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Sharing workflow and business processes from the Youth Media Team in Ireland.
On writing after being addicted to Twitter for 12 years
I’m trying to get into blogging again so this is rambling.
Brian O’Connell interviewed me about phone addiction recently and I do think people are addicted to the scroll. I’m on Twitter too much, though I schedule my tweets so there’s that there is my excuse… Twitter roared into life and culture around 12 years ago and became big for a while. It allowed the instant spreading of thoughts or headlines and allowed people to react to it. If you blogged back then there was no way you could just fire off two sentences and that was enough. Explain yourself boy, elaborate what you mean kid, we didn’t come to your website for two lines of anything. With Facebook and Twitter feeds, we never left those spaces to read, one short bit after another was there.
I was going through how many winners of the Blog Awards ended up writing books. The original Blog Awards, mind, not the one that tried to trade off the thing I helped to start. My God there is some amount of authors from the list of winners. It goes to show that maybe the fair judging system combined with the raw talent that was there, writing, reading, giving feedback and creating a community gave people a road and map to keep going. They were going to be writers anyway, let’s be clear, their talent was there already.
Twenty Major. Grandad, Shane Hegarty, Sinéad Gleeson, Sweary Lady, Beaut.ie’s Aisling, Panti, Donal Skehan, Arseblog,Nessa Robins, Annie Atkins.
You read it so much in interviews that the advice for writing from writers is just sit down and write. Create a routine and stick to it. A habit. Publishers also talk about recruiting people that have pre-made audiences so it is easier to sell them a book.
Anyway, why I got on to this was I found it really hard to write my 13th Ones to Watch post.It was a relief getting it done but it felt more rewarding too. This blog post I’m writing now feels like it is doing to stay around for a while, for years or longer. While my tweets are findable, they don’t feel permanent. Yet I’m firing off tweets all the time.
During the year there were so many times I wanted to write something but it was easier to write a tweet storm/Twitter thread. Perhaps it was the instant gratification of a Like or Retweet when tweeting and also perhaps banging out 140 characters or basically a one liner after another and another is much easier than stringing sentences and paragraphs together that have to flow. Twitter is writing bullet points whereas blogging is fleshing out the table of contents. We saw it back then with blogging, someone would take time off and then they were gone for good, not coming back.
I remember an old teacher of mine talking about Lent and how it is much easier to give something up than taking something on. I guess Twitter became the easier thing for many of us or even not Twitter but regular life. I used to write two blog posts a day for a few years. I had 2000 visits a day to this blog too. A habit. I got nothing done in my day job…
The people that make writing look easy I’m sure worked really hard to make it look that easy. The finished smooth work needed plenty of attention. Even now as I write this blog post I have various sentences that I’m writing out with points that I want to make and then I’ll create “joining sentences” or “bridging sentences” maybe? to stitch together these little islands of thoughts. This blog post is going to go through many edits, deletions and expansions before you get to see it. And it will probably sit there for a day or two but I hope no longer as I’ll not come back for weeks. Even writing this now I feel like the writing is helping me structure thoughts in my head. Writing brings clarity of thought.
And now I pick up on writing this a day later but at least I went off and wrote another blog post in the mean time which I’m happy about.
There’s been a big drop off in blogging by the people I know and a whole new wave of bloggers that have come in. Maybe we’ll see a new wave of authors come out of the current blogging community or maybe the creativity will have an outlet elsewhere? There have been Twitter users that have ended up creating books from these spaces though a lot of them seem like a book of fortune cookie phrases or one liner jokes. Sorry Gerry. What seems to work though is a single topic Twitter account such as The Irish For that makes so much sense to be made into a reference book of sorts. Which can then extend into something more for the next book/iteration. We’ve seen Facebook Groups create books too with “Oh my God What a Complete Aisling” turning into a book. The creators have mentioned though, like great comedians, they honed their skills over time before they produced this great work. This work has the legs to be a book, a play, a musical and TV show. A world was created in that Facebook Group.
Podcasts are being snapped up by studios like Netflix and others to option for TV shows and movies and books too. I would like to see more blogging from people in my social networks but it’s very hard to create this habit and kick another one but maybe where hard work and toiling of a craft come together no matter the media, we might see new creations and new works come out that will end up on book shelves or on the radio or TV, if we make a habit of it.
Cottage Pie Leftovers Recipe
Week 1: Recipe 2
Make Once Eat Twice
Yesterday I made a braised beef with seasonal veg dish and using the leftovers I’ve now made a cottage pie.
I’ll keep it simple, because my recipes have to take little time in the kitchen. The only additional ingredients you will need are about 200g of frozen peas and sweetcorn, plus a small amount of grated cheese.
Shred the remaining beef from the previous meal and stir it into the leftover gravy.
Preheat your fan oven to 150 degrees Celsius.
Spoon the gravy and beef mixture into a large baking dish. Top with the frozen vegetables.
Spoon the leftover mashed potatoes on top of the vegetables and gravy mixture. Sprinkle grated cheese on top of the mashed potatoes.
Cook in the oven for 45 minutes, until all the food is warmed through and serve immediately.
If you want to, this meal is also perfect for freezing so once assembled, cover well and put straight into the freezer where it will keep for up to 1 month. Ensure it is completely defrosted before cooking in the oven.
The post Cottage Pie Leftovers Recipe appeared first on Caitriona Redmond - Wholesome Ireland.
Braised Beef With Seasonal Veg
Week 1: Recipe 1
Make Once Eat Twice
For the first in the recipe series I’ve gone back to a family favourite. Mam used to make this braised beef dish in a heavy casserole dish with a lid. The homely flavours come thanks to the veg that all comes from a local farm. It doesn’t get more Irish than this.
Ingredients
3 onions, peeled and roughly chopped
1kg housekeepers cut of beef (note remove any string or elastic before cooking)
4 large carrots, peeled and chopped into large chunks
1/2 small turnip (or swede) peeled and chopped
1 litre of vegetable stock (use hot water and 1 vegetable stock cube)
1 heaped tablespoon cornflour
For Serving
Mashed potatoes (make enough for 2 meals)
Method
For the braised flavour you will need to sear the onions and the beef. So first grab your casserole dish, put it on a high heat and fry the onions in a teaspoon of vegetable oil until they turn brown/charred. Remove the onions from the dish and put them on a plate.
With the dish still on high, sear all sides of the beef so that it’s dark brown. Add the onions back to the dish, the rest of the vegetables, and then the stock. Cover the casserole dish and reduce the heat so that the stock is on a slow simmer. Cook for 3-4 hours. Note the stock should reach a maximum of halfway up the piece of beef, it should not be covered in the stock.
Adapted for the slow cooker: Fry the onions and then the beef in a frying pan before putting them into your slow cooker. Add the chopped vegetables, stock, put the lid on top and cook on high for 5-6 hours.
Before serving, remove the beef from the dish/slow cooker. Remember you have to keep half for your second dish tomorrow so it may be easier to cut it in half and cover now before serving dinner.
In a small cup mix 1 heaped tablespoon of cornflour with a splash of cold water until you get a loose paste. With the vegetables and the stock still on the heat, quickly stir this paste into the mixture. It should thicken the mixture to a gravy instantly. Once again, half of this mixture is to be reserved for your second meal.
Serve the beef with the vegetables in gravy with mash on the side. I’ve served ours with buttered cabbage as I got some fresh from the farm yesterday and I love the vibrant colours.
One of the main reasons why I love this recipe so much is because all of the vegetables used here are Irish and in season. It makes it very budget friendly for what is a very frugal time of the year.
Cover the leftover food and chill the food when it reaches room temperature. I’ll have the second recipe for you tomorrow!
The post Braised Beef With Seasonal Veg appeared first on Caitriona Redmond - Wholesome Ireland.
For sales of Apple Glasses, they need us to trust them with privacy
Recording the Big Tech Show podcast with Adrian yesterday, I suggested maybe Apple’s big push to be our guardian of privacy and taking shots at Facebook was part of their strategy for their AR glasses that are definitely on the way. This was after Roisin Kiberd expressed horror that Google Glass wasn’t dead and buried in a lead box under 50 tonnes of concrete. (This is how I saw her horror).
The Google Glass blowback was instant and has never been forgotten. The design didn’t help with this boxy looking thing that a surgeon might wear on their face but the main thing was that it was always recording and people did not like that. Maybe it didn’t help that those wearing Google Glass were the stereotype of the creepy white guy watching you from the bushes outside your bedroom.
Apple doesn’t comment on most societal things but they are going strong on privacy. Taking shots at Facebook though is their proxy for Google too. Google were smart about Android. They saw that Apple had a growing and eventual billion device platform that could influence search and the web itself. They were already paying billions to be the default search engine on iPhone and saw the traffic it was generating. Imagine if Apple switched to their own search engine and appls? So Google bought a phone operating system called Android, then they gave that software to any phone manufacturers and started making their own devices too. All those phones have Google apps that send traffic to Google and make Google ad revenue. That was fine but Google also started logging all you did on those phones and used that data to profile you. So Apple on the high end is selling €1300 “clean” phones and Android can be installed on €30 phones.
Android phones scoop up everything about you but Apple is making a lot of noise about the fact that your data on an iPhone stays on your phone and doesn’t phone home to Google/FBI/China etc. And Android allowed others to do the same. Everyone now assumes that Facebook logs everything and sucks up everything about you to their servers and uses that data to help advertisers run ads to you. If you want to bring out AR glasses then you are going to need to prime people that Apple glasses are going to respect privacy unlike those Google Glasses and whatever hardware device Facebook will try to build but will fail at.
Maybe Apple care a lot about privacy but if people will react badly to Apple Glasses then it will impact on them financially so technically Facebook and Google are a threat, not for their hardware they may make but because of all their privacy violations. In an age where so many people believe Facebook is listening in on you via your phones mic, it’s going to be a lot of work to convince people Apple are not recording people on Apple Glasses. I’m sure there’ll be a whole industry of people selling anti-glasses tech that you can wear, that you can install in a bar, that you can use to detect if you are being recorded. Most will probably be scammy. Then we’ll have the media stories of people with glasses being robbed, assaults, bad driving, people being assaulted because they were believed to be recording someone etc. etc. Or will Apple seed positive stories about the goodness of Apple Glasses? Not that they’d ever do that.
Recording the podcast was great, thanks for the invite Adrian. It’s always good to take part in a discussion with really smart people. Nice to meet Dr. Patricia Scanlon and Roisín Kiberd.
Youth Media Team Podcasting [Flickr]
Bernie Goldbach posted a photo: