Yesterday (as this post goes live) was Old Lady-Day, once a significant day in the English agricultural calendar. And today (April 6th), a new tax year begins in the UK. These dates are not unrelated to each other, and are also linked to the Christian Feast of the Annunciation, which commemorates the Biblical event depicted in the Leonardo painting at the head of this post—the arrival of the Angel Gabriel to inform the Virgin Mary that she was to conceive a miraculous child.
All posts by Oikofuge
Lockdown Walks: The Dundee-Newtyle Railway (Part 2)
At the end of my previous post, I left you gazing at the blind end of the old railway bridge over Lochee High Street.
Back in the ’70s, there used to be several of these bricked-off gaps along the line of the old Dundee-Newtyle railway, But this is the last one left—it doesn’t even have a partner on the other side of the road.
Impending Transfer To New E-mail Notification Provider
In the next week or two, I’m planning to shift the provider of my e-mail notifications from the increasingly creaky Feedburner to the service at follow.it.
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GPS Navigation With Historical Maps
A project to transfer an out-of-copyright georeferenced historical Ordnance Survey map from the National Library of Scotland website, to use with the GPS of an Android phone
Lockdown Walks: The Dundee-Newtyle Railway (Part 1)
This one follows the route of the old Dundee-Newtyle railway, as it weaves around town. The track bed is long gone (I can only just remember the occasional goods train plying this route in the early 1960s), and subsequent demolition and building work has left little of even industrial-archaeological interest —but it’s a pleasant route to follow, and wide enough to allow two-metre distancing throughout, with a little care (and occasional willingness to step off the path).
Brian Stableford: The “Hooded Swan” Series
Brian Stableford is a British science fiction and fantasy author, also active as a critic, translator and academic commentator. The Hooded Swan series of six novels, published between 1972 and 1975, is how he first caught my attention. According to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, (and certainly more importantly for Stableford) it also marks the point at which he significantly penetrated the American science fiction market. Since then, I’ve also enjoyed some of his fantasy alternate histories: The Empire Of Fear (1988), in which vampires are real; the David Lydyard trilogy (1990-1994), ditto werewolves; and the Empire Of The Necromancers trilogy (2008-2010), ditto Frankenstein’s monster.
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Eduard 1/48 Westland Lysander (Special Duties In France): Part 3
By the end of my previous post, I’d adapted all the major bits and pieces that needed to be adapted. The next thing was to get the fuselage halves closed around the interior, which was less straightforward than usual because the Eduard kit doesn’t provide any sort of locating pins on the fuselage halves—you’ve got … Continue reading Eduard 1/48 Westland Lysander (Special Duties In France): Part 3
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Inoculate
ɪˈnɒkjʊleɪt inoculate: (horticulture) to insert a plant bud as a graft into another plant; (medicine) to insert a disease organism into the body by puncturing the skin, or into a culture medium using a needle; (medicine) to inject a vaccine In May 1796, Edward Jenner found a young dairymaid, Sarah Nelms, who had fresh cowpox … Continue reading Inoculate
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Falling Through The Earth
If the alien cyborgs have constructed this miraculous planet-coring device with the precision I would expect of them, I predict we shall plunge entirely through the center and out to the other side. Gregory Benford Tides Of Light (1989) There’s an old puzzle in physics, to work out how long it would take a person … Continue reading Falling Through The Earth
Kim Stanley Robinson: The Ministry For The Future
Possibly some of the richest two percent of the world’s population have decided to give up on the pretense that “progress” or “development” or “prosperity” can be achieved for all eight billion of the world’s people. For quite a long time, a century or two, this “prosperity for all” goal had been the line taken; … Continue reading Kim Stanley Robinson: The Ministry For The Future
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