my virtual notebook

Why do I like facebook/twitter/blogging more than my friends/family?

Almost all of my “real life friends” are much less into social software than I am—and they are genuinely shy of interacting with others there. I am quite introverted, yet have come to enjoy the feedback I receive and also the sense of control that I feel I have when I go onto these sites.
I wonder whether it is a certain type of person, who is more likely to get drawn into online social networks/sites - whether there is a personality trait peculiar to those of us who genuinely enjoy our online interactions with others.

Interesting quote from Greenblatt's "Renaissance Self-Fashioning"

A quote from the Stephen Greenblatt's introduction to "Renaissance Self-Fashioning": "while,following the frequent injunctions to "fashion" children, midwives in the period (16th century) attempted to mold the skulls of the newborn into the proper shape." (p.2)

I would like to find out more about this practice.

New Information on the Lewis Chessmen

Interesting article about an old chess set: really! NYTimes article on the Lewis Chessmen

Here is the link to the museum exhibit: The Lewis Chessmen-unmasked

TypePad Conversations » Answer this question!

The Devil's Dictionary

A quote from said book, found on woods lot:

BIRTH, n.
The first and direst of all disasters. As to the nature of it there appears to be no uniformity. Castor and Pollux were born from the egg. Pallas came out of a skull. Galatea was once a block of stone. Peresilis, who wrote in the tenth century, avers that he grew up out of the ground where a priest had spilled holy water. It is known that Arimaxus was derived from a hole in the earth, made by a stroke of lightning. Leucomedon was the son of a cavern in Mount Aetna, and I have myself seen a man come out of a wine cellar.
  - The Devil's Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce (b. June 24, 1842)

How to outwit squirrels

We might have to buy this book--our squirrels are very determined, but also quite entertaining. The other birds and chipmunks seemed to have made their peace with them too. 

We have a nice feeder set-up just outside our kitchen/breakfast table window. It's our "cat-tv"  for both ours and the neighbors cats.  It would be the perfect place for a "critter-cam" if we were into that sort of thing.... Here's a list of the most common bird and animal sightings at these feeders: 

doves, cardinals,lots of sparrows,too many grackles and starlings,housefinch,goldfinch,hairy and downy woodpeckers, red-bellied woodpeckers,titmice?,nuthatches,cowbirds,junkos and chikadees. Plus lots of black and the occasional gray squirrel and at least two adorable chipmunks, who occasionally sit-up and look at us with their puffy cheeks. Now and then the rather hefty woodchuck that lives under out porch comes and joins in--he's rather big and very scared of us all. 

I'm not too thrilled that he lives there, but at least he's not a skunk!!

Madhouse on Castle Street

Bill and I finished watching the 1963 adaptation of Henry Fielding's Tom Jones last night, which stars a very young and supposedly rather handsome Albert Finney. I now want to watch the later BBC series of it and of course I should go back and read the book. The film was short on dialogue and long on slap-sticky interludes that reminded me of Benny Hill. The music was very upbeat and actually reminded me a bit of the music in "Oliver!" --I should check the composer. 

While researching what else the actor who played Blifil has been in (many things as it turns out!) Bill came across a short Wikipedia article about a BBC play "Madhouse on Castle Street"  that aired in January 1963 and that included a young and not yet famous Bob Dylan playing some of his songs.

Here's what wiki says about the plot:

The play is set in an English boarding house. One of the lodgers locks himself in his room, leaving a note stating that he has decided to retire from the world until the world has changed. Other lodgers and his sister try to coax him out and establish what the problem is. The action is punctuated by songs performed by Bob Dylan.^[1]

Too bad the only known copy was wiped in 1968!!  I still wonder if a copy might not turn up...

Here's a link to a BBC article about Dylan and the play.

German "first day of school" tradition

Here's a link to a short article describing the traditon of "Schultüten" in Germany: 
The Secret of the First-Grade Candy Cone

Decisions decisions

These days I feel I have a lot to think about. I have just resigned from what would have been a "terminal year" of teaching after my position was cut under somewhat dubious circumstances, which has, of course, been a bit of an ordeal.

I have a list of  "things I want or need to get done" that are not academia related, like finally getting my driver's license.  My research, which for obvious reasons had stalled a bit is  also beginning to come back into focus, except that my ideas are a bit all over the place.

I have also been thinking about my blogs. In a fit of "let's try out this cool internet tool" I set up a tumblr blog a while ago.  Tumblr does indeed make it incredibly easy to post images from other internet sites to one's own page. It seems to be mainly popular with young people (teenagers - people in their twenties) who often have a penchant for forming groups of things they like using the "f" word....e.g. f...yeahcats or fyeahrdj (=Robert Downey, Jr).

On the other hand it has been and continues to be a fun and creative outlet for me. I truly love being able to quickly post links to images that I like and want to to share. Early on one of "my" images appeared on the side bar that everyone sees on their dashboard, which meant that within hours the number of people following me went up from somewhere in the 30's to over a 100. Right now 126 follow my tumblr.  I don't interact with them much: they simply click to say whether they liked one of my images or they "reblog" it on their own tumblr.

I have been therefore wondering whether to keep this blog--the one I actually spend money on every month.

For some reason I don't feel like writing much on my tumblr blog--it really is simply a place to store and share images for me. I did get rid of my twitter account and I don't really miss it too much--never could exactly figure out what the good of it was. I think mainly because considering how tech savvy I am (=moderately) I am also extremely "immobile". I tend to only do technology at home at my desk. I don't even carry the computer around I the house.  I do occasionally check my email or facebook on the downstairs computer that is hooked up to the TV, but beyond that it all takes place in one spot. My cell phone is very primitive--I don't text or take pictures, I simply use it as a phone.  And even or especially when I travel I tend to not take the computer with--precisely as a way to get away from it, to not be chained to it when I'm in a different environment.  Of course sometimes it has to come with, but it often doesn't. 

Just sitting here typing away is bring me back to this blog--its a place where I can share my thoughts in an online forum that is also a repository of previous thoughts and ideas.  So for now it stays and I will simply have two blogs--one for images and this one for thoughts and ideas that go beyond a picture.  I might start linking from one to the other more.  Stay tuned!

Of Wolpertingers and Bunyips

I recently (via blog favorite Accidental Mysteries) came across a wonderfully weird  image of a so-called “Wolpertinger” (scroll down past the griffins, chimera and monkey), a mythical creature supposedly at home in the “alpine forests of Bavaria” --- here is the English wiki page and the even longer German page.   Both pages feature Albrech Dürer’s painting of one.

This brought to mind a mythical creature, I associate with growing up in Australia-- the bunyip.   

Just in case you were wondering...

What the German word for "magnetic resonance imaging/tomography (MRI)" is -- look no further:  Kernspintomografie