This Thursday will see one year since I began adding the weekly 'Wyenot News' Magazine to Wyenot.com. Initially I did this to try and cut down on my own work load by having a specific day of the week on which to update the web site but, far from cut it down, it has increased my work load ten fold. The actual compiling of this week's issue has taken me over 24 hours of solid editing and programming, and this is not including taking the photographs - and I bet there will still be mistakes in the text. It has all been worth it though!

When I first thought up the 'Wyenot News' idea (whilst soaking in the bath on 14th July last year) I worried that I would not get enough news to make the magazine a weekly feature and at first, some weeks I just scraped by, only just filling a page. Over the year however, it has just taken off and is now averaging three or four pages per week and I have only not been able to produce an issue on one occasion - four weeks ago, when Mum died.

Wyenot News has certainly increased the popularity of the web site as a whole and has confirmed regular readers on six continents (I cannot yet confirm Antarctica). The magazine also has quite a following in the UK and even in Ross-on-Wye. I was quite taken aback when, whilst in Essex recently I gave somebody I hadn't seen in thirty years a business card so that she had my address. 'Wyenot.com!' She exclaimed, 'Doug Taylor put me onto that web site and Bruce and I read the news every week. I had no idea it was anything to do with you!' Well, Chris - there you go. You're not alone in that - most people in Ross-on-Wye don't know who produces it either. I hope you keep on reading it now that you do know and that my childhood 'scientific experiments' have not put you off. (I am typing this with the two fingers on my one remaining hand, by the way.)

Anyway - this week did not particularly seem like a busy week photographically while it was happening but suddenly, I seem to have taken absolutely loads of photos of different Ross events. I have spread them out over four pages and, as mentioned before, if your event is on page four, it does not mean that it is any less important than those on page one. Page choice is simply down to dividing the photographs equally between pages and I use the, 'Ip dip, bird's etc.' method of deciding which goes where.

I would also like to point out that I compress all photos drastically to make them small enough for use on this web site. Although they probably still appear better than they do in news print, some faces, particularly in very colourful photographs, appear distorted on screen. When printed from the originals, they are absolutely clear.