Hi folks.
As you can see, I'm trying something new. You're welcome to look about. I hope you enjoy the Research Resources.

If I ever manage to really write something with teeth, then debate is welcome. Trolls, and those who behave like trolls, will be booted.

Hi folks.

Long time, no write. Things they have been happening, fast, furious and far too long. Here is the readers digest version of what has been going on.

I'm not at Cornell anymore. I'm now down in Virginia. I'm working with the Roanoke Times.
Mike and I wanted to be closer to the family, both his and mine.

We've had some changes in the family too. Red, my standard poodle, died in September. And Bath, our geriatric cat, died on Thursday. But we do have the addition of a new standard poodle puppy just a couple of weeks ago. His name is Hudson, and he's a parti color standard, black and white.

And there is lots more, but that's the short version. There's lots of work to get our little perch in order, so I'm going back to that.

I saw this on phialastring's journal and just had to bite. She gave me Red.
Oh. I like's me some Red. So here are ten things I love that are Red.

1. Life. Hey, life is Red. Arterial hot Red.
2. Roma Tomatoes. Also best if warm and right off the vine.
3. My Poodle. While technically no longer the color it's his name. Red.
4. Strawberries.
5. My Hair. Yeup. It's Red. (well, Strawberry Red but close enough for memeage.)
6. Silk banners snapping in the breeze.
7. My slippers. Never make it through winter without them.
8. My favorite Red Sweater... which I have now lost, and I'm pining for it. :(
9. Sunsets over the desert. Some of the most spectacular color I have ever seen.
10. The coals of a fire. warm. hearth. home. family. friends.

And just cause I like Timelines...
Please SCA people if you can find the motivation go take a look.
at my latest impractical idea
A word to the willing... set the scrolling ability all the way at the bottom of the little vertical bar. That's 500 years at a time. Otherwise you will never get out of the 20th century.

I would tie this together with the Gold,Silk,Wool blog that I am working for the A&S50 challenge.

And why I post these things late on a Friday afternoon I will never know. OK, you all might see this again on Monday.

Quick question to the peeps. (And my apologies for Cross-posting)

One thing I have been thinking is this: How helpful could it be to have a convention of placing the phrase "sca research" into the meta tags of web pages that contain sca related research? I think the answer is, quite helpful.

I did a little research using Google. Below are the results of a quick and dirty survey of sites found through Google and the associated terms...

about 8,510 for "sca research"
about 4,770,000 for sca research
about 4,470,000 for +sca +research
about 202,000 for +sca +research clothing
about 75,600 for +sca +research history
about 942,000 for +sca +research armor

You see there is an abrupt jump between 8K using the phrase "sca research" and to over 4M for not placing things in a phrase. And the applicability of the phrase based returns is immensely better. Less wading through thousands of pages you don't need.

Thoughts?

This is Keith Olbermann's video essay An American Cry for Help It is not easy to watch. But I challenge you to watch it. I ask you to watch it. It is powerful, and a view on health care that I am afraid all too soon I will have to see. Well said, sir. My prayers go with you, and indeed with all of us.

From the British Museum I found a fragment from a knitted belt. Registration number: 1990,0127.550 Very cool. No image though. Will have to do some follow up.

Found another one.

http://goldsilkwool.blogspot.com/2010/02/another-knitting-madonna.html

I've been pondering this one for a long time.
And then life turned into a rock and I said essentially "to heck with it" ... But I'm finding some of my energy again, and my thoughts turned to this. So I've been pondering, and walking in small concentric circles (as usual) what I might be able to do.

This is probably the lamest A&S 50 idea but I'm going to try to publish 50 resources for research. My hope is to find, post, and hopefully tell people why I chose to post each resource. Yeah, it's weak but it's what I have in me at the moment. Perhaps there will be something of interest to someone. Perhaps some myths will get busted. (That reminds me to take another look at the myth-list.)

A&S 50 pieces will be posted at Gold, Silk, Wool.

Like I said not exactly up to my usual levels of ambition, but I do want to try to do 'something'. Going to try for one new thing every day until the A&S 50 is up or Pennsic starts. We'll see what happens.

ETA: And then I see that I have until 2015... hmmm... ok. Maybe I can aim a bit higher before my time is up. But, we'll start here.

Jamie Oliver's TED Prize wish: Teach every child about food

What has three generations of not involving food preparation in the home left us with? (ick, bad grammar) A legacy of ignorance which is literally killing us.

It's all about education and redefining our relationship with food. Bring back the family hearth. Teach our children how to cook. Renew our relationship with something that is fresh.

Shorter lives. Higher risk of heart disease, diabetes, endocrine disruption, stroke and diet related disease. Diet related disease is the leading killer of people in the US today. Diet related.

Yes! Found another one.

I've been looking for examples of petticoats for many months now, and every once in a while I find something truly interesting. More info at my projects blog... http://goldsilkwool.blogspot.com/

Squee.