Courtesy: Sky News
When I heard of the news at midday today about the explosion at the oil depot in Hemel Hempstead I decided a great way of getting a local viewpoint would be to use Blogmaps to find and read blogs in the surrounding area (link here).
But not one blog in the area even mentions it. Worse, there appear to be hardly any blogs on there at all. A link to the blogmap for my area shows about eight blogs, whereas the Brighton Bloggers list of blogs shows far more than that number.
Update 1
There are some blogs with info:
1) The England Project
2) Possible cause: Desert Sun
3) Tim Worstall’s blog
Update 2
A fascinatingly honest comment on EUrophobia.
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#1 by leanne on December 11th, 2005 - 3:14 pm
wow!!! gavin what a great post and links, thanks! I can use the blog map alot to find new people!
#2 by Tarragon on December 11th, 2005 - 4:47 pm
The BBC are reporting that the explosion was heard as far away as France which I find a bit odd as I’m in London, was awake at the time and didnt hear a thing! Maybe I just wasnt as awake as I thought I was.
#3 by Gav on December 11th, 2005 - 4:49 pm
I doubt it could have been heard in France. I am in Shoreham-by-Sea near Brighton and no-one around here heard anything…
#4 by j0nz on December 11th, 2005 - 11:19 pm
I’m south london, didn’t hear fuck all.
#5 by j0nz on December 11th, 2005 - 11:21 pm
Btw Gav, when are you next standing for the Conservative party?
The owner of the company I work for is Adam Afryrie
#6 by Gav on December 12th, 2005 - 2:13 am
J0nz, It needs work, but there’s info about that here.
Did you see the new stats page? You’re the number 1 commenter!
#7 by abi rhodes on December 12th, 2005 - 1:57 pm
Thanks for the thing about blogmaps – I’ve submitted my blogs – they reckon it’ll be 23 days before approval
Can’t wait!
Michael Parkinson said he heard the explosion from his London home
#8 by Gav on December 12th, 2005 - 4:28 pm
I’ve been intending to post during the day today but it appears to be broken – there is a post coming….
#9 by abi rhodes on December 12th, 2005 - 6:17 pm
of course, there’s also Technorati Blog Search
http://technorati.com/blogs/brighton
#10 by Ken on December 12th, 2005 - 6:38 pm
The problem with Blogmaps is that you can’t just enter in your own location – you have to wait for its bots to pick up certain types of information from the site itself. I certainly was confused when it told me what to put on my site to show me.
#11 by Gav on December 12th, 2005 - 7:32 pm
One of the easiest things to do is add a META tag like this to the header of your blog:
<meta name=”ICBM” content=”50.833181, -0.267819″>
This contains the coordinates of your location which most blog tools will pick up.
To find your coordinates use Multimap. That link shows where I work!