I've stumbled across Digital Mappa a good long(ish) while ago, and I might or might not have posted about it here on the blog, but it might be time to revisit that. 

Digital Mappa is a tool for digital annotation of manuscripts and images, with the possibility to link multiple different sources, highlight parts of them, and, in short, do a bunch of interesting and potentially helpful things when researching and comparing stuff. Back when I last looked into it, I didn't find anything where you could use the platform without using your own installation. Which I tried to set up, but failed. 

A while ago I received a note about an update to the platform software, and I put on my list to check it out and maybe re-try installing it. These days, I finally got around to looking into it - and I found this article about DM. With, to my utter and great delight, a link to an installation where one can register and then use an already installed, up-and-running version.

Hooray! I've not spent a lot of time with the DM yet, and it certainly takes a little while to get used to, but I have hopes that it will be very, very useful for me and some of my projects - including some collaborative projects as well.

It's always nice to stumble across a new portal for research and for discovering (and looking at) museum objects. My latest discovery in that regard is the portal bavarikon, which - to my and hopefully also your delight - is available in both German and English. 

You can find all sorts of things there, ranging from 3D images of some special items to online exhibitions and accompanying material, such as the reconstruction of how liturgical chants may have sounded - chants that are embroidered onto the blue cope of Kunigunde, which is preserved in the museum of Bamberg Cathdral. 

Have fun exploring!

A chunk of it was eaten by some more research into the photo database problem; then there was a bit of writing; there was a bit of textile work; some organising; there was lunch at some point inbetween, and woosh, the day was gone.

Speaking of time, just a few days ago I was chatting with a friend about wages, and pay, and freelance employment. A few years ago, I had found an online calculating tool that helped in calculating a sensible rate for freelance work, with a list covering expenses and taxes and all these things, but that has long since gone the way of the Dodo Website.

A quick search, though, found a page called, very fittingly: The Freelance Rate Calculator.  Clicking the link there sends you to a google spreadsheet that you can download and fill in, to find out what you will need per hour to earn the money you need. It does, very handily, remind you that you might want to have some savings too... so a very smart thing.

In case you consider going freelance: Check out this sheet, or something similar. You definitely want to find out if you can turn whatever you are planning to make your main job into a business that will sustain you... before you take the plunge.

Well, not here, but on this site called "Medieval Wall Painting in the English Parish Church: A Developing Catalogue".  I'm not sure about how up-do-date the "developing" is, since the copyright notice says "-2018", but it is a very nice collection of murals in churches. 

I've stumbled across it looking for Genesis scenes, which are a premium source for images of Eve spinning. (I've learned, though, that it's not always the spinning woman in those scenes, sometimes she has other occupations.) I hope you enjoy having a look at the paintings.

While I was doing the website relaunch, I had to look at this and that. Which, obviously, included the site structure, and some of the texts. 

Among said texts were some in need of a bit of editing, or changing, or other tender loving care - and while I'm not finished with all the things I want to get up to date, or nicer to read, or both, I've at least finished one of them recently. That's a collection of online resources: Books and articles that are available for free in .pdf form. 

You can find the list under the main page category "Ressources and Helpful Things", and it's titled "Books and Articles" (much to everybody's surprise, I'm sure).

Because I try to keep my pages fully bilingual, with the same content, the page is also available in German. The contents are about the same, though the sorting is a bit different, and of course the explanatory text is in German. 

I hope you enjoy it, and find something useful in there!

The Royal School of Needlework has celebrated its 150th anniversary by making a Stitch Bank - a website where you can explore and learn different embroidery stitches. It's up to 200 now, with the latest addition of 50 newcomers in January.

You can find the Stitch Bank here. The stitch entries usually feature a series of photos and illustrations to show you how the stitch is done, plus a video. If you are all delighted with this and would like to support the project, there's the option of donating to adopt a stitch.

On a related note, here's an article about the meaning of traditional Ukrainian embroidery patterns. 

Sometimes, we fall into the trap of being human - there's certain things that we all just tend to do, and while they do make sense, usually, in an evolutionary context, it might lead to less than welcome outcomes in our modern world. Being human, and having these cognitive biases that we all have is, for instance, something that makes us vulnerable to con artists. Or to just acting stupidly all on our own.

One of the biases is the sunk cost fallacy - you've invested time, money, or both in something, and although reason tells you that it is a dead end and you should cut your losses, it is extremely hard to do so. I have definitely been a victim of that more than once! Confirmation bias is another very common one: favouring things that confirm what you already believe instead of staying objective and looking at your data in a more neutral way. Guilty, Your Honour.

Then there's also logical fallacies, such as using personal experience to dismiss statistics, or looking for patterns to fit a presumption (which sort of ties in with the confirmation bias). Recently, conversation between the Most Patient Husband of Them All and me has meandered to logical fallacies, and he has consequently presented me with a link to a very nice website, with lovely posters listing both biases and fallacies, which I now pass on to you for your delectation. You find them, and more, at www.yourfallacy.is and www.yourbias.is. Enjoy!