2004-11-29
My poor Powerbook, a Pismo, is more or less dead. I used it mainly to quickly blog a bit or check mail from my comfy chair, but also to compile Krita and check it for endianness problems. And it's not even the machine that's completely broken; it's the yo-yo power supply. And I used it to make the acquaintance of OS X
2004-11-24
In today's Trouw: a short article on the provenance of the Frisian Kalevala, the Frisian Ossian: the Oera Linda book. It turns out that this one, long known to be a fake, of course, has, in fact, been faked by no other than Piet Paaltjens, one of the better Dutch poets. In the nineteenth century, of course. Brian Aldiss is going to be so right.
In other news, I've decided to make a start on integrating littlecms into Krita, complete with support for icm profiles and calibrated displaying of images and conversions between color spaces. This takes a fair bit of user interface work, too, which always takes more time than one would guess.
2004-11-16
And turns out to be a C19 invention -- I'm beginning to wonder, did mankind exist prior the ascension to the throne of Queen Victoria, or was it just the British isles that didn't exist before then?
2004-11-08
By Henry Holt
Lord John and the Private Matter was a washout, and one that came at a particularly inopportune time, namely the first leg of the train journey from Deventer to Paris. The prospect of having to travel for four or five hours by train without anything decent to read is something that makes the staunchest man flinch blanch, and while not being particularly staunch, I blanched, and flinched with the best. Fortunately succour was at had, in the form of Murder at the Bookstall, which Irina had bought for 50 cents just before our trip and which she had prudently placed in her bag. This book tided me over to Paris.
Diana Gabaldon
Buy this book -- at your peril.
I quite like an historical novel now and then. I particularly enjoyed Fingersmith by Sarah Waters, for instance. But LJatPM is probably not a historical novel as I know it but part of one particular sub-genre of the genre: the researched-to-death-no-need-for-a-plot historical novel.
C.S. Lewis
The Screwtape Letters is one of those little masterworks of accessible theology that has done so much to foster prejudice against Lewis and his entire circle with the militant anti-church crowd that makes up the majority of the society where I live. Theology is bad enough, but acceptable if it stays stodgy and unreadable. Accessible theology, theology with a dash of humour and a sense of fun -- that is actively dangerous.