Remembering

This morning, for the first time in a very long time, I gazed affectionately at my 10 year old white iBook laptop. With a smile on my face I had flash backs of using my first tiny little Macintosh computer at college, with it's black and white screen and floppy-disk drive. Then, at a different college using larger versions of the Macintosh as I learned to be digitally creative.

I remember when the art department at the newspaper got its very first batch of G1 Power Macs and we were all so excited because they were a huge upgrade to what we had been using. I remembered being jealous of my boss at the newspaper because he had an Apple Newton.

I remember buying my very first computer at Harrods, a black all-in-one PowerMac, and reminisced about how excited I was to be able to use it's (I think) 12kph modem to connect to the internet at home using Netscape Communicator. I remember the 100mb Zip Drive I bought not long after.

I remember living in Aruba, hating that I was without a computer and then paying extortionate amounts of money to buy my iBook because there was an Apple dealer on the island. I remember being able to watch DvD's for the first time in my dingy little island home after spending long days underwater. I remember finally being able to get rid of all my really heavy scuba instructor manuals because I could now buy them on CD's.

I remember laying on a balcony studying for a scuba instructors further education class in Florida when some random cute guy started talking to me. I remember IM'ing with that same guy late at night once I was back in London as we made plans as to which Caribbean island we would find work on. "That guy" would later become my husband.

I remember being in the British Virgin Islands and able to research my family history because I had my iBook and a high speed internet connection. I remember the excitement of finding long lost cousins and slowly being able to piece my way back to 1747.

I remember my disappointment, once we were living in the USA, when I realised that I would have to buy a PC as the desktop computer at home.

I remember the Keynote events that launched the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad. I remember the excitement of buying my first generation iPad because I was back to using the brand I loved. I remember my husband saying to me "I'm never buying a PC again, only Apple from now on"

Thank you for my memories Steve Jobs. Rest in peace.

Captive Queen

Captive Queen: A Novel of Eleanor of Aquitaine by Alison Weir

I've wanted to read this book for a while as I had really enjoyed The Wars of the Roses. In that book I had been thrilled with her writing style, using a mixture of historical fact, conjecture and creative license.

On starting this book I remember being a little disappointed at first because it seemed quite different from the other, as if it had been written for a purely fictional audience. I felt like I had been thrown onto the set of HBO's The Tudors with all the abundant sex scenes and passion detailing the early relationship between Eleanor and Henry. Every time I turned the page they were at it again, and frankly I'm amazed they didn't both die of exhaustion!

For much of the early part of the book I had flashbacks to things I had read in Ken Follet's Pillars of the Earth and by the time I reached the murder of Thomas Becket I was replaying the imaginary movie I had originally made up in my head a year ago. Then towards the end of the book, when Henry and his sons are warring against each other, I kept waiting for Russell Crow to make an appearance. My mind was running through the early scenes of the latest Robin Hood movie recalling the similarities between the two and each of these famously historical figures had Hollywood faces.

Moving through the pages though was a very easy read as layer after layer of depth is added to each of the characters. Each of them becoming quite complex and really having you wanting to go off in search of more information about them. Now I find myself with a long list of people I would like to read more about. You really start to feel for each of these historical figures regardless of whether you consider them a "good guy" or a "bad guy". The descriptive change in Eleanor's demeanor while she is locked in her tower as Henry's prisoner is very subtle. Then later, after they have mellowed a little, the momentary tenderness that Henry and Eleanor show towards each other in their old age is very compelling as you again catch glimpses of why they originally came together but are sadden by the fact that they had grown so far apart.

I ended up thoroughly enjoying this book, even reading the authors notes at the end, which is something I very rarely do. Now I have to tackle my self-created further reading list...

The Craft, Rather Than the Art

Very recently I've come to the realization that its the CRAFT behind scribing and illuminating that interests me the most. Don't get me wrong, I love producing works that are handed out to people, and I often loose myself for days when creating something. However, I get so much pleasure reading about all the practicalities of the craft, like producing my own pigments, of learning to cut my own quills, reading about all the industries that could be fed by-products of say woad or leather.

Not sure how this will translate so well into A&S displays / competitions as what I produce may well end up being more like a research paper than short documentation.

The Alphabet...

"But above all astonishing inventions, what loftiness of mind was that of the man who conceived of finding a way to communicate his most recondite thoughts to whatever other person, although seperated from him by the longest intervals of space and time! To speak with those who are in the Indies, to speak with those as yet unborn, or to be born perhaps a thousand or even ten thousand years hence! And with what ease! All through the various groupings of twenty simple characters on paper" - Galileo

As found in "Biblioclasm" by Marc Drogin

Dead Sea Scrolls to be made available to all

Thu, 2010-10-21 12:01

Submitted by Charlotte Hodgman 

 

Collaboration between Google and the Israel Antiquities Authority will make the 2,000-year-old Dead Sea Scrolls available to over a billion internet users from 2011. Scientists believe that digitising the scrolls, which are currently kept in darkened, temperature-controlled rooms at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, will ensure the preservation of the 900 manuscripts for future generations, and means the fragile parchment fragments need not be exposed to light and air.

How AMAZING is that.

14th Century Burial Site Unearthed

Could this be a burial site for plague victims?

"But the skeletons of adults, children and babies have already been scientifically dated to the 14th century and one of them is a confirmed case of scurvy, a vitamin deficiency disease brought on by poor diet and common among impoverished people of that era.

Because Bawtry was an inland port during the 13th and 14th century it could be some of the remains may have belonged to foreigners."

Although I'm probably hoping for it to be a plague site since I'm immersed in my book at the moment. Would be cool it it was though.

Scribes at London Guildhall

Scribes at London Guildhall were responsible for promoting Medieval English Literature: "Two University of York researchers have found evidence that the London Guildhall served as the cradle of English Literature in the late Middle Ages. It was the home to scribes who copied the first manuscripts of works by fourteenth-century authors Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower, as well as early copies of other Middle English authors including William Langland and John Trevisa.

Professor Linne Mooney and Dr Estelle Stubbs, of the Centre for Medieval Studies at York, discovered evidence of the identities of several scribes of Middle English literature who were members of the civic secretariat at the London Guildhall.

Click here to read the article from Medievalists.net

New Book to Read

So yesterday I went to the bookstore to buy a birthday present for someone else, I got sidetracked like I always do and came out with new reading material for myself.

First on the list, The Great Mortality by John Kelly, an intimate history of the Black death, the most devastating plague of all time. The back cover reads as follows:

La moria grandissima began its terrible journey across the European and Asian continents in 1347, leaving unimaginable devastation in its wake. Five years later, twenty-five million people were dead, felled by the scourge that would come to be called the Black Death. The Great Mortality is the extraordinary epic account of the worst natural disaster in European history - a drama of courage, cowardice, misery, madness, and sacrifice that brilliantly illuminates humankind's darkest days when an old world ended and a new world was born.

I read the introduction last night and was already starting to get quite engaged so we'll see how the book as a whole progresses. Apparently it's author was intrigued by "...original source material, the literature of the Great Mortality - the chronicles, letters, and reminiscences written by contemporaries..." It seems to have gotten some pretty decent reviews and I guess I can blame my Mother for being interested in reading "histories". Definitely not a bad thing considering my new favourite past-times!