In short: I'm highly amused.

Given Circolwyrde wordhorde, should I assume you know about the Vocabula computatralia? If not, should I mention it?

---L.

Oh, but Teresa, I loved that one. Not only did it provide several minutes of Big Fun, it also reminded me to go look something up that resulted in a major vindication. Major, major, major. (Well, probably only important to me, myself, and I, but still. It was about the dye brazilwood, and the fact that the country of Brazil was named after it. Years ago, I was vending some color sample cards at Pennsic, for the use of some folks who find natural dyes useful and interesting. I was talking to a customer about brazilwood. The customer had expressed surprise that I was purveying info on New World dyestuffs. I got to the bit about Brazil having been named after the dye and not the other way around, and at that point a big name peer of the realm who had been looking at my wares turned his back with a rather grand sweep and stalked away. I now have the urge to post the relevant info in my journal and say, "Neener, fookin' neener, man.")

Anyhow, um, thank you for that. Particles good. TNH random travelog of intellect and sensibilities good. Vindication also sometimes v. good. Thanks for the pleasures of all of those.

403 FORBIDDEN

You must supply a local referer to get URL '/p1/fsq51sp.jpg' from this server.

Once you get the 403 message, reload the page (try hitting return rather than using a reload key or menu item) and the graphic should appear. Apparently "no referer" is close enough to a "local referer."

Bob

Aside from that, I've already found that the Wm. Spear site features a pin of a Plesiosaur. I might have to order that to wear when my manuscript for An Age of Heroes is published as it features a creature very similar to it.

So, keep on posting. You're doing great.

It's funny; I didn't notice your sideblog until today. I've been enjoying PNH's for some time; maybe it's because his is on the right, and so easier to see.

Elizabethan names for colors: now there’s a real thigh-slapper, you betcha...

I have files (paper and electronic) with information like this. I used to be a theatrical costumer. Learning period details is part of the research, but also, there are long hours of sewing in a group where the chat roams all over trivia and back again.

Avram, I like imagining the conversations:

Customer: I'll have three ells of your broad woollen.
Mercer: Very good, sir. What color did you have in mind?
Customer: Puke.
Mercer: Puke it is. Did you need thread to match?
Customer: No. I have a couple of spools of puke left over from my last doublet.

Larry, I don't think Particles is more elegant than your solution; only a little better-formatted, perhaps, but that's Movable Type's doing, not mine.

And no, I hadn't been aware of the Vocabula Computatralia. I shall have to post it, with thanks. Obligatory quibble, because Graydon did it when I first acquainted him with the Circolwyrde wordhorde: I would have thought "home page" would be better rendered as something like pagina prima; their pagina domestica is merely literal.

Elise, I'm glad I vindicated you, but I would have thought that anyone who affected to care as much as yr. nameless peer did would have already known that it was named for the dyestuff. Tra-la, blow raspberry, pass onward.

Mary Kay, I was about to tell you to just reload the page when I noticed that Bob Webber had done it for me. It's a weird glitch.

Emma, the French named a rose of a particularly tender shade of pink "cuisse de nymphe", which, if less sharply descriptive, takes better to being in polite company.

John, I've been cleaning out some of those bookmarks. Remember when we thought that memorable URLs mattered?

Dave K., there's always Agincourt; that's a nice one for lopsided victories under difficult conditions. But there are so many others to play with -- Morgarten, the Marianas Turkey Shoot, the Battle of New Orleans, the Russo-Finnish Winter War of 1940, Thermopylae, Chamberlain holding the left end of the line at Gettysburg, and that's only as many as I can think of off the top of my head and type while holding my breath -- that it would make more sense for you to specify flavor, duration, amount of tech, degree of grimness, etc., and have us recommend some battles for you. And of course you should use historical precedents for your battles. Everyone does that who has any sense. It's hard to make up a really believable battle from scratch. Fortunately, with as many of 'em as we have to choose from, there's no need to do so.

If you want something gratifyingly improbable, wait until Macdonald comes home from his annual stint as a scoutmaster, and ask him about the three engineers who got cut off from their unit during the Battle of the Bulge and managed to seriously impede a large chunk of the German advance.

Spacewaitress, ask Patrick how to do it. He figured it out after seeing someone else's weblog that was similarly equipped.

Jesse, not to worry. I've been enjoying the sidebars too.

Clew, that's nice to hear, but which one was it?

(1) Create a second blog on the same site as your main blog.

(2) Get and install David Raynes's Movable Type plugin MTOtherBlog.

(3) Use MTOtherBlog to syndicate posts from your secondary blog to a chosen location (like the sidebar) of your first.

To see how it's done in Making Light's index template, load "nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/index.html.tmpl" and then view source. Search for "MTOtherBlog". The chunk of code you'll find will be obviously adaptable to your needs.

Note: To get your secondary blog's unique "blog_id" number, which you'll need, go to your MT installation's main menu screen--the one that lists all of your MT blogs--and hover your mouse over the listing for the secondary blog, while looking at your browser's status bar.

To vary the number of entries displayed on the sidebar, change the value of "lastn". Obviously, there are other things you can and probably should also vary.

Entire idea stolen from Greg Greene. Go take a look at his implementation, which differs from mine and Teresa's in interesting ways.

NB: MTOtherBlog is also how Teresa and I make headlines from one another's weblogs appear in each of our respective sidebars.

The links work a little weirdly sometimes. The "in skiffy" entry actually consists of eight different one-word links, all of which link to the same non-available image (which then shows up on reload). At first I thought there was some terrifying crypto-significance there too deep for my understanding, but I've decided to ignore the potential crypto-significance and now life is okay. Although apparently I have to worry about breaking my rocketship.

Not quite. Try clicking between the words.

Fiendish, these Teresas.

Remember, you have to go into Tor and teach Liz the Dark Art of Frontmatter.

I've been meaning to confiess to a Particles addiction, Textweek has already become a standard tool . . .

So, by Elizabethan times Crimson had already made the transition from a kind of woolen fabric, noted for both a blue and a red that took very well to it, into a shade of vivid red that we presume is based on that original successful red dye? Hmm--when did that transition occur? The window is now down to only 250 years.

Oops--was I typing out loud? Sorry...

I mean, wow.

Something disconcerting about the skiffy covers: the dress-sense predictions weren't all that bad. Young women in skintight clothes with cutouts; guys still wearing khaki trousers and putting too much stuff in the pockets.

Well. I guess stuffing a pocket is subtext.

But the entry for `July 00' is probably a bug...

The formatting worked a lot better when there were only, say, a dozen randomizers and text transformation tools out there.

---L.

Oh, and the "So long, Strom" link should probably be to http://www.comicspage.com/comicspage/main.jsp?catid=1180&custid=69&file=20030628edmar-a-p.jpg&code=edmar&dir=/marlette though I had fun paging back through Marlette's more recent cartoons to find that one.

Gothic Martha Stewart - the "summer picks" sidebar lists "Smash Dragon eggs at your next Picnic!" as a fun activity.

Mambo Movers - These people move your furniture. They also have an avant-garde website which features "the accurate description of their services, conditions, and heroic deeds."

Illusory Foods in the Renaissance - want to make your grilled peacock breathe fire? Find out how here.
Interactive Lite-Brite - low technology, meet high technology.

Okay, for certain definitions of "practical." But there's a crewelwork pocket I've been meaning to do...

Customer: Not Margaret-Murrey.

Mercer: 'S'turnip, milord, nay. Despite the dagging that thou showest so divinely, wouldst never proffer that thou prank'st in thy patens, as 'tis said among the French.

Customer: Well enow. But I do see that my purse runs light by two remunerations and half-guerdon-farthing. May we come to some understanding?

Mercer: Ah, 'tis ever thus. Might I suggest that sir wrap his hatrack in these three ells of stuff, and with the smallest of urgings colour it native-pukely, yea, and wet himself for mordant?

-- From "The Witty Weavers of Walmsley," W. S. (desperately attrib.)

---L.