I have set myself an early deadline for this issue's column, as I am going away for a couple of weeks. That's two weeks without computer, without modem, in fact, without electricity. I'll have a guitar, kites, a bike, the sea and the beautiful Dorset countryside to keep me occupied, so I will of course suffer no withdrawal systems by not being able to log on each day and browse the newsgroups or surf the Web. I'm not sporty enough to surf the Channel, but I'll happily spend hours scouring the beach for interesting-looking fossils to take home in a carrier bag to add to the other bags of interesting-looking fossils I keep in my shed.
Now this is all a bit "off topic", as we newsgroup browsers call it, but bear with me. There is a point to my ramblings. While searching the Web to see if there was any information about this year's Bridport Festival, I found that the camp site where I usually stay had a Web site. Soon I found myself staring longingly at a downloaded photograph of Golden Cap, with the Anchor Inn nestled snugly at its foot, calling me, calling me. I hastily filled in the on-line booking form and clicked on "submit". I was surprised to receive a reply almost immediately, but this of course meant bad news as it was from the postmaster telling me there was no such email address.
In a nostalgic return to the days of print I flicked through a booklet of camp sites and noticed that my intended had another email address listed. A quick bit of copying and pasting and a second email was on its way. I waited patiently. I waited impatiently. I could wait no longer. Reader -- I rang the camp site. The person who dealt with their email wasn't available but in the course of a couple of phone conversations over the next few days I established that my provisional booking was fine and they would send me something to sign and I would post them a cheque. Imagine my cyber-disappointment when I opened their envelope to find a blank form for me to fill in and return.
Now I seem to remember suggesting there was a reason for me to be wandering so far off-topic as to need an Ordnance Survey map to find my way back. My point is -- and listen up those of you at the back with your mobile phones switched off -- that all this technology is only of any use if we humans make the effort to keep it accurate, informative and well-maintained -- which includes answering emails.
I keep my listings for the Ram Club, Claygate, up to date, and I know I can say the same for Jim McPhee's site for the Red Lion FC in Birmingham -- which just happens to have been designed by the inestimable Dick Gaughan -- and Trevor Gilson's site for the Fo'c's'le in Southampton, but an awful lot of people seem to have jumped on the WWW bandwagon without a thought for upkeep or updating. Sometimes it's just a small item that has been overlooked, but it doesn't take a big item to destroy your credibility.
Louis Killen's site for instance is delightfully minimalist. Click on "Hey, Louis! What's the Story?" and you find yourself on a page blank apart from the message "What's coming? Who knows?" which is all very well, but the humour is spoiled rather by each page having the inscription "updated 28 Jun, 1994" which is obviously not so, as one page includes mention of this year's UK tour.
In contrast, among the more useful sites I have been visiting lately is Martin Nail's Folk Music Page. This is a page of links to Internet resources on English folk music, and apart from the obvious artists and record companies, he includes organisations such as the English Folk Dance and Song Society, Folkworks and the West Gallery Music Association, libraries, archives and academic sites, magazines and sites dedicated to specific instruments or genres. Such a site doesn't need to be updated, just informative and accurate. But Martin is trying to make it a comprehensive guide to English folk music on the Internet and he's doing a grand job. If you have been trying to find information on anything folk related, and haven't yet tried his site, I can recommend it as a great starting point.
The information can sometimes be more useful than you might expect. Pete Burnham, whose Leicestershire Folk Diary received an honourable mention in Issue 69, once had a call from Vin Garbutt's agent correcting an entry provided by a local club for the diary. He had other ideas of where Vin was that night.
There are people around who copy pages from others' sites and pass off the work as their own, and of course this is wrong. And it is wrong to tape live gigs or CDs and sell darker recesses of car boot sales. Or is it? Show of Hands have a healthily different approach to CD copying, as you will have seen from their newsletter if you are on their mailing list. Their Web site adopts the same philosophy. You are welcome to download their pictures, which of course they hope you will use to spread the word about them. And indeed you can download three specially-recorded live versions of "Tall Ships", "Armadas" and "White Tribes" .
Trevor Gilson emailed me recently to recommend the HTML editor he uses, the Cranial HTML Notepad. At only £24, and available for free evaluation for 30 days, it is well worth trying out. Trevor says: "It doesn't pretend to create graphics (but any graphics utility will do that) but does have full colour control and recognises all the latest HTML, Netscape and Microsoft Internet Explorer options. It is simple and straightforward and I like it. One big advantage over some others I tried last year is automatic no trouble linewrap, so that existing long-line files can be read straight into it." Readers might like to visit Trevor's site to see what he has done with it, or go straight to the Cranial Web site.
Me, I'm switching off.