finding where I am with an astrolabe

 well  regarding my employer  making me redundant  to quote douglas adams "so long and thanks for the fish"
I teach four subjects so have four skills areas to  look at other opportunities  in !

perhaps i will finish that  star compass    using my mariners astrolabe i find i am  under an unchanging north star
   remembered an old site I found years ago that  provides  kits   to build cardboard working models of the ptolemaic   and copernician   solar  system models http://cp.c-ij.com/en/contents/3148/03311/index.html
will give it a go   after all what else to do





re blog i have decided to do all my weekly book reviews on amazon  but  noticed in past weeks that despite my 95 reviews  over a year my most recent ones   are getting flamed   with hard faced criticism of my  use of punctuation  and paragraphing rather than the content


"two words for you - FULL STOP!" on my review of a dire alchemy romance novel  fate by LJ fredericks 

and long  comments from  two on Richard Dawkins  the greatest show on earth 

Hmm, my suspicion is you haven't read this book at all and were determined to post some kind of diatribe against it's author, regardless.

"If you're going to bother writing a review, could you stir yourself to use basic punctuation and correct spelling to make it readable? Surely anything less betrays some measure of contempt for anyone who might stumble on it.
Not sure what your point really is. For sure, evolution is not an appealing, human-centred fable. Are you suggesting Dawkins shouldn't bother setting out the evidence for it because it's not interesting? Isn't this partly why he's doing it at all?"

end of the end end, end is it the end?

well it is the end  nothing but the end  end, end   given british olympic triumph  seen many peole out on their bikes  lots of bradley wiggins  fluorescent   fat men  in knee pinching shorts sweating by the mile

poetry well  told today will be made redundant on 1st september    after nine full years due to overwhelming funding cuts
writing zennor wedding  -   more romantic mermaid poem than zennor morning    more closely based on the mermaid fairytale    of the mermaid seducing the man in church   a lot of notes and lines such as  "she is not a kings daughter  a banshee a tear heart " or "they pulled her until,she turned fish"
this zennor wedding long term construction unlike my other poems  looking at  a big Giotto and   saint George and the Dragon which were  written in one go

watched the cleopatras now available on youtube  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfHucSYFoTg  the same era of  top notch British TV dramas such as  Upstairs Downstairs I claudius and Brideshead revisited  this was an odd pantomime of  a saga with    indoor sets  like a theatre production    the Cleopatras  told the tale of the ptolemaic    dynasty   and  all seven cleopatras    mainly  basic english  soap opera  with  court intrigue and funny costumes  i watched and remembered it  as it is the only TV dram  I know that mentioned the  seleucids (episode 3 and 4)   and the inter dynastic  feuding but using repertory  type acting  and  lack of  extras     not quite an epic and a dud on first release  not much scope for drama as the seleucids and ptolemies   only really know from inscriptions, bit of  chronicle gossip    and their Greek faces on coinage

reminded me of the Ptolemies quartet   by Duncan Sprott  only two novels of a planned four   volume 1 house of the eagle  2004 volume 2  daughter of the crocodile  2006   with a  similar  pantomine  history of the  early Ptolemies from  Alexander the Great 's General Ptolemy I to Ptolemy IV

writing that same old mythos stuff

read 1001 paintings to  see before you die well actually 996 paintings  since this library copy had  been hacked about and was missing pages and   paintings   mainly from the fifteenth century section    suffered from  the layout of one or  two paintings and artists to a page     and colourfully  went from 18th dynasty egypt to the turner prize  more detailed post 1950 and  in the  2000's    and for a great painting book few great masters  more of a word view with  from the start art from china, india and japan    but in the main still life portrait landscape mixed up feelings  with paint

first life david attenborough based on the bbc series of same name   and  full of blue water photo-spreads, slabs of rock  and computer graphic reconstructions of the early life  from  archaen  bacteria  to  micro fossils  ,  trilobites to  dragonflies   a tale of linear evolution but well detailed and  wide ranging   the  bbc film crew  had gone world wide with visits to burgess shale, mistaken point    and carboniferous sandstone

star wars old republic Revan by drew karypyshtn  set 4000 years or so  before luke skywalker this is another tale based  n the video game concerning Revan  Jedi  knight turned  Dark lord  and back again  as if after a bout of force flu to Jedi knight again   despite being set thousands of years ago  a mess of droids, jedi imperial  sith troopers and mercenary cantini scum
  played up to the action  and given that it is old republic slotted in medieval dungeons and dragons   wizard sith, dark fortresses and  chained slaves  worth a read even if you are not a game player

Ghosts of war  by george mann    a steampunk batman  from the pulp era    echoes of HP lovecraft     but more dixon hill than lee falk    set in a alternative world of Queen Alberta   it had our ex fighter pilot  hero battling flying night creatures     and ended in a climatic airship versus monster fight