I have to do tax stuff. Which, as you probably know, is not my favourite task of them all... so I've been procrastinating this morning.

At least I've been procrastinating in a productive way - finding a slightly better way to get bibliographical data attached to the many .pdf articles that I have in storage (but not yet in the bib database I use), and doing some cleanup and maintenance work on said database. That includes correcting special characters that have not transferred correctly. A pain in the neck, especially if they are not the simple, regular ones that can be typed easily on my standard German keyboard.

I used to have a specialised keyboard when I was writing my thesis, adapted to include Danish, Polish, and Czech special characters, but that has not survived the changes of computer hardware and operating system that happened inbetween, and I haven't gotten around to setting that up again. For the moment, I've found a handy character list on the 'net to copy and paste the single individual characters; it's here, and includes HTML and ASCII codes, if you find those handy.

I've also looked into some other database stuff, though not quite as successfully yet. There's a few things I would like to organise better, so that I can use and access the information I have more easily, but haven't found a really good solution yet. The optimum would be something that also allows cooperation with colleagues via the 'net, while easy to use, linking things both online and in local storage together, and searchable. I might have a lead on something that sounds promising, but haven't looked into it much yet... and I shouldn't, today, since - see above - someone has to do my tax work... and the cat, while purring helpfully and being very cuddly as she currently lies on my arm (the left one, for a change, very unusual) refuses to do that.

If you're looking for things to read and learn about something, you might find something at the Springer homepage - there's a package of textbooks available that is currently free of charge. The books are mostly introductory books (there's a lot of "principles of" in the titles), and they cover a huge variety of topics. There's little archaeological stuff among them (I found one book about zooarchaeology), but if you always wanted to know things about quantum mechanics, data analysis, programming, machine learning, biomechanics, or social marketing - you might find what you were looking for there.

The books are downloadable both in pdf- and in epup-format. Enjoy!

Here are some curious videos to entertain you! First of all: Headwear, inspired by kitchen stuff:

Slightly more modern, and owing to the current situation - while in Germany, police patrols the streets and tells people to move on (you're allowed to do sports outside, or take a walk, but not to sit on benches or on the lawn), there's a much more intimidating kind of patrol happening in Britain:


Like so many other museums, the Städel Museum is offering its collections in digital form, so you can visit and have a look at art via the 'Net. Their motto for this? #STAYDELATHOME. I have laughed my ass off about that. (Proof, again, that I am easily amused...) Do go check out their collections, they have a number of wonderful medieval artworks as well as a lot of more modern ones.

I'm a little random-brained today, so you're getting random links.

First of all, amid all the cancelled conferences, EXARC will be holding theirs as a digital conference, live-streamed and later on available as well.

[caption id="attachment_5136" align="alignnone" width="864"] Note the genius symbol thingie in the bottom right corner. I take off my hat to whoever made this.


Tune in on their official website to learn about Documentation Strategies in Open-Air museums, free of charge, on March 26 and 27. (There will even be a Discord pub get-together, because there's no archaeology conference without a drink and a chat with the colleagues!)

The open-air laboratory Lauresham (where the European Textile Forum took place last year) has started a youtube channel where they plan to show clips of various places and activities taking place. Text is in German, but you can enjoy a view of that beautiful place no matter your language:


If you're looking for something else to do, you could try yourself in folding proteins - basically playing games for science. Relevant games, too, because there are puzzles related to the proteins in the Corona virus. You can download the programme on the official website (no phone apps available yet) and get going right away.

And that's it for today... different stuff tomorrow!

Time for some link stuff again!

First of all, in case you're looking for a plane, or if you are plain curious to know how much is in the air at a given moment: planefinder.net shows planes in real time, plus their flight path and information about both the plane and the distance, height, and so on. It's rather chilling to see how many airplanes are over Europe...

It looks like there might be a way to increase how well humans can see in the dark - though at the moment, it's mostly documented as a side effect of a specific cancer treatment, which is obviously not the thing one would want.

The bibliothèque numérique de Lyon has 55 digitised manuscripts in its collection, dating to the 5th to 10th century, as well as a large number of miniatures from manuscripts of the 5th to 16th century. And because they are wonderful people, the images are open licence, so you are free to use them however you want.

Not medieval at all, but still interesting: Here is a map of the different types of moccasins in North America, with linked instructions on how to make center-seam type shoes of that kind. And I instantly felt transported back to my teenage years, when I had a phase (a rather long one, actually) of being totally into Native American stuff, and tried to make my own shoes and clothes and stuff.

Sometimes you stumble across something really cool while looking for something entirely different. In my latest case, I was looking for an image from a specific manuscript (which, by the way, I did not manage to find online), and I happened across the Troubadour Melodies Database. It is based on Katie Chapman's dissertation, and you can search the database with over 300 melodies from medieval manuscripts, and even compare melodies from different authors and different sources.

I have a thing for medieval music, so I find this very exciting, even though I won't be doing much with it (because of time being no infinite resource, sadly). But maybe it will come in handy somewhere else, or at least give someone besides me the "oh that is cool" moment.

 

Digitalised medieval manuscripts are a wonderful thing - though, I have learned, they can also be a wonderful time sink. However, when you are looking for image sources for medieval stuff, those illuminated texts can be a treasure trove. Calendar illuminations are one thing I have found especially helpful in quite a lot of cases, as they show working people doing agricultural jobs - dressed in simple, suitable clothing for the most parts.

One very nice digitised manuscript is the Bamberger Psalter, dating to 1220-1230. It has a lot of text (of course!) but includes both a calendar and some splendid full-page illuminations, one of them showing a knight in shining (well, more or less) armour (fol 63r, looks like David vs. Goliath to me).

You can have a look at the Psalter on the webpage of the Bamberger Staatsbibliothek. Have fun!