Theban Moon - Kate's personal blog

Weirdo Week

2012-02-10T15:01:00.000Z

All week I've had weirdo's coming up to me. Most have been abusive and intimidating. Today's weirdo was at least polite asking how I had grown so tall and slim since he last saw me ... which was never.

Jeffrey John

2012-01-15T14:24:00.000Z

The Sunday Times suggests Jeffrey John is threatening to take legal action against the Church of England for discrimination. John is a gay clergyman in a celibate relationship who has allegedly been blocked from promotional to the bishopric.

I am straight and as a Christian struggle with some gay rights but in this case I hope he does bring a case and succeeds. It is right for the church to demand moral conduct according to its teachings. It is thoroughly wrong both morally and legally to discriminate against someone because of how they were born. Should black bishops not be allowed? John is celibate.

And yes, the same argument applies to women bishops. If John wins then presumably women bishops and lady Imams are inevitable. At last religious institutions could be forced to stop discrimination. That's not secularism as some would claim but actually a flowering of greater spirituality.

For all religious people I hope John does mount a legal attack and is successful. It would take religion in this country to the next level.

I shall pray for his success not for gay rights but because it advances religious life.

Hating Google's Personal Search

2012-01-14T11:20:00.000Z

I really hate what Google has done with search. If I search for the Valley of the Kings of KV64 I looking for something I don't already know, for news. It's bad enough for Valley of the Kings and even worse for KV64 because my News from the Valley of the Kings is the top blog on the subject and I have written much of the material about KV64.

Google's new personalised search algorithm makes matters worse. It shrinks the world. So as well as News from the Valley of the Kings, half of the images shown are photographs I took and the front pages adds my review of Nick Reeves' Complete Valley of the Kings on Egyptological. Far from helping me to find new material it shrinks my world, not just down to things I already know, but down to things I have written. You'd have to be extremely narcissistic to like a search that works like that.

Fortunately it only works if you are logged in so I work with two browsers and only log in to Google on one of them, the other I use for searching. I can see the advantage of geo-searches. If I type in Sutton cinema, I like the fact search shows me the programme. That is useful. But not search which makes me the apparent centre of the World Wide Web.

It's irritating because there is news of a discovery in the Valley of the Kings expected in the next few days. I was scanning for it. I don't know yet whether it is relatively minor or the discovery to rival Carter's discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun many of us believe will be made one day. We will have to wait and see, although I suspect somewhere in between the two. I'm desperately busy for the next three days so I am also hoping it doesn't break until the middle of next week.

Spinnaker Portsmouth

2011-11-10T03:09:00.001Z

While I was doing, I also did this one of the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth

Me in Pastels

2011-11-10T02:31:00.000Z

Although both my parents could paint and draw, I can't. My father was an excellent artist.

That doesn't mean I don't have the sense of composition - I just cannot draw. So occasionally I do things in Photoshop as an alternative. It has been several months since I did anything, but tonight I did an image of myself in pastels. I rather like it.

Kate Phizackerley in Pastels

2011-10-16T22:34:00.000+01:00

Over the years I have tended to photograph scenes, still life and architecture but less often take pictures of animals. Animals are hard. It's not just about getting the technicals right, it is about catching them head on rather than a retreating rear. It is even better if they are doing something interesting. The picture above isn't magazine quality. It was taken on a little portable camera and isn't quite as sharp as I might like, but for once I did catch the right view of the stag, head on and roaring in rut.

Struggling with my Gravatar

2011-09-18T23:49:00.000+01:00

I am struggling with an updated gravatar. I needed one as the other was a couple of years old. (Gravatars are picture shown against your personal comments on many blogs etc.)

I swapped to this one, but my friend Andrea doesn't like it and says I am a bit too serious is it - which is a fair criticism of it.

That was a trial snap taken by a young photographer I know - I will write about her in due course. I was persauded to swap to this one instead:

It sort of looks OK, but in a tiny size it looks a bit washed out. I guess neither is perfect.

Wild Rabbit

2011-09-08T22:25:00.000+01:00

I don't often upload my photos so for a change here is a wild rabbit I shot this afternoon in Bushey Park. I had a travelcard for the week and today was a spare day (as much as any day is spare at present) so I decided to use the card and go to Bushey Park to try out the new camera. This is one of the shots. He was sat as peacefully as can be under the edge of some greenery and didn't seem to mind me taking his picture.

Back Bedroom

2011-08-04T20:26:00.001+01:00

Very boring but after a lot of work, the spare bedroom is usable as a bedroom again for the first time in years. Although they be never came to this flat, my most common guests before were my parents. When they became too old to visit, it somehow wasn't a priority and it became a box room.

Didn't help that I downsized from a three bedroom house with garage and garden to a two bedroom suburban flat. Where does the contents of the garage go - things like tools? So it's taken a major chuck out.

Good feeling though.

Next the lounge ...

Abbott Reserve

2011-07-09T16:43:00.000+01:00

I don't like beer. Such a simple statement and somewhat misleading because I like ales - strong ales. Beer is so watery. Wetherspoons though have on Abbott Reserve at 6.5°. Now that is worth drinking. It has taste. Dark hoppy, nutty taste.

It will only be one of course, but I would rather drink one with a strong taste than the dishwater which passes as weak bitters.

Round the Horne

2011-07-06T23:05:00.000+01:00

Somebody recently introduced me to Round the Horne and I am glad they did. Traditional British (English) radio comedy. The highlight for me is Kenneth Williams - there is a sketch called Rentachap which is great. There is some Round the Horne material on YouTube if you want to try it out.

Busy on Egyptological

2011-05-29T04:41:00.000+01:00

I've not forgotten about this blog but have been busy with other things. I had a technical paper to right which hadn't been planned for in my schedule.

Other than that I have been working away at Egyptolgical, our new free online magazine about Ancient Egypt. It has been a huge amount of work. We soft-launched several weeks ago and are planning to publish the first edition within a month or so. Many of the articles are in good shape, but a few need some reshaping and the process is taking longer than we had hoped.

Alongside that I am reworking the code, trying to streamline it and strip out some of the unnecessary stuff and then add in more functionality. We have done the initial design for our photo library, for instance, and I need to code that up.

That's not eating up all the time though. This week I went to see Jools Holland in concert. We love him live. This time the special guest was Sandie Shaw which was a surprise, I don't think I ever expected to hear her live. And at nearly 65 her voice hasn't aged very much at all - maybe not quite so sprightly but still fairly clear.

Rather than embed one of the classics, here is Sandie Shaw with the Smiths singing their classic Hand in Glove.

New Music

2011-04-04T19:15:00.000+01:00

I am worried I am getting old because I am not listening to much new music. I am trying. I treated myself to a couple of new CDs today. Katy Perry is modern - although the credibility factor is very low. I made up for it with me other choice - Mott the Hoople. That is certainly not modern, but then the credibility factor is high. I just need to find modern music I like with a high credibility factor!

(Schh! I do also have my fair share of old music with a low credibility factor.)

Sometimes Context Sensitive Adverts Are Useless

2011-02-28T19:57:00.000Z

I've just been browsing train times between Wimbledon and Guildford and got an advert for a car repairer. That seems a bit out of place on a train timetable as it's in ... Phoenix Arizona! Why would anyone browsing any train times on the British National Rail site want details of a car repair shop in Arizona?

Equality in Egypt

2011-02-07T23:45:00.000Z

I have spent pretty much all of the past ten days writing about Egypt, either on News from the Valley of the Kings or on the new Egyptological Looting Database 2011 which I created as a response to the emergency. It has been a difficult time for the antiquities of ancient Egypt and sadly it looks as though some important and beautiful tombs might have been stripped of their decoration. It could have been so much worse though had the ordinary people not joined forced to protect sites and even the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

I struggle with the American reaction to the uprising. It isn't what I see in all the reports I have read, in the blogs of protestors I have followed and in the various posts on FaceBook. I see nothing of Islamic fundamentalism. Rather moderation in everything seems to be the wish. The Coptic church celebrated mass in Tahrir Square on Sunday with the full support of a mainly Muslim crowd. In Luxor, the Mosques were urging their congregations to protect local Coptic churches. In the recent past Egypt has been marred by religous tension, but the uprising has been noteworthy for religious tolerance.

It's not just religion. The Vancouver Sun carried this article about how women have found an increasing voice for our gender in Tahrir Square.

Far from Islamic fundamentalism, Egypt looks as though it could become something wonderful: a moderate, secular and democratic Islamic country. In all the chaos and human tragedy, there is a phoenix of great hope. Writing about ancient Egypt has been hugely stressful, but the hope of how Egypt could develop has been the bright light in the dark.

Am I psychic?

2011-01-16T15:05:00.000Z

I guess it's something many of us ponder. I've come to believe I am; but only a very little. I think I can detect whether people around me are strongly psychic , or not. That's it, other than a strong dose of empathy.

Another Bride Killed

2011-01-11T18:14:00.000Z

It's always sad when somebody is murdered, but recently there seems to have been a disproportionate number of recent brides. So very, very sad.

Music - Old Friends

2010-12-12T23:17:00.000Z

My new Windows Phone (which I dislike as I have said several times) has one good feature: it can hold a load of music. I have literally hundreds of CDs and inevitably some have got stuck at the bottom of piles. I had ripped some to my PC but I have spent several hours this weekend ploughing through the collection trying to get them all on PC. That is more than will fit on the phone, but I am selecting favourite albums (and some greatest hits) as I go. It is a slow process as I am having to manually enter track listings for most of the classical ones. I also have a few obscure ones like Cab Calloway which it didn't recognise.

As I write this, West Side Story is in the drive. That isn't one of my favourites. Next up is John Rutter's Requiem which is followed by a Grieg collection. The "classical" ones had been stacked separately.

The phone has some classical (The Four Seasons, Verdi Requiem, some Mozart, several organ compilations) but mostly it is rock. For listening on the move I prefer something which is engaging and preferably loud to drown out travel noises. It'll be fun over the next few weeks rediscovering some CDs I had forgotten.

On top of that a friend (thak you) has sent me a CD of things I might like to try out. There are 600 tracks on that. I'll listen to that over the next few weeks as well. I'll then buy the full CDs of any groups I like on there . I believe in supporting the artists by buying anything I am going to keep. Hopefully that will add some new things to my phone over the next couple of months as well.

Covet Sarah Jessica Parker Perfume

2010-12-09T01:31:00.002Z

I bought a bottle of Covet EDP, the first time I have ever bought a celebrity perfume. I got it really cheap, so no tester. I was meeting up with my friend Andrea so we both sprayed it on. If you read the reviews below, you'll see a huge variety of opinions. The smell on my skin was totally different to that on Andie's. For her it settled don't very quickly into a fairly simple vanilla. Initially the vanilla was overlaid with sweet floral notes but they faded quickly. It was never anything special.

It behaved totally differently on my skin. The florals were totally absent. I got fresh green which dried down into fusty geranium with the very faintest hint of chocolate. The chocolate was never intense. I also don't get the vanilla. It's amazing how vastly different it was for the two of us. I wouldn't say it was hugely complex for either of us; however on me it is very pleasant and quite chic in it's own way. I won't wear it often, but when I do wear it nothing else I have would do instead.

http://www.fragrantica.com/perfume/Sarah-Jessica-Parker/Covet-1404.html

PS After about 12 hours it settled into the vanilla for the last couple of hours.

PPS I added a more detailed Covet review and resource page on Squidoo.

Virgin Vie Party

2010-12-07T20:35:00.000Z

One of the regulars from the pub ran a Vie party last night. I was rather more impressed than I had expected to be ... and learned a few make up tips as well. She did a really good job. Of course, I bought quite a few things. Some are for presents but the moisturiser for instance is for me. I have been using Lancome Hydra Zen but as the weather turns cold it hasn't been providing the moisture my skin needs, so I bought a night cream to try. I added a day one as well. The other big advantage is that they are half the price of the Lancome products which is worthwhile.

The End of Buffy?

2010-11-26T23:49:00.000Z

The announcement of a new Buffy movie should be great news but is instead a tragedy as Joss Whedon is not involved in the project at all. What a disaster. The man is a genius. He and Sarah Michelle Gellar made Buffy into the special series that it was.

Worse, it probably means Joss himself will never no do any sequels. Fran and Rubel Kuzui who owned the rights have passed them to Warner Bros.

Music from the 80s

2010-11-26T21:20:00.000Z

So tomorrow we have tickets for Jools Holland with Alison Moyet as support. So I got nostalgic and started hunting for some 80s favourites on YouTube. I'd almost forgotten this one but is a really great rock-pop tune - and I'd certainly forgotten the sax solo!

Cut and Paste

2010-11-05T13:13:00.001Z

How did Microsoft ever decide it was not needed on the Windows Phone? I miss it terribly Grrrr

My 1st WordPress Plugin

2010-09-28T21:51:00.000+01:00

I've been writing WordPress plugins for a couple of months. I have published one myself on the World of Glyphs. That is where it will need to stay because it uses a font which I cannot licence under GPL, but I wanted to get one in the main WordPress repository. That proved rather harder to achieve than I had expected, but it's done and my Taxonomy Picker WordPress plugin is now uploaded to the the WordPress plugin repository. Full details are available on a Squidoo lens I set up as a home for Taxonomy Picker.

It was very hard because Vodafone mobile broadband, upon which I rely, has become hideously unreliable and keeps dropping connections. Worse, the WordPress repository requires a strange type of connection to upload plugins and the Vodafone proxy doesn't handle that. Fortunately I worked out that I can avoid the dreaded Vodafone proxy server by using HTTPS. If it sounds complex - it was. I'd no longer recommend the Vodafone mobile broadband to any serious business user.

Anyway, Taxonomy Picker is now available so we'll see whether anybody else downloads it and uses it but it feels good releasing free open source software and putting something back as I use open source software so much myself.

Multi-tasking Kate

2010-08-22T04:00:00.001+01:00

Here in Britain one of the current subjects of discussion is a modern trend towards multi-tasking such as watching television and working online. I've always done it and find I work better that way with the exception that I cannot multi-task and listen to classical music because I lose myself in it.

My concentration is unusually deep. I work best by concentrating in snatches. If the problem is straightforward like this blof posts then my concentration switches off an on quickly. I'll plan a few words then switch off. My mind can then do other things while my fingers catch up. At the moment I am listening to a 3 CD collection of Status Quo tracks. It's ideal. It's not demanding music but while my fingers are engaged there is something for keep my brain interested. In fact I find it hard to concentrate in a library because there is nothing to keep my mind busy between the bursts of concentration.

In terms of television, trashy is best. Something like Eastenders or maybe Dannii Minogue Style Queen - I quite enjpy them but they are hardly fully absorbing. If there is something I really want to watch like the final of Celebrity Masterchef, I'll put the computer to one side.

As problems get more advanced my concentration bursts become longer up to about 15 minutes. During that time I'll take in very little of external events and media. However, then I'll need gaps of the same sort of size in between when I am resting and perhaps listening to music and typing material which doesn't require deep thought. The exception is exams when I need to concentrate much longer continuously. It's why I dislike exams: it doesm't suit me. I'll still usually take a 5 minute break every hour or so and just sit and relax. I don't fully concentrate for an hour though. I still surface every 5 to 10 minutes, I just usually multi-task on the exam itself so my surface attention can be thinkiing ahead, planning time schedules, keeping track of likely marks etc.

I've been working recently on displaying Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs online for a couple of new sites I am working one - an Ancient Egypt magazine in partnership with Andie Byrnes and the World of Hieroglphs, my very latest site dedicated to Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Both are still under construction. For the magazine, Andie wanted a way to display hieroglyphs online and I got very into it and wrote a parser for something called the Manuel de Codage. So into it that I decided to start the World of Hieroglyphs as well which will be the home of my new parser ..,. and another, much simpler one, I wrote yesterday morning. Analysing the topology of Manuel de Codage and desiging the algorithm for the main parser, called Glypheer, was the most complex thing I have done in over 25 years. While concentrating on aspects of that, my concentration was going deep for periods of 30 - 45 minutes at a time. That really is unusal for me.

I have a love-hate relationship with things that require parrticularly deep concemtration. They can be very rewarding but I guess it's like the sport of deep diving. Before a dive you need to pre-breathe and I find the same with concentration.

Right, I'm about to take a break now. The Waaderer should be about to start soon and I love that so I'll listen and head bang to it!

(PS I think I'll schedule this post for tonight.)