Lughnasa Honey Moon
Kate’s at a sewing circle all day today so I decided to surprise her and hook up the 300 CD player we filled up a while back. While doing that, I eliminated all the old cords and connectors, tied like ones together with colored plastic-wire ties and dusted the whole area. It all works. This is the kind of household maintenance I know how to do. (not that it’s hard.)
Lughnasa Honey Moon
Darwin has a clear, strong voice in On the Origin of Species and the Descent of Man. After reading three chapters of his work, I came away with my jaws far apart in amazement at this guy’s mind. He looks at things to which we all have access, but he sees them. In this quote he does fall prey to a bias of his British Imperial time, but the point is brilliant: “He who is not content to look, like a savage, at the phenomena of nature as disconnected, cannot any longer believe that man is the work of a separate act of creation.” (Chapter xxi, p.1, Descent of Man)
(Punch, 1882)
Also, I loved this from a couple of pages further along: “I am aware that the conclusions arrived at in this work will be denounced by some as highly irreligious; but he who denounces them is bound to shew why it is more irreligious to explain the origin of man as a distinct species by descent from some lower form, through the laws of variation and natural selection, than to explain the birth of the individual through the laws of ordinary reproduction. The birth both of the species and of the individual are equally parts of that grand sequence of events, which our minds refuse to accept as the result of blind chance.”
(Editorial Cartoon, 1871)
When on the voyage around South America, I read some of Darwin’s journal entries from the voyage of the Beagle. The more I learn about him the more he seems to belong to the category of inexplicable genius, a quantum step forward in human understanding: Newton, Einstein, Aristotle, Confucius, Siddhartha Gautama, the early Vedic thinkers, those sorts of folks.
Lughnasa Honey Moon
Got my second pneuma-vax since I got one before age 65. That was fun.
Loki’s Children has begun to occupy front space in my mind, turning to it in the morning now when I’m at my best. Work in the garden early, while it’s still moderately cool, then inside for the a.m.
After Missing has gone through its final paces with beta readers and Robert Kleim, I’ll begin seeking agents. In fact I plan to develop a list this week, so I’ll be ready when a final draft is.
Two things to do this week in addition to others: 1. Make candles. 2. Finally install our CD changer that we filled up a couple of months ago.
Lughnasa Honey Moon
The age of MOOCS. A fine age for folks like me for whom learning has become a lifelong habit. I finished my New History for a New China a couple of weeks ago and am about half way through Modern/Post-Modern. Later in September I’ll pick up Online Gaming and Literature and Modern Poetry.
Each class I’ve taken so far puts another foundational element under certain current projects. The Greek Mythology class and the Online Gaming classes support the Tailte Trilogy. The Modern/Post-Modern strengthens the bones of Reimagining Faith. New History fits my ongoing interest in China both ancient and modern. Modern Poetry, well, that’s just for fun, but I do write poetry so it will help there and with my work on the Metamorphoses.
Lughnasa Honey Moon
“For decades, scientists were at a loss to explain the source of the so-called Magellanic Stream, a long ribbon of gas discovered in the early 1970s that extends nearly halfway around the Milky Way.
But new data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have helped astronomers crack the case. The observations show that the stream did not form all at once; instead, the ribbon is a combination of material stripped at different times from both the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Small Magellanic Cloud, two satellite galaxies that hover around the Milky Way less than 200,000 light years away.” (accuweather) artificial color
Lughnasa Honey Moon
As you can see, we’re back. I entered the posts I wrote in Word so they would 
correspond, mostly, to the chronology here, that is most recent first. The new posts extend backward to August 9th (in the heading of the Word entries) but after them are the two posts made just after Ancientrails went back online, one by Bill and one by me.
(Bill and Me on Big Island in Lake Minnetonka)
If you don’t scroll back to see them, I’ll just say again a major thanks to cybermage Bill Schmidt, and his perseverance and good humor through it all. Bill has a unique and helpful world view which was in evidence throughout this project.
8/14/2013 Lughnasa Honey Moon
As you have no doubt observed, ancientrail’s migration to the larger bucket of unlimited service in 1&1’s hosting has encountered technical difficulties. Bill Schmidt has worked away at this for how many hours I don’t know, but I know he works with a clear eye toward a goal and a lifetime of computer experience, which is saying something since he is now 75. A resolution will take place soon, I’m sure. It might mean a new beginning, which is alright with me. The old Ancientrail’s material will not be lost, but it may no longer be online. I write along anyhow, as you can see by these entries, so we’ll move on into the future.
These are the kind of prices we pay for access to this astonishing ability to communicate with anyone in the world who has an internet connection. Anyone in the world! Think of that. A glitch here and there? So what.
8/13/2013 Lughnasa Honey Moon
Soon we’ll be back on the www. We ran up against limits nested within limits which required changing hosting packages. That’s done. Now. Except.
I had to spend 22 minutes on the phone cancelling a hosting package that I never ordered. I think Hell might be a never ending loop of all the times you’ve connected with a technology company for any reason. Just when you think you’re done, a new call will start. Forever. The horror.
( Limbourg brothers, or in Dutch Gebroeders van Limburg (Herman, Paul, and Johan; fl. 1385 – 1416)
1&1 folks are polite. But not necessarily accurate when it comes to the sales side of their endeavor. Their tech folks are very helpful.
8/12/2013 Lughnasa Honey Moon
Obviously Ancientrails remains down. This form of instant communication has its pluses and minuses. Big plus: write it and publish it. Right now. Big minus: when it’s down, everything going forward waits. So it’s instant except when it isn’t.
Worked on various tasks like reorganizing files, finishing up to do list stuff from three months ago, watching the last of the New History for a New China lectures.
This New History MOOC has some startling things to say, if its data actually supports them. For example, the lecturer today claimed that the justification for the Chinese Communist revolution, land distribution overwhelmingly in the have-a-lots hands, up to 90%, turns out not to have been the case. The implication? The Chinese revolution was a top down revolution engineered by a revolutionary organization, not a from below uprising. This is definitely surprising. Their use of data and their sources did not always seem to justify their conclusions. Too few data points, or data supposedly used as comparative, but actually comparing unlike things. Or, in a few instances, the data simply did not conform to the conclusions based on it. Weird.
So, I’m loafing and inviting my soul. To what? Not sure, but it feels fine right now. I have poked around in some of my short stories and other novels to see if I might start revising other work. I could/can do that, just don’t know whether I want to start right now.
Lughnasa Honey Moon
8/9/2013 Lughnasa State Fair Moon
Take it to the limit, one more time
Ancientrails has been down for a day plus now. I hit my limit, my storage limit on my host 1&1. They allowed, under the old rules, 100 megabytes of data. I had 149.8 which, it turns out, is where the train stops. I had to call cybermage Bill Schmidt. He’s on it and will fix it as soon as he can. It sounds complicated, but the gist is that he has to copy the whole website, then put it in a new folder, this one capable of holding 1 gigabyte of data, the new limit. A rough estimate is that I have around 1,000,000 words plus thousands of images. That’s a lot of data, although, as data goes, it’s really not much to store in these days of terabyte hard discs. I have two on this computer, one for the work and one for backup. Hey, they’re cheap.