notes.husk.org

"Commonplace books that survive from the Tudor period contain a huge variety of texts, including..."

Tue, 14 May 2013 00:04:27 +0100

“Commonplace books that survive from the Tudor period contain a huge variety of texts, including letters, poems, medical remedies, prose, jokes, ciphers, riddles, quotations and drawings. Sonnets, ballads and epigrams jostle with diary entries, recipes, lists of ships or Cambridge colleges and transcriptions of speeches. Collecting useful snippets of information so that they could be easily retrieved when needed, or re-read to spark new ideas and connections, was one of the functions of a commonplace book. But the practice of maintaining a commonplace book and exchanging texts with others also served as a form of self-definition: which poems or aphorisms you chose to copy into your book or to pass on to your correspondents said a lot about you, and the book as a whole was a reflection of your character and personality.”

- Tom Standage: How commonplace books were like Tumblr and Pinterest, drawing from the research for his forthcoming book.

See also: the distractions of social media, 1673 style.

"In October 1884, a convention held by the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions..."

Wed, 01 May 2013 18:48:31 +0100

“

In October 1884, a convention held by the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions unanimously set May 1, 1886, as the date by which the eight-hour work day would become standard. As the chosen date approached, U.S. labor unions prepared for a general strike in support of the eight-hour day.

On Saturday, May 1, rallies were held throughout the United States. Estimates of the number of striking workers across the U.S. range from 300,000 to half a million. In New York City the number of demonstrators was estimated at 10,000 and in Detroit at 11,000. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, some 10,000 workers turned out. In Chicago, the movement’s center, an estimated 30 to 40,000 workers had gone on strike and there were perhaps twice as many people out on the streets participating in various demonstrations and marches, as, for example, a march by 10,000 men employed in the Chicago lumber yards.

”

- Wikipedia’s entry on the Haymarket Affair, as referred to in The Red Flag:

Look round, the Frenchman loves its blaze,
The sturdy German chants its praise,
In Moscow’s vaults its hymns were sung
Chicago swells the surging throng.

Five years ago today, Flickr announced its video feature. Some...

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 15:00:05 +0100

Five years ago today, Flickr announced its video feature. Some users weren’t happy.

(I’m actually kind of happy I made these posts now, as they’ve all been taken down. One of the users has now left Flickr entirely. I’ve been through Flickr so I know that users own their images, but on the other hand I like that these otherwise ephemeral protests escaped their creators clutches.)

Apollo 11 Moon Shot, Cape Kennedy, Florida by Garry...

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 20:57:47 +0000

Apollo 11 Moon Shot, Cape Kennedy, Florida by Garry Winogrand.

Being watched watching them watching the launch.

SFMOMA is currently hosting an exhibition of Winogrand’s work, including this. I popped in at lunchtime and it turned out to be remarkably dense (small prints will do that, I suppose) and pretty busy.

To make the most of it, I think I’m going to have to go back. The exhibition runs until 2 June, 2013.

Today I learnt that the San Francisco Market Street Railway...

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 22:30:19 +0000

Today I learnt that the San Francisco Market Street Railway owns Streetcar No. 189, from Porto, Portugal.

Sadly it’s not in service, but it is under restoration. Hopefully it’ll see service some time soon.

"In 1969, Ampex created and maintained the Videofile system, which recorded files and photos to a..."

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 20:13:32 +0000

“In 1969, Ampex created and maintained the Videofile system, which recorded files and photos to a magnetic videotape system long before the advent of commercial computer hard drives (to this day, Britain’s New Scotland Yard still uses the Videofile system to store perpetrators’ fingerprints)”

- A random UK reference aside in Chris Stokel-Walker’s post at Buzzfeed on The Inside Story Of Pong. Ampex is where many of the early Atari developers started up.

theeconomist: Who was America’s greatest president? Our friends...

Wed, 14 Nov 2012 18:34:51 +0000

theeconomist:

Who was America’s greatest president? Our friends at Intelligent Life are trying to pick from a shortlist of six.

Here’s the current poll results:

I’d be more convinced in the write-in results for the 40th President if they could consistently spell his name correctly.

From page iv of the Catalogue of the San Francisco Free Public...

Tue, 29 May 2012 05:30:30 +0100

From page iv of the Catalogue of the San Francisco Free Public Library, 1888 additions, abbreviations for “the more common masculine and feminine fore-names”.

Soviet poster, 1931 (text: “We Are Building a Fleet of...

Tue, 08 May 2012 01:57:00 +0100

Soviet poster, 1931 (text: “We Are Building a Fleet of Airships in the Name of Lenin”) from The Dead Dream of the Dirigible by Megan Garber in The Atlantic.

Lightroom’s map of locations of iPhone photos I’ve...

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 21:17:24 +0100

Lightroom’s map of locations of iPhone photos I’ve taken since January 2010.