Kinks in a hose
Aug 17, 2009
It seems that my writing for h2g2 comes in spits and starts that are almost unpredictable. I really don't know why.
In April, I wrote my first EG entry in about ten months, and since then I've written eight.. eight of my favorites, incidentally. It's been a fun few months, but I can feel that this particular urge has inexplicably run its course. I've been reading a riveting book about the Mississippi flood of 1927, but I haven't been taking notes (not even mental ones) or thinking of entry ideas. In June, if I didn't set aside an hour for writing every night, I started to get restless like a werewolf at the full moon. Really. It was inconvenient and exciting.
Animals have a biological imperative to procreate, I've heard, but it eventually ends after they've made their own contribution to tomorrow's food chain. I guess, for now, I stop at eight. 
I found a website yesterday that offered free audio books for download (probably one of those websites that half the internet had heard of - the other half knowing of a superior alternative), and I snapped up Wodehouse's "Three Men and a Maid". So I spent the better part of tonight laying outside in a hammock with a pint of ice cream, listening to the first few chapters. Great stuff. Even better when narrated by a British accent. I don't know that there's better accompaniment to ice cream on a hammock in twilight than Wodehouse.
The results of the MOT is supposed to be announced tomorrow.
Sometimes when I'm about to go to sleep, I think about how things are different at that moment from when I woke up that morning. As much as every day seems to blend together, there's almost always that little something about my world that is irrevocably different. A new friendship, a broken appliance or a tiny victory. In 24 hours, I wonder what my miniature account for the day will read. I'm anxious.
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Neighbors
Aug 14, 2008
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7559881.stm
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5...AyZ1wt-fM_YS6UnSulmL4-DBeAD92H2DM81
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Perseid Shower
Aug 12, 2008
I don't really follow astronomy. So I only found out that there was going to be a meteor shower last night at about 1:30 AM, when I was getting ready to go to bed. I'd never seen a meteor shower before. I had never really seen a shooting star... just the kind where you see something out of the corner of your eye, and then you turn your head and it's gone, but you convince yourself it was a shooting star. I had never really been looking, though.
So, even though I was tired, I decided to see what all the fuss is about. After about an hour, I put on some warm clothes and grabbed a blanket and headed out.
I hopped the fence to the local golf course which is about a mile west of where I live, and I laid down on one of the hills facing east nearby one of the greens.
What I saw of the meteor shower was pretty neat. I think I was too early to see the real height of it, and there was still a lot of light pollution flooding in. But I saw a fair number of them. About 3:30, I was pretty tired. I decided to head back because I was afraid I'd fall asleep and get nudged awake by a putter attached to some local cardiologist. (Donnie Darko did it, and look what happened to him)
A good way to spend an hour, anyways. Much better than sleeping 
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Bringing New People onto H2G2
Jul 9, 2008
I've been tossing this around my head for a while, but I'm not quite sure what to do with it, so a Journal seems like the most obvious place to let it out.
I've been thinking that there needs to be a fresh initiative with the sole aim of bringing in new people to h2g2. It seems to me that when we talk about advertising the site, we're talking about T-shirts and side links from BBC articles. I think it makes more sense to put the process of recruiting more people into the site into the hands of all of the site's users.
What I'm envisioning is people crawling across the web to drop links where interested people might be. Obviously, there's a very specific group of people who are strange enough to want to participate in the h2g2 project, so we would want to focus on that. I mean, a facebook group about Douglas Adams, or some kind of intellectual blog or whatever - dropping a link there could bring a few more curious people in. But there's more than those general interest . There are tons of political blogs out there where I could post links to my political entries in the comments. There are dog websites and blogs where we could post or submit links to Mina's fantastic dog entries. Cooking websites where we could link an unusual recipe found in the Guide. There are all kinds of topics which are in the Guide which would be interesting to outside observers - and some of those people might stick around.
I remember a thread in askh2g2, I think, where people were asked how they found h2g2. Most seemed to have the same answers - Salmon of Doubt, sheer coincidence, a friend mentioned it, etc. Those are fine, but I'd like to see in a few years a similar thread, but with entirely different answers and many more responses.
So this is just an idea which I decided to post about late on a Tuesday night (or early on a Wednesday morning). Is it worth pursuing further? Would other people have the enthusiasm to take the time to post relevant links around the rest of the internet?
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That's Dedication
Jun 13, 2008
Tonight I was researching for an entry I'm somewhat excited about, and I came upon a quick mention of a remarkable man named Philip Lampi, who has apparently singlehandedly catalogued the popular vote results of the earliest (1787-1825) elections town-by-town *by hand* based on old newspapers and local election reports.
So, I googled his name and read a bit more about him. This article came up - http://www.neh.gov/news/humanities/2008-01/TheOrphanScholar.html It says he lived in his car from 1973 to 1988 - 15 years! - working on this, driving through the eastern states in America to work on this project. It's really amazing. I simply can't begin to imagine how much effort this must have taken, the tedium, complexities and costs. But now, having access to his figures online (I didn't know such a thing existed until tonight) is an exciting thing for an American history <nerd> such as myself.
What's really amazing is that one person could give up his life *his entire life* to something so obscure and meaningless to 99% of his countrymen. I guess it goes to show, if you have a passion, or if you think something is important, then run with it and don't let anyone tell you to stop. And Lampi might die a lonely man, having spent his life in libraries rather than in raising a family, but at least he'll have accomplished something. The article quotes him as saying, "It hadn't been done for two hundred years. There's a good chance it might never have been done"
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