I would like you to know why Briantist has not been posting on UK Free TV

During the 13 years I have been providing the UK Free TV web site, I always endeavoured to keep my personal life separate from goings on in the world of free-to-air television and radio.

I made this rule because I wanted the content here to reflect my best efforts at journalistic balance.      In life many issues are complex and trying to see out what is correct is most often more useful than just having an opinion.   If the internet delivers anything these days it is more opinions than we have need for.

Personal injuries

One thing I learnt a long time ago is to stay away from bulletin boards, newsgroups and electronic public publication when you are unwell.  The top reasons being due to poor debating skills when not emotionally balanced, sky-high chance of taking offense when none is intended and making public mistakes.

Site-life balance

After almost 5,000 days of UK Free TV, whatever my lack of intensions, the project is clearly a personal one.   I have had a lot of help from people both online and offline and I can't say enough how grateful I am for every contribution.   

And this means that when I have downtime, then the site doesn't get ATL (above-the-line) postings and this troubles me.  To misquote a Mr O Wilde:

"To break one leg may be regarded as a misfortune; to break it twice looks like carelessness"

Which is the problem here.   Over the past years I have broken my right leg twice, and in the last six months broken my right wrist and had a dental dry socket.     This means I have had long stretches of time in agony, or on over-strong painkillers.   

To top this, two days after UK Free's first teenage birthday, I have to have to go into hospital and have my right leg operated on in ways that I can bare only look at line drawings of. 

After this at least 6 weeks and possibly three months in a fixed cast.  

 

BBC Charter renewal

I am really concerned that the BBC Charter renewal is coming up and UK Free TV needs to do more analysis work because the internet is filled with opinions and vested interests and the corporation needs to hear honest support from the likes of me.

 

Other projects

I have also not been able to work on a few other projects. 

Overground Twitter Bot: overground.info

The first project is a Twitter integration system.  See http://overground.info

 Do you want to know when an Overground train is cancelled. Follow this robotic account to get a tweet every time the official systems shows big delay or is cancelled?

 

Tubedreams : the future as it might have been!  

Another one of these is TUBEDREAMS.LONDON - a fun look at some of London's planned but never got made lines and stations.   Click on this example line diagram to have a look at a sample page: