I had a pretty nice birthday

John and Momma came and got me. Momma and I went to Peebles and we found a couple of blouses for me that are summery and cheerful, one of which is very much my normal style and one of which I like a great deal but would not have normally chosen. Still, I crossed several racks in the store when I saw it. Then we got some fish at Long John Silver's and went to visit my grandmother, who is not doing very well. At one point both my mom and grandmother fell asleep and so I read some more of the novel I've been working on. Turns out my mother used my gift certificate at the holidays towards a Kindle, so I finally got to hold a Kindle 3 in my hand and compare it to mine. It's so small, it doesn't look real. :) We visited for awhile and then headed back home. I got back about 4:30 pm. I finished up the notes (I'd gotten about a quarter done already) by about 6:30. I've worked on the house a bit (mostly shuffling things, around I'm afraid) but getting rid of stuff, too, waiting for dark so I could call YKWIA (it was sabbath). Now, due to my lack of sleep, I'm starting to get tired. I may go on to bed, although I'd kind of like to watch a movie--but I'm not sure I'll make it through it.

Thanks to everyone who wished me happy birthday with their texts and Facebook posts.

I've always thought this was remarkable

Ancient Greek Computer Had Surprising Sun Tracker

The world’s oldest astronomical calculator is famous for having intricate gear systems centuries ahead of their time. But new work shows the Antikythera mechanism used pure geometry, as well as flashy gears to track celestial bodies’ motion through the heavens.

The device, a 2,000-year-old assemblage of gears and wheels that matched 19th century clocks in precision and complexity, was salvaged from a shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera in 1901.

Called the Antikythera mechanism, the machine gracefully kept track of the day of the year, the positions of the sun and the moon, and perhaps the other planets. It also predicted eclipses and kept track of upcoming Olympic games.

Now, due to some new research, it turns out it uses precise geometry to allow for irregularities in apparent speed of the Sun's transit across the heavens due to Earth's elliptical orbit.

How did I miss this?

March 31st was Hug a Mediaevalist Day.

Hug a Medievalist (From the New Yorker)

Today is International Hug a Medievalist Day. Do I really want to hug a medievalist?, you wonder. Yes! you do. Medievalists are the best kind of historian, in my opinion (which is why I majored in medieval history in college): they are always very interested in the body, the bawdy, and the beautiful, by which I mean they have a profound interest in the nitty-gritty of Western culture—in its material composition and the spiritual and intellectual urges that give rise to it. Perhaps because they delight in details and see worlds within them, medievalists are uniformly possessed of an excellent if slightly juvenile sense of humor, which becomes more pronounced when they drink and their inherent social awkwardness wears off.

Via Medieval News.

A special belated hug goes out to my major professor, E Randolph Daniel, who put up with so much from me that he deserves a hug for every year since he first had me in class. :)

I slept horribly last night

It took a very long time to get comfortable and sleep, and then right before 1 am I dreamt that a daemon-like thing was trying to choke me from behind. There were bizarre nightmares all night. I woke this morning right after 6:30 with giant bags under my eyes. I feel a bit better now that I've showered and been doing some things around the house, but I still feel a bit hung over. It's not a great way to start a birthday, but hopefully the day will improve from that. Momma and John should be here soon, so I'm going to just play on the computer for awhile.

The rain is really hitting the windows

I came in from getting a drink in the laundry room just five minutes ago. Good timing.

So happy that today's 'book talk' comic for Unshelved is about a favourite series of books by Lloyd Alexander, starting with The Book of Three. They are probably my third favourite fantasy series aimed at children. Number two would be Harry Potter. Hands down number one, and the series that got me interested in fantasy to begin with, is Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising. It also got me interested in Arthurian myth, Celtic culture, and ultimately, paganism. [Okay, maybe the crazy Christians who are convinced JK Rowling will turn their precious children into witches aren't...quite...wrong. ;) That's a joke for the unwary.]

Tomorrow I am going to Danville very early. My mom and step-dad are supposed to be here around 8 am. Not sure why so early, but that's fine. We'll go visit my grandmother and see how she's doing.

I suppose since I'm going to get up so early, it wouldn't be amiss to go on to bed, even though it's about 10:30. I'd like to get a few things done before they get here. I have a couple of old CRT computer monitors I want to see if John can use, for example, so I need to get those out.

I have a project that is going to take a laptop. I realise this, but I do not own a laptop. Fortunately they've been ridiculously cheap lately. We're talking less than $300 for a basic-no-frills one, which is fine for what I need. If things go well I might be able to swing one in May or June. If that's the case, I checked, and the licence for my Office 2010 covers a stationary and a portable device, so I can have a desktop and laptop running the program without violating the licence. Considering I lucked out and got the professional suite for $9.95 through work, I really didn't want to have to spend a lot of money for a second copy, so yay, especially as this project will definitely take Word. But first I have to get through tax season. And if I'm lucky after that, I might be able to swing a little money into a car fund a month, although most everything will be going to bills, the IRS, and student loans. But maybe $150 a month savings is doable. Maybe.

Well, the cobra's back where she should be

Not that she ever left the Bronx Zoo Reptile House. Or did she? @BronxZoosCobra has garnered over 200,000 followers in a week or so--amazing by Twitter standards, many celebrities would kill for that--and now has a location of 'I'm at the Bronx Zoo. For now.' Whoever has been tweeting has a wicked sense of humour. One of the post-capture ones: 'The secret to surviving on inside is to find the biggest snake in here and take him down. That earns you respect in the yard.'

My favourite tweet he/she did:

Dear @CharlieSheen, know what’s better than tiger’s blood? Cobra venom. #winning #snakeonthetown Also I’m 20 inches long. Just sayin’.

:)

I actually had more fun with this ad than another video I was watching on YouTube

So I thought I'd post it there. A would love it, he thinks Conway is hot. :)

I wonder what happens if you scratch your nose?

Don't get me wrong. I think this is a great first step and pretty nifty to need nothing more than your computer and a camera.



For more info go to http://www.gmail.com/motion

PS Of course, I didn't consider the date when I read this. It was an April Fool's joke by Google. But there are people working on this sort of thing, using such things as a Microsoft Kinect camera: Google’s Gmail Motion Prank Turned Into Reality.

Ah well, I've always been pretty gullible, and the Internet is great for pranks. But I thought I should amend this post to reflect what should have been obvious.

Settling things in a genteel way

I recently pissed a friend off. I was in the wrong. I find it best to give it a couple of days in these cases and then grovel. This is how things went down:

I receive an e-mail message with a picture of a yellow carnation. Now, we are perhaps the only two people on the planet besides florists who care a thing about the Language of Flowers these days, so I immediately grokked this and looked it up in my Kate Greenaway book.

Yellow Carnations mean disappointment and disdain. Oh, boy.

I searched for a way to say I was sorry. Purple Hyacinths. I send a picture back.

I get two more pictures back. One is of Acacia. Friendship. So far so good. The other I could not identify. Fortunately there is TinEye, a search engine that allows you to upload a picture and search for it on the Internet. Hazlenuts, also known as Filberts. Reconciliation. Wonderful!

I send back: Agrimony (Thankfullness), Lesser Bindweed (Humility) and Flax (I feel your kindness). Essentially thankfully grovelling.

All is now right with the world. My point in sharing this is to show that, although a bit odd, our friendship is rooted in certain commonalities that really most people don't share. A love of Latin and history is another big one. We have a lot of inside jokes in our relationship. How many people would have gotten that e-mail and said, oh, look, he sent me a pretty flower? I knew from a previous frosty e-mail that I'd pissed him off, and this was no happy early birthday. Sometimes you just realise that the people you love, the people you consider family, are so right for you in so many ways. And although disagreements happen, generally those sorts of friendships are to be treasured and hopefully endure. I guess what I'm saying is I'm very thankful (Agrimony!) that I have someone in my life who knows me so well and who, while not always comforting in the way people want it, is extremely supportive and a treasure among friends, as someone who will always be honest with me (often when I don't want him to, but I need him to). You can't find that easily.

On the other hand, his spouse now thinks we're nutjobs because we solve spats with flowers. :)

PS The Language of Flowers is not without its pitfalls. Don't send Wild Tansy to anyone unless you really want to declare war on them, for example. Bachelor Buttons mean Celibacy (perhaps that's why they're used in weddings, but that probably is as appropriate today as white on a bride), but Lime Blossoms mean Fornication. And colour of the flower often matters. :) I came across the tree that my last name comes from, the Rowan or Mountain Ash. It stands for Prudence. What can I say, it's a nearly lost art, one I'm interested in for many reasons. I love gardening and I love old things, especially many things Victorian (or at least high class Victorian--let's face it, they don't include Jack the Ripper and syphillis in Victoria magazine. They're just not pretty. :)

I really have to stop falling asleep early

I've been doing better, but I fell asleep about 8:30 pm, which was bad because I needed to wish Brandon a happy birthday. I woke up just after 12:30 am, which was technically not his birthday, went onto Facebook and posted on his wall, but that's pretty lame not to have posted on his actual birthday. Hopefully, he'll forgive me. After all, I'm 16 years older than he is, and older folks fall asleep at odd times. :)

So for the record, Brandon:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Even though it's April now.) :)

Okay, still lame, but the sentiment is there.