still flat out at work; bits and pieces

...if I get much flatter I'll become 2D like the latest monsters on Dr. Who.

I kept this window open to update LJ all afternoon in 'idle minutes' but didn't get any. This just bites. Because Ebola.

Today I published the Genomics research unit and the Proteomics research unit pages. They're in the list.

I decided that Genomics and Proteomics are mates of Asterix and Obelix, on the R&D side of the village, who research Romans to decide what makes them so crazy. Maybe they hang out with Getafix.

Today's weather was brought to us by ex-hurricane Gonzalvo; wind, instead of just rain.

I blame goncalves.

Last weekend's revel went well: 20+ attendees, 2 of them our newcomers from WorldCon. For the second month in a row an SCA member has stepped off the plane from another kingdom and rolled into the shire revel the very next day. I approve of their priorities. :-)

I did much the same thing except it was the shire meeting, since there were no revels in my day...kids these days, don't know they're born...

One pleasure of the revel was dancing: I ran the better part of 90 minutes of dancing instruction (with breaks) and noone died.

My explanation of the piva was shaky but in my defense it's hard to explain til you get it anyway.

The very patient dancers soldiered on, and we still managed to dance Petit Riens at the end.

I've ordered two more Wolgemut CDs to round out my collection. Wolgemut is now old enough to have a greatest hits album, which always makes me think of BNL's New Box Set.

Also investigating getting the Jouissance CD of Inns of Court, which doesn't seem widely recorded or played.

According to the guy who runs Renaissance footsteps, it's because the music just isn't very good, so noone bothers. :-)

Also, because the splendid zmiya_san pointed it out on eBay, I ordered 20m of linen blend fabric that will make brilliant tablecloths. It's already got blue stripes in it!

I might share it with the shire, or maybe not.

setting a new standard for confirmation messages

Remember I said I ordered new Wolgemut CDs?

Here's the confirmation message. They have my business.

----------------

Your CDs have been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.

A team of 50 employees inspected your CDs and polished them to make sure they were in the best possible condition before mailing. Our world-renowned packing specialist lit a local artisan candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CDs into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.

We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved "Bon Voyage!" to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, October 21, 2014.

We hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. In commemoration, we have placed your picture on our wall as "Customer of the Year." We're all exhausted but can't wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Sigh...
We miss you already. We'll be right here at http://cdbaby.com/, patiently awaiting your return.
--
CD Baby
The little store with the best new independent music.
http://cdbaby.com cdbaby@cdbaby.com (503)595-3000

Virdict on Bath: too many tourists

Everyone and their dog says Bath is beautiful. And it probably is.

I wish I could confirm this, but I couldn't tell because the damn tourists were in the way.

We went to Bath after goncalves and J's wedding. I've been meaning to visit for ages; partly to feed my Roman bug (nurtured since childhood visit to Hadrian's wall), partly to take the waters for myself.

It's a good thing I knew what I wanted to see, otherwise I'd have given up and gone home.

From the train station onward, it's a wash of tourists; people jamming up the station exits ('where did my ticket go? why didn't it come back?') to those walking too slowly ahead of you, to the buses swinging round narrow streets trying to avoid gormless goggling pedestrians, to the relentless promotion of Bath itself.

I can honestly say I've not seen any location so given over to tourism since I was last in Niagara Falls.

Aside from standard upmarket shops on the main pedestrian mall, and the pubs, restaurants and places aimed at tourists, I could not see any businesses that were run for their own sake, for the people of Bath. I didn't even spot an accountant office or a bookies, at least not between the train station and our destinations.

We did find an excellent pub, which would serve both locals and guests, and seemed to have a goodly share of locals in it: the Raven of Bath. We liked it so much we went twice in one day - once for lunch, once after visiting the spas and before the train. Recommended.

Itinerary:

Roman baths: my first reason for visiting.

Crammed, crammed with people, with a worrying long queue outside, which proved to be for tourbus groups. But still packed.

The advantage of modern portable audio-tours, I guess, is that the people packed into exhibits are mostly quiet. They're not talking to each other or even to their kids. They're listening. So if you're not listening to an audio tour, you can enjoy the visit relatively quietly.

The Baths are impressive; they're layers upon layers of building, Roman, Georgian, then Victorian idea of what Roman would look like, then reconstructed Roman. The baths have been restored so you see the Roman water level and layout and piping of the main bath, and the water system that fed the hot bath is maintained. It's quite bright green with minerals and oxidisation.

The supporting exhibits are good, but I really don't like crowds so I didn't linger where it was cramped. The exhibits do, though, emphasise this was a liminal location - it was about visiting and socialising, but also a spiritually connected place, where Romans set up plinths to demonstrate they'd held their end of their deals with their gods...and threw in curse tablets to make the lives of thieves miserable.

The displays of waterworks, brickmaking, carving and building were best, IMO.

There is a water fountain at the museum, so you can indeed take the waters of Bath. It's chock full of mineral content, and tastes a bit iron-ish, sulphur-ish.

Fashion museum: second reason for visiting.

I'd heard other clothing mavins really running down this museum and wanted to see it for myself.

And certainly it's small. It's in the basement of the assembly rooms, a lovely Georgian building restored to Georgian condition (but w/ modern heating and lighting), and so when the dance hall is in use it sounds like a herd of elephants are doing the maraca over your head.

Right now there's a detailed display of Georgian clothing, which is one of this museum's strengths. And here I did get the audio tour, as I don't know much at all about Georgian clothing.

The pieces on display are in beautiful condition, AFAICS, and the exhibit points out where gowns have been remade and reused - several examples of gowns cut in one style but with fabric from 20 years earlier. One bright gold dress has clear hemlines where it's been let down for someone taller (or who needed a longer skirt for a different style).

But the written and audio info, to me, didn't provide a fraction of the detail I wanted. I wanted to know what it was lined with, what the pleat style was called, how many yards went into the skirt, how many panels in the bodice, and how it was hooked or laced up. None of this was forthcoming.

The written bumf put the styles in context (ie. in this year Mozart was resident in Salzburg, in this year the American civil war started, etc) which are useful references. But I dearly wanted the 'advanced' setting on my audio tour for all the gory details.

The next section was a dressup area - not of interest to me, but clearly in use every time Robert or I passed through.

Then the exhibit about how the collections are stored, with illustrations of items from each decade from 1820(?) to 1910. I thought this was very effective, both displaying items, and showing how to store them - hats, shoes, gowns, coats, everything. Each decade had a relevant quote from a novel from the appropriate era (not historical fiction, but written at the time as contemporary, like Austen or Dickens or Bronte or Forster), which was another good contextual tool.

The last exhibit was wasted on me: 'design of the year' from 1960s to modern day. Yawn.

Thermae spa: the modern Roman baths

These were a treat, because I hardly ever go to a spa, but I love saunas. This spa features baths using the same hot spring as the Romans used.

So for a 2 hour session you have the very social experience of sharing your bath with several hundred other people. YMMV.

Closest I got to the sauna was the scented steam rooms, which were ranged from not very steamy to very steamy. But not the same as the penetrating heat of the dry Finnish sauna. Sigh.

It was now end of day, and I'd had my fill of people and crowds. We retired to the pub again for a reviving drink before braving the train home.

I'd still like to visit again, to see the distinctive architecture, maybe take one of those bus tours. But maybe in a blustery February, sometime that will really keep the tourists away.