Archive for February, 2013


THE PURE VOICE OF OLIVIA CHANEY

Filed under: Music — 1 Comment
February 3, 2013

it was a great pleasure to receive Alasdair Roberts’ fine new album, A Wonder Working Stone, for review on Whisperin’ & Hollerin’.

A happy consequence of this was to discover  Olivia Chaney  who sings backing vocals on the album.

Olivia is a new name to me but one I expect to hear much more of .

She studied piano, voice and composition at Chetham’s School of Music and The Royal Academy of Music and taught herself guitar and harmonium.

As you can hear from a selection of her songs on Soundcloud and the video link below, hers is a voice that makes an immediate impact for its purity and grace.

Her debut solo EP is out now and hopefully is just the beginning of an illustrious career.

Tags: , , , , ,
Comment

EDCMOOC: HERE ARE THE PROFESSORS!

Filed under: Blogging — Leave a comment
February 2, 2013

agooglehangout‘Where are the professors?’ was the title of one of the threads posted anonymously in the discussion forum page of the E-learning and Digital Cultures  MOOC.

To reassure us that there are, after all, real human beings behind the digital interface, Jeremy Knox, Siân Bayne, Hamish Macleod, Jen Ross and Christine Sinclair from the Edinburgh University all showed up yesterday evening in person for a live broadcast on a Google hangout which has now been archived on You Tube. Continue reading →

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Read More & Comment

REDUCTION IN BLOG VIEWS

Filed under: Blogging — 1 Comment
February 1, 2013
Even a flashy splatter rainbow image like this won't increase my views.

Even a flashy splatter rainbow image like this won’t increase my views.

Site Stats fluctuate all the time but I doubt that I am alone in noticing how the number of views of my blog posts has plummeted over the past week or so. In fact I know I am not alone because other bloggers have raised the issue on the WordPress forums.

Responses from the WP team suggest possible reasons are:

The first two do not apply to this blog but the third sounds like a probable reason. Google’s old interface meant that you saw where the image was imbedded but this is no longer the case. I used to get a lot of hits simply because people were searching for a picture and chanced upon my blog. My most popular post, for example, is still a short poem by Ivor Cutler that generated a lot of traffic simply because I used a photograph of a brick wall. (Why so many surfers are looking for photos of bricks and mortar is an intriguing mystery in itself!)

It’s a shock it see my stats looking so sad but , upon reflection,  think this is quite a postive thing. It means that more people are viewing posts because they want to read what I’ve written rather than stumbling upon me by chance.

It also means I have to attract readers by good writing rather than depending on flashy images. That’s the challenge I have to rise to.

Tags: , , , , ,
Comment