I’ve discovered FlickrBlog. There goes productivity.
Courtesy of the blog, I give you marmosets and the Flickr song. (If you’re having trouble hearing the lyrics, they are helpfully provided here.)
Thought of the day.
From a mailing list I’m on, for your amusement:
“Compared to meditation, liturgy is like going to a monster truck show!”
I’m working: Wednesday afternoons I tutor, so they’re geeenerally longer days. This has been the week of (figuratively) beating myself over the head with the notion of “if you just start doing whatever it is you don’t want to do, chances are you’ll find it all kinds of fun.” No duh, but sometimes it takes a while to sink in again.
In other news, writing a paper with a co-author is more fun than writing it alone. More frustrating at times (timing, disagreements, what have you), but more stimulating, therefore more fun.
Thanks to mindlace, the flickr zeitgeist on my home page is full of wedding photos. *happy wiggle*
Design site/book
From Halley Suitt’s blog: check out Thoughtless Acts, a site/book concerning human-oriented design. Leaving aside the fact that it’s a Flash site (bleah, accessibility-wise), looks interesting.
A very confused fiction seller.
Fictionwise sells e-books. Some are free! Neat, yes?
Take a look at this Jules Verne classic. Click on the cover, to get a larger popup image of said cover. Giggle.
work patterns
Most of us (I’ll hazard) have occasional issues with “productivity,” or “efficiency”. This is particularly felt in academe, programming and other fields where it’s nigh unto impossible to predict how long a task will take.
It occurs to me that “staying late at work” is a hostile opponent of “learning to work more efficiently.” This excludes cases such as “I had a doctor’s appointment in the middle of the day and am making up the absence” or “this is taking me longer than I thought, but I’m on a roll.” I’m talking about the feeling of “well, I’m doing something unrelated now, but that’s okay, because I can just tack on an extra hour or so at the end of the day.” If you-impersonal* are trying to become more efficient when it comes to your working hours, do not permit yourself to stay late. Slacking off? Still, get up and go home at a pre-determined time. Eventually the slow progress will catch up to you, and push you into more efficient working mode(s).
*of course, I’m talking about myself here :)
Printing presses and movable types
Did you know that Gutenberg invented neither the printing press nor (surprising to me) movable type?
I’m reading a pretty interesting article about the life cycles of texts. In an offhanded way, the author states at one point: “A great leap in the development of the text cycle was Gutenberg’s invention of loose type and his improved use of the printing press.” That presses had existed before, and that Gutenberg’s huge innovation was movable type itself, didn’t surprise me much (although I hadn’t thought about it before). What did surprise me was that he re-invented movable type.
Here’s a small part of what Britannica says on the topic: (please do not keel me Mr. Copyright, I’m a mere excited researcher sharing the goodness that is knowledge)
About 1041–48 a Chinese alchemist named Pi Sheng appears to have conceived of movable type made of an amalgam of clay and glue hardened by baking. He composed texts by placing the types side by side on an iron plate coated with a mixture of resin, wax, and paper ash. Gently heating this plate and then letting the plate cool solidified the type. Once the impression had been made, the type could be detached by reheating the plate. It would thus appear that Pi Sheng had found an overall solution to the many problems of typography: the manufacture, the assembling, and the recovery of indefinitely reusable type.
In about 1313 a magistrate named Wang Chen seems to have had a craftsman carve more than 60,000 characters on movable wooden blocks so that a treatise on the history of technology could be published. To him is also attributed the invention of horizontal compartmented cases that revolved about a vertical axis to permit easier handling of the type. But Wang Chen’s innovation, like that of Pi Sheng, was not followed up in China.
In Korea, on the contrary, typography, which had appeared by the first half of the 13th century, was extensively developed under the stimulus of King Htai Tjong, who, in 1403, ordered the first set of 100,000 pieces of type to be cast in bronze. Nine other fonts followed from then to 1516; two of them were made in 1420 and 1434, before Europe in its turn discovered typography.
Nifty!
Patriotism, Superstar-Jesus-style.
Oh my goodness gracious. What the hell is this?!
Warning: you may have to wash out your eyes afterwards. This isn’t for the faint of banality tolerance.
*wide eyes*
OMG.
Entire text of the New Testament, Aramaic/English interlinear (literal English translation under every Aramaic word), free, online, gorgeous. Oh.
Say it with me.
Daylight Saving Time. Only one S in Saving.
That is all.
Happy birthday, papa.
On a more sober note, it’s my dad’s birthday. He would’ve been 68 this year. I feel like… I feel like celebrating! He was a difficult man and a passionate one, and he was my papa and I love him.
Still get sad that he’s gone, but not today. Today, I’m happy. It’s his birthday!
