It's the middle of a week! And a shorter one at that - time for some links!

Jane Austen's novel "Emma" has its 200 year anniversary this year, and there's an exhibition about it at Chawton House Library, Hampshire, UK. The exhibition will run until September 25, 2016, so if you want to see it, there's still plenty of time left to plan a trip. If you like textiles (which you probably do, since you are reading this blog), it gets even better: part of the exhibition features contemporary embroideries, inspired by patterns from Austen's time. This part is called Stitch-Off, and you can read more about it here. If you're curious about the patterns used, you can find them here, and if your fingers are itching, it's still possible to join in on the project.

Totally unrelated, but rather funny: the UK is building a new polar research ship and they have invited the public to suggest names for their vessel - with interesting results. The leading suggestion is Boaty McBoatface. (The Council responsible was smart, though, as they are only inviting suggestions - they'll be free to pick whatever name they like best in the end.)

 

Gillian, my partner-in-Beastly-crime, has a new book coming up. It's her latest academic work, published by Peter Lang, titled "History and Fiction. Writers, their Research, Worlds and Stories".

The book looks at how writers understand and use history in their fiction, including world building. It focusses on genre fiction, so if you've always been wondering how history might influence science fiction novels... here's a book for you.

I'm all excited for her, and I especially like how the cover turned out...



...because I had a hand in it. As in I made the photo. And the Most Patient Husband of Them All also had a hand in it, even more literally, as it is his hand you can see doing the colouring. Which means he got to be a cover model, though he never planned on it!

It's Friday again, the sun is shining, and I am in dire need of some coffee (which I will make as soon as this blogpost is done). So - Friday links for you!

First of all, there's a nice post by Juliet McKenna about embroidery, and what the "richly embroidered wall-hangings" in a fantasy novel (or in a medieval source, of course) actually mean in terms of time spent (and thus in terms of wealth).

Twitter has changed its display style from chronological to an algorithm a bit similar to the Facebook one - you are now getting tweets first in line that the algo thinks you'd be more interested in. Here's a longer post about it - but if you just want to go back to how Twitter was before, go into the "settings" menu and uncheck the appropriate box.

Internet memes change our language - for instance, turning nouns into verbs (let me google that for you) has become quite common. JSTOR Daily has an article about this phenomenon here.

The British Library has an Anglo-Saxon manuscript digitisation project running, and the latest addition is the 11th-12th century MS Cotton Vespasian A XIV, which contains the letter book of Archbishop Wulfstan.

Medieval Histories has a short article about 13th-century knitted mittens from Estonia (where else?).

And that's it for this week. Have a sunny weekend!

It's Pi Day! Hooray! And now you are getting a really crude transition in addition to a late and short blog post - I had a meeting today that ran a huge lot longer than anticipated, and it shot my schedule for the day to the ittiest bittiest bits imaginable.

It is Pi Day. Pi sounds just like pie. Pie has layers. Something else that had layers? This Mortlake tapestry, dating to the 1630s - a part of the tapestry was folded back and hidden...

Also fascinating: Conservation treatment of a Sudanese leather dress.

Finally, if you'd like some fresh fiction in audio - here's a list of the Hugo Award eligible stories that ran on the Escape Artists Network. Enjoy!

Today is... International Women's Day.

Which gets me pondering...

There's a lot of International Whatever Days that make me smile, and I happily celebrate them (if only by tweeting about them or blogging, in some cases). Like Star Wars Day (May the Fourth, of course), or Talk like a Pirate Day, or Pi Day (March fourteen. Coming soon!). These are fun, and funny, and they can bring smiles to faces, which is all good. Sometimes they're an excuse to get a fancy pie (or make one), or geek out with friends.

On the other hand, there's also the serious days that serve as reminders that there are issues we, as humans, need to solve. Like cancer, or depression. These days serve a purpose, and they are a good thing to have. War Remembrance days fall into sort of the same category, for me - they remind us that we, as humans, should maybe do better in the future.

Women's Day, though, just like Mother's Day (which is an even worse thing as it has gotten so commercialised) - they make me sad in a way that the other serious days don't. Goodness, we're living in the 21st century. Shouldn't we all have realised by now that while yes, there are differences between men and women (obviously, and not only the external appearance), both men and women are human beings who have something to contribute to society? That both men and women formed history, and made important contributions? That men and women deserve the same chances, the same opportunities, the same pay rates? Which, unfortunately, is still not the case. We're all still caught in biases and prejudice, deeply ingrained due to the culture that we grew up in. Finding those biases and blind spots is not easy - it does take effort, and sometimes they are so subtle it's nearly impossible to find them out and counter them. So men and women today are still not considered equal - and that's sad.

On the upside - the fact that there is a Day for this hints at humanity somehow being aware that this is an issue, and that it should be fixed. So. Happy International Women's Day, everyone. May we not need a day like that in the future anymore.

I think it's time for some bits of art and creativity, randomly pulled together from parts of the Internet:

Saraswati, a Malaysian lady, uses make-up artistry and hijabs to recreate Disney princesses (and, in some cases, non-princess characters). It really creates amazing effects!

Ruby Silvious has a very different, but also unusual canvas, painting on used tea bags - one for each week of the year.

Not an art article per se, but using medieval (and later) pictures: Why do women carry things on their heads?
And finally, the art of surprising your students with bonus questions (and some of the answers) for a statistics exam. Sadly, I would not have had much luck with them (but they are still very funny to look at).

(I had planned a different post for today - but due to something I found in my inbox just this morning, I'll be pushing the post about textile stuff to Monday instead. It will come, though!)

Recently, there's been a new virus called "Locky" that comes in Word files. When opened, they contain a macro that sets the virus free on your computer; it then encrypts your files, and you are supposed to pay money (probably a lot of it) to get the key to decrypt your data again. Ransomware like that has been around for a while, but "Locky" spread quite furiously, since it took a while for antivirus software to be able to detect it.

(So - don't open word files that come from sources you don't know. And make sure your word security settings regarding macros are set to "high". That is the default setting; if you're not sure, here are instructions on how to change macro security settings.)

Everyone, though, should know by now that opening email attachments from unknown sources, especially if they are not a .pdf, is a bad idea. What I personally find really disturbing is not the stable-ish number of sketchy attachments arriving in my inbox, however. It's the quality of the most recent phishing emails that I've been getting.

Just this morning, I got a "payment confirmation" from "Paypal". Which told me that I have successfully transferred money for a one-month membership to a porn site. Helloooo? What?

The mail looks almost exactly like legit payment confirmations from Paypal. It uses the original images from the PP server, and layout and design are very similar.

The differences are very subtle: there's a reference number in the top right corner that looks like a link but is not (it is in the legit version). Same with the item description. In the mail I received, there was also a question mark in front of every number.

The scam is also missing the imprint data that PP includes at the end of the mails. The biggest (and most important) difference, however, is the inclusion of a nice, big, friendly button to cancel the payment.

Here's how the lower part of a legit payment confirmation looks:

[caption id="attachment_2244" align="alignnone" width="650"] This is only the bottom part of a legit payment confirmation, received just this morning (I had to buy postage). There's an invoice number just above the light grey line on the top of the picture, which I'm not showing due to privacy reasons.


In comparison, this is how the scam/phishing email looks:

[caption id="attachment_2243" align="alignnone" width="651"] You can see that the invoice number is missing. The "problems?" thing is in red, to make sure you see it... and then that nice, friendly, ohsohelpful button (which, you guessed it, will not lead to Paypal proper, but somewhere else).


In case you get something like that, from Paypal or from any other banking/finances site (I received one about a credit card a while ago, if I remember correctly), take a deep breath, open your browser and go directly to Paypal or to your bank. Log in and check - you will find that nothing has actually happened on your account.

You can then report the scam - there's various ways to report various scams, but it's always a good idea to forward the scammy mail to the actual company that it is spoofing.

These scams have gotten much, much better over the course of the last few months, and they really do look a lot like official stuff. With so much of commerce and invoices going through the 'net these days, I guess that they are a very good strategy to making money by fraud. So please beware, double-check, and be safe. Have a backup or two. Never click links in sketchy emails, open dubious attachments, and don't believe everything a random email tells you.