In preparation for the start of the Ashes, I am doing some tweaking of the website, intended mainly to improve navigation and increase the interactivity with other members of the online cricketing community.

Changes so far:

Last Friday (July 8 ), BBC Radio 4 played a 30-minute program entitled "Cricket Calypso", about Judge Ray Funk of Fairbanks, Alaska.

Funk is an expert on calypso music, including calypso tunes about West Indian cricket. Not that he necessarily knows much about the game.

It's available for listening online till this Friday (July 15) in realaudio format.

Firefox 1.0.5 has been released. For me it was a seamless upgrade. More info and download links at Mozillazine.

http://asia.news.yahoo.com/050712/kyodo/d8b9kaf80.html

A restaurant in the Manchurian city of Jilin admits Japanese customers only if they firstly apologise for their country's occupation of China in the 1930s.

I wonder what's on their menu...

On Tuesday June 21 I took part in a segment on BBC Radio Five Live's weekly Pods and Blogs program talking about cricket blogs. It just happened to be days after Australia had lost to Bangladesh in the NatWest Series and was on a losing streak of four.

Download http://noise.rickeyre.com/2005/06/bbc5live.ogg

Another plug from the BBC Five Live Pods and Blogs crew, after my appearance on the show on June 21. Chris Vallance has done an entry on their blog about blog coverage of the Ashes. This site gets a mention, which is nice as there wasn't time to give the URL a mention on radio. Corridor of Uncertainty and Cricket 24x7 also get a mention, as does "The Ashes" by one Darryl, and Jim Maxwell's blog for the ABC.

The 2005 ICC Trophy is almost run and won, but the final still to be played on Wednesday, the five berths for the 2007 World Cup have been filled. Congratulations to Bermuda and Ireland, who have qualified for their first World Cup. Congratulations also to Canada and Holland, who remain in World Cup play, and to Scotland, who return after taking part in 1999.

I don't know what I would have done if I had tickets to Lord's today.

I'm pleased, nonetheless, to see that the two remaining England v Australia ODIs at Lord's and The Oval are going ahead. The British response to Thursday's outrage has been quite stirring.

I've had more to say about the bombing atrocities in London on my other blog. But here, there's a lot happening in the cricketing world to talk about. Time for me to get on with it.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/08/blog_ambulance_chasers/

This item by Andrew Orlowski posted on The Register a couple of hours ago raises some thought-provoking issues about the techie reaction to major breaking news events such as 11/9/01, the Tsunami and Thursday's bomb attacks in London.

The IOC meeting in Singapore has decided today that Beijing 2008 will be the last appearance of baseball and softball at the Olympic Games for the time being. They have been dropped from the 2012 games in London, but are theoretically eligible for re-inclusion in the Microsoft Seattle Olympics of 2016 (remember where you hear it first!)

This is a pity from my point of view, as baseball is one of the few Olympic competitions which capture my interest.

A brief IOC announcement is here. Five other sports are candidates for inclusion in 2012: Roller Sports, Squash, Karate, Rugby (presumably the seven-a-side mutation) and Golf! Later today, the IOC Executive Board will decide whether to submit any of the five to the IOC session, which is scheduled to wrap up tomorrow.