Tags

I am currently in the process of making a new description page for my LibraryThing in order to get all my tags in place. It is a work in progress to say the least... Watch this space though.

Fishywishy

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How an Aquatic Monster was driven off by virtue of the blessed man's prayer.

ON another occasion also, when the blessed man was living for some days in the province of the Picts, he was obliged to cross the river Nesa (the Ness); and when he reached the bank of the river, he saw some of the inhabitants burying an unfortunate man, who, according to the account of those who were burying him, was a short time before seized, as he was swimming, and bitten most severely by a monster that lived in the water; his wretched body was, though too late, taken out with a hook, by those who came to his assistance in a boat. The blessed man, on hearing this, was so far from being dismayed, that he directed one of his companions to swim over and row across the coble that was moored at the farther bank. And Lugne Mocumin hearing the command of the excellent man, obeyed without the least delay, taking off all his clothes, except his tunic, and leaping into the water. But the monster, which, so far from being satiated, was only roused for more prey, was lying at the bottom of the stream, and when it felt the water disturbed above by the man swimming, suddenly rushed out, and, giving an awful roar, darted after him, with its mouth wide open, as the man swam in the middle of the stream. Then the blessed man observing this, raised his holy hand, while all the rest, brethren as well as strangers, were stupefied with terror, and, invoking the name of God, formed the saving sign of the cross in the air, and commanded the ferocious monster, saying, "Thou shalt go no further, nor touch the man; go back with all speed." Then at the voice of the saint, the monster was terrified, and fled more quickly than if it had been pulled back with ropes, though it had just got so near to Lugne, as he swam, that there was not more than the length of a spear-staff between the man and the beast. Then the brethren seeing that the monster had gone back, and that their comrade Lugne returned to them in the boat safe and sound, were struck with admiration, and gave glory to God in the blessed man. And even the barbarous heathens, who were present, were forced by the greatness of this miracle, which they themselves had seen, to magnify the God of the Christians.

How many lightbulbs does it take to change a fish?



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Bibles

This is an explanation designed to accompany the “bible” tag on my LibraryThing.

Bible, biblical, Testaments
I have a collection of 29 Bibles and biblical paraphrases to date. These are tagged both “Bible”, and “Biblical”, the “Biblical” tag referring to other books about the bible, and the “Bible” tag being reserved for Bibles, books of the Bible, and biblical paraphrases. According to the contents of the specific volume Bibles are also tagged “Old Testament”, “New Testament”, and “Apocrypha”. This does not mean the entire testament or section is included, only that the book draws from one or more of those sections. So a book containing only Esdras would be tagged “Old Testament”, a “full bible” would be tagged with all three. The “Psalms” tag I have used differently, I have used this to tag books which contain Psalms, btu not any over part of the Old Testament, in practice my two Gideons.
There are three works with the tag “extra canonical”, one of these is Good as New and also has the “Bible” tag, as it also contains books from the canon*, the other two, being editions of the Dead Sea, and Nag Hammadi scriptures are not included in my Bible count, but they are tagged “biblical”.

Paraphrase
Amongst my Bibles I further divide with the tag “Paraphrase”. What is and is not a paraphrase is obviously a judgement call. It was easy to make that decision in the case of the Good As New, or Enid Blyton’s Bible for Children. There are some who would not think of The Message as a paraphrase, I do, although I am coloured by the value judgement I make regarding it. On the other hand there are some who would say that the Good News Bible, being more of a sense than a word translation is Paraphristic. I disagree. I have chosen not to try and divide Sense and Word translations in the tagging structure.

Translations
I have tagged translations in order to group them, tagging, so far, only the non paraphristic bibles. I have:
2 “English Standard Version”
1 ”Good News Bible”,
3 ”King James Version”,
3 “New English Bible”
3 “New International Version”
3 “Revised Standard Version”

Special Note
The two gems in my collection are two particularly substantial bibles, one a particularly large leather bound New English Bible, the other a King James Version, which was presented in 1876 to Miss M.A. Thomas. Both were made available to any good home by the Religious Studies department of Bradford Grammar School. I must offer thanks to the gentleman who made the latter available to me, despite his earlier claim to it.
Also unusual is the parallel translation of the 1611(Authorised) and 1881(Revised) versions, which was published in 1882. Unfortunately it is an unlovely book, made from plates about half the size of the paper sheets used.

* See Article VI of the 39 Articles, for instance.

Christ Is Risen! N is 21! I am 22!

V - Surrexit Dominus vere, alleluia!
R - Et apparuit Simoni, alleluia!

Christ is Risen, as ever, and for the first time in my life I celebrated the fact in a church not Thornton Methodist. It was just a special though.

Shortly after Easter I celebrated both N’s and my own birthday. These are the second birthdays we have spent together, and the third since we were a couple. (I rang N from a phone box on Iona for her 19th, on her 20th we had a day trip to York). Obviously N’s was the more significant birthday, so we spent both days in Liverpool, and on her birthday went to an interesting Russian Restaurant.

I have never eaten Russian before, so didn’t really know what to expect. I was first struck by the range of food, the menu contained food which was reminiscent of Sub-Continental cuisine, eastern European dishes, and food which sounded Oriental in nature. Unsurprising given the vast size of Russia. The place was interestingly laid out, pleasant overall - but a little more attention to detail would have been nice. E.G. To use the sink in the mens bathroom I had to stoop under a sloping roof (and I am not quite six foot tall), and my seat had an uncomfortable sag just under my right buttock, so I had the disconcerting feeling that I was sitting on the side edge of my chair. My meal was exceeding pleasant though. I had some borscht, which tasted much unlike the beetroot soup I am more used to. I followed this with some interesting affairs like mushroom burgers or similar. I wish I knew their composition because they were lovely. I washed it down with much Baltika, at least some of which was free, in apology for a mix up with N’s food. I was rather sorry not to get what I ordered (they were out), which was originally going to be a stew with mushroom dumplings, and topped with dough. All in all I liked the place, and would go to the Manchester Branch given the chance, the trip was worthwhile, and made doubly so by the music and dancing…

As it was my birthday I pulled in a handful of gifts, one way or another. Including a number of books, some of which are tagged ”Birthday ‘08” on LibraryThing.

It is safe to assume that in the near future I will be reading some of the following (Not an exhaustive list):
Kari Mauns, The Welsh Kings: Warriors, Warlords and Princes
J.L. Carrell The Shakespeare Secret
Julia Fox, Jane Boleyn, The Infamous Lady Rochford
The Book of General Ignorance
The English Year

Thank you to anyone who got me anything by way of a birthday gift, or card.

iTunes and Apple Matters

Apple Matters, is just one of a number of websites which has had a bit of a sprucing up recently. The others are: the Ship, whose new look I very much like, especially (unlike everyone else) the fixed width, partly for the same reasons I use Tofu* for reading; and the BBC, whose new look I am still getting used to. AMs look is very swish, not how I would want everything to look, but about right for one of the links which I file under “Geekery” in my book marks.

Apple Matters is an excellent place to pick up on what Apple is up to, as well as a source of the odd tip, and occasional opinion. I have it on my reader, and I recommend it to anyone interested in any of the above. I doubt it would satisfy someone really keen, but for my casual interest it is sufficient.

To launch their redesign (or just for the craic) AM has started a series of articles on how to better use iTunes, the first of which inspired me, and this post. I am one of those the article describe who has “playlists -- even smart playlists -- that are fairly dull.” I have a handful of short compilations for my listening pleasure, a series of longer collections that suit a particular feel, and a group of dull smart playlists. (Classical, Jazz, Recently Uploaded etc). Inspired by that article I have created some new lists, one of unrated music (of which there is 16.67 GBs), and one which will hopefully become my most listened to folder. It is broken down like this:

In I Dig Music:
5*, 2 Days (Rated 5 Stars, not played in the last 2 days.)
4*, 4 Days
2*, 6 Days

N.B. Excluded are podcasts, Audiobooks, Classical music, and Opera.
This gives me, at the moment, a total of 4.85 GB of music. (Out of my library of 23.09 GB). This is only a starting point. It will be improved as I rate more of my music, and it will be improved by the addition of more playlists in the folder. E.G. A playlist of infrequently played, well rated music; a dumb playlist of this week favourites etc.

For the moment though, I am happy with the results.

* Which I recently converted my sister to - so she can read Mummies Alive fanfics on it…