Historical Currency Conversions

Historical Currency Conversions is a  useful little online tool that will translate historical amounts of money into modern equivalents in US dollars.

The very first thing that came to mind was Mr Darcy’s £10,000 a year, which turns out to be over £500,000 per annum. I knew he was incredibly wealthy of course, but I’d never really translated the figures in my head into the term ‘millionaire’.

Steinbeck: the horror!

I had some fantastic English teachers at school. There was only one I wasn’t very fond of and she was only there as a supply teacher. She also accused the class of nicking copies of Steinbeck’s The Pearl. I honestly don’t know to this day if we were more insulted that she thought we would steal the books or steal that particular book, because it was dreadful. The only book more depressing we read in six years was The Red Pony, also by Steinbeck.

And so, in my mind, Steinbeck writes the most depressing books ever. There is no contest. If you’re the most cheerful person on the planet, stay away or prepare for misery.

Friends, colleagues and even pupils have tried to talk me out of this state of mind and I have vigorously resisted, but I’ve got to admit to a strong streak of fairness striding through me, and to dismiss someone’s work entirely because of two bad experiences as a teenager …

And thus it came to pass that the LibraryThing 75 in 2012 Group decided to hold a Steinbeckathon, and so I’m now reading Cannery Row, with several others stretching ahead of me into the months ahead.

Wish me luck.

Reblogging

Last night I discovered that a photo of mine, posted on Flickr, had been blogged and reblogged around the world over the last year. I feel like I’ve come home to find all my stuff’s been gone through.

A bit more investigation showed that the image was posted on Tumblr (several hundred times), pinterest and weheartit, all websites specifically set up for people to keep all their favourite images together in an online gallery.

Nowhere in the main introductions to these sites is anything said about copyright, although I wasn’t surprised to see that they all have steps in place for people wanting to claim back their images, as they all claim to “take copyright seriously”. Not so seriously that they require the person posting to find out the information in the first place, mind you.

And of course, what about Flickr, where I believed my image was safe. I can only assume that it was blogged during one of the periodic updates that always seem to require people to refix their settings (despite being happy with them the way they were) and I haven’t had the correct settings in place.

I’m aware that someone who REALLY wants the image has other ways of downloading it; I take that into account when deciding whether to upload. But I’m really not happy that the process is being made so simple. When I’ve been asked in the past, I’ve always said yes. What I really dislike is the idea that the world believes they can walk in and take whatever they like, from whoever they like, without asking first.

And anyway, all those hundreds of likes should have been coming to me!

Oh well, another lesson learned, I suppose. Two actually, as I ‘ve also learned what’s required under copyright law to claim my picture back: fingers crossed.

 

Update 4th January 2012

I spent Hogmanay contacting the various sites reporting the use of my photo, and all three have since got back to me, asking for further information or reporting that the image had been removed and the person involved notified.

Most of them are also saying that if I spot it again, then I have to report it and continue to report it, so for the hudreds of versions on Tumblr for example, it’s my responsibility to track them all down. ONe has said that the ‘guilty party’ has the right to reply, at which point they will reinstate the image, pending my response!

Nice that they make it so easy for the image to be used, but not for it to be removed. Nice to see whose side they’re on.

I have no qualms about the idea of the sites, but I wish they would make people work slightly harder when it comes to copyright. I guess I’m just old-fashioned.

The pain, the pain

Oh good grief.

Extreme pain in right wrist and thumb = tendonitis. I wish it on no-one.

Extreme frustration = not being allowed to use right hand for a week. Trying to be good but failing e.g. I’m here amn’t I

Extreme annoyance = simultaneous lousy cold. Can’t taste anything. Can’t stay awake. Can’t stay asleep. Too hot. Too cold. Too miserable.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year xxx

A brilliant bit of writing

Listened in to Celtic Music Radio on Friday night and the first thing that hit my ears was the following:

Walking down the road I thought I heard a song,
I’m not sure where it came from, it was neither short nor long.
Not sure how it started and I don’t know where it ends,
But it walked along beside me like we were the best of friends

Colum Sands, Walking Down the Road

Now I reckon that’s just brilliant. Feel free to agree or not, but it was a lovely image to meet on a rainy Friday evening.

How to catalogue your library

I found this in a review of a book called How to catalogue your library:

“The subject may at first appear uninteresting, but the possessor of a small collection of books finds it advantageous to have a list of them, and is often perplexed as to the method to be employed.”

From Northern Notes and Queries or, The Scottish Antiquarian Volume IV, No XV, p143

It seems on the surface to be a rather sweet comment, bringing doddery old men and women to mind, falling over piles of books and hopelessly bewailing the lack of a list for their books. But as a veteran listmaker and cataloguing fiend, I shouldn’t laugh.

There are many reasons why I am so far behind with the cataloguing, and futering about with the classification and cataloguing is one of them, although I’ve curbed my tendencies to reclassify the minute I get a new book that doesn’t quite fit.

The problem is that having being so long at my present citadel of learning, the vast majority of the books have been catalogued by me, along with all the mistakes and failed experiments from along the way.

And I can see them, and it annoys me.

More importantly, it makes finding the relevant books more difficult for the pupils, and that annoys me even more.

Maybe I should have read How to catalogue your library more carefully back at Robert Gordon’s, but where’s the fun in that?

Mumuration

Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive on Vimeo.

Earth: Time Lapse View from Space

Earth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.

How to review 29 books in 60 seconds (and a bit)

Reviews!! from David Maybury on Vimeo.

Frozen Planet

I’m watching Frozen Planet and with no apologies for cliches, I am blown away by the stunning photography and glorious colours. The meltwater is the most amazing blue and the footage of snowflakes forming is beautiful.

But the speeded up glacier is a major stand out moment. The power of that river of ice churning up everything in its path is phenomenal.

I didn’t realise Antarctica was so mountainous either, although it’s quite difficult to perceive size when everything looks the same.

My absolute favourite part of the programme though is the added ‘making of’ element that’s showing how the programme was made. So many little snippets just thrown out:

• the air is so thin that the helicopter can’t hover
• the pilot has to breathe oxygen through a tube in his nostrils

And then of course, the pod of orca just pop up while the cameras are setting up. Wonderful, just wonderful.