Pepys' Diary - Site News

Roll Call. Say hello!

Phil Gyford — 2012-05-12T16:38:37+00:00

Some time ago Laura K suggested we have a roll call for readers of the diary to say hello. This seems like a good time.

Whether you’re a regular annotator, or have been quietly reading along since the beginning, or have only recently joined us, please do post a comment below and say hello to your fellow readers around the world!

You don’t need to write much. As Laura suggested, just let us know where you’re from, how long you’ve been reading, and anything else you’d like to share.

If you haven’t posted anything before, don’t overlook the “What is Samuel’s surname?” question in the form that helps filter out the spammers. And note that the first time you submit the form you’ll see a preview of your comment, and then you’ll need to click the “Post” button to finally submit it.

Hello!

Expect more visitors this month

Phil Gyford — 2012-05-01T09:47:10+00:00

As we approach the end of the diary there’s a chance this site will attract some publicity. I’m not going out of my way to get lots of coverage, but then I didn’t when the site started and there was quite a bit! I mention this because if there is publicity then we will have many more visitors to our friendly part of the web.

If this happens there might be more annotations, more often-answered questions asked, more off-topic chatter… After all this time it might feel like our little home is suddenly swamped with strangers. I’m sure you’ll all be helpful where appropriate — this is more a warning that we might feel a bit overwhelmed by interlopers.

Hopefully, it’ll all be fine and there’ll be nothing to worry about, but I didn’t want any regulars — whether frequent annotators or long-time lurkers — to be surprised and annoyed by a rush of people who haven’t been following Sam’s journey for months or years. Be patient, and remember it’s their loss that they’ve only just arrived!

Also don’t forget the Pepys’ Diary group on Yahoo should you need to discuss anything slightly more off-topic or away from the crowds. I hope you all enjoy the final stretch.

End of Diary Events Update

Phil Gyford — 2012-04-24T09:20:25+00:00

Both the previous posts about end-of-diary events in London and Massachusetts have been updated, so I thought it might be worth highlighting those here.

The London event on 26th May (now a guided walk followed by lunch) is now full. After a few weeks it seemed like interest was tailing off so I arranged with a guide to take us on a Pepys-oriented walk. He, understandably, has a limit of 20 people, which seemed like more than enough.

Since then a few other people have enquired and we’ve now reached the limit (with a few already on the waiting list). So I’m very sorry if you were interested in coming but haven’t yet got in touch with me.

The Massachusetts event on 13th May has had to change location due to Mothers’ Day filling up the original venue. If you’re planning on going, please email carl_wickstrom@comcast.net for more details, or to confirm.

Planning for 26th May in London

Phil Gyford — 2012-03-14T17:45:26+00:00

As mentioned late last year we are planning to round off our journey through the diary with a small celebration in London on Saturday 26th May 2012. It’s only a couple of months away, so I’d like to get some idea of how many people will be coming.

(UPDATE: Places are limited to 20 on the walk and we currently have that number of people confirmed. If you still want to come, let me know, but I’m afraid you’ll be on the waiting list. 18 Apr 2012.)

So, if you’re planning on being around on that day, please do email me and let me know how many of you there are.

My vague plans so far are for a walk around the City area of London for probably a couple of hours in the afternoon, followed by dinner somewhere in the early evening. These plans might change, but we’ll definitely be doing something on that day — I’ll confirm plans when I get a better idea of roughly how many people will be there.

I’m going to see if there’s anyone who could do a good guided Pepys walk (let me know if you have ideas) or, if I do a bit of preparation, we could probably manage our own! If I go for the former option there may be a small charge involved to pay the guide.

Anyway, let me know if you’re coming!

(If you have questions about what happens on this site after the end of the diary please see this post.)

Family Tree updated

Phil Gyford — 2012-02-13T18:44:34+00:00

In case you like to keep an updated version of the Pepys Family Tree to hand, I’ve just made a couple of small updates to it. I’ve added Babs and Betty, daughters of Roger Pepys, and his new wife, Esther (all over on the far right). I’ve also added Elizabeth Pickering’s 1668 marriage to John Creed, which had gone unrecorded.

Letters between Pepys and Evelyn on the site

Phil Gyford — 2012-02-10T14:14:37+00:00

I’ve just added a new section to the site, for letters to and from Samuel Pepys. It currently lists a selection of letters between Pepys and the era’s other major diarist, John Evelyn.

These letters, along with their footnotes, are taken from Guy de la Bédoyère’s website with his kind permission. That site has been linked to at relevant points during the diary, but it seems a good idea to have them all on this site too, with links to all the Encyclopedia references.

They make for interesting reading, in particular the different style Pepys uses in his letters to others compared to that in his private diary.

We also have quite a few letters that were exchanged between Pepys and various correspondents from later years, but they won’t appear here until after the diary ends, to avoid spoilers.

Recent Activity page is back

Phil Gyford — 2012-02-03T12:30:53+00:00

I had a brainwave about how the Recent Activity page is generated and it seems to work. The page is now re-created every five minutes and seems to do so without keeping the database occupied for ages like it used to. Fingers crossed it’ll keep working like this from now on.

There might be occasions when it lists fewer recent things on the page, depending on the distribution of where annotations are… but it’s certainly better than nothing.

(For the technically minded and interested… Previous versions of the page required joins between the database tables holding annotations and entries, and this was too much for the shared server to cope with without making temporary tables etc. In the most recent previous version of the page, this was taking a few minutes for each of the page’s four lists, and prevente any other queries on the annotations table (such as posting a new annotation). I realised I could get much the same data without any joins, and this takes seconds. Much simpler!)