Investigations of a Dog

Not really a proper post, just some random things:

Bill Turkel is always right. First because in the first of his excellent posts on analysing the Old Bailey Proceedings he recommended DownThemAll. This is a Firefox extension that lets you download all the files linked to from a web page in one go. You can set up filters to only download certain types of file, or you can select the files by clicking on a list, then download them all with one click. As well as the obvious benefits for digital historians it’s very handy if you want to download a whole album from LastFM.

Second, because in a post on infrastructure he recommended expensive ergonomic chairs. I’m currently waiting for delivery of a new chair so that I can spend a reasonable amount of time working at the computer without my back hurting. Cheap chairs are a false economy.

Over at Glod’n'Epix Esther posted some interesting thoughts on sexual harassment and gender stereotyping in live action role playing, which also led to some discussion of cross-dressing and gender swapping.

Gary Smailes has launched a new website called OneBook which features brief posts from different people recommending a book. Anyone can submit a post and they don’t have to be very long.

The Difficult Second Article is getting there but still needs a lot of work. Once this is out of the way I never want to hear anything about the causes of the English Civil War ever again.

I’ve just finished reading Christopher Hill’s The English Bible and I have to say I really enjoyed it. Apart from lots of useful historical insights it made me think that my generation’s equivalent of the bible is probably Star Wars.

And finally the latest early-modern edition of Carnivalesque is up at jliedl.ca.

It’s a truism that computers and the internet are changing the way we do research. This might have major implications for the academic publishing industry in the future. Books aren’t going to disappear completely. There will always be a market for books because people buy them for the aesthetic appeal of the object itself as well as for the content. Vinyl records haven’t been killed by MP3s or CDs, and have outlived tapes. While the major labels are whining about file sharing hurting their profits, sales of 7″ vinyl singles (a format particularly associated with small independent labels) are actually increasing in the UK, according to Artrocker magazine. Similarly, many people will continue to buy books because they like books more than alternative formats. However, for academic researchers for whom reading is a large part of their job, the printed book is starting to look like an outdated and inconvenient way of presenting and accessing research.

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Some observations on two bestiality cases in the Old Bailey Proceedings.

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