OK, I'm going to admit it: I've changed. Massively. Maybe not to what you said, or in the way you said I would - but I have.

Lay on the grass earlier today with Lauren Who is Not on Twitter; head down and thinking about life, it all suddenly fell into place.

My phone reassuringly buzzed with your messages, and rang with your voice: I lay basking in the sun. Almost perfectly still. The first time.

Through my mind, less frantic than normal, the thoughts flow like a river in the sun... what if this, what if that...

Around me, others lie in their own little version of bliss and I talk rubbish to Lauren, who talks it back - or listens with a friendly disinterest trademarked for those who just do - as the words float off into the distance. Transient in their cruicallity. We meander off into the woods and find a quiet spot, part in the shade and part not. It's as if we're not there.

The pervert with the camera creeps in the trees, but the buzzing continues, as I smile into the distance and send you a picture so it's as if you were there too.

"So you can get anywhere if you can get to Old Steine!"

"Yer, I guess you can.

"So why do we spend such a fucking lot of time there?"

But after all of it, I just end up smiling and wondering about what dog it will be.

(This blog was a shameless attempt by me to write like Lee. Read his blog and he might write more.)

I kind of went to a bus rally. I wasn't sure what to do, so I took lots of pictures and got very sunburnt. Here's the pictures.

I've spent the past week or so writing a few hundred thousand words in an attempt to come up with about 3,000 that I actually like all the while trying to analyse something that I wrote from a viewer's perspective.

It's not easy, but talking to a couple of people yesterday I was shocked to discover that the approach I take to writing essays is somewhat like a programming.

To a certain extent, having written this essay I am now almost certain that English could be referred to as an object-orientated programming code for humans.

The first part of each essay is a title. Programs have those. A bit like what you see in the title bar, I guess.

The second part of an essay is where you start doing your review of all the theories other people have put forward that you might like to discuss in this essay. You 'define' them.

What do you do in programming? That's right, declare your variables.

$myth = 'text'
write 'a part of metonomy' (I won't bore you with the details of this; this blog post is verging on the insane anyway)

After declaring them, you're then free to use them in the essay in any way you want - as many times as you want. Provided it's sort of relevant.

Then you get on to what your essay is actually doing - its main purpose in life is something. In this case, I'd probably have typed something along the lines of this:



At the end of this process, you've got an essay. Normally, of course, you'd need a conclusion but since we are mainly dealing with Media Studies at the moment then this isn't necessary at all.

I think the fact that my brain is coming up with things like this blog post actually demonstrates that I'm going completely and utterly insane and possibly might need to be placed in a padded room pretty soon.

As you were though, my next challenge is to talk about Child Language Acquisition and how kids really do need some input before they reach adulthood, in order to learn language.

One of the final projects I've had for this year has been to produce a promotional or informative short film about a subject that I chose.

Working with a production team of 4 other people, we came up with the idea of what you see below. Watch it, if you like, and let me know what you think by clicking "respond".

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In the process of filming the video, I've learnt an awful lot - as well as shared a lot of the knowledge I already had with some of the other members of my team, too.

It's also the first time I've edited anything of this length from start to finish, with just a little bit of input from some other people to stop me going mad, and make me run around shouting "FIVE YEARS TIME WE WILL BE WALKING AROUND A ZOO", all the while showing Emily sat on a bench before she walks to it!

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You will note, of course, that both of those things actually did happen.

For the geeks amongst you, the film was shot on a Sony AVCHD camera in 720p. It was edited using Adobe Premier Pro 4, and the original concept was developed by Jeff Khan with further "organic" development by Emily, Judith and myself when we were out on the shoots. At each shoot we had 3 people - one person responsible for appearing on camera, one for the camera and the other to assist where needed.

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I produced the film, and directed four of the six location shoots (can you guess which I didn't?) alongside my team. We are, of course, indebted to the help we had from the Bluebell Railway and Shoreham Airport - who gave us access to their staff and properties, and were incredibly helpful.

We've just had what a load of people were calling the first "online" election, The BBC had a 'twitter Election Correspondant' in the shape of Rory Cellan-Jones with a touchscreen Mac and the occasional iPhone appearing on TV, as well as a giant iPad which not only lasted out the full stupidly-long 18 hour broadcast but also managed to look far better than Dimbleby, and cause Emily Matallis to change her dress half way through the night.

Of course, turns out it wasn't much of an Internet Election at all. In fact, it was slightly less of a modern election - the authorititive, informed public simply massively shrugged their shoulders over everything and let the politicans get on with it anyway. If anything - the massive amount of positivity on the Internet for the Liberal Demoncrats actually translated into their loss of several of their existing seats, as if some packets had gone missing or something, and the Conservatives bought the front page of YouTube on May 6th.

So, while the BBC were putting together an experimental role for Rory to see how the Internet affected the election, we were all busy tweeting away saying "we agree with Nick," while actually wondering if everyone was mad enough to believe us. When Sky came by, we said "Yer, Conservatives rock!" and when the BBC asked they simply waggled an electronic family of worms at us on a screen and we all shrugged our shoulders again.

Even today, there are journalists crawling all over the vast .gov.uk websites charting the removal of policies and the renaming of departments all over the place. A valid thing to do, certainly, but not something that's that exciting since Parliament hasn't even got back to business yet. It's interesting, nonetheless, to see how the Goverment's going to deal with the first massive change since the Internet really did take off.

How exactly we're supposed to understand how this is going on is down to how well the media understand what's going on. Most of it, they should be fine on; but what continues to annoy me is the 'new' refreshed and understanding tech-savvy media stealing pictures from indepdendent film makers on YouTube (Yes, I'm exagerating a bit here) and crediting them to this autonomous being "YouTube."

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I hate to break it to them, but YouTube doesn't actually produce any video, or comission it. So in absoloutely no way should it be credited to them, but - instead - the person who filmed it, edited it and uploaded it.

Over the weekend, I pretty much realised that I was getting closer to the person I used to be. The guy who used to run a really succesful news website, just because he couldn't get any work experience at the real media.

I used to have the power to do anything I thought was possible. The power came with a price though - once the Festival in 2006 and the site was closed, we all got drunk and did a pretty good job of celebrating what we'd achieved - and then nothing much happened.

Since then, I've had something of a cool stroll through life. Stopping off at various points of so-called achievement, and celebrating them. Being proud of what I'd done, all the while trailing along something which I was clinging on to as being "the original idea".

There were times when I clearly put a lot of effort in - my infamous, and much-loved 90 hour week at a combination of Costa and other jobs was clearly a hell of a lot of work. You don't manage to do 14 days in a row, including many 12 hour shifts without really really meaning it. You don't just accidentally do it. At the time, I certainly enjoyed it.

But on my return, I can't help but notice that nine months on: the only real change is a piece of banana on top.

To quote Victoria Wood, as I often do.... "Hello!"

This is a bit awkward. I'm not totally sure what to say now, and there I've gone and grabbed everyone's attention.

It's been a while since we've exchanged packets and you've heard me say anything hasn't it? I don't think we need dwell on the reasons why I haven't been around on the Internet, because that's much-discussed by people who need to care, and by those who don't - and I think it's safe to say that while some of the things said and exchanged are true, others are not, and the importance of some of the truths and some of the lies are even less factual.

It's the third time that I've had an issue like this in my life - the first, of course, being with George Galloway MEP, the second with someone rather less important who was offended at my over-use of the word 'shit', and the third with an unknown who had assumed. I've certainly not got to say that I've benefitted a lot from any of these situations - because I'm always left feeling like I should do more. Alas, I have accepted that I cannot. So we must move onwards.

To have actually managed to get to this stage in this piece of writing is reasonably difficult. Since, whenever I set out to write a blog in the past I've had an actual thing to discuss.


This time, though, things are a bit different - and I feel a little bit like I should just be doing some sort of housekeeping? I feel as if I should reel of a list of things I've done over the past 5 months that are significant enough to tell you; I feel as if I should somehow be compelled to have had a slightly more interesting life so that I can stick to the facts and just tell it you straight. In all honesty, I haven't. I've had a hell of a lot of fun over the past five months - all of it far too fun, fast, and uninteresting to tell you about.

I feel somewhat like I've come back to work after being off for a very long time. I feel as though some stuff has changed. The changes, though, not obvious enough that they caused me any great discomfort. The door I always used to get into the office hasn't been replaced by an ornamental stature of an elephant. Indian or African. The security guard still sat sleeping in front of mass of screens showing the mundane reality of life.

Sat back at my desk, just a quick glance to my right - and I notice that the plant has grown, unmaintained by anyone - because I was the only one that ever bothered. Tough, and unloved: it's survived without me; it's still glad I'm back. It quite likes the company, even though it doesn't admit it.

To my left, my trusty notepad is there - previously home to the many scribbles and notes that constituted opinions. It's got "old" scrawled across the front of it in a thick black marker. No new additions are welcome.

I'm in the seat.

We don't stop. You can't stop; we're going to celebrate. One more time.

See you tomorrow,
Nic x