Posted by Jerry on January 20th, 2004 — Posted in History, Journal, Writing
This morning, my partner Sharon pointed me to a new site from the British Library devoted to virtual exhibitions. The site has some lovely use of flash – tastefully restrained – which livens up the presentation enormously.
I particularly enjoyed the `literary landscapes’ section which marries literary figures with maps and images providing a context for their writing. Having visited Loch Katrine in Scotland (and taken the steam boat ride along its length), I liked the section on Sir Walter Scott despite his highly romanticised view of scotland portrayed in his writings, and the accompanying hand-coloured engraving by FJ Sargent from 1811. The web version has handy navigation icons and a zoom function – which works well on the high resolution images. There are maps too, providing a rich backdrop to a number of Scott’s novels.
Also included are Chaucer’s Kent, Wordsworth’s Lake District, Thomas Hardy’s Dorset, Jane Austen’s Bath (the place, not the ablution), and Defoe’s Moll Flanders.
I had a good poke (okay click) around in the Durham exhibition too – I loved the section on Jarrow Priory.
There is also a great ‘about Collect Britain’ page which talks about the digitisation project and the designers.
All in all a good site, well designed and informative – well worth a visit!
Cheers
Jerry
Comments Off on British Library: Virtual exhibitions
Posted by Jerry on January 18th, 2004 — Posted in Journal
Today (Sunday 18 Jan – in Australia it is anyhow!) is the anniversary – one year to the day since the Canberra bushfires came through our suburb. We were lucky in only losing the garage and front garden and fences – superficial stuff really, but the reminders are there with our neighbour’s house still untouched after a year – the back end still charred. It has taken a year for the insurance to settle with them and they have only recently taken the painful decision to sell up and leave the suburb after 30-odd years. We were in the process of buying our place when the fires came through so the house were were buying was empty, and our old place was packed up in boxes. We fought the fires at the old place – embers falling like a snow blizzard – the darkness like night fall and the sound (the unforgettable sound!) of gale-fanned flames on an enormous scale and roofs clattering like pine boards dropped onto cement and the power poles glowing like candles.
But there are some amazing positives. We now know everyone in the street – I have lived for years in other houses never even knowing the name of our next door neighbour, but here everyone has come together as a community. And the whole district is like in perpetual Spring as new houses are coming into bloom, springing up out of the bare blocks. Winter was Winter – the blocks had been cleared (mostly) of debris and there was a collective hiatus or holding of the breath. I guess this was when those who were rebuilding were getting their house plans drawn up and going through the Council approval processes. Then Spring came and by the start of Spring in October the first sets of foundations were being poured. By mid summer (December) the frames were up and piles of bricks sprouted on pallets, transforming themselves at remarkable speed into walls and windows and then the tiles appeared for the roof and gradually these too took shape. Around ten percent of the sestroyed houses have been rebuilt to the point where the owners have moved in – many racing the last few details to get in by Christmas.
In a street of eighteen houses we lost five, and those whose houses were saved are rebuilding their gardens. Our neighbours have commented on how colourful our garden is – truth is we were desperate for any colour other than “charred brown” so we went a bit crazy with flowering shrubs and trees and loads of pansies and petunias of all different colours, and bulbs – tulips and daffodils and the unkillable agapanthus (burnt to the ground they almost all grew back!). And of course the tree – formerly towering over the house at the front is now stacked, milled into boards, ready to be turned into our new dining table – but that’s another story!
So we are having a street party today to mark our survival and to acknowledge how far we have come in one year 🙂 It’s been quite a journey…
Cheers
Jerry
Comments Off on Canberra bushfires – one year on
Posted by Jerry on January 8th, 2004 — Posted in Journal, Writing
er… happy new year folks! just surfacing at last 😉
And I was reading a new edition of Beowulf – as you do – in this case a new verse translation by Michael Alexander published by Penguin – and found two references to middle earth within the first thousand lines! It’s a great tale – half Tolkien half Star Trek Klingon warrior culture… A classic at the speed of videoclips!
And of course I had to see the new Lord of the Rings on the second day after opening – what a great movie – mobile scars, vanishing cloaks and all 🙂 The trilogy will live like 2001 a Space Odyssey (also drawing on classical references), and the five movies of the Star Wars trilogy, among the great movie experiences of the new Century – of course Tolkien was a fine linguist and Anglo-Saxon scholar – so I was delighted to see the way some of Tolkien’s langage reflects its Anglo-saxon/Old English roots – check out this list:
Tolkien and Beowulf for a good sprinkling…
I particularly liked Fródan as Frodo – the wise!
And for a taste of Beowulf itself – check out:
Beowulf Project Gutenberg Version
Cheers
Jerry
Comments Off on Beowulf and LOTR
Posted by Jerry on November 25th, 2003 — Posted in Journal
Looks like a good day to ride the bike into work 🙂
Last night’s Irish music session began well but a drunk person put a damper on things – still the early return home meant that my daughter could test the new fire twirling stick she brought back from Melbourne…
It is certainly spectacular – and firewater gives a good yellow flame. I had a go myself and was amazed at the sound the thing makes! It was a perfect evening for it and the recent rain meant there was no danger of fire on the lawn in the event the stick was dropped.
Fire twirlers have found a niche in the folk music festivals and we have found that there is a similar sense of community among them – with plenty of common ground between the twirlers nd the musos – fire twirling is, after all, another form of dance.
The technology is simple – just an aluminium rod with a wooden dowel core in the ends, and the wicks are cotton wrapped in kevlar and screwed through the aluminium tube into the dowel – very secure. The centre of the tube is wrapped in rubber for increased grip – and to provide a good tactile signal that you are moving off-centre if the stick is out of immediate sight (eg when twirling behind your back)
The first light-up is quite spectacular as excess fuel is shed by throwing the stick high into the air and catching it – it seems to keep in line better if you spin the stick along its axis as you toss. And yes we did have a fire extinguisher on hand for safety.
cheers
Jerry
Comments Off on Fire twirling
Posted by Jerry on November 21st, 2003 — Posted in Journal, Writing
It seems to me that blogs are a bit like digital soundings charting one’s course through an ocean of thought. How appropriate then, that the idea of keeping log books derives from a navigational technique that relied on nodal soundings to record one’s speed through the ocean. In a type of navigation called ‘dead reckoning’ the technique relied on one throwing a log, or wooden board overboard from the stern (or back) of the vessel, the board being attached to a rope. The rope had series of knots tied at 7 fathom (6 feet to a fathom = 42foot/12.5metre) intervals. Each knot, paid out from the reel over a period of 30 seconds (as measured by a sand glass) represented a speed of one nautical mile per hour. Observations were made whenever the wind changed in velocity or direction, and recorded in a book – called – you guessed it – the log book! (neat eh?) The distance (calculated by speed over time) and direction were plotted onto a chart, and thus one could navigate without recourse to the stars or a visible land mass.
The knots represent digital nodes, the wind changes: the threads of discussion or thought; the chart, the great canvas of ideas – So perhaps blogs are a kind of chart of ideas!
Cheers
Comments Off on Blogs and logs
