Tom Roper's Weblog

The FT discovers blogging

Ghastly headline and no revolutionary insights, but significant as an indicator of the growth of corporate interest in blogging:  FT.com / Home UK - The new companies on the blog.

Radio 4 on open access

I failed to listen to it all, but for others likewise diverted by dishwasher-loading, and so on go to: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/rams/tue2002.ram

Dick Heckstall-Smith

Telegraph and Times obituaries

Radio 4 on open access

On  BBC Radio 4 tonight there's a programme on open access:
Publish or Be Damned.

Dick Heckstall-Smith

So far I can only see this on Reuters and on a site in Dutch I don't understand, but doubtless it will appear elsewhere. Dick Heckstall-Smith has died.
I used to hear him in the early 80s at a pub on Green Lanes in Stoke Newington whose name I can't recall, where he would play a residency at the weekends. I knew of him long before that through his recorded work. He was also famously referred to in the late Jeff Nuttall's Bomb Culture

Selections: Haydock and Windsor

Haydock 110: Latesaani
Windsor 125: My Will
Haydock 140: Lough Derg
Windsor 155: Nil Desperandum
Haydock 210: Bee an Bee
Windsor 225: Baracouda

A three-pipe problem

Seaford, where I live, is a small seaside town in Sussex and has a character as provincial as any small town in Gogol's Tsarist Russia. The local newspaper is a good indicator; when I lived in London the front pages ran stories of shootings and murders. Here I read earlier this year in the Sussex Express that a car had been scratched in Tesco's car park in Lewes.
This post is inspired by the poster for this week's edition of the Seaford Gazette, which shouts to the world: "Seaford man attacked with pipe". What sort I wonder? Briar? Meerschaum? Clay?

PubSub LinkRanks

Excellent: I see from PubSub's link ranks that my blog ranks 99628th in the world. If we believe that there are at least 5 million (based on the number Technorati index) then this puts me in the top fifth. Open the Pol Roger!

CILIP Election

Postscript: the results are now up: CILIP | Annual Election 2005.
21% turnout seems to me quite good. I think, though I'm open to contradiction, that this is higher than usual, and pretty good when compared to turn-outs in comprable professional bodies. I may stand myself next year, on an armed struggle now platform to make things a little more exciting.

BL in Guardian

This morning's Guardian runs a piece on the British Library, mostly about  changes in document supply.