This competition just gets tougher!

I've created a monster. To be more accurate daytime-cookery-competition-TV has created a monster.
Not a mealtime goes by in the Shaw household now without my four-year old daughter proclaiming "the carrots are delicious, and the taste comes through from the pine nuts. But the tomatoes are yuck."
Fortunately for me, whether we have lamb and sweet potato tagine with roasted vegetable cous cous or fishfingers and oven chips, her act always ends with "Today's winner is..." dramatic pause, camera switches from one sweating contestant to the next "...Neil".
I'm presuming she uses my first name to avoid any accusation of the judge favouring Daddy.
Honestly, she doesn't watch that much TV, but clearly just enough to turn her into a combination of John Torode and Jilly Goolden.
There are upsides as well, she is fascinated by cookery. The routine actually starts before the meal hits the table.
While I stand in the kitchen slaving away over a hot stove, she grabs a stool and works along beside me.
I wouldn't say she's quite Great British Menu material yet, at least I can't see Raymond Blanc tucking into a plastic cup half filled with water, mixed with milk, potato peelings, rice and £3.50-worth of organic dried wild basil. But she gets the idea. And I think she's planning the first episode of Come Dine With Me to feature five toddlers.
The foreign students we play host to over the summer have also been impressed - which isn't a good thing for the state of British cuisine.
Over the past two years we've had students staying with us from France, Austria, Germany, Czech Republic, Italy and Spain and all of them notice a range of cultural differences between our country and theirs.
But what they all notice in common is how little cooking people in Britain do, and how little time they spend together as a family eating.
Every one of them has been stunned by the amount of space given over in British supermarkets to ready meals and processed food.
And every one of them has been shocked by tales from their friends, staying in other houses, of meal after meal in front of the TV eating frozen pizza or beans on toast.
I usually reply with something about Britain having the longest working hours in Europe, but the reality is we seem to have lost the process that see one generation pass on cookery skills, even basic life skills, to the next.
The truth is, we would rather bung a shop-bought chicken masala in the microwave for three minutes and eat it while watching someone cook for a bunch of pretentious judges rather than cook one from fresh and eat it with our family talking about their day.
Well, I guess I better start preparing the menu for this evening, can't face another harsh dressing down from The Judge.

Abruptly, the sound ceased

Two amazing things happened last night. Firstly we launched a new-look website after months of planning and preparation, and secondly my other new baby slept for FIVE hours in her own cot!!!
I say months of planning, but the actual build of the live site was done in about seven working days. Seven days in which my second-in-command on the web team here was on holiday, seven days in which I also had to run the old thisisplymouth and seven nights in which I wasn't getting ANY sleep.
Of course before embarking on the build process I prayed to the Gods of News to keep everything quiet for a while to make the whole thing easier. Of course that doesn't work, there are no Gods of News. They are all demons.
But here it is, the new site. Brighter, fresher. cleaner. Hopefully you will be able to find everything you want a lot more easily. If not shout and I'll point you in the right direction.
So far the comments have stopped flooding in. Mostly because you now have to register to comment, so no more fake emails and no more trying to get around being blocked.
And while silence reigned online last night, it also reigned in my bedroom.
Delta is now 38 days old, and for the first time in, well, 38 days she decided to give sleep a try. And it seems she liked it.
Up until this point sleep has been taken only in three to four minute snatches, bookended by the high-pitch wailing you would normally associate with a banshee or a nuclear reactor about to go into meltdown.
Last night she watched Big Brother, fell asleep, slept for five hours, woke up to feed then went straight back to sleep and woke up again at 6am. IT'S A MIRACLE.
As with our first we've tried to be fully organic with Delta. But as Trinity was placid from the start it was easy to avoid chemical medicine at most points. Something wrong with the baby? Try massaging her with marjoram.
But when you're subjected to sleep deprivation like they use at Camp X-Ray, (didn't they change it's name to Camp Delta?...hang on a minute) Western medicine starts to look more attractive.
Sure we start out with the Infacol, then at 2am I'm starting to shout "DRUGS, MORE DRUGS" and at 4am I'm reaching for that old bottle of liquid morphine I've got left over from when I had my gall bladder out.
But it seems launching the new site worked to clam Delta down. I think it was preying on her mind.
Of course it would have been easier if two days into the build they didn't radically redesigned the basic structure of the site, then three hours before the launch redesigned the graphics and the navigation system.
And it would have been easier if commercial hadn't suddenly woken up to the fact we were getting a new site two days before it launched and suddenly started saying "where's that link no-one ever uses and when they do it doesn't work, I want it up here"
But it's all over now (ish) and there are several great new things you can do with the site. Every channel (news, crime, South east Cornwall etc) has its own rss, so you can subscribe to be updated with the news you want, and there is a /forward for each channel too to make it easier to navigate.
In a novelty we thought we'd try a search facility that actually works, and you can search across sites so if you like you can read articles from thisishull. Well, someone may want to.
It does have its disadvantages. Trying to keep the order of stories as you want it is like trying to herd yogurt.
So if you suddenly see "Seagull trapped on roof" as the top story, we haven't turned into thisisexeter (website of the year 2007), and normal service will soon be resumed.
The story ordering seems to work on Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principal (what do you mean you have no basic grasp of quantum physics?).
For those who haven't read A Brief History of Time or the technical manual for a Starfleet transporter pad, the uncertainty principle means we can predict where a story will appear, or when, but not both - and usually neither.
Ah well, we'll get used to it.
Let me know what you think. I'm sure Delta will.

There are no Muslim terrorists

I spent 12 solid hours yesterday editing comments as they poured in to thisisplymouth. Wading through so much filth can really wind you up.
In the end to distract me from the barrage of extreme racism I had to resort to extreme measures of my own - origami.
OK, it may seem fairly trivial, but believe me it's hard to think about just how evil some people's minds are when your trying to carry out a tricky reverse inside mountain fold along a line you won't even make for three more steps.
And the end result? Well, people are still racist, but at least I have a small green paper rabbit to look at.
At least 20 per cent of the comments that came in yesterday had to be taken down, and of course those making the comments have no idea why and get very indignant about it. The real curse of racism is that the people holding racist beliefs honestly feel them to be reasonable.
Of course some comments are worse that others. Those comments ordering we immediately round up all foreigners and execute them are rare, while those saying our country has been diluted by people intent on harming us are more common, and the most common are those saying 'send them all home' and 'Enoch Powell warned us this would happen'.
The real problem does come down to a lack of integration, this ghettoisation which is more prevalent in a city like Plymouth where the communities of people from minority ethnic backgrounds are smaller.
How many people in Plymouth spend a significant amount of time with Muslims? Very few. So of course there is misunderstanding, fear and hate. If you don't spend time with Muslim people your only view of Islam is what you have been told by people who can never understand it or, worse, may want to give you the wrong impression.
Many of the comments taken down imply or outright state that Islam is an aggressive faith, bent of world domination, that violence to infidels is at the core of the credo.
The truth is the exact opposite. There are no Muslim terrorists. No-one who commits acts like 9-11 or July 7 can call themself a Muslim. No-one who would use a lonely and broken individual to commit acts of terror is a Muslim. They are not considered Muslims by anyone inside or outside that faith.
I freely admit that I myself have spent little time with Muslims. I grew up and spent 18 years in Leicester, but my friends were Sikhs and Hindus. Same again when I spent four years in Peterborough and again when I spent three years at college.
I grew up counting Rashpal, Gurpreet, Mayur and Akash as my friends. While the Mooken brothers made my life hell in the playground.
I ate in the temple with Rashpal's family, enjoyed the sweets Gurpreet's mum made. But I have never spent significant time with anyone from a Muslim background. (Unless you count the Muslim guy called Innocent my cousin briefly dated, who my dad accidentally fed pork - we didn't see him much after that)
But because I grew up and have spent a lot of time in a fully integrated city I find it 'more difficult' to think in a racist manner - it just doesn't come naturally.
All those saying we sould send the Muslims home, the only answer is the opposite, invite all people into our homes.
The objective or terrorism isn't to blow things up, it is to instill terror. If your reaction to these attacks is fear and hate, the terrorists have won.

Bloody public transport

Bloody public transport. Here I sit, blogging from the slightly grubby and very cramped seat of a Number 12 bus - the only form of transport which seems to think the most direct route from Torbay Hospital to Paignton is via the centre of Torquay.
40 minutes?!? I can do Paignton to Plymouth in half that (police traffic officers please ignore that last remark).
Insult to injury the bus timetable told me a bus was due a minute after I strolled up (lie) and that they came every seve minutes (lie). The fact three buses following the exact same timetable passed in the opposite direction while I was waiting for this one seems designed by fate, or Stagecoach, to induce a stroke.
And then two turn up at once. I thought that was just the punchline to a Jasper Carrott joke.
To top it all off my epic voyage home is setting me back £2.85. So Gordon Brown can continue his pogrom of taxing us motorists back to the Stone Age while the oil companies mainline cash direct from our accounts but it seems there is no alternative - buses are even more expensive than driving and about as customer-friendly as a Barnstaple B&B.
So why do I find myself traversing the Queen's highway with the hoi polloi?
As previously reported my other half is expecting our second child. Not due for another couple of weeks but when the maternity unit sees a lull in the tidal wave of economic migrants "coming over here, using our NHS"(damn, I've come over all Daily Mail) I guess they decide to induce.
Having got a lift in to avoid filling out the second mortgage applicaion necessary to fund a day's parking, I was planning to wait by the bedside all day for the action to start, watching £2 a minute TV and contracting C Diff, but when the midwife heard I'd been up all night uploading election coverage to thisisplymouth she took pity and told me to go home for a nap. Either that or she heard I was a journalist and wanted me out of the way. Ah well, by the time this bus gets me home at least the new arrival will be old enough to drive back and pick me up.
In other news, I'd say even more exciting news but the other half may kill me, thisisplymouth has rocketed up the chart to become the third largest website in our nationwide group, and has just been shortlisted for a prestigious website of the year award.
Well must go, a bloke with a dodgy grin, a Morrison's carrier bag and a smell of yak is eying up my palmtop and the bus is just pulled upo in what is either Paignton bus station or one of the slightly-less gentrified parts of Albania.

Victory and the price of freedom

WE WON!! No-one was more surprise than me when the camera swung round to table one in the conference room at the Holiday Inn as it was announced that thisisplymouth and The Herald had won a Media Innovation Award.
One year, well 15 months, messing around with this multimedia stuff and this was our second awards ceremony.
The last one we got beaten to the post by the Financial Times and had to settled for 'highly commended', this time we got the prize.
I was so sure we wouldn't win, after all as I say we're real newcomers to this, that I had no speech prepared. Fortunately the Editor took to the stage with us and said some very wise things. I mean they were probably wise, I was dumbstruck by all the lights and cameras and trying to hear what was going on through too much Venetian red wine. Well, they should have put our award earlier on.
The prize came for our nativities minisite, which allowed all you out there to view the hundreds of pictures of photographers took at nativity plays last year through an advent calendar.
Of course the real reason I'd had too much red wine was that our photographers couldn't make the gala meal, so the wine we'd ordered for them accidentally ended up in my glass.
If I had been able to say anything, it would have been a big thank you to all involved in putting the site together, a big thank you to the judges for giving us the award, and a big thank you to the media industry for welcoming us with open arms. I'd also like to thank all the Herald readers and thisisplymouth visitors for putting up with our experimentation over the last year. Our tarffic is 100 per cent up on November 2006 when we first started improving the site with multimedia content - so I take it you like what you see.
...
After Friday night's ceremony it was back to reality with a bang, weeding through story comments again. For every comment on the Ben McBean story praising 'Harry's Hero' for his bravery, there was another decrying all Royal Marines for taking part in the conflict in the first place.
Once again, each comment has to go to that subjective test - is this an honestly held belief? How far do we allow freedom of speech to intrude on the feelings of others?
There are no answers. The Royal Marines, whatever else they are fighting for, also stand for democracy and the right to say what you want - rights that did not exist under the Taliban. If Ben McBean has the cojones to face extremist insurgents in one of the harshest environments on Earth, if he has the bravery to come back from what those insurgents have done to him, I believe he would want us to allow people in this country the freedom he is fighting for in another. I would hope that even those that cannot support the conflict, would be able to support those ordered to fight in it.
We should allow people freedom of expression, and all endeavour to consider others when we freely express ourselves.

EARTHQUAKE

Well I survived my first major earthquake. I say major, one person injured, a few bricks slightly out of place - but apparently it's the biggest we've had in the country for 25 years. 5.2 on the Richter Scale so I'm told.
I wasn't that far from the epicentre in Market Rasen, I was staying overnight in Leicester while taking part in a two day conference in Nottingham.
So you want the dramatic every cough and spit first hand account of my horror at the hands of Mother Nature?
Well...I was woken up at about 12.50am to feel the house rapidly vibrating, with a low growl rumbling all around. It took me a while to figure out whether the boiler was about to blow up or if it was the effects of the chicken satay (Thai style) I had for dinner (with fried rice).
It was over by the time I had woken up enough to realise it was neither. And that's it, dogs barking in the street, a few car alarms going off, and I drifted back to my restless sleep dreaming about the new website content management system I've been trying out (yes, even my dreams are geeky sometimes...apart from that one I had about Angeline Jolie dressed as Xena warrior princess).

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Personally I think this new management system is much more interesting. Probably won't make top story on Radio One Newsbeat, but it pushes my buttons.
Without getting into too much detail, expect to see thisisplymouth exponentially improved before the summer - barring flood, fire or er... earthquake.
PS It's quite disconcerting being in the East Midlands, everything is just slightly different from Devon. Even the roadkill was different driving along the A46 today, no badgers, and I haven't seen so many bruised and battered foxes lying at the side of the field since Argyle took on Holloway's new crew.

Hell in a handbasket

Everyone experiences those moments in life when things shift, slightly, and nothing looks the same any more.
You know the kind of thing, like you're watching Neighbours and suddenly it has adverts in the middle - you're just not used to it.
For me it was taking a tour of the maternity unit in Torbay at the start of the week, the same day, coincidentally, when news broke about them giving a mother the wrong baby to breast feed and giving another baby in special care someone else's breast milk, but that's by the by.
The first thing that unnerved me was the sheer number of people. Of course I've seen the news reports saying maternity units are now inundated, but you have to experience it for yourself to truly appreciate it.
Four years ago, with the tour before our first, there were less than a dozen of us and we were given a leisurely two-hour tour, going through every aspect of the unit and seeing every facility with no rush. no hassle. Everyone smiled.
This time we were crammed into one of about a dozen groups of about 20 people. The unit was so stretched they had to get one of the anaesthetists to act as receptionist while all the midwives and various volunteers took people on tours. We got about 20 minutes, most areas and a whole floor were off limits because they were so busy.
Throughout the whole experience the midwife was at first begging, then almost ordering people to have their baby at home rather than come into hospital. When she wasn't showing how basic and uncomfortable the surroundings were she was re-enforcing how draconian the visiting rules are. Having had one child in Torbay I would have to say the facilities and staff were great. But they seem to be under so much pressure now they would much prefer you just stay away, thank you very much.
Hmph. Thinks I.
But the real shocker, and at this point I should highlight that my wife is a teacher outside Plymouth, was that one of those in our merry band of expecting months was an underage pupil at her school while another was a teacher sacked for having un-professional relations with a male pupil.
Hmph. Hell in a handbasket thinks I.
Women have been having babies for so long you'd have thought we, and by that I mean the medical profession and society, would have got it right by now - and by that I mean both the facilities we provide and having our ethics in order.
Maybe I'm just getting too old, perhaps I should start writing letters of complaint about the state of modern society to Herald Express postbag.

Everything in moderation

Its not an easy life being a web editor. Okay so there's none of the danger of front-line combat or the hard work of construction, but it has it's moments.

I'm not talking the 5.30am starts six days a week, or even being on duty 24/7 - that's just the job. If you want to avoid the gut-wrenching feeling of being scooped you have to stay alert.
The price of inner peace is eternal vigilance.

Perhaps the toughest apsect is moderating all the comments that come in on our stories. On an ordinary day the flow of comments, although significantly higher than it was a year ago, is just about manageable by myself and a team of people here in the office.
But when a topic touches a nerve all hell breaks loose.

The campaign to keep the Nigerian family here in Plymouth is the greatest recent example of that, with more than 2,000 comments on the stories in a week, all requiring careful attention.
Usually I try to leave as many comments as possible untouched. I delete only where absolutely necessary and edit as little as I can.

But with this topic it grew more and more difficult through the week. There were the inevitable racist remarks, some of which were easy to spot, others of which required some thought.

Each comment required a bit of perspective, a few moments to stand back, set aside any personal thoughts on the situation and reflect on what the commenter was saying. Was it racist? Was I being oversensitive? Would other people view it as racist? Would a court of law view it as being likely to incite racial hatred?

Of course, in the end, we couldn't please everyone. Any comment which was edited or deleted sparked instant online retribution with claims that the Herald was twisting the story, trying to show more community support for the family than existed and repressing the views of the people of Plymouth.

In fact the majority of comments that were edited or deleted weren't down to racial views, but down to potentially libellous comments being made which could have landed the commenter in serious trouble.

On the other side those campaigning for the family came close to backing out of the debate, claiming the Herald's comment section had been taken over by the BNP who were using it to spread their propaganda. In the end they relented and I believe the debate was vital, healthy and a valuable contribution to the ongoing story. No-one can deny the passion of the campaigners or their opposition.

At the end of the day, as I say, we couldn't make everyone happy. But I think we probably upset most people an equal amount, which has to be some kind of victory.

Of course being web editor is as enjoyable as it is challenging, and despite the Gothic glower it even has me chuckling on occasion.

Take this morning for example, while updating our social network pages, I came across a friend request from Paranormal Devon, who wanted to join our happy band on MySpace.

The psychic investigators sent a personal message with their request 'didn't know you had an account on MySpace otherwise would have requested sooner.'

Not particularly psychic nor investigative.

Sorry Paranormal Devon, couldn't resist, it just tickled my funny bone. Welcome to the family.

Herald on MySpace

Herald on Bebo

Herald on Facebook

Herald group on Facebook

What's in a name?

So we've reached the stage of trying to decide on a name for the baby. Our three year old has already chosen Lola for a girl and for a boy...Mr Bump.
We've decided we may not go with those options, and have drawn up a shortlist, as well as digging out the old shortlist we had four years ago.
We showed it to father-in-law last weekend and he hated them all...so we must be doing something right.
I've kind of settled on Delta as a perfect first name for a girl. Our first is called Trinity as she is the third member of the family (among other reasons) and Delta would fit perfectly with the name/number system as it is the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet (pretentious, εγώ?)
We are having trouble deciding on a middle name though. Trinity's middle name is Africa, as that is where she was conceived, but three-bed-semi-in-Wimbledon doesn't have the same ring, much more suitable for a Womble.
We thought Delta Dawn, bit too American, then Delta Echo...but where do you stop Delta Echo Foxtrot Golf?
Boys names, a lot more difficult. I kind of settled on Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve in the Bible - the ancestor of Noah and hence the forefather of all mankind. Medieval lore has it that as Adam lay on his deathbed he sent Seth back into the Garden of Eden. Seth convinced the Archangel Michael to open the gates and once inside he collected three seeds from the Tree of Life. Those seeds were placed in Adam's mouth before he was buried and grew to become the trees that provided the wood for the three crosses on Golgotha. Not a bad name.
Of course father-in-law points out that Seth is also one of the Egyptian gods of the underworld, the Lord of Chaos and the god of people with red hair. Now death and chaos I can stomach..but gingers *shudder*
Personally I was more concerned people might think he was named after Seth Armstrong off of Emmerdale Farm. Then again I was named after Neil Armstrong so there's some connection there.
Obviously the internet is the best place to find baby names, and I've developed a new found respect for the Miwok tribes after coming across the name Tumu, meaning a deer thinking about eating wild onions. Now there's a word you need in your life. Much of the Miwok languages seem to be made up of similar concepts, the sound of a bears claws, the cry of a hen harrier while descending, the noise of a salmon in a slow-running stream. I think I might just go with Nigel.

Inner tubes and the rise of China

Is it just me or have babies got more expensive in the last four years? I'm guessing it's got something to do with the price of oil or possibly the rise of industrialised China.
I only mention it because Saturday saw the first of what is likely to be many trips to Mothercare, now that the latest addition to the clan is well on the way.
We dug the old pushchair out of the loft to find all three of the tyres were flat, and no amount of pumping would get them to stay up for long. Long enough to get to the library then half way back before having to physically drag the fully laden beast, kicking and screaming, along the mean streets of Devon.
So the kind lady in Mothercare advised us that after three years the inner tubes may have perished. "Hmph", says I.
"How much?" says the heavily laden wife. To which we are informed that inner tubes will cost us £17 each. "Argh", says I, wandering off to look at the new pushchairs mumbling something about it being cheaper to buy a new one.
The idea of buying a new buggy deflated faster than three-year-old inner tubes when I started flicking over the price tags and finding that 649.99 wasn't the model number but the price.
Fortunately back at home I logged on to eBay and managed to find three inner tubes, plus delivery, for well under £10. Derek, the man who will supply them, assures me they are now on the way.
I'm sure having the first one wasn't this expensive. Must be the oil thing. I wonder if you can get babies to run on used cooking oil.