my astrolabe home made kit

i decided to add photos of my old homemade template kits of medieval astromonical instruments i made in 2006
my marine astrolabe my nocturnal star clock , moon phase dial and small polaris sighting star clock
the astrolabe the bigger instrument with the scale in tens i have used to sight the north star and work out my latitude of 53 north
the nocturnal has more working parts two rings three star gauges and a pointer it is much more complicated nocturnals ideally used on a rolling deck to give time to nearest hour which it still does
the polaris sighting clock gives similar results by turning the gauge to the current month but only uses the big dipper ursa major as star sight

see link about nocturnal http://www.sciencetech.technomuses.ca/english/collection
/nocturnal4.cfm
here is a good video explaing the astrolabe in full 12 minutes but very well presented
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yioZhHe1i5M

secret conspiracy made up by secret masters

library warrior women 3000 years of courage and heroism warrior queens , women in uniform, spies and herorines
lost treasure the worlds tombs, shipwreck and treasure trove from europe to south america
dan gibbons Crusader gold as usual ends in anticlimax- coincidently the viking king is the brother of the tomb robbing viking from tom erglands novel this viking harald hadrada who not only steals the jewish temple treasures from constantinople but also survives the battle of stamford bridge in 1066 from where he flees from the normans (why?) all the way to mexico where harald loses both life and jewish temple treasures to an olmec ambush
ends as usual in anticlimax gold from temple treasures melted down and eventually forms part of spanish main loot along the way or hero bumps into elderly nazis and secret brotherhood keeping the secret of harald hadrada going to america (why?)
priory of sion the ultimate conspiracy nonsense and secret of lost king descended from jesus yes we know its a myth based on a hoax but i didn't make that up

masonic conspiracy to write trite novels lacking 3D

i left the dating site and also wrote a ten word paean to love poetry

library- read tom ergland's guardians of the covenant a norwegian dan brown complete with five historical prologues (five count em!), the usual conspiracy architecture based on the idea of the great icelandic secret - that viking raiders invaded a still functioning ancient egyptian temple and stole the mummy of moses along with a book of the bible the 6th book of moses that contradicted the rest of the bible and that said mummy was kept from the pursuing vatican agents throughout the ages all the way to viking america the book ended in no less than five epilogues and a bibliography from wikipedia

tom severins viking trilogy final part kings man from corrupt byzantium to the battle of stamford bridge in 1066 - hero viking even met the historians and chroniclers the whole main plot was cribbed from
china reference work on chinas culture art and geography the usual book if well illustrated
history of the bloody passion of war- book read and book quoting all the way from stone age sacrifice to US flag campaigns

archaelogical thrillers

read another david gibbons tiger warrior like all his work starts with prologue in ancient times and ends in either big explosion or anitclimax -usually anti cilimax where the moden day heroes find what you already know from the historical prologue
the tiger warrior was set along the silk road and ticked all the boxes
the prologue had shades of ben kanes the forgoten legion and valerio massimon manfredi empire of dragons and even included roman trasure seekers and the tomb of the first emperor - reminds me of robert low here
archaelogical thrillers remarkablely similar even the the quest for the same artifact, atlantis, alexanders tomb etc , do the teams of rugged cliched adventurers ever bump into each other "hey that's my lost temple of doom"

re-read mary renault the king must die minoan crete as it appeared in the 1950s
the ghost hunters :concise history history of the society for psychical research
the immortality commision: who could resist a book that includes pharonic tombs, nineteenth seances, stalinist pseudoscience and the immortality promised by present day nanotechnology
-wait i can feel an archaelogical thriller coming on !!

what happens when a boring static personality turns to love

I have been researching online dating for a theme day for my learning centre and joined a free dating site creating a wonderful drop down list profile and adding my best rick moranis photograph

sat back waited for the messages to flood in well not really
checked out the "babes" - the 40-50 women divorced, separated usually women looking for mr ideal right and I of course was "boring and frightening short"
why do all the women want to walk along lonely beaches in the moonlight with someone they have just met on the internet !
many of the women said very little of interest their profile or had photos of themselves at girls nite out parties or even worst the blurry gamour shots in a mirror taken by their mobile phones
the profiles talked about the womans turnoffs and pet hates but didn't really tell me much about them -fundamentally everyone is a stranger

i sent a few messages mentioning my job role to any who mentioned their job role planning a first date in a museum - why not madame tussards and even quoted my poetry to the woman replies or even them reading the message were lacking
writing my "ice breaker" I froze up

well it was purely for research purposes I do not know what type of woman i am looking for and anyway see myself as a bibliophile leaving my large estate to a cats home

the coming of the martians in 4D

read a star trek novel one of the typhon pact series post star trek nemesis usual star trek cliche using sisko and spock in romulan civil war typically stuck in the sixties the plots cold war politics and axis alliances either 1939 /41 events or 1962 stand off star trek novels are easy to read and easier to write
i remember one afternoon i created in 15 minutes an entire two seasons of a star trek series set on the sidelines of the borg-dominion war

other books aztec empire rise and downfall and Inca empire downfall both newly founded societies based around a small tribes rise to power and both at their height of imperium toppled by alien invaders with superior technology - the coming of the martians
final book matteo ricci jesuit in ming china had the inca and aztec empires been at the technology levels of china at the time of the spanish conquest - would it not then have been -martians go homeand the invaders destroyed with the native culture intact to the present day

pencil and paper

visited the library looked at many sci fi novels usually trilogies of total trite having read wars of the roses should have taken out the princes in the tower but really could not care about Richard III cue manical laughter and "wheres me nephews at"

nearly had a poem yesterday but only could remember first line lost in sandfall, stone in ocean grave

recorded that in my notebook which i have taken photos of to share with the world blog nothing if not neat and tidy

the future is an open book

i had another inspired piece of poetry but unfortunately woke up and could not remember the middle section and last lines
re remembering when awake reminded of a dream i had in 1985
i was in the obsure siberian part of soviet union talking to a teenage stall holder who was saying "it does not matter about your lady Di my grandson will be ruler of the world" and then produced a altas of maps showing the next hundred years which he insisted on flicking through the pages for me
a quick look at the book - remembered one map for the early 21st century and a quick glance at rather confusing and quite brilliant series of maps
the last pages were future maps mainly based around a radically advanced future asia
euroamerica it seems will be finished along with its civilization and culure didn't get the chance to look at any maps of africa or oceania

i recorded the map i saw in a 1980s drawing see above next to the new and remarkablely similiar EU map of 2010 i found on the internet
all i can say is i once put what i remembered of wht the future atlas showed the world is to become into a poem

"first in the fire
fire follows fire
hope"

our current historical period (despite what you may think) is rather dull and lacklustre in its culture and morals , lacking in any lasting real science and invention and one of the very few times of peace