Thothmuffin
Don't get any crumbs on the scale of judgement.
Monday, February 19, 2007
Moving AGAIN
I was going to check my bloggins for a post I was sure I'd made back in August 2006, whining about how I was never going to move again, or at least not for another year--and then I realized that I didn't post for all of August and September (and October, too, apparently?) because I was so busy with moving and starting school. Silences speak louder than words.
Anyway, I'm moving again. It sucks. I started thinking about packing two days ago, and all my stuff has to be 67 miles away by the end of Sunday. AHAHAHA. At least I won't have to commute anymore.
Anyway, I'm moving again. It sucks. I started thinking about packing two days ago, and all my stuff has to be 67 miles away by the end of Sunday. AHAHAHA. At least I won't have to commute anymore.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Squid strikes out
Those Japanese researchers who keep filming giant squid are at it again. While studying how squids attack, they ruined a squid's Valentine's day:
Poor squid! Someday love will find you.
You should go watch the videos at The Guardian article. As if squid weren't cool enough, now their tentacles are also equipped with strobe lights:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/japan/story/0,,2012937,00.html
On one of the squid's arm-tips is an organ that produces bright flashes of light prior to attacking. "We think it might act as a flash to blind its prey," Dr Kubodera told the Guardian.
The squid emitted several short pulses of light as it swam around the torch lights from the research ship, possibly in an attempt to court the vessel, according to the paper published in the journal, Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Poor squid! Someday love will find you.
You should go watch the videos at The Guardian article. As if squid weren't cool enough, now their tentacles are also equipped with strobe lights:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/japan/story/0,,2012937,00.html
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Oaty retribution
i like instant oats
but this morning they taste like
cinnamon karma
but this morning they taste like
cinnamon karma
Sunday, February 04, 2007
Some thoughts on diaries
The Thothmuffin blog is three years old, and instead of starting yet another reading about archival description, I'm going to take a moment to reflect on blogs vs. diaries.
I used to keep a diary; though sporadic, the entries provided a fairly good overview of the high and low points of my life. I stopped for two reasons: (1) I filled up the pink, ballet-slipper-adorned diary I'd been using for 10 years, and (2) I started blogging.
Obviously the blog as I keep it has limitations, since I try not to get too personal. TM mostly serves to keep a very small group of people updated on things that I find interesting or noteworthy and yet are too trivial to email. In a way, TM is the least useful sort of blog. It neither provides content (either original or in the form of editorialized links) that is of interest to a great many people, nor provides great detail on my day-to-day thoughts and feelings to feed the curiousity of readers who come to know me better than they ought. I suppose, in that respect, my attempt to use the most public forum in the world for semi-private communication has...succeeded?
Studying archives and records management has got me thinking a lot about preservation of digital sources. How would I preserve TM for future generations? It can't be stuck in a box or a filing cabinet for my grandchildren to find. It relies on HTML, Blogger, all the sites I've linked to, the rendering of comments (which, as a constantly fluctuating part of the blog, add a whole 'nother dimension of preservation problems), and the whole infrastructure of the Internet, browsers, computers, etc. Treeware starts to look pretty good when you think about it that way. I suppose I could print out each entry , staple them together, and file it in a cabinet. (File cabinet! <3) But there's got to be a better way.
Anyway, this nervousness about my inability to leave a print record of my life, including my private thoughts and concerns, has led me back to the traditional paper diary. Now, I like to have diaries with locks. Even ones that are easily picked. The simplest lock still requires and act of will to defeat, in a way that merely opening a book does not, and having to take that extra step both discourages readers who are tempted to pry and adds ritual comfort to the act of recording thoughts for oneself.
Apparently the world, once it stops being a pre-teen girl, disagrees with me on the issue of locked diaries. I looked *everywhere* for a diary of reasonable price that could accomodate an external lock and was also not meant for a 9-yr-old girl. I finally found a pretty innocuous one with blue polkadots on it on ebay, but after my first entry I experienced a crisis of doubt: how could this cheap paper possibly be acid-free and of archival quality?! I might as well just post into Blogger!
So I ended up splurging on a leather, locking diary that cost ten times as much as my blue polkadotted one but whose description contained soothing words like "acid-free" &c. (This was also difficult to find, but there are a few places that make some nice ones.) I guess if I'm going to make an enduring record, I better do it right.
Diaries are weird artifacts, because they're supposed to function as private aids to memory, but there's always that sense in the back of your mind that someday someone you know--or don't know!--might be reading your diary, whether out of historical or prurient interest. I'm not sure how I feel about this--I'm both distressed and compelled by the diaries of dead people for sale on ebay--but obviously I'm planning for it. Archival methods have usurped my brain! Now if only I can find a way to preserve poor Thothmuffin....
I used to keep a diary; though sporadic, the entries provided a fairly good overview of the high and low points of my life. I stopped for two reasons: (1) I filled up the pink, ballet-slipper-adorned diary I'd been using for 10 years, and (2) I started blogging.
Obviously the blog as I keep it has limitations, since I try not to get too personal. TM mostly serves to keep a very small group of people updated on things that I find interesting or noteworthy and yet are too trivial to email. In a way, TM is the least useful sort of blog. It neither provides content (either original or in the form of editorialized links) that is of interest to a great many people, nor provides great detail on my day-to-day thoughts and feelings to feed the curiousity of readers who come to know me better than they ought. I suppose, in that respect, my attempt to use the most public forum in the world for semi-private communication has...succeeded?
Studying archives and records management has got me thinking a lot about preservation of digital sources. How would I preserve TM for future generations? It can't be stuck in a box or a filing cabinet for my grandchildren to find. It relies on HTML, Blogger, all the sites I've linked to, the rendering of comments (which, as a constantly fluctuating part of the blog, add a whole 'nother dimension of preservation problems), and the whole infrastructure of the Internet, browsers, computers, etc. Treeware starts to look pretty good when you think about it that way. I suppose I could print out each entry , staple them together, and file it in a cabinet. (File cabinet! <3) But there's got to be a better way.
Anyway, this nervousness about my inability to leave a print record of my life, including my private thoughts and concerns, has led me back to the traditional paper diary. Now, I like to have diaries with locks. Even ones that are easily picked. The simplest lock still requires and act of will to defeat, in a way that merely opening a book does not, and having to take that extra step both discourages readers who are tempted to pry and adds ritual comfort to the act of recording thoughts for oneself.
Apparently the world, once it stops being a pre-teen girl, disagrees with me on the issue of locked diaries. I looked *everywhere* for a diary of reasonable price that could accomodate an external lock and was also not meant for a 9-yr-old girl. I finally found a pretty innocuous one with blue polkadots on it on ebay, but after my first entry I experienced a crisis of doubt: how could this cheap paper possibly be acid-free and of archival quality?! I might as well just post into Blogger!
So I ended up splurging on a leather, locking diary that cost ten times as much as my blue polkadotted one but whose description contained soothing words like "acid-free" &c. (This was also difficult to find, but there are a few places that make some nice ones.) I guess if I'm going to make an enduring record, I better do it right.
Diaries are weird artifacts, because they're supposed to function as private aids to memory, but there's always that sense in the back of your mind that someday someone you know--or don't know!--might be reading your diary, whether out of historical or prurient interest. I'm not sure how I feel about this--I'm both distressed and compelled by the diaries of dead people for sale on ebay--but obviously I'm planning for it. Archival methods have usurped my brain! Now if only I can find a way to preserve poor Thothmuffin....
