- Anglerfish Trap: Amazing Street Art - I am fascinated with angler fish so this really caught my eye. A street artist was tasked by an art collective to paint something on a wall that had a staircase and two lamps. The lamps became the anglerfish's eye and lure. So cool!
- I have 2000 old VHS tapes in my garage and I don't know what to do with them - In 1974 the BBC started Ceefax, a teletext service. Before the Internet was born, you could access news, on-screen magazines and even proto-message boards using your TV. This was apparently wide spread in Britain (I don't think there was a similar service here in the States but please let me know if I'm wrong!). But technology advanced and teletext became a thing of the past. Neither the BBC nor the company which operated the service kept anything archival so it was thought that teletext was lost to the ages. However! Someone found out that there were fragments of the teletext on old VHS tapes that had been used to record TV shows. This isn't visible on the recording itself and a program had to be written to extract the code fragments from the tapes and stitch them back together. There are a group of enthusiasts who work to save teletext from old tapes and the author of this article got involved, too. He ended up "lucking" into a hoard of VHS tapes and thought he could really do his part to save teletext examples. However, when he wrote this article he had only managed to go through 40 of the 2000 tapes and is now looking for a new home for the remainder. As of February, it doesn't look like he's found a new home for them. Neat article on old tech formats and getting in over your head on a project is very relatable, at least to me!
- Teletext Archive - If the above link intrigued you at all, you can check out this searchable database of teletext pages.
- Take a Nostalgic Dive Through a Visual Cassette Tape Archive - This is someone's passion project to document cassette tapes. You can search the archive by brand, color, running time and/or type. Do you have a cool cassette tape that isn't in the archive? You can send them a picture to have your example included!
I felt like I had a lot to say this week before I sat down in front of the computer and now that I have this blank document staring me in the face, my mind is also a blank!
I spent some time last week downloading all my Kindle books off of Amazon. As of February 26 you can no longer download e-books to your computer. You can still send them to Kindle over wi-fi but I haven't used my ancient Kindles in quite a while - I think I'm pretty much a Kobo girl now.
It's been a couple years since I decided to stop shopping at Amazon but I still have an account. I use it to download library books with the Libby/Overdrive apps. I had 400+ books on there and I was able to download all except one without any issues. I ended up acquiring that from another source.
I'm not even sure I still wanted all those books but I paid for them at one point in time, dammit, and I wasn't going to let Amazon keep them from me. I know, they say you bought the license not the book and they can revoke it at any time. I say bullshit, I paid for them and they're mine. Anyway, now they're sitting safe in Calibre.
On Saturday, Best Son and I went to see a play at one of the community colleges, The Complete Works of Shakespeare (abridged). We've seen several plays at this campus and they've all been really fun. This one had some unanticipated audience participation. Two people got pulled up on stage. The rest of the audience was asked to participate verbally from their seats. Thank goodness I was not one of the 2 people! I would have died. No, seriously. I would have. And Best Son would not have saved me. He would have enjoyed my discomfiture.
I had lunch with my Cat Lady group on Sunday. Twice a year I get together for lunch with a group of cat ladies. We all met volunteering for a local rescue group (which has since disbanded). We're not quite sure how long we've been doing the lunches but it's been over 20 years. It's always fun to hear what everyone's been up to!
I'm looking forward to tomorrow - I signed up for a zoom class, A Beginners Guide to Street Art. The teacher is Sarah McAnulty who runs Skype a Scientist and the reason she's putting on this class is that she feels passionately that people aren't getting the messages they need the most and the dismantling of our government information systems is just going to make that worse. She says, "Truth doesn't have a marketing budget, so spreading those messages is up to us." I have never done street art before and I'm really excited to learn about this! I will report back on the class next blog post.
Listening
Haven't been listening to too much this week, either in podcasts or music. However, the other day when I was cleaning house I did put on this excellent Back to the 80s - Deep House Remixes of 80s Hits. This is super legit - brings me back 30 ... no 40 (yikes!) years. And earlier in the week I was listening to this awesome Liquid DnB/Jungle Mix which I found courtesy of Rusty Bytes.
Reading
So last blog post I wasn't sure what I was going to read after the 2 Regency romances but I was looking for a change of pace. A library book I had put on hold became available so my next read was The Restaurant of Lost Recipes by Hisashi Kashiwai. This is the second in a series, the first book being The Kamogawa Food Detectives. Have you ever watched the series Midnight Diner, about the Japanese chef? It has those cozy, slice of life vibes. The premise of these books is that this is a combo restaurant/detective agency. People come to them wanting a food from their past recreated. They do some detective work and have the person come back a few weeks later to taste the results. This always results in some kind of closure for a person. It's just really sweet and lovely. And hunger inducing! The descriptions of the meals are just lush.
After that I took a gamble on a book that had been on my library wishlist for a while, Forever Amber. I first heard about this book on an episode of Call the Midwife. It is Miss Higgins' favorite book. Miss Higgins, over the years, has developed quite the character arc and it intrigued me what kind of book would appeal to this woman. I looked it up and found that Forever Amber was written in the 1940s and is a historical romance novel set in 17th Century England. I checked it out and then wondered what I'd gotten myself into because it's a 1,000 page chonker. But readers, I am already almost done with this book. It is so good! The main character, Amber, annoys the crap out of me because she's her own worst enemy and no matter how many years pass she always acts 16, which is how old she is when the book started. But the book is great, full of lots of lovely detail and lots of adventure. Amber is somewhat mercenary and ends up marrying her way up in society, several times. There are lots of lush court scenes, descriptions of beautiful gowns. It has been quite the romp and that's mainly what's been keeping me occupied this week.
Watching
Like I said, I've been mostly reading this week. I got all excited thinking there was a new Big Cats, Small World episode from Nature on PBS. After 10 minutes of watching and thinking, man, this seems so familiar I realized that yes, I had already watched that episode.
I've been watching a YouTube channel called Belle of the Ranch for daily insights on our political situation. The channel has a schtick with Belle being a downhome type with straight talk but honestly, she does really good short video segments. There are usually 3 a day, explaining one facet of something that is going on politically. And we currently have so many shitty facets to choose from! But I do like her breakdowns and I think she's a good source to watch if you want to keep abreast of things without getting overwhelmed.
OK, that's all for this week!