The Vobes Show January Newsletter - Vobes 2010

Is it a bit late to welcome you to this new decade? Probably, but Happy New Year anyway. It has certainly been a while since I managed to get a newsletter out to all the Vobes fans and I apologise for that. Last year was a trial for me on a personal and health level and I didn’t achieve anything like the success I wanted to with content for the show. The ongoing problem with the eye and two cornea operations, the additional complications, severe pain and the continual medications caused me a lot of hardship that I am very keen to forget most of 2009.

However, that said there are a few things I am pleased with. The new Members Area, otherwise known as the Vobes Vault has been a success and people are happily signing up to receive additional content. The making of two history videos, ‘History You Can Touch‘ and ‘Chanctonbury’ in high definition and the fun with the Empty Shops project down in Worthing Town Centre at Christmas. So not all bad.

I have now had what I hope to be the last of the major operations on my left eye, the third replacement cornea and I’m still on large dollops of steroids to assist the inflammation reduction and cease rejection of the donor tissue, but the outlook is good for this one and I hope to be back to normal health in a few weeks. Believe me I cannot wait. The drugs are causing me to put on weight and get quite puffy. However, I do have a plan to get my figure back to a healthy shape in February and March.

Many may have noticed that I am currently tweaking the website, www.Vobes.com just to make it easier to navigate and better to look at. I have always been worried about the two sides to the Vobes material, namely the comedy and silly stuff and the more straight laced serious investigations being confused when you first visit the web page. As you know, it takes a while to ‘get’ the concept of the show and what I am about.

To that end, I have placed the daily show, with its usual mix of comedy and fun, onto a separate page with the main link in the top left corner. The main front page now tries to explain the other all nature of the content and the side menus as before leads to the instant audio downloads. Most of these are teasers for the additional material in the Vobes Vault.

Can I say a big thank you to all those that have send to me various presents? You are all stars and very generous people. I won’t name all here, but books, old vinyl LP’s and coffee have been delightfully and graciously received!

So what’s happening in this new decade then? I am calling this new era Vobes 2010 as I believe the future is bright for the UK’s most prolific podcaster and Internet broadcaster. Here is a list of some of the stuff I am planning:

A trip to the Mary Rose in Historic Portsmouth.

A new History quest to find King Alfred

More Walks, including long hikes across the Icknield Way and the Offa Dyke

Pinhole Photography Calendar project

More Book reviews

Cooking and Beverage experiments

All of which will be recorded with a combination of audio downloads and video presentations in the inimitable Vobes style. Details will be forth coming on the Vobes website and in the daily show, so there is no reason to miss out.

A particularly interesting idea I have come up with is the Podcaster In Residence concept. This is based on the artist in residence idea and I thought it would be great to try and get involved with a few projects that others are running and record the events on a semi-regular basis making the audio available to all. The sort of thing I mean might be an archaeological dig over the summer or the process of setting up a food festival. It would be covering an event that was fairly long term and I would just pop back as and when I had a spare day to see what was going on. I have yet to define this more clearly, but you get the general idea I hope?

Finally, the last two weeks of January I am away working a fair bit on corporate videos. These are the necessary evils that I have to do to pay the mortgage and keep the show going as I slowly build up the membership base. I hope you will forgive me if there are a few holes in the transmission of the daily Vobes show as I work away on these projects. I have bought myself a small Samsung netbook so that I am able to stay in tough via Twitter and hopefully upload some sort of content while I am stuck in a hotel in darkest Wales!

Many thanks for reading the newsletter and listening to the Vobes show. I wish you success and a great year ahead and look forward to receiving your comments on either my blog or in emails to the show.