November 18, 2008
I'm hosting Carnivalesque and I haven't sent out any invitations!
Well, I keep saying I'm having a Christmas party and I haven't even chosen a date, either.
Hey - if you have an Ancient or Medieval bit of bloggery to suggest or show off in the November 
, which I hope to go live with on Monday, you can either email me at thecrankyprofessor AT gmail DOT com, send a message to the carnival email address (carnivalesque AT earlymodernweb DOT org DOT uk), or use the nomination form.
Here's the previous Carnivalesque I hosted, way back in 2005.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:02 AM | Comments (0)
November 5, 2008
Travel
I'm away from home for a week, so I may or may not blog as much. There will be pictures, I'm sure. Sad to say the Rochester airport no longer has free wirefi.
Further: There IS free wireless - I was just in a bad pocket to find the signal! Thank goodness.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:52 AM | Comments (1)
November 3, 2008
Vote for Obama or Andrew Sullivan will just DIE.
From a comment on a post at Althouse:
I wouldn't say that it's the very best reason to elect McCain, but it surely has to be fairly high on the list of motivations that if McCain wins, Andrew Sullivan's head will explode. (It will "open in a fundamental way,"* perhaps.)
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:14 AM | Comments (1)
October 26, 2008
Radio silence
Sorry - I had a busy weekend packing stuff and lifting things. Not particularly stressful for me (since it's not my life being moved and I'm not concerned about various closings), but I did go off and leave the blog on its own. I also managed to leave my cell phone charger at home, which caused some parental worry when they couldn't get me on the phone yesterday. Alas.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:03 PM | Comments (0)
October 23, 2008
I should stop blogging over my coffee
It's cutting into my crankiness.
In a new experiment, people who held steaming cups of coffee for a few seconds judged another person as more generous, caring, and happy than people who held a cup of iced coffee did.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:57 PM | Comments (0)
October 18, 2008
Screen resolution annoyance. Movable Type annoyance.
So yesterday I plugged the laptop into a bigger display to do some proofreading - everything worked fine. This morning I unplugged the laptop and the screen resolution is all wacky. I've tried every setting and nothing seems quite right, quite the way its always been. Maybe it's like getting a new prescription for your glasses - things never look QUITE right at first?
And then there's Movable Type 4.21. I upgraded a couple of weeks ago. In general it's slower and it has at least one thing that annoys me a LOT - about a third of the time when I try to create an entry and most of the time when I try to edit an entry I get to the editing screen and the BODY field won't accept a cursor. I can click into the TITLE field and start one or edit that, but the BODY field is dead space. I have to quit MT and come back. If I wait at least 5 minutes it seems to solve itself.
Odd!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:38 AM | Comments (1)
September 13, 2008
A new spam stream
I'm getting some new spam emails at work - every one comes from a deeply unconvincing name (iabg mac?), but the subject lines are these great 3-part names: abdenace jill tien-fu, pratt beau cadwallader, erik graham constantine [capitalization sic].
I actually had to open Erik Graham Constantine to be sure. Pratt Beau Cadwallader sound too much like a fellow alumnus of the McCallie School to be true, though.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:23 PM
September 1, 2008
Weird Anti-Republican Reactions to Palin
This is hilarious. Andrew Sullivan wants medical staff to confirm that Palin's baby is hers. Talk about the presumption of guilt for the accused!
You can't make up this kind of hostility. It seems like desperation to me.
-----
Update: He's still doing it:
Now they've cleared the air on this - and good for them - what harm would it do to release the medical records showing that Sarah Palin delivered Trig on April 18 in Wasilla? This is not hard: there must be an obstetrician, medical records, and data that can easily refute this rumor. It is not out of the ordinary either: candidates routinely issue medical records. So let's have them. And then we can move on.I like the use of the phrase, rather loaded in contemporary political life, "move on" to describe what he's willing to do if he gets his way. Remember the sex-scandal that MoveOn.org was founded to counter?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:26 PM | Comments (1)
August 30, 2008
Obama pick up lines
Hey, baby, you're the change I've been waiting for!
I just hope these guys are married, because otherwise there's no hope for 'em.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:29 PM | Comments (0)
August 20, 2008
Why We Blog
My home away from my home away from home
Originally uploaded by Michael Tinkler.
Why we post pictures
Originally uploaded by Michael Tinkler.
The other day I posted a picture on my flickr stream of my new home away from my home away from home. One of my regular readers happens to be the just-now-formerly-acting-head-librarian (I'm not sure how else to describe Sara other than, say, Library Goddess, but those two will have to do).
She noticed a particularly horrible chair with green padding in the first photo. She brought me a new one - much more comfortable for sitting with my feet up and reading purposes.
I'm an even happier camper now!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:02 AM | Comments (1)
August 14, 2008
New Pocketable Camera Joy!
A PowerShot SD870 IS (don't all those elements connote sophistication?). This will fit more slimly in my pockets - the tradeoff of the A530's use of over-the-counter batteries was the big bulge; of course, it also made it easy to handle. We'll see.
Once again I read around, but came back to Ken Rockwell's recommended list and ordered there - might as well support someone who is so very, very informative! Go there and do likewise.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:59 PM | Comments (2)
The Old Pocketable Camera
My PowerShot A530 is still working fine - but the slide to switch from shoot to replay broke off - luckily in the shoot position! Time for a new camera!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:57 PM | Comments (0)
August 8, 2008
What a week of Blogger-meeting!
My trip was great - we all had a wonderful time helping to celebrate my sister's promotion and I had a good time meeting some of the bloggers I most admire!
Eve Tushnet met me for lunch on the same day I visited the Afghan Gold exhibition. Eve turns out to be much the same mix of philosophy, religion, Dominican-admiration, book-chat, and probing questions (I do hope she takes that lunch off her income taxes - I was being interviewed about the state of contemporary college students!) as she is on her blog, confirming my belief that bloggers I like to read are all typing in their real voices. See below. And further, later.
Megan McArdle gave me the gentle push I needed to start blogging - I commented so regularly at her gone-but-not-forgotten Asymmetrical Information that she gently encouraged me to get my own. I noticed that another of her frequent commenters has done the same lately - Freddie at L'Hôte. Megan and I met a couple of years ago for drinks and dinner in NYC; this was my first chance to find out up close and personal about her reactions to Washington. She's having a lovely time and cybertracking her friends with her iPhone apps. What else would you expect? A city whose dominant ethnic food is Ethiopian and which is full of wonks with good tech skills is the perfect environment for her - and she's getting paid to blog!
Margaret Soltan, two hours, and a Venti dark roast goes a long way towards restoring a cranky man's view of the professoriate. O.K., she drank apple juice from a box, but I already knew she was not a coffee-drinker. The voice was spot on and we had fun ranging about, from the sadness that is the University in Europe to best bets for retirement living. I'm headed South, that's all I'm sure of, and she's headed to the Sun.
One of the old differences between literary and art historical temperaments came out, too - I'm spending my sabbatical running around looking at stuff; Margaret's headed for a beach. Or two, if she can swing it, but she's going to sit and read and think and write. That's one of the reasons I'm happy at being what I am (though, yes, I am cranky about quite a number of things!) - I discovered in time that I am temperamentally suited to running and looking. Arthur Kingsley Porter with his camera and his touring car is the more or less explicit model still for all medievalist art historians.
Do I need to say that I came away from the 3 meetings with enough book recommendations and resolutions to last me till October? That I had a good time? Probably not. But I can repeat a bit of advice: it's always worth looking up a someone who delights you on screen; if someone has a strong voice over many, many posts that lunch, dinner, or cup of coffee will pass too quickly. Forever afterward, too, you'll hear the real voice when you read the typing! And what could be more pleasant than that?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:57 AM | Comments (1)
August 7, 2008
More typography
The Ampersand, a weblog.
via Daring Fireball
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:32 AM | Comments (0)
July 30, 2008
Rochester Airport blogging
Off to NoVa and DC for a week - the big reason is to attend (and help with!) my sister's wetting down party - she's now (or soon will be?) a Captain, USN.
Geneva being the small town it is (and Rochester being one of our only 2 airport choices) I saw a couple of colleagues coming in from vacation in LA - they got here just in time for drenching rain.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:35 PM
July 29, 2008
TLM Communities and Google Maps
So I don't want to start any new non-fiction big medievalist books before I leave town tomorrow. And I was a little bored last night. And I'd been wanting to play with Google's personal mapping functions. And I've spent WAY too much time reading What Does The Prayer Really Say and The New Liturgical Movement and such lately.
So here you go -
1. residences and rectories of
2. groups, orders, etc., who are
3. in union with the Pope of Rome and
4. say Mass primarily with the Missal of Bl. John XXIII
So far I've got the:
FSSP in blue
ICKSP (link not safe for work if you dwell in chant-averse lands) in purpleish pink - I wanted purple for obvious reasons but Google doesn't get that far up the color scale
CRSJC in yellow
2 disclaimers -
1. Not mass locations, residences. I'm more interested in community dispersion or concentration than I am in individual masses. I'm an historian, not a devoté here. I'm depending on the public information on their websites and sometimes there are ambiguities. For instance, the Institute of Christ the King has at least 2 oratories in the Bay Area, but there really only seems to be one priest (going by the bulletins online). Not that you can tell without compulsively reading that kind of thing.
2. I am not, myself, all that interested in the Extraordinary Form. I'm happy with a well-ordered and reverent Missal of Paul VI mass - the Reform of the Reform is just fine with me. I was very happy with the Oratory in Rome this spring. But I live in the Diocese of Rochester, so I'm hoping for a new springtime and the revivification going on in this movement seems like the best thing for the Church lately.
- - -
further - I've already accepted a name-change for the parish in Vancouver, BC. Suggestions welcome!
- - -
further still - added a 2nd location in St. Louis, MO
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:16 PM
July 28, 2008
Back up your blog!
Folks - I had a scare this morning. I could not get into my Movabletype control panel consistently or see the blog front page for a good hour there. When did I back up the data base last? Let's just say I was a younger man, then.
Everything is tidy and backed up now.
I resolve to be a better blog-maintainer in the future. Right when I turn over that aspidistra-full of new leaves I've already thought of, sadly . . . .
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:17 PM
July 21, 2008
Getting ready for those incoming students?
That little lecture to your first year advisees on why they shouldn't post compromising pictures online?
Read this. Two years in prison.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:41 PM | Comments (0)
June 3, 2008
Technology on the March - Looking at Art Online
Over at Cronaca I read about an exhibition at the Morgan Library of a new acquisition of theirs, an early 16th century French prayer book (the Prayer Book of Claude de France). The manuscript is too late to be of much real interest to me (we all have our preferences, and a strong one of mine is for earlier art), but the online viewer he linked to is amazing! Just shows what money and thought can do - this is the best online viewer for books that I've used lately!
Go look!
By the way - total coolness! The donor's bookplate is still in the book; after all, it's a Picasso! The Morgan wouldn't go peeling that out, even for conservation purposes. Just look at the juxtaposition of interiors and exteriors - Picasso's sketchy little window looking onto a landscape (with the owner's initials worked into something that recalls a wrought iron balustrade) and the Claude Master's tricky little framed view of John on Patmos toying with space and illusionism. Fun!
Now having looked at that, go look at some of their other online exhibitions.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:57 AM
May 4, 2008
Not dead - just grumpy
Sorry for the hiatus. I re-hurt my knee* and gosh is it making me grumpy. Somehow I just can't bring myself to write a cheery blog entry about the show in Venice or about the duty-lunch-gone-well that last weekend in Rome. GRRRRR.
*My own damn fault - I helped my parents' yard lad get the rototiller down from and back up into his truck. Too heavy, I guess, because a few hours later the knee started to swell up again.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:20 AM
March 27, 2008
Fritzy morning
I'm having a very fritzy morning with my internet connection, so I'm not going to try to upload the pictures and write the two entries I have in mind right now - but soon to come, Walter Benjamin and the Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius followed by yet another example of why I'm leery of the idea of sending important ancient art back to Italy just because they say it's theirs.
Oh - meanwhile - this morning we're meeting at Sta Maria in Trastevere and I give out the schedule for final exam presentations. I expect some wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:05 AM
March 13, 2008
Historic Photos on Flickr
Notre Dame's Architecture Library has (or maybe 'is in the process of'?) uploading scans of its lantern slides - and they're all under a Creative Commons license!
This one shows the Pons Fabricius, the foot bridge to Tiber Island, with an INCREDIBLE load of silt - perhaps in the aftermath of the 1870 flood? I'm not sure. Here's my photo from this spring of the same bridge - taken from a slightly different point of view.
Amazing photos! Over 600 for Italy alone! Lantern slides were amazingly high quality black and white medium format glass slides, and nothing is much better for showing architecture. Given the collection there are few scenes of everyday life except those in the foreground of buildings and there's an obvious western European bias, but this is a real resource - 2,714 reasonably high quality photos in the public domain of the world before World War I. Thank you, Notre Dame!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:59 AM
March 6, 2008
Meet the blogger...
I also met a blogger today - something that I, who usually live in scenic Geneva, NY, seldom do.
Zadok the Roman invited me to meet him outside the Cancelleria, where he had a class this afternoon. We got caffé, then he showed me the Sala Riario (named after the cardinal who built the palazzo) and the Sala dei Cento Giorni, painted by Giorgio Vasari.
I had never been further than the Bramante courtyard. Here's the best picture I can find on the web of the Sala dei Cento Giorni, which is as good an answer in paint to the question "What is Mannerism?" as the Villa Giulia is for architecture. The name of the room comes from the funniest anecdote in Renaissance art history (a field of striking solemnity and self-importance, I usually find). Vasari, now better known as a biographer than a painter, showed the room to his old master MIchelangelo and bragged that he had completed the work in 100 days. Michelangelo said, "It shows." I rather liked it, but then I have decadent tendencies. Paul III surveying New St Peter's dressed as the Jewish High Priest really made me happy! There was a scene of the distribution of cardinals hats to semi-nude men in advanced states of ascetical skinniness that made no sense at all - that's Mannerism for you!
I enjoyed meeting Zadok. He had to stay for a lecture in the glorious Sala Riario on the Internal Forum from James, Cardinal Stafford. Sad to say, even princes of the Church use PowerPoint. I skedaddled.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:38 PM
February 5, 2008
O me of little faith!
I am blogging from wifi in my apartment!
Yay!
(when I spontaneously said that over the cell phone to my basically non-English speaking landlord he laughed)
Yes, the technico came this afternoon when promised and wandered all around the building looking at where the wires went in. He got a ladder, fiddled with stuff, and the box he'd hooked to the line made a horrific noise until he came back in and pronounced the line functional.
So, yay!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:59 PM
January 12, 2008
Just one of those mornings - but you know, I'm in Rome.
Rome can be rainy in the winter - and today is a frustrating, on and off again rain. But that's not the only reason I'm back at the internet cafe.
1. The DSL hasn't been hooked up at my apartment. Pray for me. I've called the landlord - he hasn't called back. I want a shower curtain, too. I might buy a spring for an expansion rod myself on that one.
2. I need to retrieve a password for my cell phone account. Long story. That could wait.
3. When I came down here earlier I brought a usb flash memory thingy with the pictures for uploading (since Flickr uploader on my laptop is still hating me and perhaps GustoLab in general). I walked off without it. There's nothing important on there, but I wanted that gb of memory back! Luckily, it was still in the usb slot. Maybe choosing a screen with a really inconvenient cpu (I had to reach way under the desk to put the usb flash memory thingy in and to retrieve it) wasn't such a bad idea after all?
But, here I am. I came out both times with my more serious camera, the one that takes pictures that are usable for teaching on the big screen. About every 15 minutes it stops raining and I think I'll take some pictures. Then it starts again - hard, usually. It's not a day to go do anything much outdoors, and I'm just not in the mood to preview the Vatican Museum on a weekend. Hit me, beat me, make me go sit in the Pantheon for an hour. Then maybe the Palazzo Altemps and the Ludovisi Sarcophagus.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:15 PM | Comments (0)
December 10, 2007
Gothic Revival in the Finger Lakes
This is what my students in the Gothic course have been working on for their final project - Gothic Revival in the Finger Lakes. Take a look! They're not finished (grrrr!), but the project is closer than it looked on Saturday, when I wanted to kill myself.
I'd like to turn this into an ongoing project, adding to it from course to course. I'll try to get the IT folk to move it to a more permanent URL, too.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:09 AM
December 7, 2007
Ave atque vale.
Fr. Jim Tucker gives up blogging.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:08 PM
December 4, 2007
Why I read Cronaca
Modern over-the-counter cough remedies may not be as dramatic an example as, say, bleeding, but our continuing embrace of them is no less irrational.Do you need more to make you read it all?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:33 PM
November 29, 2007
Visitor tracking and pit of your stomach emotional weirdness
I read something last week that reminded me of the power of visitor tracking - I forget what - and I mentioned it to my collegial non-blogging but regular reader and occasional commenter next door office neighbor. Then I showed her what I get from Sitemeter for free. You can skim down in the right hand column and click on my Sitemeter badge and see some stuff too, I suppose. I hadn't really looked at the hit tracker much lately, but sitting here at home with my foot elevated (grrrr, sez the Gouty Professor) I happened to look again.
Someone googled me - http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Michael Tinkler. I click on the little link and discover that said googling was done from these scenic Colleges' own server - by a Windows user. This visitor spent a couple of minutes on my site and then clicked out via one of the dog pictures from last week.
So why am I feeling - um - observed? Because I figure that many people on campus who do read me have me bookmarked or can remember "Crankyprofessor.com." Those who are coming to look for the first time may well be - gulp - people reading my Tenure Box, a process I assume is going on right now. I made no mention of the blog in my tenure case, but one of the outside reviewers did, which might tip the committee off.
I don't think googling candidates for jobs or promotions is an invasion of privacy. I never tried to be particularly anonymous here; perhaps I was naive, but when I started blogging in 2002 (thanks to Amy Welborn and Megan McArdle, the latter of whom actually said something like "why don't you get a blog of your own?") I didn't consider possible professional implications. However, I've always assumed that I'm writing in public, and have consequently done my best to avoid annoying my friends and loved ones any more than I do in person.
Of course, maybe it's just the professor for whom I dog sat, looking at the cute picture of his dog in the snow.
Yeah.
I'll think about it that way.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:40 PM | Comments (1)
November 28, 2007
The Cranky Professor considers changing his name . . .
James Gillray, "The Gout"
Just back from the doctor and the pharmacy, I am considering changing my nom de blog to The Gouty Professor. Remember when I wrote that I was trying to listen more attentively when colleagues tell me to go to the doctor? Lo and behold, there turns out to be a reason I'm still limping for the fifth day in a row. Though the Nurse Practitioner is confirming my uric acid levels with a blood test I'm taking the medication as though the diagnosis is correct. What's more, my diet and genetic predisposition probably pale before iatrogenic reasons - hydrochlorothiazide for blood pressure is probably the main culprit,
Perhaps I shouldn't grade any papers tonight . . . I have far too much fellow-feeling right now with Henry VIII for the grading distribution to be very high.
Holbein, Henry VIII
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:39 PM
November 17, 2007
Roman drinking vessels
Two of my favorite sites have related recent stories - the 24 Hour Museum tells us about a museum in Wiltshire acquiring a local hoard of Roman vessels found by a metal detectorist and the Portable Antiquity Scheme Blog points to the 24 Hour Museum AND to the PAS database entry for the hoard. Fun with blogging!
The vessels themselves are interesting - one is stamped with a maker's inscription otherwise known from Pompeii!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:46 AM
November 5, 2007
Dendrochronology - it's not just tree rings any more!
Serendipity! I explained dendrochronology and even mentioned the lab at Cornell to the students in Medieval Art and Literature: the Vikings on Friday - we were talking about how to date and determine the source of building materials for longboats. Today, via my friend at Mirabilis.ca, I read this helpful article about Cornell's enterprise, the Malcolm and Carolyn Wiener Laboratory for Aegean and Near Eastern Dendrochronology. I think I'll email them each a copy.
Here's a taste:
Trees of the same species from the same geographical area have fairly similar ring patterns, Manning said, because they are exposed to similar climatic conditions. By starting with living trees and then finding samples from slightly older trees used in buildings and still older trees from more ancient sites, archaeologists have been able to overlap tree-ring data to create chronologies that date back thousands of years.Radiocarbon dating, statistical analysis, researchers' trained eyes and prior knowledge of events in the area are then used to match new samples with tree-ring chronologies from the same area. Manning and his staff in the lab have used such techniques to verify, for example, the likely origins of a Circle of Rembrandt painting (referring to an elite group of students that worked directly with the artist). He showed that the oak board of the painting came from the same tree as the board of another painting, whose origins are known and which hangs in a museum in Krakow, Poland.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:30 AM
October 10, 2007
Best Spam comment recently - Spam for the Children
Having deleted a real comment amidst the spam by being too quick to empty the junk folder, I am now skimming more carefully before deleting all - so I noticed this:
Please, do not delete the given message. Money obtained from spam will go to the help hungry to children Uganda!
There follow a number of urls for - um - enhancement products. You know what I mean. Nice Ugandan orphans wouldn't want to be supported by dirty money from products like that! DELETE!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:00 AM
October 3, 2007
Hmmm. I shouldn't have hit 'delete junk comments' so fast
Steve...I think I deleted a real, non-junk comment from you. I was skimming too quickly and emptied that junk mail box. Feel free to comment again! I'm not sure why it got filed in the junk folder, but that sort of thing does happen.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:57 PM
September 9, 2007
All my lady friends are moving . . .
What is this? New blog season?
This is really kind of odd - the first two were the main impetuses behind me getting a blog in the first place (you know, you comment so often they email you to say "you should really look into a blog of your own") lo, these many years ago. #3 is a long-time daily read of mine, too - and I think she occasionally notices mine. Click and see her new location - Five Feet of Fury (actually, it's more fun to go to the old location and see her Youtube Siouxsie Sioux farewell metamorphosis. Or maybe it's a generational thing that I like it so much).
Nah - I'm happy with my current identity - even if two people have recently told me that they don't see me as being particularly cranky. I put it down to being so happy to be back to the classroom and moved on. Crankiness will follow as more homework comes in!
Speaking of which, the only good thing about spending all day in airports and airplanes? My backlog of Bible homeworks are all graded and ready to hand back.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:39 PM | Comments (2)
August 28, 2007
Movies I won't see but that make me think
Megan McArdle has a fascinating post on status hierarchies - but it's still not enough to make me see a movie about Donkey Kong. We're all part of networks of hierarchies - good or bad at all sorts of things that no one else really cares about.
An odd point - I picked up the post through Net News Wire (where I have my daily reads saved). I usually just click and open blogs in a new window, but for some reason I skimmed through this one in NNW, the newest version of which seems to display a few revisions and additions - some sentences will be picked out in green, for instance, and there will be a few strike-throughs in red. I'm not sure if NNW is showing me just the last couple of versions of the post or what. I learned that Megan has trouble with Sweden, too - she struck it out and retyped it without altering it. That Nordic nation is one of my spelling problems, too. Imagine the semester I'm going to have with this course, BiDis 291: Medieval Art & Literature - the Vikings.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:33 AM
August 27, 2007
Have I mentioned how much I like the Portable Antiquities Scheme?
I'm playing with the PAS database artefact cloud. Click and see. It's a big list of words that reflect the finds - the bigger the words, the more of that kind of object people have found. Coin is biggest (71063 entries), but I clicked on badge, of course. 251 entries. That takes you to the database - click on a header to resort - for instance, click on COUNTY to see finds localized, or TYPE to sort between badge and pilgrim badge. Then click on the individual entries to see pictures and information! Oh my!
I love modern living!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:35 AM
August 25, 2007
The Internet - flickr groups
I came across the League of the Empty Chair and their amazing discussion of what constitutes an acceptable image.
Either some people have too much time on their hands or the internet is the most wonderful invention of human history - or maybe both.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:37 PM
August 23, 2007
My kinda charts
via Tony Woodlief
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:30 PM
August 15, 2007
Ah, the crankiness . . . kindred spirits all over
Critical analyses of critically bad church signs
The "Blog" of "unnecessary" quotation marks
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:54 AM | Comments (1)
August 13, 2007
Dresden Old Master Gallery appears in Second Life
The Dresden Old Master Gallery has created a virtual version of itself for an online environment. Cologne Cathedral is following suit.
I think I feel an assignment for my Gothic Art and Architecture course coming on!
(Oh, yes, it really is called that - it's the Gemaeldegalerie Alte Meister of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. I don't know (it's not my part of the field), but this may be one of the places our English phrase for those old painters comes from. I always thought it was really funny, though, that they really WERE the Alte Meister.)
This is the story in Wired.
Here's their regular website.
Here's the Second Life version.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:07 AM | Comments (1)
August 8, 2007
I can only imagine what my RSS feed looks like...
Sorry about that - for some reason the San Francisco post just didn't want to do what I wanted.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:02 AM
August 6, 2007
Eeeek!
Hit counters all over St. Blogs are gonna feel this.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:35 PM
July 25, 2007
Archive Bloggery and resizing photos
Something that I do not do particularly well is resize photos to fit on web pages. For some reason I have to resort to pencil and paper and hard thought about proportions every time - I guess I should do it more often.
This morning I was busy posting (and thinking of how to resize) a couple of photographs on the Abner Jackson Journal blog, a blog the Hobart & William Smith Colleges Archivist Linda Benedict and I are working on. I've mentioned it here before, but it's on my mind at the moment (and MUCH more amusing than Chicago-style referencing, which I could also be doing - but hey! This was Faculty Research Grant-funded Scholarship and it counts, too!).
Jackson was president of Hobart College from 1858 to 1867 and kept a daily journal. Some students and I transcribed it (that's where the funding came in) and Linda and I are now uploading it. We're also putting up pictures, though until the blog comes onto the campus server we're not making a lot of internal links from entries to the photos; we know about broken links.
This is what I put up today - a pair of pictures of Linden Hall. Through the second half of the 19th century (from at least 1858 until 1892) Linden Hall was an entertainment space in downtown Geneva which the College and college groups (such as the sophomore class on at least one occasion that springs to mind) rented for events. The Washington's Birthday celebrations were usually there, for instance, and at least part of the graduation celebrations (either the exercises or the dinner) were held there.
We didn't have any photos of Linden Hall in our own archives, but my neighbor and friend Karen Osburn, archivist at the Geneva Historical Society, found and scanned these two for me. Thanks, Karen!
One of the interesting things about treating the journal as a blog is the utility of categories (one of the things I do is categorize entries - Linda's uploaded most of them so far). Unlike a book index, categories are live links - so if you go to the blog and click on Discipline or Clubs, Societies, and Fraternities, or Campus Planning or Fundraising you may see how little life for a college administrator has changed in 150 years. I think that folks who are interested in 19th Century America might find this interesting. As a Southerner living here now I find the relative lack of trouble caused by or interest in the Civil War fascinating - though we ARE missing 1865 from the journals.
Here's Linda's own blog, Alone in the Archives, in case you've never clicked on it from the blogroll, where you'll find it filed under the HWS blogs.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:59 AM
July 17, 2007
Why we blog - and badges!
I apologize for the slow posting lately - I'm in a frenzy of deadlineness. I'm trying to get several things finished before the tenure box goes in - and then there's actually writing the tenure case. I have a teaching philosophy, but I'd rather enact it than write about it (and isn't that just the kind of sentence I need to use?).
And I've had a house guest this week who comes up periodically from Atlanta to read things at the Cornell Library (mainly in the rare book room) that he can't get elsewhere. He stays with me and drives down to Ithaca every morning. Having a human being (sorry Argyle) to talk with reduces some of the blog-urge. Oh - he blogs occasionally at Reformation Professor. Ah - grad school friends. You forget sometimes how much you miss them.
And then there's the Hand List of Words for Talking about Medieval Badges.
I did most of the reading in dictionaries for this year before last and left the text file sitting on my hard drive. I was looking up some words again and realized that I had those already and might as well post them somewhere I can get at them. Take a look. I'm up to cockle-shelled, an adjectival derivative of a cockleshell shaped badge. The example the OED gave was of a St. Michael badge (Mont St Michel also used the cockleshell, being sea-girt and all).
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:02 AM
July 2, 2007
Carnivalia
History Carnival at Historianess.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:51 PM
June 27, 2007
A little lunchtime blog maintainance
I've just added a new flickr badge - it's way down there in the right column - pulling random pictures from the Gothic Revival flickr group. If you have fun Gothic Revival pictures come join us and contribute!
I meant to do a little more archival research on my own Gothic Revival article today but got diverted - so until tomorrow I'll stick to thinks in print. I'm rereading something on style in architecture by J. Mordaunt Crook. Isn't that the greatest name in scholarship? The book is pretty wonderful, too. That helps.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:54 PM
June 26, 2007
The Carnival of Bad History
Jonathan Dresner brings you this week's Carnival of Bad History!
I've added a link in the right column to the History Carnival Aggregator, too.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:40 AM
June 14, 2007
Silence
I apologize for my recent blogging neglect - though the weather in Geneva has been heavenly, I'm not having the greatest of summers. Work. Managing dog-decline. My lungs. I'm in a cranky mood.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:13 PM
May 28, 2007
Lifespan issues
Bloggers come and bloggers go - but important bloggers live forever in our hearts. Prof. Anne Brannen is closing down Creating Text(iles). She was kind to introduce herself to me at Kalamazoo in 2006! She had read between the lines of my blog most carefully and offered sympathy I needed at the time.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:20 PM | Comments (0)
May 19, 2007
Airport Blogging, again
Ah, free wireless at the Rochester airport, how I love you!
Off again - this time for a family thing. My parents have been genealogizing in Richmond, VA, and are now at my sister's in NoVa. I'm running down for a few days to overlap with the parents and see the others. Should be fun!
My friend the Artemisia Gentileschi specialist tells me there're Aretmesias at the National Museum of Women in the Arts show of Italian Women Artists from Renaissance to Baroque. I might even go, since Dumbarton Oaks is still (grrr!) closed and they have an American Western Art show up at the Philips. Maybe the big Modernism show at the Corcoran? It got great reviews.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:07 PM | Comments (1)
May 6, 2007
Procrastination is a Beautiful, Beautiful Thing
Alright. So I should've been writing the final exam for Islamic Art & Architecture (yes, a Sunday exam), but instead I set up a new Flickr group for Gothic Revival. Come join and contribute if you have the right stuff.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:51 PM
May 1, 2007
Bloggables
I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm regularly blogging things I find at Bloomberg.com: Muse lately. That's more or less Bloomberg's arts (and dining in NYC, mainly - though today there's a review of a restaurant in Dubai) page. They have some sharp folks writing arts coverage for them. Take a look. I find the black background annoyingly retro, but there you go. At least it doesn't look like the woeful NYTimes.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:19 AM
April 24, 2007
The things google news will offer you . . .
Google news turned this up for me - Geek archaeology - how to throw out tech junk from Wired. I'm doing a lot of that this week - chargers to lost appliances? Begone!
Moving has its points.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:57 AM | Comments (2)
April 16, 2007
Art Law
I noticed a link from the Art Law Blog - interesting reading over there about deaccessioning (including the Fisk case, which I haven't followed closely enough to blog about - even though an old friend sent me a link to a story in the Tennesseean long enough ago that I really should have). Go read!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:14 AM | Comments (0)
April 14, 2007
Prof. Dr. von Korncrake at the Zoo
Between trips across the hall to see if the carpet has been laid in my new apartment (I've told the students who I'm offering to pay to carry my belongings that it will be more like rearranging the furniture than it is like moving) I'm fiddling with the beginnings of my paper for Kalamazoo.
Then I click over to Herr Professor Doktor von Korncrake and read his story.
Simultaneity.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:10 PM
April 11, 2007
Charlemagne's Palace Chapel at Aachen
This on the right is pretty much the view of the intended audience - what Charlemagne would have seen from the vantage point of his throne if he looked up at the dome.
The throne sits on the 2nd floor gallery on the west side of the central octagonal core (to the left on the section - click for a pop-up). Charlemagne could walk west from his throne to a window overlooking an large courtyard or could sit on his throne and look up and across the central core at the chapel at the mosaic of Christ enthroned (the parallelism was not lost), around him in the gallery level at his court, or down and across the core to the altar.
The big inscription that I was talking about the other day ran around the cornice (more or less) between the gallery level and the lower level. I'm still looking for a good free photograph of that.
Drawing from Georg Dehio/Gustav von Bezold: Kirchliche Baukunst des Abendlandes. Stuttgart: Verlag der Cotta'schen Buchhandlung 1887-1901, Plate No. 40. I found it at the Wikimedia Commons
Longtime readers may be wondering about this burst of images lately - I've been realizing that I can use Creative Commons licensed photos off of flickr but it hadn't occurred to me until this morning that you could search that way! Damn you Alun Salt! That little blogpost of mine on the administrative senior managers overuling marks in the archaeology department at Bournemouth got picked up for Four Stone Hearth XII - a Carnival of Archaeology. I go over there to read the other entries and come across Alun Salt's note on alternatives to stock photography. Alun has a couple of suggestions, one of which is a flickr creative commons search. He uses Delphi. I change the search terms to aachen chapel and come up with 5 great shots, one of which you see above.
So I guess you'll be seeing more pictures. That's not a bad thing.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:31 AM | Comments (5)
April 9, 2007
The Consolation of Blogging
Have you visited Korncrake - the website of Herr Prof. Dr. Boethius P. von Korncrake? I recommend his work.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:23 PM | Comments (0)
April 7, 2007
Adding a New Category
I was inspired this morning while doing some cleaning around the house and the blog to add a new category over in the left column - Historic preservation. Then I went back and made sure that the older entries on topic were so categorized. Click and see.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:25 AM | Comments (0)
March 30, 2007
The Rotunda and the Lawn
When I was blogging about UVa the other day I remembered that not everyone has a good visual memory ('visual learners' my foot). Google images didn't turn up what I wanted, but a flickr search did. This is from Steve Cholewiak, who kindly agreed to let me upload it to the blog. Click and see his other photos, especially his amazing high definition range photos of a clock tower at Purdue! Ain't the internet great?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:22 PM | Comments (0)
March 16, 2007
"Because really, bitchery doesn't seem so petty when it's poetry."
You all read Big Arm Woman, don't you? Go read aboutHaiku Friday.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:38 PM
March 13, 2007
The Joys of Google News
One of the thrills of google news and world-wide news aggregation is that when one skims the headlines presented for one's delectation one has no idea of context. Big Banks may be Chum. You see, that could come from some English-language daily in India and tell us about the friendly relations between big banks and small banks! One almost has to read the summary to see - and sure enough, it's Forbes, and the article begins: "As the sharks circled beleaguered subprime lender . . . . " O.k., that kind of chum.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:25 AM
February 16, 2007
Why some people are on my blogroll . . .
Well, one person. In re: North Korea, Miss McArdle asks:
So what do we get out of the negotiations, other than a way for earnest people who believe in diplomacy to get the same emotionally loaded, adrenalin-soaked thrill that the rest of us got out of being on the Prom Committee?Click. Read.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:07 PM
February 12, 2007
Oh my!
I'm so sorry! I just deleted a PILE of comments (including all those from the sweet Airedale Terrier folks!). I have about 24,000 comments in my junk folder and was trying to clear them out. There are so many that MT can't empty the folder in a single step! I mistakenly chose the wrong set and lost at least 75 and maybe a hundred real comments. I apologize. That's what I get for housekeeping without paying attention.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:36 PM | Comments (1)
Ugh - Spam
I'm being deluged with spam - and peculiarly pointless spam! It comes with a non-functioning url (I have html disabled in comments anyway) and a web link for the commenter to google. Surely google isn't doing this!
I thought that MT 3.33 had a built in comment throttle! If so, I need to reset mine. Any ideas?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:16 PM | Comments (0)
I apologize for silence...
I have not been in a blogging mood.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:35 AM | Comments (0)
January 16, 2007
Spam names
You know, I wish I received real mail from someone named Nub G. Esthete. The spam he sends really isn't cutting it, though. DELETE!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:46 PM
December 7, 2006
How do you like to be interviewed? "In as fawning a way as possible."
Derek Lowe is on the job market and has a number of interesting posts on interviewing and being interviewed - go read!
The whole category - How to get a pharma job.
Best of luck, in the Advent season, to Derek! His blogs have been one of my daily reads - I've learned a little about the way scientists think.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:15 AM | Comments (0)
December 4, 2006
Advent as a Penitential Season
I have no problem keeping Advent as a season of penance - I'd better get credit off of time in Purgatory for grading. December has started badly for me - bronchitis on top of a pile of papers. At least the exhibition project for the first year seminar seems to be in good shape. Some of them were up until 3 last night posting, but the overall exhibition looks good. Now we have to prod them to revise things. It's a pity my colleague and I feel cautious about copyright issues, or we could show you the results - but we're still in the problematic days of a new technology.
My colleague told me on Thursday (I think it was) that the Victoria & Albert in London is no longer charging for academic and non-profit printing of its images - at least its digital ones. Read the report at Cronaca.
Onward through the pile of 101 papers!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:38 AM
November 30, 2006
Class blogging rewards the fiddlers
I have two classes going at Movable Type to create online exhibitions right now (which I will not advertise for copyright reasons - if we keep it private maybe we're covered by fair use). This year I've added an oral instruction in both classes which seems to have paid off a little: web work rewards fiddlers.
I encouraged groups to choose a single person to be the enterer-of-information and to try to choose that person on the basis of a willingness to tinker. I think I see that happening in one group (of 8) in the First Year Seminar and 2 groups (of 7) in Art 101. This year in Art 101 when I asked how many people have ever had a LiveJournal or MySpace page account about a third raised their hands - I told them that if they've done that they can do this. We'll see!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:09 AM | Comments (0)
November 24, 2006
Aca-blogging
Oso Raro has written a magnificent reflection on academic blogging - with pictures. Not of academic bloggers, you'll be happy to know. Other blogging is implicated. Click and read.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:01 AM | Comments (0)
November 9, 2006
Not ready for prime time, but take a look at some local history
I'm a medievalist. I live in Upstate New York. There's no medieval architecture. However, there's lots of Gothic Revival - and revival styles interest me.
I've been working on our chapel off and on for the last couple of years. One part of that project is the journal kept by Abner Jackson, president of Hobart College from 1858-1867. I'm very interested to see how much I can say about the intentions behind the building than I can ever say securely about Medieval buildings.
I had a little grant last year to have students transcribe the whole thing (we're missing 1865, damn it, but we got the rest of it) and now the archivist and I are mounting it as a blog.
We're posting photos and realia from the archives to enrich the document - and it's already starting to be fun. I'd like to publish it, eventually, but an online version may satisfy that. The illustrations would certainly be richer this way!
Oh - when I say "not ready for prime time" I mean that we've got it on the Wordpress free server right now, but there will eventually be a stable, campus URL for the site. Feel free to look and link, but the link will be broken sooner rather than later.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:25 PM | Comments (1)
November 3, 2006
The new Economist Blog
The Economist Blogs - eponymously, as always. WE know Miss McArdle is behind it . . . .
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:06 PM
October 30, 2006
Best Spam Comment in AGES!
So I'm looking at the one or two junk comments MT 3.33 let through today and read this lovely text:
Your site is very cognitive. I think you will have good future.:)I find the use of 'cognitive' to mean 'meaninglessly good' about par for the course. Cognitive is right up there with evolutionary and slightly less meaninful than nano in my book.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:58 PM
October 29, 2006
All is new...
OK - I think I've succeeded in upgrading to MT 3.3 - and comments are back on.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:10 PM
October 28, 2006
The nicest thing...!
I think this is a very nice thing to say about your wife! If the choice of who to play her in film is Angelina Jolie . . . oh, click and see.
You know, the alternative always impressed me as someone from somewhere perfectly reasonable - and there you go - IMDB tells me she was born in Gaffney, SC. No wonder she sounds real!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:55 AM
October 26, 2006
sorry, folks
I'm having some mild technical difficulties - among other things I need to upgrade my MovableType installation. I've backed up my SQL database, downloaded MT3.3, and then found myself a tad busy. It's really not the kind of thing to do after 9 p.m., so I've turned off comments (the script is disabled - my hosting service informed me that something was up in the cgi script - someone had left a gremlin there).
SO...commenting will resume soon.
In the meantime I just finished pulling together Pompeii for Art 101 today (with the digital presentation software and access to the Visual Resources Center we can do this from home - yay!). For reasons I don't quite remember I decided to concentrate on the House of the Vettii this year, so I made sure that all of that was scanned and ready to project digitally. When you have more than 150,000 slides the scanning process is NOT instantaneous.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:51 AM
October 24, 2006
Sorry for the hiatus
I apologize to anyone who missed me, but I ran off to a conference and then had to play catch up.
The conference theme was drama in the Middle Ages, and I fell back on "those who don't do, teach" - I gave a pedagogical paper. It went over well, though - I have a good module for handling the high Middle Ages in European Studies 101.
1. Read Rutebeuf's Miracle of Theophilus
2. Study the north transept portal at Notre Dame de Paris, which tells a slightly different version of the Theophilus legend.*
3. Discuss ecclesiastical administration and organization, homage, written contract, Jews in the 13th century, magic, Hell, intercession and patronage, the role of the Virgin Mary, the Ptolemaic model of the cosmos -- the list, as one says, goes on.
It was well-received in the conference sense and, I believe, in the "ooh - I'm going to try that!" sense.
And I'd like to acknowledge Another Damned Medievalist for her two read throughs.
*sorry for the link to someone's flickr site, but I'm queasy about posting copyrighted pictures and am having trouble doing better.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:43 AM
September 27, 2006
MY Favorite Humphrey Bogart Movie
Prophets unhonored in their own countries -- David Larrabee in Sabrina suggesting plastic champagne glasses, 'just in case' after his sitting-on-the-glasses-in-his-hip-pocket incident. Me, I prefer glass, but the plastic champagne flute has been a wonderful, wonderful thing for the world -- I'm all for the democritization of champagne flutes!
Bonus excitement! What blogger's real name is implicated in the Larrabee office staff?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:59 PM
September 20, 2006
Virtual friends
One of the beautiful things about finally meeting those one has become acquainted with - yea, fond of - online is that one can forever after hear them.
As I wrote him, a dictatorship is a real thing, not a super-synonym for "governments that do things I don't like".So not only do I agree with JG/MM, but I can hear how she's saying it. That's even better.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:27 PM | Comments (0)
August 14, 2006
Travel sadness
I'm a little hurt that I don't appear in the Sartorialist's instances of effortless on the street dress, given that I was putting some thought into how to look as I trod the sidewalks of New York.
Saddest of all, he'd probably like my weekday dress 9-5 (Sept-May).
Me, lately, coordinating my goatee with my polo shirt.
Me, not so lately, dressed for grading.
Me, not dressed for class, given that I live in the sad land of Memorial Day to Labor Day. Me, I tend to observe my ancestral Easter-to-Columbus-Day rule anyway.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:15 AM
August 13, 2006
Spam subject lines
I got a great serving of spam today - here are the subject lines:
Tabatha Murphy + Science has a way to improve your vitality
Elvira Carmichael + Recall the bubbling energy you had in youth
Mickey + Feel Pleasure wih Finally there is something that is real
Trinidad Newton + Say goodbye to extra pounds
Anne Dominguez + big news break on up and coming company
Nickolas Henley + Science has a way to improve your vitality
Lorna Head + Hey man, stop throwing away your money
Ain't the internet great?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:37 PM
August 12, 2006
Socializing
Of all my socializing in New York City the most thrilling was certainly meeting my blog-parent Miss McArdle. We had splending drinks and a splendid Chinese meal - and lots of splendid conversation.
Yes, several years ago after I'd been commenting at her blog she said something along the lines of "shouldn't you have one of these?" And I do. Still.
Thanks, Megan!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:21 AM
August 3, 2006
Breathing Exercises
I notice that Megan McArdle (in her guestblogging role at Instapundit, not at Asymmetrical Information) is having trouble breathing in New York - she slept on the sofa. Me, I have an Ikea Poang chair and footstool for those bronchitic nights and have never been happier to sleep sitting up. Not that it's fun to sleep sitting up, but it beats smothering in your own bed. Mine pieces of ikeadom are two different colors of red, the chair havinga head start of several years at fading gracefully, but they're still comfortable.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:02 AM
July 24, 2006
OK - a REASON for YouTube
I'm watching this over and over again and chortling. YouTube is a wonderful thing. The intersection between reality and celebrity - and the power of posting online! The 21st Century summed up in 31 seconds!
And yes - I've seen the Charro version - it isn't as much fun. YouTube found me that one, too.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:35 PM
July 21, 2006
Why I read B.A.W.
Big Arm Woman does it again - "Durham is a tense town on a good day."
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:35 AM
July 19, 2006
Digital Libraries...
Here's another digitalization project - this time a Digital Abbey Library of St. Gall (Codices Electronici Sangallenses). Best of all, they're allowing non-commercial reproduction on the web, so long as there is an explicit bibilographical reference and a link back to the digital library!
Here's a good description of the project - they have about 100 out of about 2,100 manuscripts digitized now.
You, readers, might have wondered why I, an art historian, use so few images on my blog. Copyright. That's why. I'm moderately sensitive to the horrific issues of copyright, and it's easier not to tread those paths.
This kind of collection will help!
Here's one - a cross-carpet page from an 8th century Gospel book.
Cod. Sang. 51, page 6, Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen / Codices Electronici Sangallenses).
Sorry, the descriptions (and even some of the labelling) is in German even after one chooses the English options. Oh, well - everyone should learn German, anyway!
One of the neat things about this kind of online resource is that all too often we art historians only show students the pretty pages - the ones with good pictures. I was in graduate school before I realized how few pages in medieval manuscripts had any decoration at all! But you see, slide collections are that way, too - we tend only to own slides of the pretty pages. So what I can do with this sort of online resource that provides facsimile photographs of complete books is choose a book I know has some decorated pages and move through it on the big screen page by page -- and the students will see what a small proportion of book pages are decorated!
What fun!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:11 AM
July 16, 2006
Read and Learn.
When H. P. Lovecraft wrote,There is reason to hope that my experience was wholly or partly an hallucination - for which, indeed, abundant causes existed. And yet, its realism was so hideous that I sometimes find hope impossible.he could well have been describing a screening of Dances With Wolves (1990).
Passages like that make me read Udolpho.com religiously. Well, have him on Net News Wire. Which he would mock because I'm a Mac user. And people tell me with strange regularity that I remind them of Stephen Speilberg. But I don't mind. He's worth it.
Here's the direct link to the post from which the excerpt came.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:06 PM
June 19, 2006
Sorry for slow posting - summer strikes!
It's been hot and sticky and not much fun here in Upstate New York. Another thing that cuts into my blogging, productivity tends to make me grumpy. I'm being productive. Yay. Kalamazoo sort of accepted the session proposal (they accepted one of the two sessions on humor we proposed, and I had to cut down the descriptions and titles from a pair of sessions into a single session. Good news, bad news). I've had a paper accepted for the Binghamton medieval conference and really might want to think of writing it now, given how early the conference is and my schedule in the fall.
The only interesting news has been the blessed event. Welcome, Mary Elizabeth! None of the plants died while I was gone, the airedale is fine, and Geneva is still here.
I do have something to say (with pictures) about the new Renzo Piano wing at the High Museum in Atlanta, but I'm still thinking.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:24 AM
June 5, 2006
Free Airport Wireless!
Yay! The Rochester Airport has free wireless!
I'm on my way home to Tennessee for a week with the parents and a cousinly wedding - and it's important to stay connected. Even if you have no reason to be connected, I guess.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:06 AM | Comments (5)
June 4, 2006
Bloggers one would like to meet...
I have met very few fellow bloggers. I mean, I knew Another Damned Medievalist, Jodi Dean and Bibliochef before they started blogging (and they, me).
I want to meet Professor Soltan. You can't autograph a blog, but I want to shake her hand. She's the most interesting acablogger of them all.
But honor’s another one of those words. When a marine sings “keep our honor clean” -- an awkward bit of language in itself, I admit -- I actually know what’s meant. There’s a history and a literature there. When an unimaginative dean, brimming with the accumulated irritations with everyone -- professors, students, parents, other administrators -- that deans are obviously going to have, portrays himself as an honorable man in a sea of dishonorables, a man who can renew a college’s honor, I need a good deal more substance and clarity about all that than this book is willing or able to give me.Here's her review of the latest Harvard book.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:55 PM | Comments (0)
May 28, 2006
Blogging and Food!
Go read a bit at Bibliochef's Cooking With Ideas! The author is a near-neighbor and good colleague of mine. If I know this colleague, there will be mystery-talk, too.
I've added Cooking With Ideas to the blogroll, too.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:03 PM
May 22, 2006
Things I've bought lately
I'm still incapable of typing clever thoughts for you, but here's a list:
John Hiatt, Master of Disaster. I was motivated by looking for a deeply politically incorrect song of my youth and heard the recentest stuff.
a woodcut from the student art show - maybe I'll photograph it for you later.
and a Christmas present I'd better not link to - the intended recipient reads the blog and need not know that I'm gonna read it myself, first.
Let me hasten to assure you that while linking constitutes endorsement (everyone should follow my lead and the world would be a happier, more harmonious place) it does not constitute a commercial endorsement - no amount of clickage puts anything in my pocket other than the vague satisfaction that by providing a lead I may be making the world a better place.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:50 PM
May 16, 2006
Oh my!
Sorry to have left my garden uncultivated! I've been busy beyond even my usual busyness for early May - 4 days at Kalamazoo isn't exactly a mistake, but it does make it difficult to finish strongly!
Oh, well, I'm back on track. This was the first weekday of summer and I did work! Yay!
Graduation was dry! Yay! Not beautiful, but not what was predicted.
I'm headed upstairs to the balcony grill a little steak and local asparagus (it's turned out to be too nice an evening to stay inside) and read William Diebold's Word and Image again. I'm going to try to use it in my Art 270 next spring (early medieval, more or less) and I really ought to reread it. Pricey for such a slim volume, but it is good. He deals clearly with lots of the issues that I wish most for students to learn. He strudctures the book around Gregory the Great's defense of images and its partial success in the West - and its failures. He ends with a really well-done exploration of a single object - the reliquary-statue of Ste. Foy of Conques. Here's the later church dedicated to her.
You know, the pretorn, prewashed salad may be one of the great innovations of recent years. I am eating much more salad because of it.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:17 PM | Comments (1)
April 27, 2006
I apologize
I apologize for the gappy service, but life has been hard lately - and not only in the usual academic April way.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:14 AM
February 21, 2006
Creepy!
O.K., so I'm cleaning out the spam this morning -- there was only one, but it took me to comment #666. Honest (remember, I restarted the blog in January 05 after losing everything to a database meltdown). So I tell mt.blacklist to purge it and it comes back and reports that the URL behind the comment is shaved-goat.com.
Satan? Running online pharmacies?
That's where all this spam has been coming from!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:54 AM
February 19, 2006
Subject lines that disappoint
Eliminate all weakness and become the king!
Unworthy though I am, I was willing to become the king for the good of the rest of you . . . but no. It's another ad for 'performance enhancers.'
So you're left imagining the glory of my benificent rule!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:56 AM
February 1, 2006
"Meme."
GOSH I hate that word. Worse is "memed." Worst still is discovering that you've been memed but haven't even noticed it because you've been busy and not blogging. Oh, well. Alright, Jgo.
FOUR JOBS YOU’VE HAD IN YOUR LIFE (and part time had better count):
Clerk in a college admissions office
Clerk in a graduate school of business admissions office
High school Latin teacher
College art history professor
FOUR MOVIES YOU COULD WATCH OVER AND OVER:
Could we do books? O.K., O.K.,
Kind Hearts and Coronets
Gallipoli
Blade Runner
Zoolander
There was a time when 2 or 3 of those would have been John Hughes movies, but that time is past.
FOUR PLACES YOU’VE LIVED:
Chattanooga, TN
Houston, TX
Atlanta, GA
Geneva, NY
FOUR TV SHOWS YOU LOVE TO WATCH:
Law and Order
Law and Order, Special Victims Unit
Law and Order, Criminal Intent
Local on the 8s
FOUR PLACES YOU’VE BEEN ON HOLIDAY:
holidays? I'm an art historian! Travel is for business!
really - I'm blanking here.
New Orleans. the last trip there was pure vacation.
FOUR NONPORN (and let me add, nonblog) WEBSITES YOU VISIT DAILY:
The New York Times
our Colleges' Daily Update
our Visual resources center, but it's only accessible from within the firewall, so I won't tease you.
Amazon
FOUR OF YOUR FAVORITE FOODS:
Mama's fried chicken
Mama's fried okra
fried artichokes (carciofi alla giudea) (are we detecing a pattern?)
bacon
FOUR PLACES YOU’D RATHER BE:
Rome
the sunny South
Paris
New York (in good weather)
No one need feel obliged to make lists on MY account! I take all that kind of mild sadism -- making people write things they wouldn't have written without being under compulsion -- out on people who pay me for the privilege.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:09 PM
January 30, 2006
Atlatl Season
Pennsylvania has approved an atlatl-season for deer. Don't remember what an atlatl is? Go read.
I stress read because, like so many stories on the internet, it has no pictures. Now the National Geographic has to have internal access to more stock photos of atlatls than anyone else in America! Are you telling me that the magazine art department is so jealous of its copyright that it doesn't make old "artist's conceptions" of prehistoric hunting available to the other departments? They're bound to have one of the larger supplies in the world of photos and drawings out of copyright of this kind of thing -- why don't they scan them? It doesn't surprise me, but it's STUPID.
I was complaining about this pattern over at Mirabilis.ca just the other day (on an entry about stackable cars) -- why do so many news outlets not post pictures on their web versions of stories? I especially dislike that about CNN, given that most of their news is video driven anyway!
The National Geographic News Service does provide a link to a lovely atlatl site, atlatl.com. Can you tell I've always enjoyed the word atlatl? I do. And I love saying it. Ever since I was 9 or 10 and went to Russell Cave with my class and threw a stick using an atlatl I've enjoyed the word. "Flint knapping" does nothing for me, by the way -- the words, not the practice.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:02 AM
January 5, 2006
Back and blogging up a STORM
Mirabilis.ca, that is. Brain science, black death, Befana - go read!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:07 AM
January 4, 2006
Wonder of wonders!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:01 PM
January 1, 2006
Blogging your local paper
One of the more interesting uses of blogs is the [fill in the blank]-Watch function, and one of the best is Patterico on the LA Times. Here's his year-end roundup. As he points out somewhere in there (it's huuuuge!), when newspaper editors think 'blogger' they should be thinking 'reader' -- bloggers are readers.
Every paper should be so lucky as the LA Times.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:44 AM
December 18, 2005
Upstate Greek Revival, Or, Blogging Pedagogy and Me
My Art 208, Greek Art & Architecture class, participated in a blogging assignment between Thanksgiving and the end of the semester. Here's the blog. There are lots of good pictures and interesting comments -- interesting enough that I gave credit for them, at least. Go look!
I had several objectives in this. I wanted to get my students off campus to look at some of the interesting 19th and earlier 20th century architecture all around them. I wanted them to draw specifric comparisons between what we had studied and a revival style. I wanted them to practice in a new medium -- taking and uploading pictures, writing short entires, commenting. I wanted to see if blogging would work with a class as a mixed group and individual assignment (they were to take pictures and post in groups and write comments as individuals).
I'm particularly happy with the categories - the few readers who know Geneva (four or five of you, I think) will know where the streets are. If not, don't worry. In a better incarnation these would all have clickable map graphics.
All in all I'm quite happy - look for a medieval revival version next semester!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:58 PM
December 14, 2005
Class blogging, 2
The class blog is going well - with a day or two left to run I have 55 entries (almost all of them separate buildings) and 134 comments. That's pretty good for 32 students.
I am spending a lot of time editing and recategorizing -- the next iteration will definitely have student EDITORS.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:09 PM | Comments (2)
December 12, 2005
Class blogging
Sorry to have been blogging lightly lately, but I've been cracking the whip over a reasonably successful class blog. I had students in my Greek Art and Architecture class take pictures of local buildings that were either Greek Revival or used classical architecture vocabulary, post them with a brief text entry, and then comment on each others' postings.
The blog looks great, but I told them that I wouldn't show it to anyone outside the department (some of them were concerned). It's no great loss to the larger world, but it has been interesting. Maybe when the semester is well and truly over I'll close comments and make it more public. It's also one of the pilot blogs for Movabletype on our campus server, so the IT people (who told me last year that this blog is in the top twenty or so referrers to the Colleges' website) asked that we keep it private for this go-round.
One way I helped them find buildings (you have to realize that the young are kind of obtuse and needed guidance) was setting up as categories categories the useful streets of Geneva. Now those categories are clickable links in the side column and generate nice photo sets. Fun!
I've learned a few things that I will do the next time I try this.
1. Use the more experienced to help the less experienced. Sit down with the 30% or so of the class who have already kept a blog (Livejournal and Myspace were both popular venues) or were regular uploaders to photo sites and run them through a tutorial. Then use them as 'consultants' for the 70% who haven't. Unfamililarity with the medium made this HARD for some people.
2. Write clearer directions. Again, the 30% who'd done something similar found them crystalline. Then some more folks had no problem because they like fiddling with new things. I'd say 30% of the class didn't like it at all because they don't particularly enjoy fiddling with new things.
3. Comment more myself. I think that every time I offered a comment I got 2 or 3 direct responses. The grade for this project is pure participation -- so anything that stimulates participation is good.
4. Try a different time-scale. This time I kept it very concentrated -- only the last 3 weeks of the semester. That period was partly dictated by getting MT up and running, but mainly I was thinking that if I ran it as a true COURSE blog lasting all term they wouldn't pay attention. I'm still of that opinion, but I may start the project at midterm next time. My students had a definite pattern of getting to work, taking some pictures (in their little groups), posting them, commenting on everyone else's posts, then never reappearing. It's too task oriented! How could one overcome that tendency?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:45 AM
December 7, 2005
What I'm Listening to Lately
I haven't confessed to my musical indulgences lately -- so here's this afternoon's grading melancholia playlist:
Been There, Done That (What's Next mix) -- Jon Astley -- The Compleat Angler, 1988
Ne me quitte pas -- Nina Simone
Avalon -- M People -- Fresco, 1997
Sinking In An Ocean Of Tears -- Stephen Bishop -- Careless, 1976
Another Nail In My Heart -- Squeeze -- Singles 45's And Under, 1982
Love Will Tear Us Apart -- Joy Division -- Substance 1977-1980
Party Girl -- Elvis Costello & the Attractions -- Armed Forces, 1979
Only You -- Yaz -- Upstairs at Eric's, 1982
Pills and Soap -- Elvis Costello & the Attractions -- Punch the Clock, 1983
Heaven -- Talking Heads -- Popular Favorites 1976-1983
Whispering your name -- Alison Moyet -- Essex, 1994
When The Hangover Strikes -- Squeeze -- Classics Volume 25
All Cried Out -- Alison Moyet -- "Alf", 1985
Under Pressure -- David Bowie & Queen
Broken Hearted Melody -- Sarah Vaughan
Black Coffee In Bed -- Squeeze -- Singles 45's And Under, 1982
A Fine Romance -- Louis Armstrong & Ella Fitzgerald -- Ella And Louis Again, 1957, disk 2
The End of the Party -- The English Beat -- Special Beat Service, 1982
It Might As Well Be Spring -- Rosemary Clooney -- 16 Most Requested Songs
Skateaway -- Dire Straits -- Making Movies, 1980
Last Night 10,000 -- M People -- Fresco, 1997
The Menu -- Jon Astley -- The Compleat Angler, 1988
Alison -- Elvis Costello -- My Aim is True, 1977
Say It's Not Too Late -- Matt Bianco -- Indigo, 1988
Is you is or is you ain't my baby? -- Dinah Washington (Rae & Christian Remix) -- some Verve remixed thang
I Get A Kick Out Of You -- Dinah Washington -- The Essential Dinah Washington
No me llores más -- Omara Portuondo -- Buena Vista Social Club Presents Omara Portuondo
Romeo And Juliet -- Dire Straits -- Making Movies, 1980
Thought It Would Be Easier -- Shelby Lynne -- I Am Shelby Lynne, 1999
Sunbeam -- Submarine -- Skin Diving
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:57 PM
November 30, 2005
Hosting Haikus
My hosting service, Dreamhost.com isn't perfect, I guess - they have had an outage or two (though in one of those all of downtown LA was out). However, they never cease to amuse me. This month's newsletter is entirely written in Haiku:
Why can't I connect?https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=support.msg
Everything used to be fine.
Is my server down?
I recommend 'em - the service is entirely adequate for my purposes, the Help response is swift and helpful (for my purposes), and you get newsletters!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:17 PM
November 29, 2005
Blogger books
Our School : The Inspiring Story of Two Teachers, One Big Idea, and the School That Beat the Odds came yesterday - run order a copy yourself! Then go read Joanne Jacobs blog. As I pointed out earlier, this has thrown off Amazon's suggestions for me -- I really don't want to give a book by Michelle Malkin for Christmas.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:33 AM
November 14, 2005
If I deleted your comment . . .
I apologize. I just got hit with about 250 spam comments with likely human names. I'm only halfway through deleting them, so I may have knocked out a real person. Sorry!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:00 PM
September 27, 2005
We all have our heroes . . . .
The Manolo, he gives an interview!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:23 PM | Comments (3)
September 7, 2005
MovableType Plugin for Scripture References!
Did you know that there is a plugin available that takes scripture references and creates automatic links to text at Bible Gateway? Yow! Scripturizer 1.1 I may have to install this! One can imagine similar plugins for all kinds of literary sources online. Shakespearizer? Gutenbergificator? My mind is boggling.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:50 PM | Comments (1)
August 24, 2005
How to blog
I'm showing someone how blogging works.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:17 PM
August 14, 2005
Snippy Spam Message!
One seldom reads the spam messages, but I had one left under a normal first name that I didn't delete on first pass. It had the nerve to say:
can you please tell useful info this website is dissapointing [grammar, spelling, punctuation sic]The nerve!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:06 AM
August 10, 2005
Further Blogfinds, Antiquity
More, MORE interesting blogs! I dunno - having done the Carnivalesque thing I'm following up links and finding other blogs I should bookmark -- here's one:
Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean blog, subtitled "Posts on religious life among Greeks, Romans, Jews, and Christians in the Roman empire and on the social history of Christianity." This post talks about his main squeeze - which probably isn't what you're thinking. Go read!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:25 AM
August 8, 2005
Neat Late Antiquity Blog!
I forgot this one in the Carnivalesque listings -- I came across Troels Myrup Kristensen's Towards an Archaeology of Iconoclasm sometime last month and had misfiled the bookmark. Kristensen is a graduate student at the University of Aarhus and the blog tracks the course of the M.A. thesis on early Christian iconoclasm of non-Christian (pagan, that is) art.
The Case Studies category is especially interesting -- and the pictures are even more so.
One of the interesting issues will be sorting out the dating accurately enough to be certain that what shows up is Christian iconoclasm rather than Islamic iconoclasm (something that certainly went on as well). It's also tricky to separate accidental damage from intentional destruction -- marble statues are inherently fragile (the qualities which makes marble easy to carve makes it easy to break). For instance, were statues damaged in earthquakes or shipping and then simply disposed of?
When we see faces that have been chipped away with bodies that have been allowed to let stand it's clear we're seeing something intentional -- but it's difficult to date except by careful attention to archaeological context.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:27 AM
August 4, 2005
Carnivalesque
What have people interested in things Ancient and Medieval been up to lately? Here are a few offerings -- some submitted by their authors, some by readers, and some dug up by your host - Michael Tinkler. all links open in new windows
To begin on a properly carnivalesque note, Anne Brannen at Creating Text(iles) tells us about Lewd Maygames and Riotous Piping in Barns
Item bicause the Saboth day is so fondly abused in going vnto Fayers and visiting of frendes, and acquaintances, and in feasting and making of good chere, in wanton dawnsing, in lewd maygames sometyme continuing riotously with Piping all whole nightes in barnes and such odde places, both younge men and women out of their fathers and masters howses, I charge all my parishes, within my Dioces, and charge the Churchwardens, Sidemen, and ministers to see that no such disorders be kept vpon the Sabaoth day, commonly called the sundayes, as they will aunswere vppon their othe.This entry is an entry from a series describing a summer research trip. We know that academic summers sometimes look like beer and skittles, but some of us travel around the world to go to ill-ventilated libraries and read documents in crabbed hands. I myself had a few posts using the word Carnivalesque earlier this summer, but I didn't get to go anywhere. No one even brought me a tshirt.
Natalie Bennett of Philobiblon took a less professionally focused trip -- she was cycling through Kent -- but when those inclined to think about the past go pedalling around high and late medieval buildings, they can't help but think. Those who blog can't help but type about architectural cycling.. She found that the villages and towns of later medieval Kent weren't quite what she expected.
Carl Pyrdum at Got Medieval offers Astonishing Tales of French Bureaucracy -- his first trip to the Bibliotheque Nationale as a reader. Woe! Footnotes!
Michael Hendry at Curculio offers a way to pass the dog days of summer for those of us who aren't travelling -- Latin Scrabble! Go comment and play at home!
It seems that many people who aren't reporting research trips are still thinking more lightly than usual. Jim Davila at Paleojudaica offers a list of lost books he'd like to see.
It's heartening to know that what once was lost can be found. the eponymous Glaukôpis of Glaukôpidos commented on the rediscovered Sappho poem and offered some alternative translations.
Two of my daily reads for keeping up with things found are Mirabilis.ca and David Nishimura's Cronaca. Both are constant sources for urls forwarded to my students with the subject line "look! someone just dug up another one of those things we were just talking about!" I recommend them both to your rss feed reader. When they go on vacation I miss them!
David Nishimura took a plunge into publishing original scholarship in late July, though -- he's been posting regularly on the Macclesfield Psalter situation. Because an article he and his wife have written is in festschrift limbo, he's posted it (with permission but without images). Ah, those double-medievalist marriages!
Michael Drout at Wormtalk and Slugspeak has an Update on the Crazy Sheep DNA Project (his use of the term "crazy"). For your less crazy medieval manuscript needs there's always Pecia -- nominated by a reader and also recommended on Cronaca last week. You have to be able to read French, but we can do that, can't we? And for archeology news, mainly in German but occasionally launching into other tongues, Archaeo-News-Blog.
Since I just used the word part archaeo-, I turn to archaeoastronomy - the term and Alun Salt's site. He speculated recently about which comes first -- addition or multiplication? The answer might surprise you, but for those who think I'm setting a math reading, there are pictures. I especially liked the aside "A lot of thought on numbers requires assumptions which we don’t even acknowledge existing."
Word parts and words - I know that's what hooked a lot of us on a past. Michael Gilleland at Laudator Temporis Acti had a nice post on augurium and auspicium.
Another Damn Medievalist at Blogenspiel speculates about why she loves the early stuff -- I concur. But to remind us all that a specialty in things old doesn't improve one's character, Dennis at Campus Mawrtius posts about an Italian human interest story I'd missed retired classics teacher as con man. Can't trust a man just because he has Latin and Greek. What is the world come to?
The past isn't always long ago and far away. Tony Badran at Across the Bay posts on Ethnohistory, Ideology, and Modern Politics -- what's an Amorite? a Canaanite? a Phoenician? Think it doesn't matter in modern Lebanon? Then you don't read Tony often enough.
Did you know there's a Beowulf movie? It's going to be about as horrible as you might imagine -- Grendel has a father, for instance -- but the costumes look like fun. The world premiere is going to be at the Toronto film festival in September. I'm sure we'll all buy it on DVD, no matter how horrible it is, just like I'm about to buy the director's cut of Alexander.
The next will focus on the Early Modern, but I haven't seen a host announced yet.
Further: you can also go read this -- about a blog I intended to include.
Further: The Über Carnival page at Truth Laid Bear
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:31 PM
August 3, 2005
Medieval and Ancient Blogs on Parade
My friend that other damned medievalist persuaded me to run a blog roundup of Ancient and Medieval blogs -- if you care to submit something send it to professor AT crankyprofessor-dot-com. Things will go up Friday the 5th.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:00 AM
Sorry for the silence . . .
I've been peevish even for me -- I was sick, then I had to travel while relapsing, then I was at my parents, now I'm home, the weather is sticky and hot, the summer is ending swiftly, I have a lot to do. Oh, well. I'm back. I hope you've been using the archives or the category function . . . .
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:58 AM
July 10, 2005
Anti-Panda Blogging
The Old Oligarch is at it again.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:09 AM
July 3, 2005
Flickr fun
I've added a link in the right column to my Flickr stream, but I'm not at all sure that I like it. We'll see. Does it do horrible things to people's loading time if they're on dialup? Does anyone read me on a handheld internet object? Hmmm.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:43 AM
June 29, 2005
Poor guy!
Brian Tiemann's blog was the 22nd google hit for "Bob Lewis Volkswagen." If you add "service" to the search he's #16.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:24 AM