Maps from Books VII

Mistress Masham's Repose

"Tell me about the Horses."
"What about them?"
"Tell me," she said guiltily, "how they ought to be pronounced."
The Professor threw his head back firmly and began to neigh.
"What?"
"Can you neigh?"
Maria tried, to see if she could.
"How did you do it?"
"Let me see, I kept mouth shut, and I don't think my tongue moved, and I sort of kept on huffing out a wriggly squeal, through the back of my nose."
"You could't spell it very well, because you do it with your mouth shut. So there can't be any proper letters, really, not real vowels."
"Well, Dr. Swift used a 'hou' for the huffing part, and a Y for the squealy part, and N's and M's are the part in the nose, Houyhnhnm. It is what a horse says."
"It isn't very easy to pronounce in the book, not when you are reading aloud."
"It is only a question of practice," said the Professor grandly. "Practice and self-confidence." 
                                -From Chapter XXV

Venison

Two tasty, soy bean fed yearling bucks on the evening of opening day:

Skinned, dressed and ready for butchering:

 

It's Been A Hard... Day's... Night...

First, Laurence Olivier as Richard III:



And, Peter Sellers as Laurence Olivier as John Lennon...

Cetology

Moby Dick - Chapter XXXII 
The word cloud was created using frequency of a word's use in the text to generate its relative size.

(click the image for more detail)

The Wicked Bible

Gandalf's resent penchant for defacing Bibles pointed me in the direction of the "Wicked Bible," now a valuable book published (for a short period) in 1631. It was intended to be a reprint of the King James, but owing to a crucial error in the composition of the type, omitted the "not" from the seventh commandment. Ooops... The error so outraged Charles I that he had the printers summoned to the Star Chamber where they were fined and lost their printing licenses.

King Charles's disgust with the event is made abundantly clear in this wonderfully nostalgic statement regarding the decline of the art of printing : "I knew the tyme when great care was had about printing, the Bibles especially, good compositors and the best correctors were gotten being grave and learned men, the paper and the letter rare, and faire every way of the beste, but now the paper is nought, the composers boyes, and the correctors unlearned." Oh what sad times are these...

Iceland Accedes to the European Union

Image courtesy Strange Maps

Finely Tuned...

Mine at last.

Maps from Books VI

The Mysterious Island

“Lincoln Island” as engraved by Sédille for Hetzel,
based on a sketch by Verne. Mysterious Island (1875). 
Image from Science Fiction Studies

Choose A Vista

And while we're at it... a little Ridley Scott:


And a UK add:

Crankshaft Bearings!

Just ordered two 6004-C3 bearings from Treats. I love ordering parts...

Rebuilding the PA50II's engine. Oil seals from ML Kevin.

 

Seats

With the longer frame the old Ducati cafe seat looks kind of silly.

 

I'm thinking something a little more boardtrack racer inspired, maybe a Puch saddle seat?

If I go with the saddle seat I'm thinking some boardtrack bars (read cruiser bike bars) instead of the clubmans

This picture from the amazing garage fabricator at Boardtrack Replica.

Farewell and Adieu to You...

Farewell trusty Vans. I must leave you in Rome...