Oscar Puffin's Blog

Lazy', 'Vain' and 'Self-absorbed'. These were just three of the things levelled at me during my last appraisal. Despite personally believing these are excellent qualities to possess, I know for a fact my bosses don’t. So I was a bit surprised to hear that they'd put my name forward to write a series of articles for our new website.

When I was informed of this obligation I was initially hesitant, as I was sure I was employed for my good looks and not my journalistic ability. But then some bright spark dug out the contract that I'd signed when I was an egg back in 1963. There in the two colours of my plumage stated the clause, 'You must embark on additional journalism as the management sees fit'.

So much to my chagrin, my wings are tied. Honestly, my life's a bit like that TV show 'The Apprentice' at the moment - each morning starts with my brain showing me a five minute summary of how exasperating the previous day was.

Anyway, enough of my moaning. I guess the good thing is that my brief is deliciously vague. So since we've just launched this web thing that you're currently reading this on, I thought I'd have a gander at this internet malarky that everyone goes on about.

Indeed, someone asked me recently how the internet works. I managed to look clever by replying that the internet is a complicated system of pulleys and weights and that a fisherman brings bits of it over on a daily basis from France in his little boat. Now I pride myself on being an expert in many things such as feather care, roll-mops and birthdays, but I must admit that my knowledge is sadly lacking when it comes to information technology. I’d only just managed to get the hang of Teletext before they pulled the plug.

Realising I had a gap in my extensive knowledge of most things, I thought I’d ask the internet boffins at itv.com for some guidance. “Can you tell me about the internet?” was my opening gambit. “Well, first thing’s first, HTTP stands for hypertext transfer protocol” came back the response. I knew then I was in for a long afternoon. Over the next few hours, I was treated to a cacophony of large and scary sounding phrases such as ‘Server-Side Caching’ ‘The .NET Framework’ and ‘Content Management Systems’. My mistake was obviously not specifying the level of detail I required in my opening question.

So I would have liked to tell you exactly how the internet works in simple terminology, but I was left so confused and baffled that I'm just going back to my original assumption that the internet is a complicated system of pulleys and weights.

Anyway, I hope that’s of some help. You can follow me on Twitter if you must - @OscarPuffin

Waves, wiggles, winks and that,

OP