

It's only been seven weeks since he died. It still doesn't appear to be real. I wanted to call him today to let him know that his car (that I now drive) passed it's MOT. Not bad for a 14 year old Volvo.

I miss him more and more everyday.

Hope to blog loads more in 09, regards David