Tom Roper's Weblog

Two iPods?

Two iPods? I understand, Scott, though I've only had mine since Christmas, but can already see the need. I came to it from a much more impoverished background than Scott, as I never had a portable CD-player.
It has indeed, as Scott says more eloquently, changed the way I respond to music I know well, given me new insights and made me listen to unjustly neglected stuff. Scott juxtaposes Dylan, Wagner and Coltrane; my favourites are the 48 prelude and fugues of Das Wohltemperierte Clavier which I have in a recording played by Davitt Moroney and which fit ideally and serendipitously with all other sorts of music, never failing to surprise and excite.
See this on Wired: Wired News: Hide Your IPod, Here Comes Bill.
And see also last Sunday's lebrecht.live on Radio 3.

More on Audioscrobbler and LastFM

I can now offer my personal radio and my profile radio to the world, thanks to LastFM; the distinction is that the personal radio plays things from my iTunes playlist, the profile one plays things from playlists by people who are supposed to have similar tastes (cum grano salo I would suggest, today it tried to suggest that I might enjoy Led Zeppelin and Frank Sinatra's reading of White Christmas but I dare say it will learn). You'll need to register.

Scientific Publications: Free for all?

It's out:  House of Commons - Science and Technology - Third Special Report.

Audioscrobbler

A week ago, on other words about the time of Edward the Confessor in blogging terms, the Observer's Music Magazine ran a piece on Audioscrobbler.
Audioscrobbler uses a plug-in for iTunes (or WinAmp for lumpen-proletarians who don't have Macs) and records what the user plays and  compares that list with other users. It then produces charts of favourite artists and songs and can show other Audioscrobbler users with matching tastes. Audioscrobbler have recently enhanced the charts to show weekly favourites. Here's my Audioscrobbler page, complete with RDF feed. The clever bit, which I hadn't really explored until I read the Observer article, is  Last.FM; once you've played sufficient tracks for Audioscrobbler to be able to analyse your tastes, Last.FM will deliver a customised radio feed. I've been listening to this over the weekend and it really is very good
Two criticisms:  (apart from wondering why on earth did it think I would be interested in the appalling Stranglers?) why can't I get it on on my iPod?
Secondly and more seriously, I can see that if Audioscrobbler can map a user's tastes against those of others, it could lead to a frightfully homogenised musical world. Last.FM played me a lot of material I liked and indeed knew, but there were no surprises. Serendipitous and shocking musical discoveries seem to me unlikely.

Julian Maclaren-Ross event at the LRB

There was little detail on the LRB website on the event Lili drew to my attention in a comment the other day, but my copy arrived in the post this morning (two days after the RSS feed hit my aggregator) and there's more detail:
Paul Willets will speak and there'll be readings from Collected Memoirs and Selected Stories by Callum Coates and Tony Austin

Cheltenham and Doncaster

Selections for Plllar Chase Day
Cheltenham 205: Thisthatandtother
Cheltenham 235: Cristal d'Alnay
Doncaster 250: Debbie
Cheltenham 310: Grey Abbey
Doncaster 325: Spring Margot
Cheltenham 345: Le Duc

Big Garden Birdwatch

We're doing the Big Garden Birdwatch chez Roper
Not very impressive (these figures from observations between 1430 and 1530, in our Seaford back garden)
Blackbirds: 2
Blue tits: 2
Wood pigeons: 2

Scientific Publications: Free for all?: latest responses

The date for publication of the latest instalment has been announced: on 1st February at 11 am the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee will publish their latest report on Open Access, its Third Special Report of Session 2004–05, Responses to the Committee's Tenth Report, Session 2003–04, Scientific Publications: Free for all?: Responses to the Committee's 14th Report of Session 2003–04 (HC 249).

This will include the Government's and the Office of Fair Trading's Response to their previous report  in which the Committee noted, "We are disappointed that the Government has missed the opportunity to take more decisive action in response to our Report. We recommend that the Government reconsider its position on this important issue in the light of the other responses to our Report published here; the forthcoming RCUK policy on the publication of, and access to, research outputs; and in view of the support for the Committee’s stance from the Wellcome Trust, an important research funder. In this context, we do not believe that Government should continue to refuse to provide the modest funds necessary to make institutional repositories workable, and to allow the experimentation necessary to properly test the feasibility of the author-pays publishing model. "
 

David Bain obituary

Times obituary of David Bain. I'm off to read Apotropaic Farting and Six Greek Verbs of Sexual Congress.
Lest anyone think I'm mocking, I assure you I'm not. This sort of scholarship is more useful and interesting than anything else I can think of and I think we're much worse off without David Bain

Survey of the public on whether medical students should use human specimens in anatomy lessons

Survey of the public on whether medical students should use human specimens in anatomy lessons: "As part of its 'Anatomy for Beginners' programme, Channel 4 has a page surveying the public on their attitudes to the use of human speciments in anatomy teaching. Have your say by casting your vote on the programme website."
(Via LTSN-01 news.)

All well and good, but trying to vote yes (naturally) just now gets a file not found message