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

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

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.