- Sanborn Fire Maps - Do you like typography? How about old maps? This website is a passion project - the author has dedicated the past 10 years to collecting images of fire insurance maps produced by the Sanborn Map Company and, as a result, his site has 3,500 images published before 1923 of almost all the art found in the Sanborn maps. The title page typography is beautiful and the maps are really interesting, too.
- Traffic Cam Photo Booth - I really appreciate this artistic activism. From the About section:
Traffic Cam Photobooth is a website that allows anybody to locate their nearest publicly available traffic camera and use it to take pictures of themselves. While these cameras are ostensibly intended for traffic, they also serve to acclimate us to the idea that constant monitoring is an everyday part life in the city. No matter the target of this surveillance, it's clear from looking at the map that most New Yorkers get unconsentingly captured by the lens of at least one camera - if not several - every day. TCP offers visitors an engaging and lighthearted way to engage with this very serious topic by drawing attention to these easily ignored cameras. People can use their feeds, which their tax dollars help fund, to take pictures of themselves, spreading the knowledge of this sprawling surveillance apparatus through fun self-portraits designed to be sharable online.
This has been a painful week for me. Not sure what happened but my hip pain, which the PT had been helping, has suddenly increased over the past couple weeks. It's been a challenge getting anything done. I have an appointment next week with the orthopedic surgeon. Kind of wishing I hadn't waited so long to make it but I really thought PT would fix this for a while.
I had lunch with one of my friends yesterday. We went to a Chinese restaurant. It's one of those places that's in an old strip shopping mall. It looks kind of shady from the outside but the food is really good. Usually I go with either Beef with Broccoli or Almond Chicken with Hot and Sour Soup but I changed things up and had Teriyaki Beef with Egg Drop Soup this time.
Afterwards we went back to her house as she offered up her cats for snuggle time, since I am still catless. Out of 7 cats, only one was really interested in my love and attention. Her other cats were alarmed and appalled that mama was trying to trick them downstairs with toys and catnip when a STRANGER was sitting on the couch. After about 2 hours, 2 of the others decided I wasn't going to eat them and let me love on them a little bit. It's been a hot minute since I've had the chance to love on kitties and I enjoyed my time with them.
Reading
I've finished Midnight Snack and Other Fairy Tales and started on The Rook by Daniel O'Malley. I watched the one-season-only TV series a while ago and, so far, the book is pretty true to what I remember. I finally hit a story that I really liked in Terrible Lizards. It involved calling on dubious mercenaries in a medieval-ish setting. Mercenaries of the rending, gnashing, terrible lizard kind. Not sure why I enjoyed this story so much more as, at its heart, it's still a lot of crunchy, bloody dinosaur horror gore. Maybe it was the setting? Who knows. Anyway, I'm glad I've kept plugging away at that book and I hope to find more unexpected saurian delights.
Watching
I'm slowly making my way through season 4 of Only Murders in the Building. I just finished episode 6, which was interesting as they filmed it "found footage" style.
One of the channels I subscribe to on YouTube is Archaeology Southwest. They host an "Archaeology Cafe" in Tucson and, since I can't make it down there for the lectures, I'm very glad they upload them to the channel! This season the talks are going to be on dogs and their role in past societies and their impact on art, stories and daily life. The first lecture was "Celebrating the Song Dogs" - all about coyotes. It was unexpectedly interesting! Next one was "Weaving the Hair of the Dog: White Dog Hair Textiles in the Ancient Southwest" and the last one for this year was "The History of the Coast Salish Woolly Dogs". All of the talks have been really interesting and, if you are interested in dogs and/or archaeology, you might want to check these out.
Til next week!