Go Me, Pt. II

From the Penn State admissions server:

As of February 26, 2007, the Graduate School is pleased to grant you admission to graduate study at The Pennsylvania State University. A formal letter of admission is being sent to you in the mail.

I spent this past weekend touring the campus, visiting with current faculty and graduate students, and meandering around town. It gave an excellent impression--as, it would seem, did I. It's a magnificent program; it has a Civil War Era Center that is virtually a department within a department--twelve faculty, a huge number for ACW-era studies.

I've come a long way from when the departmental secretary at __________ asked me if my application was some kind of joke.

State College has two game stores, from what I can tell; oddly enough, they're across the street from each other, and have virtually the same (kind of thin) line of games for sale. I'm not sure how that works out. Introducing myself, I bought a game from one and a comic book (a Krazy Kat volume) from the other. Gotta establish connections, y'know.

The Codex is Mine!

My copy of the Codex Seraphinianus arrived the other day, and I've had a chance to look it over. It's very much as strange and wonderful (if that's the word) as I recall it. It's a very attractive package; a nice sturdy cover, thick textured paper, the works. No slipcase, but hey.

It's worth noting that there are some additions included. The author gave a preface (in Seraphinian, of course) and eight new pages, along with some corrections to the original text--which is an interesting concept. Also included is a pamphlet in an envelope on the inside back cover called the "Decodex," which reprints several reviews and notices from when the book originally came out 25 years ago. Oddly, neither the book nor the Decodex includes Italo Calvino's preface to the second printing back in the eighties. I've always wanted to read that, but I haven't found a copy anywhere.

A fascinating piece of art, in all respects.

Goodbye Orange Blog

...Hello, black blog.

As some of you may have noticed, the Haloscan comments dingamabobber has been acting up, refreshing and sending out the feed every few hours. It suggested that part of my problem was that I hadn't updated my template to the New Blogger Template format. I assumed that I had, since, you know, I had updated to the New Blogger, but apparently these are different processes. Who knew?

Anyway, so I updated my template style and went through the process to fix the comments feed and whatnot...and it hasn't really worked. So, until that gets fixed, if you want to comment on a post, you'll have to lean in really close to the monitor and shout.

UPDATE: OK, I think I managed to get it to work. I told Blogger to enable Blogger comments...which turned on Haloscan comments. I'm not sure how that happened.

So You Wanna be a Civil War Historian?

In my young apprenticeship, I'm discovering that studying, researching, and writing on the Civil War is one of the truly great jobs, and I'm glad to have it. That said, it has its moments that tend to turn many people off.

I spent the better part of this afternoon trying to figure out how much cornmeal I could get out of a bushel of corn. Second, how many people would that feed, and for how long? Those have a lot of sub-questions, too. Are these "bushels" by volume or weight? (Gotta be volume; the new bushel-as-weight thing is recent. But does the weight correspond to a typical volume-bushel of corn?) When I read that the army had so many bushels of corn, can I assume that that means parched kernels, or could it possibly be ear corn? (I'm assuming kernels; that's gotta be the only reasonable way to ship and store the stuff. And it'd make a bushel, by weight or volume, completely unpredictable if it included cobs.) What books do I have that might answer such a question? (More than you'd think. If you wanna understand the south, or the Civil War, you gotta understand corn and hogs.) (And sweet potatoes.) Shoot; none of my books come out and tell me. What other books are out there? (I verily rejoiced when I found a 1916 manual of crop husbandry and utilizing at a nearby library.)

And you know what? I had fun doing all that. Academia is finding a field in which you are willing and able to become a complete dork. Fortunate those of us who find such a niche.

And, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to try to track down some parched corn I can put through my blender.

Fun With Google

So, for some reason entirely unrelated to anything I've talked about recently I'm looking for a way to translate Grade 1 Braille into letters. I put "Braille" into Google and found, at the bottom of the page, a suggested list of "Searches Related to Braille." Let's take a look at them:

braille alphabet: Reasonable enough.
how to learn braille: Also fine.
louis braille: A natural.
braille battery: I don't know what this is, but sure.
braille translations: Kind of what I'm looking for, actually.
morse code: Both involve dots? I dunno.
sign language: Both adaptations for the disabled, I suppose.

...and finally:

who invaded spain in the 8th century

I'm curious how Google's algorithm found that one.

(The answer to that last query being, of course, the Moops.)

This Post Is About Something Completely Different

Man, it's cold outside...

Further game content to come. Some other content to come in or around March 1.

One Reason the Stress Level is Down

From OwlNet, Temple University's online information system:

View Graduate Application 02

Admission Decision:

Decision: Congratulations! You have been admitted to the DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY program in HISTORY
Decision Date: 02/13/07

That's the first decision to come down one way or another, of my eight schools. Maybe I'll end up at Temple, and maybe I won't--it is a good program, of course; I only applied to good programs I'd like to attend--but right at this moment I like Temple slightly more than Bill Cosby does. (If you don't get that, don't worry.)

Petals Around the Rose

There's fun, there's great fun, and then there's the sublime feeling of introducing Petals Around the Rose to a game store full of people.

(If you haven't played that game before, and you go to that site, and you get frustrated...don't Google it. Trust me. It'll be worth it in the end, even if it takes you six weeks like Bill Gates.)

PXC

As per Jeff's request...

About a week ago, Perplex City: Season One was solved. I had kinda lost touch with the ins and outs of Perplex City, so I didn't actually learn that until just recently. I'm curious to learn how it was all done. I found the backstory--which, presumably, was critical to unraveling the mystery--fascinating, but I came in absurdly late to actually get into it. I mostly focused on the puzzles, which I greatly enjoyed. I love the variety--trivia, logic, word searches, the works. And of all different difficulty levels!

Also impressive was the spontaneous community that arose around it, helping people solve the puzzles and commisserate over the metapuzzle.

On March 1, Season Two--with new puzzles and a new prize--starts up. I'm planning on getting in on the ground floor this time; I've got my name down for a box at the game store.

I Feel Like People Should Know This

Cough! Cough cough cough...

Man...Dusty around here. My fault entirely, of course; between the classes I'm taking, the class I'm teaching (sort of), the thesis, and trying to get into another school for next year...it's been nuts, and the blog has absorbed most of the hits. Things are easing up, however, and the usual supply of drivel should begin again soon.

I just discovered something today, though, that might be of interest to those of you who--like me--are into Weird Stuff.

Codex Seraphinianus, the weirdest book ever, is back in print. It's been hard to find for a while; most copies on the used market go for $3-400...but from Italy, the new one is about $100 (before shipping). Sure, that's still an expensive book...but if you've never seen it, you're really missing out. It's just so powerfully strange, but there's still a deep order to it that has mostly defied attempts to understand it. The numbering system the book uses, however, has been figured out--it's a modified base-21 system. It is also guessed that the language--which is likely an invented one, with its own writing system--might be Semitic. Or not. Who knows?

If you're patient, the book is published by Rizzoli, but I don't know of any plans by their USA arm (aka "Random House") to publish a stateside edition (or, for that matter, any publisher doing any other edition); I imagine that there's gotta be some demand, though.