The Best of British Blogging

British newspapers obviously are in a state worse than I expected if this is what they're up to thesedays. The Guardian, one of the remaning newspapers who doesn't need to comment on Jordan and Peter Andre having "sex"... give them time though if this is the kind of crap they're going to publish.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/weblogs/story/0,14024,1108883,00.html

The Guardian's second British blog awards found the country's webloggers in fine form, with last year's high standards maintained. Simon Waldman, chair of the judges, hands out the accolades

Now, I don't feel bitter about these awards. My blog hasn't been publicised, hell, I don't even know if anyone even bothers reading it. If they do, well done. If you don't, well, you're not reading this - are you? I gotta stop my moronic comments like that. Anyways, each category was full of bullshit, so I thought I'd do the British thing and be as cynical as possible, y'know the type of person who will rant and rave about how crap the blog is, and why it shouldn't have won. Yeah, I think it's worth a try. Unless I get bored and decide a wank is the best alternative.

In the best design category, the winner is Rob Hinchcliffe and Euan Mitchell's The Big Smoker. They narrowly beat Paul Cleghorn's The Bunker. Both blogs combined good looks and clear presentation. But the Big Smoker was a little bit more elegant, sticking to a simple colour scheme and black and white photography for extra effect.

http://www.thebigsmoker.co.uk/

So... this is the best designed British blog? Obviously they must have looked at a wiiide range of blogs, probably all over the internet. Or, they popped down to Brighton to see how they could get the easiest fuck. "Hey, got a blog?" "Yeah!" "Fuck me and we'll give you Guardian acclaim!"

I expected this to be half-decent... I have messed around with Photoshop before, and so has my dog. My dog has created better artwork than this, and she doesn't even have hands.

The design is a sort of foggy yellow... mmm, kind of like it's a yellow that's been smoked out by the 'Big Smoker'. Or not. It just relies on HTML tables. Ooh, that's really modern - isn't it? I don't pay for my blog site, I don't even bother designing it, yet this piece of shit wins. It doesn't look shit, I will give you that. It looks distinctly average... I couldn't point you to a site that looks better than that because I'm not as sad as Simon Waldman to search Brighton for people to blogfuck... but I can assure you that there are people who own blogs that also possess this amazing magical thing called TALENT. It's awesome. Some people actually put lots of hard work, lots of creative skill and thought and get good looking results. It's a bit like Kylie Minogue after Neighbours. She puts in a lot of hard work, creative skill and has a superb arse... Arse is the connecting word. It looks like someone had a dodgy curry and shat on this site. Poor blokes...

Black and white also featured in the winner of the best use of photography category. This went to Rob Gardiner and nyclondon.com for the stunning quality of his photography. We also commended two others in this category: Camerantics, which also featured among the judges' selections in the best design category, and Apparently Nothing - both full of arresting images and enough to make the average aspirant snapper (like me) sick with envy.

http://www.nyclondon.com/blog

Like I said. If I am due to give credit, I shall. I will... this guy certainly can take cool looking photos. But, I think he needs to upgrade his camera to something we like to call colour. Black and white sure as hell looks great, but doesn't he want to test his skills out with colour? Anyone, with enough practice and talent, can capture great B&W images, but colour is a different board game. This guy has ran around London, and just taken photos of them... touched them up in Photoshop so they look nice, and that's it. He has talent indeed, but it seems a bit limited, doesn't it?

The under 18s category was incredibly close. It was a choice between the slightly surreal, chatty writing of Olivia Fairweather's Magnetic Kid Liv, and the remarkably mature A Teenager Blogs by Max Munton. Olivia's writing was excellent and exceptional. But, in the end, we felt Max Munton was running a better overall blog: good design, regular updates, and intelligent writing full of personality. And he's only 17.

http://inmyplace.net/

Oh, this pissed me off. Seeing as this category would be one I should be entered into, I hoped that the "intelligent writing full of personallity" would be just that... I have lots of literate friends who do the same... I also have literate friends who write boring pieces of shit. Oh, if only Max Munton was my friend, he'd come under the latter category too!

On my way to school, every morning, I exchange friendly “hellos” and smiles with the same postman we’ve had for as long as I can remember and a random woman taking her two bubbly, enthusiastic children to the same primary school I went to. That alone sets up the three of us for a better day. It doesn’t take much.

Oh, that's real cute sonny. Every morning I walk past a guy who works in the local library, he says "hello" to me because... DUM DUM DUM... HE KNOWS ME! Damn that! Then I get in a car and drive to a train station. This sets all of us up for a superb day because we are such happy people living great lives! Oh, put Mary Poppins on the VCR, I want to step in time, step in time!

After work on Thursdays I give a couple of quid to the Big Issue seller who sells outside the Majestyk nightclub in City Square. It turns his face, ignored by hundreds every minute, into vibrant delight full of thought and chat that is worth the two quid on its own. “Have a nice day, sir. Take care, sir.” And what’s it to me? A few minutes work, that’s all. It doesn’t take much.

This is cringeworthingly sickening... really bad stuff. A seventeen guy called Max, winning an award for being as soppy as possible. "This morning I supported a homeless guy's heroin addiction..." Yeah, good one Bingo. You can buy two items from the McDonalds £1.00 menu with that £2. Why don't you go buy the guy two items? Because he doesn't want those two items, he wants that £2 to go straight into his local dealer's account as he cooks up some scag.

I guess, in a way, he is trying to do the right thing. If people were more like him then wars wouldn't exist, blah blah, but in reality, he isn't making a difference. People will still get AIDs, some people will be born Welsh, some may even be called 'Rhiannon'... why don't you adopt something beautiful, like snobbery?

What's more fun? Giving a homeless guy £2 or walking past him, laughing at the fact that he hasn't showered since birth, actually, ever, the placenta is hanging off his fingers still. Eating a juicy burger and sipping "a tasty beverage" (oh Samuel L. Jackson you God) whilst teasing him with your designer label clothes and pretty girl companions. Yeah, the latter is so much better. So, what's a compromise? I have it... instead of being a total snob, you can show you are bigger and better than him, but also giving him food. Go to Pizza Hut, like I did one night in the West End, leave one half-eaten, picked up and revolting piece of pizza, wrap it in a cloth, scrunch it a little. Now, find a homeless guy and give him it. Make sure your friends laugh when you give it to him. Then leave, turning around periodically to see him sigh and hate his life even more.

There’s something special about this New York trip. The mere sight of seeing plane tickets for the first time in my life the other day was enough to excite me. The songs I love will come to life in front of me. What was only fiction until now, is about to become reality. Life could change.

Life really could change. These people called al Queda could be on your flight, it could be hijacked, you could be shot on-board, or killed when it penetrates into a deserted field... Yeah, methinks life really could change for you! Haha.

In the best specialist category we saw evidence of the increasing number of top quality niche weblogs. Annie Mole's London Underground Tube Diary won respect for its humour and detail. But the prize went to Phil Gyford's remarkable Pepys' Diary. The project started on January 1 this year: Gyford will put a new entry of the 17th-century London-based diarist's work on the web every day for the next 10 years. As one of our judges said: "The audience is entranced: just look at the number of 'annotations' each entry receives."

http://www.pepysdiary.com/

This is just pure boredom. Who really, in their right mind, wants to read about a total stranger, who also happens to be the most BORING guy in the world? "I was in the office today. I did some work". Oh, that's the way to win an award... BORE THE READER TO DEATH!

The best written category threw up a number of gems. The three winning titles were all very different. Stuart Hughes is the BBC reporter who lost his leg to a landmine in Iraq. Since February he has been keeping a brilliant blog called Beyond Northern Iraq (not endorsed by the BBC). It is an excellent daily take on happenings in the Gulf written by someone with personal experience, providing a really good read with smart links.

http://stuarthughes.blogspot.com/

I like this. I mean, the guy is an idiot for losing his leg, but a fellow blogspotter, who deserves a hand shake for this. I mean,his perspective of life probably has been shaken up by what happened to him in Iraq; he's probably a superb hopper too. I didn't read that much of his blog, but from what I saw; it was well presented, humourous and topical. See? I'm not that jealous.

- posted by Ronnie @ 10:17 PM

 
The Comments You Can Comment On

Now with the power of the internet and these fabolous pieces of shit that are called computers, you can now comment on my comments! Click the correct button and you can tell me how idiotic, moronic, up my self, foolish and stupid I am. In fact, I can even reply and tell you what a penis you are. Wow, it's like a schoolyard slanging match.

Or you could just be nice. Maybe donate some money to my dying mother. What's that mum? Fallen down the stairs again? Your legs are broken again? I can't afford to pay for a new hip for you.




















What do you take me for? Poor? Of course I could fucking afford it. I live in the countryside morons.
- posted by Ronnie @ 10:13 PM

 
Change of e-mail address

I'm not sure if anyone has attempted to e-mail me... (thanks Steve Garfield for the heads up though!) but my e-mail address has changed to ronnie_joice@cerebral.ho8.com. If you tried to e-mail ronnie@ronniejoice.com ever, I wouldn't of got the e-mail. I haven't actually renewed my ronniejoice.com domain yet; as I'm too busy spending money on other things. However, if my host, Nick, does ever read this - he will get another year's payment out of me... very soon I hope too!

More rants coming soon, I promise.
- posted by Ronnie @ 9:44 PM