Just in case you're looking for something delightfully weird to bake this season, here's a lovely long blog post about how to make cuneiform gingerbread. The post is from last year, but hey, what's a year more or less when talking about ancient cuneiform scripts?

And in case you don't want to copy an existing text, there's alternatives to this. First of all, an online transcribing gadget that will give out your own text in cuneiform script. Or you can check out the twitter feed of Team Cooleiform, a group of students from Helsinki who have fun doing cuneiform scripts. (I met some of them at the WorldCon in Helsinki, where they made clay tablets... not transliterated, but actually translated the things you asked for into ancient Sumerian. Which, it turned out, meant a good bit of discussion and checking and thinking when I got my tablet inscribed with "keep flying"...)

So maybe, if you ask nicely, they might even translate something like "this is a cookie" for scribing that onto your gingerbread... who knows?

A while ago, I was in a restaurant with a few English friends, and at the end, when there was the bill to pay, there was a bit of confusion as to how tipping is done in Germany.

Just in case you are wondering about that now - it's done in a kind of reverse haggling. The server adds up what you owe to the restaurant, then you hand over the money and say a number that is a bit higher - depending on how much you want to tip. The guideline is to add about ten percent if you were happy with the service, but in practice, Germans often round up to a full Euro in about that range (which means, with small amounts, there can be server-friendly prices and not so server-friendly prices). Leaving a tip on the table is not an usual practice here.

So, for instance, the server tells you "Eighteen fifty", and you say "twenty" and hand over that 50 € note, getting back thirty Euros. Alternatively, you can of course give your server a 20€ note and say "stimmt so" or "Danke" - the latter can possibly lead to misunderstandings if you are just trying to be polite when handing over the money!

Austria has similar tipping practices, as has Switzerland, at least as far as I know. I still remember being in a country where it was customary to leave the tip on the table for the first time - it was really weird and confusing for me!

One of the many questions is: Where has this day gone? Somehow, part of it got sucked away by my carrying stuff - or, to be more precise: carrying parts of a storage shelf down into the basement.

As the stuff accumulation goes on, so does the need for storage space, so I've finally given in and ordered a large shelf, to be set up in the basement. It arrived today, and thus I've been bringing the parts of it downstairs and did some re-arranging of the things hanging out in the room, to make space for actually putting it together.

Next question: Where has November gone to? Somehow it has sped past even faster than months usually do. Which, I admit freely, is a weird question in combination with the next one - why is it not Friday yet?

Ah well. At least the German newsletter has gone out today, on the edge of it being still November. Also - baking season has started yesterday, as usual with the Vanillekipferl (because I always feel they need the longest to get to their best taste).

And after all these questions that are probably of no real interest to you, here's something that might amuse you - a crowdfunding campaign to save (and possibly reconstruct) a castle in France: Chateau Ebaupinay. I'm not entirely sure what to think of these plans - I am definitely and totally for saving the castle and preserving the building for posterity, but I'm not so sure the plans for something which sounds like a huge Living-History-Meets-Live-Roleplaying thing...

You are getting links today!

Here's a little post about a wooden stick with runic inscription found in Staraya Ladoga.

The CIETA has old issues of their Bulletin available as pdf online - the most recent one is from 1986.

Finally, a short video about a fascinating pleating technique (in French, but the text is not about how the pleating is done anyways, so you won't miss information by not understanding French):

 

Websites can be a funny thing. Especially if the site is not quite what you would expect it to be... or to offer.

One example of this is the website of current Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, which can be found here. Only he (or his social media/PR team) have let the domain rent expire, and thus the domain came up for sale, and someone else bought it and put a photo there plus a rather indecent song...

There's a similar thing going on right here in Germany, also concerning politics - someone bought the domain "mutterallerprobleme.de" (Mother of All Problems) and set it up with an automatic redirect to... well.. the official CSU party website.

Which, I admit, amuses me no end.

While we're at the current in-topic of tablet weaving, here are some links:

Lise Ræder Knudsen has updated her publication list, so you can now read her work about tablet weaving from Verruchio in Italy and "Ancient Running Animals" from Fort Milan in the Taklamakan Desert, China.

Not tablet-weaving, but textiles from far abroad: Vikings purchased silk from Persia.

And being on the topic of Norway, here's a film about the Jellstad Ship...

enjoy!

 

If you've been following this blog for a while, you will know about my love for EscapePod, the weekly free science fiction podcast. I also like its sister podcasts PodCastle and Cast of Wonders.

In fact, I like them so much that a few years ago, I offered to narrate for them. Now... I'm no native English speaker, and my accent and voice are a bit, let's call it "unique", so I am not a voice that's called on often.

Which means I've only done it once before - so my delight was immense when, a while ago, I got the opportunity to do it again, with a wonderful and slightly weird story by Finnish writer Ville Merilainen.


The episode is live now, and you can listen to it via the CoW website - or with your favourite podcatcher.