Back before social networking--back when imagemaps were the state of the art in HTML--I had my own web presence. I first used it to showcase some of my creative work, then my historical research projects. I felt it was useful for disseminating information that wasn't otherwise available on the 'net at the time, and it provided me with a space I could share with other geeky friends around the world through frequent updates. This space went through a couple design iterations of various levels of technical difficulty, and I felt it gave me a little more geek cred. Last I updated it, I was still an undergrad. Now that my name starts with "Dr." I'm sure you can figure out how much I've felt like it's a useful part of my digital persona, but it was there, and a few friends have offered to hook me up with hosting I'd like more than my last host.

Now, I'm conflicted about the usefulness of continuing to have that kind of presence. Flickr and LJ take up most of the social aspects of what I want to do, and I also use these venues to disseminate nearly all the same information I used to disseminate in HTML. I still want to feel like I know what I'm doing with the development end of things, but I don't know that creating a new space would be anything more than a technical exercise; I'm not sure it would fulfill the same purpose it used to.

One of my other considerations is identifiability. One of the motivations I might have for creating this space is a professional portfolio, and I'd want to put my name on that. I would have to be okay with the fact that there are people out there who may have the intent to find me by my legal name--something I'm obviously not interested in, for several reasons--and I would have to reconcile the desire to put my name out there with the fact that I could be found by people with whom I desire no contact.

Am still not sure it would be a positive, at this state, especially without knowing exactly what it is I want out of it. :/

Every time a new Dan Brown book comes out, I want to commit grievous violence. At least with this one, it's the American Civ profs who'll have to unteach some wantonly distributed fiction, which rational adults ought to separate from The Way Things Really Were, but don't.

I swear, sir, I blame you for my lesson plans on Merovingians and Templars.

It stands to reason that similar fairy tales throughout the world may have had a common root. One researcher in particular has determined the common ancestor for "Little Red Riding Hood" dates back at least 2600 years.

Single molecule imaging is pretty.

I'm intensely irked by the split infinitive in the motto, "To boldly go where no one has gone before." I cannot be the only one on the internet who thinks so.

I now have a working flatbed scanner with a USB port, so it'll talk to my laptop (unlike our previous scanner, which only had firewire).

::eyes gigantic stack of notes and photocopies from dissertation research::

It came with OCR software, and if I can get it to work, I wouldn't have to re-key student papers or require only electronic assignment submissions in order to run them through the plagiarism checker software package the college provides. I think I might like this evil plan.

For those of you also fans of parkour, or creatively-choreographed action flicks, Banlieue B-13 (marketed in the US as District B13) is rather entertaining. One of the leads was stunt coordinator on the Transporter series and several other films with unique fight sequences. Only a couple minor snarks about conservation of ammunition and proper defensive perimeters; good entertainment, overall.

A few weeks ago, one of our local ladies had expressed interest to me in learning how to spin, and I gave her my normal caveat, "My method isn't really the way most other SCAdian spinsters do it." It's definitely an unorthodox method--a worsted technique rather than the more-common woollen. Her response was, "Well, if it works, who cares, right?"

I'd had a run-in a few years ago, back when I used to play in Æthelmearc, with a couple ladies who expressed negativity about my technique. It's made me rather shy about teaching others to do it my way. Someone cares, evidently.

But armed with new-found curiosity inspired by herself, this afternoon I set out to figure out the "orthodox" way to do it. (I'm sure this was aided by having a poof of waste fibre carded for me by students at the demo yesterday with which to experiment.) It took me about 5 minutes to figure out, and I worked with it for a couple hours, just to practice and compare.

Really, I can't say there are any apparent advantages over my "unorthodox" technique: I perceived no difference in speed or the number of slubs. I did notice that I wasn't able to get quite the draft length with the "orthodox" technique--5 or 6 cm as opposed to my normal 10--but I did wind the spindle a little less frequently. Rather frustratingly, I did notice a much greater frequency in draft breakage, that infuriating moment when the yarn snaps at the unspun part, dropping your spindle to the floor trailing a wisp of un-spinning fibre when some smartass invariably quips, "So is that why they call it a drop spindle?", but that may just be my lack of practice or Mercury being in retrograde or whatever. There's a little more fuzz to the surface of the woollen technique, but I can't overall say there's much visible difference to the finished product. Haven't yet tested the difference in tensile strength between the two techniques, but I do know that worsted wool is better for warp when weaving.

Trying this new-to-me technique did have the advantage of showing me that I control the fibre much more with my left hand than my right; I had to switch hands in order to wind the spindle in my right hand, rather than my normal easy transition from spinning to winding.

Overall estimation: why shouldn't spinsters have options as to technique? I'll be fine teaching one-on-one.

A student asked me today how one might say "playing God" in Latin. I don't think "imitatio Dei" has quite the connotations he's going for, so I said I'd get back to him.

...and others among you who may have followed the fashion craze.

On the Effectiveness of Aluminium Foil Helmets: An Empirical Study

For those of you who are worried: when the apocalypse comes and you need to handle such things on your own, the mortality rate of even septicemic plague caused by Yersinia pestis can be moderated to 15-20% with streptomycin and gentomycin.

Sleep well!

The Juried Mathematical Fiber Arts Exhibit of 2009

and possible even more cool, Japanese scientists are using 3D laser modeling to study the female form; likely application seems to be that we'll get underwear that actually fits, for a change. I say about damn time.

From time to time, I catch up on a lovely blog entitled the Duchess of Devonshire's Gossip Guide to the 18th Century, one of the recent posts of which mentions a highwayman who went by "Sixteen-String Jack", John Rann. He was so called because he wore "sixteen strings at each knee". My curiousity piqued, I disbelieved the pub-sign recreations of what this might have looked like, and have been poking through various period pieces. The best one I've found is distressingly small, and it's difficult to see his precise dress. smarriveurr suggested some kind of calf-enhancement was going on, and as he knows a well-turned 18th-century leg, it's hard to argue.

thirteenletters provided a fun clue in Coaching Days and Ways, which indicates that certain riding dress included "small clothes of corded silk plush made to button over the calf of the leg, with sixteen strings and rosettes to each knee," circa 1808. As Rann had been employed as a coachman for a time, this makes sense, and even a Handbook of English Costume in the Eighteenth Century, 1750-1800 indicates with some line drawings of period sources, that breeches were after c. 1794 tied, and that 1790s pantaloons were "sometimes also pulled in round the ankle with a running string".

Any other theories?

From thirteenletters: Inauguration Day from Space courtesy of Popular Science, with photos shot from nearly 700 km by the powerful commercial imaging satellite GeoEye-1, which can pick out items of about 40 cm. Creepy, even with the current US licensing restrictions that require image resampling to 19.6" ground resolution, but awesome photos.

Evidently, Charles Darwin's wife's cookbook is to be published by Cambridge, with sales to fund Darwin historical research.

Bill Nye the Science Guy is on Stargate Atlantis. X) It is hilarious.

In case you needed more proof that Vikings brought civilisation: on the Beeb today, an article about the spread of mus musculus domesticus through Europe with the Viking.

Does anyone remember the talk from last year about a desktop application for Gmail? Don't think it was supposed to be a true POP client, but more of a specific browser for Gmail, or some such.

Is that still being thought of?

For those of you who are maritime enthusiasts, they've found at least nine wooden ships from c. AD 1600 in Oslo.

And for us more terrestrial types, more Neolithic glacier finds as glaciers recede in the Alps.

...and I didn't even reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.

So that's one of two non-functional stoves fixed before Pennsic. I do still have a bum fuel tank assembly to tinker with, and am 75% sure it's the pump and not the generator, but the replacement parts are cheap if I can find them anywhere nearby.

So freaked out by things that need combine WD-40 and fire.