time travellers blistered by monkey arrows

still working on alien astrolabe  occassional dream about  reading future  scientific manuals and  had vivid dream of main  historical  events  in 2060  some sort of siege ends a war  society   para physical  and  nanorganic
 once dreamt i read that tau ceti has no planetary system(this has now been proved)  and that tau cygni was the closest star system with advanced intelligent life on the wanting to meet an alien scale  
 82 orionis nearest for lifeforms
only ever believed kellyville goblins and trent photographs actual evidence of real ET  villas boas encounter  turned  out to be  a Covert ops  LSD experiment 
jobs in 2060 and hopefully newly redundant to not want to wait that long
knowledge designer
food engineer
religion manager
  
poetry  a  long lull but  always write the most oct to november  march to may  each year  
 despite change in circumstances  and future security  I wrote  some of the usual on  the afterlife, science as failure, visions of  the future   and musing on ruins  ie "time traveller returning in butchered  sequence
 blistered with monkey  arrows"   and "henge fallen lith  lays  as an Arthurian queen
a ring of folded   jackdaws her maidens" and this last week inspired by  jim  al khalli  doing his usual telly thing
"whistling discord to collapse
easy superior scientists  hope their   students will save the universe  and not get an ordinary job
 entropy  in the rain "

never got around to finishing zennor wedding   nor fight between  knight and spaceman
  not  uploading any of the new poems  to poem hunter or  poet sanctuary  as this does not help in job search
longest few months I  had had for years as had was used  to  counting  the days  according to my  learners time table
 despondency  of redundancy from my job as  tutor or as  I put on my CV  "twice national award winning tutor"

  not even a goodbye after 16 years  with the same  organisation!!  move on think of the future not the past

but there is little  to do online as I only  used the internet  to   dealt  with work  issues ie   teaching blog writing  ebook creation  and video creation for youtube  in classroom never much of an internet user despite teaching the subject 

I should delete my  learning centre  videos  from my  youtube page as the  old learning centre room is now used for storage by the day centre next door 
still amazon reviewing but have occasional flamers  a minority who claim spoiler alert on of all things a   fantasy novel by stephen baxter  cursing me  as a spoiler  if i say the  obvious ending and storyline  are  cliched what is a spoiler about that
and we all know how important a  CV is at times like this
not much available in local area for adult education and training  even in voluntary capacity

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?"

humanity the ape of anxiety

got letter warning me of "potential redundancy  that reflects the  difficult trading  circumstances  in which we are operating"
10 years as  twice national award winning adult education tutor specialising in  adaptive technology
well that is it having bouts of anxiety   for past week but that of worry over travel to college at night to do  further education  teaching course  and wait for bus in an another town  dark  now not so anxious as realised can afford taxi there and back  but of course now no place to teach at - neither have i taken the  29 days of holiday owing to me

poetry still popular with readers for example  he died in the ark http://www.writeoutloud.net/public/blogentry.php?blogentryid=29549

Not sure where you were led with it, but a bloody brilliant piece of poetry."
"I'm not completely sure I follow the exact meanings of it, but at the same time, I found it a sparking and stirring piece of poetry."

writing lot of mystic variations on myth and tending to tell  little stories in my poetry ie he died in the ark  timeslip, threshold bride , the sleeping engine,  zennor morning,  arthur the king,  helen is finally faceless 
that tell as much as the long romantic narratives
will still carry on with this

I have hoped to build my hawaiian  star compass if it EVER stops raining  and construct a cross staff  and build a paper sextant from kit  and hoped to blog on it
using the astrolabe  i can only work out I am standing still  !

seeing the sky with an astrolabe

As planned  I changed the rete on my astrolabe to use stronger paper  and reinforced the dials with backing cardboard the astrolabe  works as seen in tis setting for this week stars  in northern hemisphere   note orion just above taurus 
the astrolabe of course works on the same principle as those star pocket viewers or plantispheres but i find it effective  and can use it alongside my  mariners astrolabe i made last year

on a poetry front mixed news   i have posted to three poetry forums rather than one
 moods of wookey hole legends   my you tube poem    got good comments

enjoyably disconnected; mysterious; fresh

  and the occasional complaint from some one angered by the poems  confusing language ie  quoted in full as I  find it so  entertaining by its sheer critical non entity

This wasn't bad, but what is a fallen tomb? How can a door be haunted by the tombs. 'Telling empty'? Not sure what you mean there. I'm not sure what the cave is suppose to be. It reads like every line is meant to be a fluffy verse meant to be on it's on.(own)Nothing really links together. You have some nice images, but it could be better.(!)

 Emphasize on the girl led away by fairies. It's too vague and abstract to have a meaning in my opinion.

tend to get asked questions on forums when i post poems   such as  "A fragment ,ask for  my advice on improving"  all could answer was "I wrote it in 1994   sorry never looked at it since" and that ends the conversation  from my worthy mentor  i have been writing for nearly 30 years  so tend to  put mix of new stuff and stuff from 80s and 90s  that not me -its my  unpublished back catalogue

 got rejected by magazine editor  for  distant machine  posted  on this blog already guessed the reason 

"While this poem has some lovely lines, e.g., "Gray over the rainbow/A gospel of white light," there are some problems with syntax and clarity. 

Note that explaining a poem in the cover letter should be unnecessary. I can't use this one, but I'd be happy to see more of your work."

although i have sent emails to Bettany Hughes mentioned my theory on the minoan culture and the god goddess trinity as  bull leaping cosmology  no reply but since discovered  that all BH emails are answered  by her PR company which also posts as BH on facebook and twitter 

likewise simon armitage will not reply but  the  actual addresse of SA email  will be a junior PR  accounts assistant at  SA's publisher  who is puzzling over  what  moods of wookey hole legends is actually about  if they bother to view this blog or  youtube video at all

Click to read my poems on www.poemhunter.com

Flat pack astrolabe kit

 what did i do this weekend
downloaded this astrolabe kit from internet it is based on chaucers treatise of the astrolabe
basic card version i will   print out  rule and label  on stronger card and rete on different paper
it works  and followed  chaucers instructions 
check out the   original  article and kit download   hours of fun  

cardboard kits of scientific instruments

http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif


found a really great website
that sells make yourself carboard kits of nocturnals, orreys,sextant and telecope kits
thinking of an excuse to buy them all


given up on sending my poems to magazines that want you to buy your work as one poem in an anthology see little different between the bridport prize and the vanity press forward books
no room in me for vanity or anthology as do not actually like poetry as a subject

medieval clocks and moon dials

it is in this time of year you can see the night sky looking at thr big full moon and remembered when everyone else used it in poetry i used it to tell the time using a moon dial phase clock i made from cardboard for anyone interested in such things this is a great site of resources

http://www.middleschoolscience.com/earth.htm check out make a plantisphere, big dipper star clock moon clock and astrolabe templates

I find using the big dipper star clock and noctunal above less useful as they only tell the time on the hour based on the month note you line up cassiopeia and the big and little dippers so they match what you see in the night sky and according to the position you can read the month and hour

the noctunal is something i alwys wanted but real ones are expensive and made of wood and ivory and do not make an easy template i eventually found a diagram of parts of a noctunal which i printed out on cardboard

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