Meet BoB: The Blog o' Beer

My friends and fellow real ale guzzlers Darren (better known to most SF folks as Ariel) and Ed and I have been planning a blog where we could post on one of our passions - proper beer, real ale as it is normally called. We've been planning it for ages and Ed and Darren got it up and running a few weeks ago. Since I have finally, albeit rather slowly and haltingly, returned to the personal world of blogging (as distinct from my work blogging for Forbidden Planet which has continued) this week I thought it was about time I started putting in some of my Tasting Notes as well and just posted my first couple up, starting off with a couple of Scottish ales, one from Bellhaven and one from my own doorstep, Edinburgh's Innis & Gunn, who actually use old oak casks to mature the beer, an unusual process for ales, more something you'd expect in a single malt really, but it gives them a distinctive colour and aroma. Anyway, Darren and Ed have several pieces up on the Blog o' Beer -or BoB as it is also known - and I've now added my first couple of tasting reviews.

Bloody blogger

Some of you may have noticed that I hadn't posted for an entire week then suddenly two posts with old dates crop up. Blame bloody blogger. Ever since the new version came in there have been problems (and not just for me judging by some of the forums I had to search for help since Blogger now makes it very hard to get in touch directly for problems, not very user friendly) and this isn't the first time the admin side says my post has gone up but nothing appears on the live site. In this case it took exactly a week for material I wrote last Friday to turn up and I'm not happy about that. I've been talking to a good friend about what would be involved in moving to a full Word Press set-up like I use on the FPI blog but keeping my woolamaloo.org domain, which I can't do with the free, basic version of WP. But if blogger is going to continue to be so unreliable and to make it so hard to get in touch with their help folks when it is going tits-up then I am going to have to think about changing one way or the other.