Midwinter

Taken from the top of Bryn Celli Ddu earlier this year.

Plotting the vectors of the fundamental interconnectedness of all things.

Strange Lovers from Methera and Mats Rehnman on Vimeo.

Live from Fiddles on Fire, The Sage Gateshead, May 2013.

View from the tram. Shortly after I took these, someone was sick at my feet. Oh this town, this crazy town.

Rupert Murdoch... is now the single largest shareholder in Disney.

Disney buys Fox in all-stock deal, making Rupert Murdoch the largest shareholder in the company

We had to go back to find the picture on the other side!

Stockport Rocks - Paint, Hide & Find 👩🏻‍🎨🎨👨🏼‍🎨

Solidarity

What are your favourite solidarity terms? As in, excuse me mate / pal / buddy, you've dropped your ticket. Are any of them gender-neutral?

Pal is from the Romani word for brother.

Mate (according to Wiktionary) is an old Germanic term for one with whom you share food (meat). But my intuition tells me that mate (as a solidarity term) is probably not gender-neutral.

Buddy is usually assumed to be baby talk for brother, but again Wiktionary says it may be a comrade, one with whom one shares booty (hmmm).

I've used my friend as a gender-neutral solidarity term. It's hard to think of others.

Poppy mural on Sandhurst Road, Didsbury.

Saw this on the sat nav today and thought of Pilgrims' Way.

Honoured to be part of the 8-piece big band for Hekety's 20th birthday celebrations.

Out last night to see Leveret at Band on the Wall.

It must have been a good gig. I woke up the next morning and found I'd bought a 120-page tunebook containing nothing but 3/2 hornpipes.

DON'T YOU OPEN THAT TRAP DOOR! You're a fool if you dare.

Someone else had the same idea

Another instalment in the continuing series of "palaeontologists of the future won't have a clue what this animal looked like"

Here's how a baboon skeleton might be interpreted by paleoartists who had never seen one pic.twitter.com/4Q6LvyIPzd

— Atlas Obscura (@atlasobscura) September 22, 2017

And another:

Paleoartists tend to "under-feather" drawings of dinosaurs based on fossils. Here's how swans would look if given the same treatment. pic.twitter.com/y9Hg9BVFd9

— Atlas Obscura (@atlasobscura) September 22, 2017

Here's the article:

The Bad Hair, Incorrect Feathering, and Missing Skin Flaps of Dinosaur Art

See translation? Okay then, Facebook...

The Companion

Finished reading: The Companion by Sarah Dunnakey 📚

I really enjoyed The Companion. I'm trying to write some kind of a review; this is what I've got so far. No spoilers here, I think, but I will refer to some minor plot points.

I like the multiple time frames. I've got to admit, I find it hard to remember names at the best of times, so I did occasionally struggle to recall who some of the minor characters were as the book zips between past and present. But that's my problem.

Anna's story is partly a hymn in praise of archivists. She unravels the mystery of what happened at High Hob by patiently trawling through papers, diaries and audio recordings. Cataloguing, consent forms, making presentations to the board: this makes it sound like the book might be a bit of a quiet read, but Billy's chapters, in contrast, are full of action and dynamism. A mood of awful apprehension grows as Anna uncovers the details, building up to a sequence of grim revelations and reversals, some half-expected but still shocking, as Billy's story reaches its climax.

Ultimately it is about loss of innocence: young people coming to realise that the adult world is often sordid and dishonest; and the consequences our actions have on future generations.

Google's style guide for developer documentation:

Google developer documentation style guide

I see data is a mass noun (singular), as I would have expected.

Two of my tunes :-)

A pernicious attempt to erase the Midlands from the map ;-)

We've figured out exactly where the North is by plotting every single Greggs store on a map

I spotted this pew a couple of weeks ago at the Birchcliffe Centre in Hebden Bridge, which is a fantastic building.

It's all a bit Drowning by Numbers, could explain why I've had Michael Nyman stuck in my head for the last few days.

Knock knock!
Who's there?
Knock knock!
Who's there?
Knock knock!
Who's there?
Knock knock!
Who's there?
Knock knock!
Who's there?
Knock knock!
Who's there?
Michael Nyman

Nope.

Bumped into my old boss in Leeds. He seems well. Semi-retired, still doing a bit of SQL training now and again. He asked if I was still in touch with anyone; I said I'd pass on his best wishes.

Help, I’m Trapped in Facebook’s Absurd Pseudonym Purgatory | WIRED

Facebook took my profile away. And it's clear I'm never getting it back.

Synaesthesia

I saw an (only half serious) article recently that suggested people with phonetic synaesthesia broadly agreed on colours and phonemes. Can't find the link now. But today I had a conversation with a friend who has strong associations between musical keys and colours. We agreed that C major is yellow, but had no other keys and colours in common.

For me, E is white, A is green, D is red, G is brown, C yellow, F blue, B♭ sort of bronze... I don't have strong associations for other keys. Minor keys are darker or paler, so E minor is silver or pale grey. It's definitely tonal centre rather than number of sharps / flats. I'm not aware of making any other sense associations, just this.

Also, come to think of it, I don't have perfect pitch so I can't tell what key something is in just by listening to it. So these colour associations are purely when I'm playing or learning or writing a tune.

Haven't posted any Didsbury graffiti for a while. I'm really not sure what this one means.

A souvenir from the coast-to-coast. I had a schooling on that last stage in fortitude, resilience and cheerfulness. 17 miles and I could hardly stand. Alison looked as if she could happily do it all again. Fantastic!

Why Doesn't Ancient Fiction Talk About Feelings?

If you can get past the clickbait title, this is interesting.

Why Doesn’t Ancient Fiction Talk About Feelings?

It massively overstates the premise. My first reaction was, I can think of lots of counter examples. But keep reading!

The middle bit is interesting and touches on thoughts I've had for a while on what is the actual point of studying literature?

Then the end bit seems to undermine the argument. Again, I can think of at least one example from ancient literature where emotions are implied and you have to read between the lines: the Norse sagas.

This instance is from Hrafnkels saga Freysgoða. Þorbjörn and Sám are about to bring a lawsuit against powerful and dangerous landowner Hrafnkel, a lawsuit they have no hope of winning.

Þat var einn morginn snimma, at Þorbjörn karl vaknar. Hann vekr Sám, ok bað hann upp standa, Ok má ek eigi sofa.

It was early one morning that old Þorbjörn awoke. He woke Sám and told him to get up: And I can't sleep.

That's all it says, but we know exactly what they're feeling.

Glaisdale to Robin Hood's Bay

I joined Alison for Friday night and Saturday — the last stage of her coast-to-coast.

Eskdale

Littlebeck

Falling Foss

Not sure what's known of this one. I'll see if Julian Cope has anything to say about it...

Looks like a c18th boundary stone. It's listed here, but the original poster doesn't know what to make of it: Boundary Stone?

However, this entry for another similar boundary stone nearby gives more information: Boundary stone and waymarker, Fylingdales Moor

The boundary stone marks the boundary between the civil parishes of Sneaton (to the right) and Fylingdales Moor. The latter is coterminous with the Abbey Lands and this C18 sandstone monolith is inscribed C X I; the 'C' refers to the Cholmley family who held the former Whitby Abbey lands until late C19.

Almost there!

Maw Wyke Hole. Robin Hood's Bay is a short walk to the south.

Ten years since our last gig... Jabadaw are back!

Saturday 26th August 2017

Shrewsbury Folk Festival
Jabadaw ceilidh

Caller: Nick Walden
Where: West Midlands Showground, Berwick Road, Shrewsbury, SY1 2PF

I've made this sophisticated location-tracking app to keep up to date with Alison's progress. Shown here at end of day one.

Alison steps out in search of England.

Coast to Coast Challenge

I'm looking forward to not having to check the toaster settings in the morning. I tend to go for gently warmed by the distant light of TRAPPIST-1, Alison usually whacks it up to global thermonuclear war.

What am I looking at?

The junk-punk DIY manifesto? Professor Gafferduck's latest invention? A masterpiece of outsider art? Whatever, I think it's fantastic. Chapeau!

It's as if Graeme Obree built a quantum leap accelerator.

Here's a closeup of the dashboard. Flux capacitor and chameleon circuit clearly visible.

The feeling that something in the dark is watching you.

The Palantír

I've been aware of a few Tolkien names and phrases popping up in the alt-right and manosphere over the last few years, which is... interesting.

Palantir and Trump's Deportation Machine – The Intercept

If you've actually read The Lord of the Rings, you might wonder why any company would choose to name itself after the palantír.

If I remember it correctly, the true king Aragorn masters the palantír and wrests it to his will, or something. So like, pervasive surveillance of all the thoughts and deeds of the citizenry is absolutely fine, because the true king will use this power to fight evil? Maybe that's what they're thinking of.

I wonder what the Prof would have made of it all. I mean, you can make many fair criticisms of the LOTR, but it's full of a horror of the industrialised surveillance state. That's how I read it anyway.

Colorado man claims to be King of England

All hail the king: Colorado man claims to be King of England

It's worth scrolling down to read the actual ad the guy placed in the paper. He claims that Wales is Gondor and he's king of it.

The Comes now... is reminiscent of the kind of wording the sovereign citizen movement use when they're trying to prove that they shouldn't pay any tax.

RIP Ian Luff

Great driving rhythm player, wrote some cracking tunes. A huge influence on me and many others. Also very encouraging to Mart and me in the early Jabadaw days. :-(

Jamming on the seafront, Sidmouth Folk Festival, 1998. Photo by Alison Dew.

L-R: Miranda Rutter, Jo Veal, me, Chris Walshaw, Martin Keates, Ian Luff.

Listening to A Richer Dust. The moment when the bass kicks in on New Jigs lifts up your heart and sends a chill down your spine at the same time.

Alison is walking the coast to coast path this year to raise money for Alzheimer's research. You can sponsor her here:

Alison's Coast to Coast — JustGiving

Procrastination.

Another episode in our occasional series of "animals which palaeontologists of the future will not have a clue what they looked like". This week: the owl.

Via Dana Schwartz on Twitter.