With all the so-called 'new media' in the world at the moment, I'm starting to feel old before my time. There's me thinking I'm all modern with my love of technogadgets and frequent visits to Maplin, yet I still insist on buying CDs and ripping them into my music collection rather than resort to (legal) MP3 downloading. I call myself a 'technophilic luddite' for this very reason, an intentional oxymoron.

Perhaps I don't have time for such things...yet another statement which makes me feel old, but it's the truth! However, I'm coming to the end of my PhD, and my media passion has never gone away. I'm already doing a weekly radio show on Off The Chart Radio (and having to fight my own brain to stop myself accepting offers of extra slots), trying to start a community radio station, and gigging with several bands...frequenty enough to keep me sane, but infrequently enough that I still have free time to do other stuff, like...oh yes...my thesis!

So, you may ask...why on earth have I chosen to start one now? I'll be honest, there isn't a simple answer to that question. I'm not the world's most straightforward person. Perhaps I'm procrastinating (yep, that's it!), perhaps I'm getting nostalgic for my student newspaper days, or perhaps it's just because everyone else seems to be doing it and I've been inspired to jump on the bandwagon. I'm not sure. Whatever the reason, here it is: my sometimes sarcastic, whimsical, cynical, unusual, tangential, bizarre (just because I needed an adjective that didn't end in '-al') outlook on the world. I said sometimes. Occasionally I can be quite normal.