In my capacity as most popular lecturer in the Design & Visual Arts Department of City College Manchester, I am often asked to share my encyclopaedic knowledge with hordes of saucer-eyed students, who gaze at me in admiration and hang on my every syllable.

This past two weeks I have been talking the students through the process of setting up blogs and showing them the mechanics of adding photos, slideshows & video – generally availing of the various tentacles of the Google global empire; Blogger, Picasa and YouTube. This is so the students can maintain a studio diary [or PDP - ‘Personal Development Plan’ - in City College parlance] as part of their coursework.

Anyway, it occurred to me that it might be a good idea if I led by example and set up a similar blog for myself, wherein I could post random work-related musings. Of course, I already have an incredibly popular personal blog which is read regularly by up to one person globally - but since that consists mainly of my beer and drug fuelled rantings about things which piss me off [generally the entire human race] I thought maybe I’d set up this '`ere new blog to show the mature, intellectual, professional side of my character for - allegedly - such a thing does exist!

Those of you who just want to read lots of sweary immature verbal diarrhoea should look away now.