The Virtual Shakespeare Consortium is a consortium of individuals and organizations dedicated to bringing Shakespeare and his culture to the Internet and beyond.
Partly it’s about bringing together people from all over the world – virtually – to perform his plays in virtual worlds, like SecondLife.
Shakespeare’s sonnets are often forgotten in such ventures, but I think the richness of their imagery and of their conceits would lend themselves to creative treatment in SL, along with sonnet readings in-world.
This venture will celebrate the polyglot nature of Shakespeare’s language – he emerged after all, at a pivotal point in the development of the English language, benefiting from the three major language groups that made up English, in a context in which new words were being coined daily and entered the language with the kind of speed not seen again until the birth of the internet.
The late Peter Barrett’s experimental steam car is up for sale – currently at US$20,000 (my guess would be a UK bid from Jeff Theobold – one of the few who could make real use of this amazing vehicle.
The car uses two cylinders of a converted VW engine and is mounted in a fibreglass kit car. It is reported to have been run at 80mph. The car comes with full design notes – Peter Barrett was a meticulous engineer and every aspect is documented. It would be great to see this car go to someone capable of understanding the system and getting it on the road as a modern turnkey steam car.
Some of Barrett’s notes are here, so you can see the kind of work that has gone into this.
If it sells for less than US$50,000 the buyer will have quite a bargain – with 20 years of documentation. This is an outstanding opportunity for the right buyer. (why can’t I just win lotto now?).
Cheers
Jerry
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Yes I’ve been neglecting this blog a little, but grab a cuppa because this is really neat 🙂
It was my birthday recently and a pleasant surprise arrived right on time from the USA. It was a package – tantalisingly box-like
When I opened it, out came a package of metal bits and a reassuringly large instruction manual from Graham Industries – a detailed working live steam model engine. It is a single-cylinder, double acting engine with a stephenson link reversing gear – the sort you get on steam trains.
I borrowed a beading tray from Sharon to prevent the loss of small parts – the bolts are tiny and in good scale with the engine.
And so I set to work on the assembly. The manual opened with a lovely line drawing showing the relationship of components and separate drawings of the valve gear
The cylinder and piston assembly was first – and the manual was well illustrated with step-by-step photos. The package even included proper paper gaskets to ensure proper sealing.
Then came the valve gear – a slide valve that would move up and down to reveal the ports in sequence
Then it was time to assemble the frame
The crankshaft followed with the valve eccentrics, the beautifully machined brass flywheel, and the connecting rod was added to the crank-pin
And finally the engine was complete. The detail is fantastic. Each of the bolts holding moving parts runs in a brass bushing to minimise friction, and the engine runs on fairly low pressure air or steam.
Here is the completed engine.
I did a test run first using a tiny air compressor run off my car’s cigarette lighter, and it ran briefly before one of the bolts vibrated loose on the reversing gear. This was fixed with a light dab of loctite, and then I adjusted the valve timing lightly (yes it is fully tunable!) until it ran well in both directions from the air compressor.
But a steam engine isn’t a steam engine unless it runs on steam is it? So, not having a boiler to hand I went for the next best thing – a milk steamer from a cappucino machine – it had a steam valve to act as a throttle, and with a couple of bits of clear plastic tubing (fuel line) I stepped down the size so it would fit on both the milk steamer and the engine. And within moments, the engine ran smoothly – without the harshness I found running it on air – and without the problem of possibly setting off the smoke alarms!
While most teenagers are content to kick a footy, 16 year old Marco Facciola was in the woodshop fabricating a bicycle entirely from wood – no metal or rubber parts – just wood, good joinery and a bit of glue. Even the chain is made from hundreds of wooden components and it all works – even down to the free-wheeling ratchet so he wouldn’t have to pedal down hills. As part of his International Baccalaureate studies he had to complete a non-academic project. In this case he recalled stories his grandfather told him of how during the Second World War, rubber was short, so kids made wooden wheels fo rtheir bikes. Marco took this a stage (or two) further and built the entire bike.
With 200,000 sign-ups daily, Facebook has become the social software phenomenon of 2007, according to New Scotsman newspaper. Facebook has been added to the 2008 edition of the Collins English Dictionary as both a trademarked noun (the site) and as a verb – ‘to facebook’ – meaning to search the Facebook profile of someone.
This underlines the way in which social software is fast becoming mainstream, as opposed to a youth culture fad. Businesses are rapidly developing Facebook profiles and developers are producing new applications for Facebook each day. And that is part of its success – its open architecture enables it to grow organically as people see new ways to use the medium to make new socail connections and build larger or more specialised relationship networks as appropriate.
Alongside Facebook, related words have also been added – like an extension to the current definition of ‘poke’ to take account of its specific usage on Facebook. According to Collins Dictionary, Facebook was recommended ten times more than any other word in the dictionary’s webiste for a new listing.
It just goes to show that the dynamic nature of English is undiminished – in fact, quite the reverse!
