Notices by Jody Hughes (gaolaitch@cupoftea.social)

@Infoseepage If you search online you can find copies for sale: it’s a normal size and thickness. I would not describe it as compact at all.
Even if the number of glyphs is significantly smaller, the space they take up is much wider than a traditional alphabet: it seems to me compactness on the page was not a characteristic that Pitman was aiming for.

Also, a Pitman’s Bible can’t make translation work easier: Pitmans is a shorthand for English, so I don’t think anyone can read it who doesn’t already read English.

@Infoseepage It is not appreciably thinner or more portable than a Bible in any normal alphabet. I don’t know anything about Pitman’s: is it phonetic?
I don’t think Pitman’s is quicker or better at anything except the taking down of speech, so any written Pitman’s document only serves to allow transcription later. And no one need do that for the bible…

Came across this as I was moving books around at Oxfam today. Yes it is the entire bible (Old and New Testaments) in Pitman’s Shorthand.

Because…why?

#ModernHieroglyphs

I got distracted yesterday thinking about authors signing many, many copies of their new books.

I think this stems from a belief that signed copies have more value. Which for some authors is true, I suppose (more value in the second-hand and collectors market).

But.

• Collectors skew markets away from normal users, and we should be wary of accepting their valuations.

• If you (an author) sign thousands of copies (I assume you are a famous author) there is no rarity value.

• The non-monetary value of a dedication is very low if you bought a signed copy from a bookshop that had a stack of them; or if you queued at a signing, and had a brief exchange with the author who then scribbled in your newly-bought copy.

• Dedications have value in books given between friends, lovers, family members etc, but the value is an emotional one, memorialising a relationship.

So in conclusion, I think authors should stop flood-signing their books as a sales tactic.

#bookstodon

I do like to see evidence of history’s chaotic interventions in architecture. This is a building on the market square in Sudbury, and I wonder what is the most likely explanation for how this* happened. Any ideas?

* I wrote more about it in the alt-text if it’s not obvious what ‘this’ is.

#photograph #architecture #chaos

Reading that made me realise how much I needed it. If only there were a thousand more responses like it.

From: @Greenseer
https://toot.wales/@Greenseer/114428844096128763

I wonder what is the history of this little slice of building. Seen on my little walk into Long Melford.

#photography

#3GoodThings

• day is done
• tax accounts done but not filed
• no one is chasing me for anything right at this particular moment

hard.

Some mantras for modern life:

• Perhaps I was wrong.
• My expertise does not grant me superiority.
• Allow boredom: it might lead to creativity.
• My ignorance is just learning that hasn’t happened yet.

#ThoughtOfTheDay

@bmacDonald94 Thanks. I was just playing with it.

@bmacDonald94 In that case, the man is forever stepping in the same river, frozen in his moment of being, as the infinitely many different iterations of himself, and the river, stretch out before and behind them.

@inthehands @OctaviaConAmore @helplessduck I wish I had! BMus (cello performance) MMus (cello/conducting). They tried to tempt me to a PhD but I finally saw sense.

@inthehands @OctaviaConAmore @helplessduck I have serious amounts of baggage in this area. My training toxified the idea of audience by demanding that I aim for perfection, and so imagine the listener as a critic with the perfect ear who will know if I fall short of perfect. I’ve spent many years trying to disempower my hyper-criticism; it’s only lately that I find I can play to a real audience, whose opinions I believe and trust. Rather than failing at the impossible, again.

Imagining a real human being as my ideal audience sort of crowds out the hyper-critical one, I find. Or at least gives me an alternative to play to. Little steps.