Kate Griffin freelance journalism and editing

Today I discovered that the front wheel of my bike had been stolen. It must have been an easy crime to carry out; the bike was parked at Oxford train station with just the frame locked to the stand. It probably only took the thief a few minutes to get the wheel off.

I was tempted not to bother reporting it to the police because I know very well that I won’t get the wheel back, but I decided I didn’t want this crime, however small, to be invisible.

The BBC is currently considering axing three of its regional news services. The local “opt-outs” for Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Jersey (plus surrounding areas) may be closed as part of the BBC’s money-saving drive, misleadingly branded “Delivering Quality First”. This blog post was written to answer some of the more common questions about the proposals.

Attempts to harmonize easily strand when considering population environmental banks to harmonize with disease-oriented/clinical banks.

Make sense? Thought not. But that sentence was taken from a medical journal with subscription costs of nearly €900 a year, a journal covering important developments in European medical research.

I really should have mentioned this a month ago, but my slight shock at events overcame my instinct to report them.

At our October AGM, I had the honour of being elected chair of the Oxford & District NUJ Branch. I’ll be following in the experienced footsteps of Peter Cann, who I’m glad to say will be staying on the branch committee as vice-chair. (In other words, we’ve effectively swapped roles.)

Maybe it was the interview on Radio Oxford that did the trick, maybe it was some kind of Gladwellian tipping point. Either way, last night’s Oxford Geek Night was the busiest I’ve seen. The upstairs room at the Jericho Tavern was crammed with people; according to the organisers, we reached the limit allowed by the Jericho’s fire regulations.

Tonight is the tenth Oxford Geek Night. (All the cool kids are calling it OGNX, or so I hear.)

Chief geek-herder J-P Stacey has a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it slot on Radio Oxford today at 12:30pm.

?“The answers to our global woes won’t be found with shiny logos on a special aisle at Tesco’s...” Is that the ghost of Purchase-Free Future we’re hearing? Almost: it’s performance poet Danny Chivers with Don’t Buy It, part of a set that ridicules the human tendency to accumulate heaps of junk. His witty rhymes and repertoire of voices brighten up the chilly and still-sparse crowd. We’re even joining in with chants by the end of his set.

Oxford artists are creating window displays with a difference this winter. WinterLight Windows is a series of installations created by artist-led community groups to brighten up Oxfordshire windows this winter. 

The Oxford & District branch of the NUJ (National Union of Journalists) will be holding its November meeting at an earlier time in a bid to attract more members. The meeting tomorrow will start at 6:30pm with sandwiches provided.

The ninth Oxford Geek Night is happening tomorrow evening at the Jericho Tavern. Both keynote speeches should be interesting for anyone involved in online publishing. I'm definitely going, if only to find out what "digital fiction" actually means.