Matthew Revell

BBC Radio 4 has just broadcast a fascinating programme about shortwave number stations.

I used to hear these, as a child, but never grasped how exciting they were. English, German, Spanish and all sorts of other voices reading numbers, seemingly in some sort of sequence, sitting beneath the static. Others were in Morse code or started with electronic music, similar to a Stylophone or musical doorbell.

Radio 4’s Tracking the Lincolnshire Poacher takes its name from one of the better known number stations. It begins with the folk tune The Lincolnshire Poacher, played on musical doorbell, then continues with a sequence of numbers read in a sampled British woman’s voice. I think it’s a shame that, recently, the station was tracked down to an RAF base in Cyprus; takes some of the mystery out of it. It does, though, give weight to commonly held belief that number stations are government communications to spies in the field.

BBC Radio 4’s The Lincolnshire Poacher listen again.

Wolverhampton doesn’t have much in the way of decent local media, particularly on the web. At least, that’s how it seems to me.

I tried to find out who was standing for the General Election in Wolverhampton. A Google search came up with nothing. So, I’ve set up Wolverhampton Politics. Depending how things go, I’d like to keep it going after the election, and provide some scrutiny of our city council!

I’m going to mail each candidate to see if they’ll give me an interview. I want to know what they plan, as individuals, to do for Wolverhampton; not what their leaders tell them to think. It’d also be interesting to know what they’ll do for Wolverhampton even if they aren’t elected … surely they’re not just cynically pretending to care so they get all the trappings of office!

Let me know what you think.

www.wolverhamptonpolitics.co.uk

What sort of judging panel could name The Da Vinci Code “best book”? A million other people have written about it being a badly written book, filled with rubbish, so I won’t repeat all that here. Seriously, though, the Da Vinci Code is not even a good book, let alone the best book.

And for the BBC News site to refer to it as “quasi-historical” is further evidence that the Beeb really should rein in some of their online hacks, whose eagerness to believe other people’s flights of fancy are often highlighted by Ray Girvan. Perhaps “faux-historical” would have been better.

You can get everything you need to know about LugRadio Live by subscribing to our new LugRadio Live blog!

It’ll feature all the latest news about the event, plus views from some of the people who plan to attend and the occassional post from some of the speakers we have lined up.

Don’t forget: LugRadio Live, Molineux Stadium, 25th June 2005!

www.lugradio.org/live/blog/

The Register has an article predicting that Adobe’s purchase of Macromedia will stifle development of Dreamweaver.

Whether that’s true, or not, I don’t know/care. I do, however, disagree with the author’s conclusion that any reining back of Dreamweaver development would be “bad news for online development”.

Supposedly higher-end WYSIWYG tools, such as Dreamweaver, are bad news for online development. They promote sloppy web page creation, giving print designers an analogue to the print design tools they’re used to, by doing everything they can to hide the nature of the web as a distinct medium.

Whereas tools such as NVU make no claim to be of professional grade, Dreamweaver’s unfortunate kudos leads pure-play designers to believe it magically transforms them into web designers.

If Adobe’s purchase of Macromedia does prove to be “bad news for online development”, it will be because the Adobe name lends even greater credence to the mistaken idea that you don’t need to hand code to create decent websites. Worst of all, another software producer with a near-monopoly in its market, may lead to the creation of some nasty pseudo-standards. Let’s hope that, without a browser to interpret such “standards”, we’ll be saved from that.

I was fascinated by computer technology, as a child. One encounter really sparked my imagination, though.

It’s hard to remember just how exciting sound, photos and video on a computer were, back in the mid-80s. The Domesday project, of 1986, was astonishing and cemented my love of computers. Although all the multimedia stuff was simply genlocked into the BBC Micro’s video output, it still rocked haaaaaaard, to an eight year old me.

Now, some chaps have reverse engineered the original system and stuck it online, complete with all the photos and ridiculous levels of detail about places like Dipton, in County Durham (near where I grew up … not simply chosen at random). It’s legit, in association with the BBC and National Archives.

www.domesday1986.com

There’s been a bit of talk, recently, about “monetising” podcasts. Y’know, what we’d call “making money” out of podcasts. It was inevitable and is far from a bad thing.

Sure, there’ll be attempts by a few of those really odd looking blokes who run the so-called marketing websites - the ones with five or six screens of ridiculous, hyperactive copy that try to sell you their latest book o’bullshit. But every now and then, there’ll be someone who has a good idea, which they implement well, and manage to make a little cash from, without appearing to completely sell out.

Podshows has been set up by a couple of DJs, who recently ended their stints with national radio stations, and apparently were behind turning the crazy frog ringtone into a “song”. The idea seems to be this: gather together a few DJs who used to have a national radio show, let them continue to record something very similar, then charge people to listen to it streamed on the internet.

The Podshows website gives a rather bold, and frankly inaccurate, introduction to their concept:

Let’s face it who wants radio anymore? The reason you bought an MP3 player is because you want to hear what you want, when you want. That’s where podshows.com comes in - it’s the world’s first website to give you unique downloadable radio shows.

I can think of at least one other site that offers “unique downloadable radio shows”, but let’s put that aside for now. In their FAQs section, you’ll learn that not all the shows are downloadable: you have to pay your 99p first, though, to find out which ones are only available as a stream. They blame it on licensing, adding vaguely that they’ll have it all sorted in a few weeks.

You may be able to tell that I’m not really sold on Podshows. I think it’s great that someone’s trying to make money from internet broadcasting, again, but these guys need to do a bit more thinking, if they’re going to succeed. For a start, there’s a touch of, “it’s okay, podcasting is proper now that we radio DJs are here”, to the whole thing. Secondly, they seem to believe that their content is sufficiently compelling that people will want to pay to hear it. Lastly, I feel their segmentation is a bit confused: i.e. they’re hoping to appeal to too many different people.

Of the shows currently on their site, two are essentially continuations of what the founders did on their Radio 1 and Virgin Radio shows: Wes Butters does a Top 40 run down and Darryl Denham plays music, with his “hilarious” comedy interludes. Also available are both Paul Gambaccini’s Jazz and Classical Top 40 run downs and an ancient Kenny Everett pilot show. There’s more, but these particular shows illustrate what I believe to be a rather scattergun approach to finding their audience.

If anything, it’s the Jazz Top 40 that will find them an audience. Guardian Media Group’s Jazz FM will soon become the insipid-sounding Smooth FM, ditching Gambaccini’s show in the process. Jazz is under-represented on UK radio, with just a couple of shows on Radios 2 and 3 to keep fans happy. So, Gambaccini’s show does fill a gap and has an established audience, even if it’s not large enough for the Grauniad. There’s also a promising-sounding monthly show about the British comedy scene. I imagine there could even be one or two dedicated Kenny Everett fans who are desperate to hear that pilot.

But do we really need yet another Top 40 chart show, when Radio 1 and at least two syndicated commercial shows, already do that? Is there an audience of Wes Butters fans willing to pay 99p to hear him do what every other chart music station already offers for free? And I don’t understand what most of the shows will offer that I can’t already get from my local Emap or Capital/GWR station. In fact, if I’m going to have to stream most of it anyway, Shoutcast links to hundreds of free streams and there are countless commercial stations offering streams covering just about everything that Podshows does.

If they get the licensing sorted, enabling them offer downloadable MP3s, then the 99p may be justified. They’ll also have to offer more original ideas, perhaps targeting niche audiences: generic 90s, 80s and 70s themed shows just aren’t different enough.

I know it doesn’t sound like it but I do hope Podshows succeeds. If they do, they’ll show commercial radio that its reign won’t remain unchallenged.

Had a very scary day, yesterday. After two days of slight chest pains and shortness of breath, I nearly passed out whilst driving home from work.

This wasn’t giddiness: I felt as though I were being wrenched from the Earth, with my vision draining away into black. Not pleasant at 60 miles per hour. The pain in my chest stabbed, my left arm felt as though it wasn’t mine, my fingers tingled. Perhaps worst of all, I felt a pressure inside my chest, as though a huge rock had somehow been slipped between my breast bone and lungs/heart.

Arg.

I pulled over into a filling station, called Lyne. Voicemail.

After some deep breathing, I felt my brain was my own again. The pain subsided, the pressure lifted and I drove on.

Arriving home, I called NHS Direct (Labour-fuelled ruinours that the Tories plan to scrap it are, apparently, not true.)

Did I have pain in my chest? Yes, a sharp but constant pain. Where? Just under my breast bone and to the left a bit. Did I find it difficult to breathe? Yes. Did I have, at that moment, a crushing in my chest? No. Did I have tightness in my chest? Yes. Was I cold and clammy? Yes. Did I have pain in my jaw? No. Did I have pain in my arm? No. Did I have any strange sensations in my left arm? Yes, definitely.

“Matthew, I want you to go to hospital immediately. If anything gets worse, ask your wife to pull over and call an ambulance straight away.”

I cried. I was being sent to hospital with a suspected heart attack.

Thankfully, though, there’s not much on telly early Friday evenings, and Eastenders is repeated on BBC3 at 10pm.

As Lyne parked the car, I waited in a line of people badgering the receptionist with questions about when their child would have their slightly sprained finger seen to. I didn’t want to make a fuss, though, and waited my turn.

The receptionist - possibly bitter from years of people badgering her about their child’s slightly sprained finger - herded me along to another window, where she handed me a nice pink card - “Priority patient” - and spoke into an intercom, to have a nurse come see me straight away. Good ruse, this heart attack lark; must remember it for future reference.

“Yes, yes, the chest pains, I know, I know, but I was wondering if you could see to this broken arm first?”

I was hooked up to an ECG machine almost immediately. “Everything looks fine, but I’ll just ask the doctor to take a look”. Nurse left. Nurse returned. “Yes, you’re fine but if you could just wait in reception, I’ll get the doctor to speak to you.”

Relief. My heart was fine. No one of a medical flavour was panicking. Of course, something else was wrong but at least I wasn’t having a Rick Wakeman-style late 20s heart attack.

Turns out it was asthma, brought on by hay fever, or some other allergic reaction. I have to go my GP and get an inhaler, or two.

A very odd experience. After all the panic, everything’s normal again now.

This morning, I sat in on Adrian Goldberg’s BBC WM breakfast show. Nice bloke.

So, why did I indulge in this bit of “I wanna work in the mediiiiuhhhh”-style self-promotion? I love radio. At its best, radio uses the power of language to make thousands of concurrent personal connections; in the words of Paul Daniels, that’s magic.

As a teenager, I’d spend evenings listening to barely discernible stations from half way across the world; even if their language was entirely incomprehensible to me. Slightly less whimsically, I also learnt the name of the independent radio station in almost every part of the UK.

After a couple of years shocking old ladies, by trying out slightly odd comedy sketches on my hospital radio show, I got a few comedy pieces accepted by BBC Radio Leeds. Although never broadcast, recording them made me think I actually stood a chance of making my living from radio.

Anyway, after a few years of being distracted by the filthy lucre of the internet, I recently decided to get in touch with Adrian, at BBC WM, to see if he had any advice for me. Now, I love LugRadio and also plan to do more like my Birmingham flash mob report. However, I want radio to be my job.

Adrian was very helpful and invited me along to watch his show go out. It was a great experience, which I recommend to anyone who wants to work in the media. This is my second time round, having done all the work experience at radio stations etc, when I was a teenager. Nonetheless, I got nervous and jittery with excitement at being inside a live radio studio!

Thanks very much to Adrian.