Veni Vidi Scripsi

I guess this has been around for some time, but I'd never run across it before: an animation of (the second half of) the Bayeux Tapestry.

I like how closely the animation seems to have followed the original work (to my non-expert eyes), while still giving it a new life.

... why wedding rings are so often made of a nice, non-reactive metal. A rarely noted one is that, should you take your ring off briefly, you don't have to worry that the dog who's trying to eat it could do much real damage.

(I was relatively sanguine about socks, pens, soda cans, and even a $2 bill, but this is ridiculous. Actually, I was pretty wroth about the bill, too, because I think a money-eating habit would be really, really bad.)

A while back, when cat9, new_man, mermaidlady, and I went to Mexico, we saw a variety of interesting wildlife, including at one point the coral snake and the milk snake, which have very similar coloration. Our local guide explained, however, that the former was deadly poison and the latter was merely a mimic, and that their patterns of red, black, and yellow bands could be easily distinguished using a mnemonic like "red next to yellow, kill a fellow; red next to black, friend of Jack". Only, just a short while later we had found that our memories were just as liable to substitute other, equally plausible rhymes, like "black next to red, kill you dead; black next to yellow, he's your fellow". Back home, we discovered that there were actually several different variations in coloring, and several different kinds of mimics, that could make things even more confusing. I pictured us debating what the rhyme was and whether that orangey color really counted in a tense moment, and largely wrote it off.

So, drifting off to sleep last night, I realized that surely one group follows the rule of tincture and the other doesn't. And, indeed, true coral snakes (well, in this hemisphere) have color and metal touching, and at least the preponderance of false ones (milk snakes, king snakes, and scarlet snakes) have black and red against each other. And, perversely, I think that will be a lot easier for me to remember.

Of course, I mentioned my revelation to cat9, and she said "red and black - but isn't sable a fur?" and I said that I thought it was really only the Germans who treated it as a fur, and Western Europe treated it as a color, so that was alright. But certainly I can now imagine us faced with a potentially deadly snake, and arguing over whether its tincture should be considered correct by the prevailing standards of blazonry. No memory aid is perfect.

(And, just as a disclaimer, you really shouldn't use this as the basis to go poking snakes. I have read about coral snakes from other parts of the world that are pink and blue, or other odd things a herald would never go for. On the upside, all of these snakes tend toward the retiring personality, so bites are very rare.)

As a cautionary note to any of you who engages in any kind of piping of video from one device to another while in your home, I have found that it works extremely well until such time as, say, your dog tries to eat your VGA cable. So, now you know.

(It's alright, I managed to bend the pins back to acceptable positions, and now I'm once again using LJ at 60", as is just and proper.)

Well, I'm far behind on updating about anything, but as it's the astronomical new year... now, I guess it's a good time to write at least a little.

I kept meaning to mention that I got a new job, but not actually getting around to it, so here you are: I am just starting my fourth week at Sonicbids, a web-based company to get bands booked with gigs. So far so good - and since my time here's already been 1/14th the duration of each of the last two places, in my book we're doing well.

I didn't wake up for the sunrise this morning, as I have done some years, because I'm apparently no longer willing to put sleep as my lowest priority, even if it's well removed from the highest. The sun seems to have come up, anyway, so I guess we're safe for another year.

So cat9 and I were out at Prospect Hill Forge tonight (she actually smithing, me just hanging out this time). We left here at probably 5 PM. When we got home, our entire block, including down both side streets, was marked with signs saying that the area had become a tow zone for tomorrow, and only authorized film vehicles were allowed. Everyplace where there weren't still cars parked had been marked with cones as well, and they had run some serious theatrical power cables for the film crew's convenience.

Now, I know that we're supposed to feel special that someone's using our quiet little neighborhood for a film location, but this is actually stunningly inconvenient. Few people in our neighborhood have driveways, which meant that where most of the time we can just park in front of the house, today we had to hunt quite a ways away, because nearly everyone else from the whole area had already moved their cars everyplace closer. I would merely be irked by this inconvenience, were it not for the fact that they gave less than seven hours' notice that they would, at least in theory, begin towing cars. There are still a number of people parked out there who probably got home from work before the signs went up, and haven't been out since. I can only hope they're not rudely surprised tomorrow. I was under the impression you were supposed to give at a minimum a couple of days of notice of this kind of thing, and it seems tacky not to provide some kind of advance warning even further ahead. But nothing at all? I'm surprised that this is even legal.

As it turns out, I'll be around the house tomorrow. I'm very tempted to provide authentic local color to the film...

Idea by dkapell, embellished by me.

Death by Letters Patent
OR
Fess Up

Someone's been tampering with the records. The whole College of Heralds could have sworn that 'Quarterly, argent and sable' was a long-held device, but no one can find it on the rolls... And when Gerold Blanders, gules a couped stein or, the loudest antagonist of this new submission, turns up ashen in a pool sanguine, palewise a dirk proper, it uncovers a heraldic stain that counterchanges every expectation!

I doubt we would actually run such a thing, but a lot of you would play it, wouldn't you?

You know, whatever happens, Pennsic is basically always a transcendent experience. Even coming home and using electric light is totally different upon returning from its marvelously alien territory. So, taking as read that it is awesome - in the classical sense - a few specifics follow.

I only went for the second week, and the weather was great. It wasn't ever ungodly hot, and I don't think it ever rained on me. (There was a little at night, or for a couple of minutes while I was in a tent, but nothing major. I understand it poured the first week.)

My fighting was far from in practice, and hardly a piece of my armor kit didn't need to be patched with duct tape at one time or another, right down to my boots. The war setup was pretty goofy, but did allow me the pleasure of fighting alongside jamey1138 a couple of times. All of the battles ran later than perhaps ever before (though herooftheage may know of some worse occasion), and seemed poorly coordinated to the point of changing rules on the last battle down to 15 minutes before it started. I had fun with my part in the fighting, but the organization was all terrible.

I spent a lot more time hanging out with people in our camp, and wandering down by the lake. Actually made it to (nearly) all the Tagmata daily readings, which this year was The Tain, a far more engaging work than I had expected. It may even have started some mischief for next year.

Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to the delights of a hot shower and a soft bed. Though the ones we have at war are pretty good these days, the comforts of home are always greater than the comforts of campaign.

Plus, tomorrow we get two adorable dogs back.

I've been musing on a recent post of jducoeur's, regarding a Swedish political party's attempts to limit copyright to five years (and more specifically Richard Stallman's not terribly convincing complaints about it). Now, I think the copyright situation we are in is bad: large, bullying companies hold on to the agglutinations of purchased copyrights for remarkably long time periods, and use their legal strength to make a mockery of fair use whenever they feel like it. It seems like this does not serve the original creators well, nor the consumers, nor later creators that have to watch their steps with exceeding care to avoid these intellectual property behemoths. And there is something tempting about the five year notion, yet I don't really like the idea of someone who makes a thing losing their ownership of it while they are still alive to care.*

The corporate acquisition of those rights is tricky, too, because it is often very beneficial for musicians to have labels, authors to have publishers, and directors to have studios. It's possible to do without them, but at least in principle they are a good thing. And in order for them to make large-scale reproduction of creators' creations an effective business, they need to secure some rights on, well, copying. But we often see the case where, say, a comic book author does not have any rights at all to the work he did twenty years ago, because the copyright is held by the publisher.

With these problems in mind, I wonder whether the following might work better for everyone. Or at least, everyone who isn't DC Comics: while you are alive, you retain copyright on your work. Your ownership of it would be non-transferable. You can license the work as you like, but we enforce a short maximum term on any such license. This is where I think five years becomes an appealing period again. If I record an album for Apple Records, and it's a big hit, or even a quite prolonged sleeper success, they do quite a good bit of business in the first five years exclusively selling it. And when five years is up, we can renegotiate. The big juicy upfront profit window is still theirthere for middleman organizations, but they don't get to sell your property to someone who sells it to someone who sues people who put it up on YouTube decades after you die. You can sell someone an option on the film rights (for five years), but you can never be made to sell the right to decide who gets the film rights.

And, of course, if you do die right after producing a work, the longest it stays out of the public domain is five years.