tingilinde

thar be a map

Maps in literature 

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In the beginning was the map. Robert Louis Stevenson drew it in the summer of 1881 to entertain his 12-year-old stepson, Lloyd Osbourne, while on a rainy family holiday in Scotland. It depicts a rough-coasted island of woods, peaks, swamps and coves. A few place names are marked, which speak of adventure and disaster: Spyeglass Hill, Graves, Skeleton Island. The penmanship is deft, confident – at the island’s southern end is an intricate compass rose, and the sketch of a galleon at full sail. Figures signal the depth in fathoms of the surrounding sea, and there are warnings to mariners: “Strong tide here”, “Foul ground”. In the heart of the island is a blood-red cross, by which is scrawled the legend “Bulk of treasure here

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the good place podcast

It might be a good addition for those who like the show. I haven't listened, but have heard several positive recommendations recently.

 

 

a bit of adventure in the arctic

When your ship is hits something

 

 

at the end of his life calvin talks with hobbs

A cute piece of fandom from a few years ago

 

color choice for presentations

some common sense advice 

a tip of the hat to Lynn

 

for black panther fans

The Black Panther animated series from Marvel now streams free.

a tip of the hat to Dewayne

 

 

jam busters

A fine Joshua Rothman piece on the drive of an engineer from The New Yorker.

 

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“I wouldn’t characterize it as annoying,” Vicki Warner, who leads a team of printer engineers at Xerox, said of discovering a new kind of paper jam. “I would characterize it as almost exciting.” When she graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology, in 2006, her friends took jobs in trendy fields, such as automotive design. During her interview at Xerox, however, another engineer showed her the inside of a printing press. All Xerox printers look basically the same: a million-dollar printing press is like an office copier, but twenty-four feet long and eight feet high. Warner watched as the heavy, pale-gray double doors swung open to reveal a steampunk wonderland of gears, wheels, conveyor belts, and circuit boards. As in an office copier, green plastic handles offer access to the “paper path”—the winding route, from “feeder” to “stacker,” along which sheets of paper are shocked and soaked, curled and decurled, vacuumed and superheated. “Printers are essentially paper torture chambers,” Warner said, smiling behind her glasses. “I thought, This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.”

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marvel's highly constrained fan fiction platform

Over defined and over controlled - as if that is a surprise. 

the shepherd

Listening to this is one of my few long term holiday traditions,,  a reading of Frederick Forsyth's The Shepherd on CBC.  I caught the first one on As It Happens in 1979. 

 

where are you from?

NPR's excellent Code Switch podcast and blog looks into DNA testing...