@raymccarthy@historians.social
@raymccarthy@historians.social avatar

raymccarthy

@raymccarthy@historians.social

Former Electronics, Software & Communications Engineer now a full time writer.
Living in the Mid-West of Ireland.

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Godyssey, to random
@Godyssey@pagan.plus avatar

The placement of a horseshoe above a door is a hotly debated topic. Some argue that it should go right side up, the horseshoe catching luck and giving luck to the home; others argue the shoe should be upside down, pouring good luck on visitors.

#FolkyFriday where do you fall?

raymccarthy,
@raymccarthy@historians.social avatar

@Godyssey
I remember reading another reason about the opening at the bottom.
The horseshoe wasn't about luck, but protection and the fact of it being iron. Sadly I forget the details. Not sure even if Irish or English belief.

SimonRoyHughes, to random
@SimonRoyHughes@thefolklore.cafe avatar

I understand this. I can draw Donald Duck's head, but can't for the life of me figure out how to do his body.

On the other hand, if I were king, I wouldn't pay for an unfinished painting.

raymccarthy,
@raymccarthy@historians.social avatar

@SimonRoyHughes Obviously a Jacobite painting.
(See James vs William married to his daughter Mary. William should only have been a Prince Consort, like Charles' father Philip).

SimonRoyHughes, to random
@SimonRoyHughes@thefolklore.cafe avatar

(I has ISBNs.)

raymccarthy,
@raymccarthy@historians.social avatar

@SimonRoyHughes
But they were a lot cheaper than mine :D !

raymccarthy,
@raymccarthy@historians.social avatar

@SimonRoyHughes
Yes, it's brilliant.
OTOH, should one in Ireland be one of the less than 0.5% earning enough to be taxed from writing, you can apply to have the title royalty be tax free.
I had to buy my ISBNs from a UK based reseller. They have the Ireland "franchise". The Norwegian scheme would make sense here.a

juergen_hubert, to photography
@juergen_hubert@thefolklore.cafe avatar

Le sigh.

Look, if you find a baby bird hopping around without its parents, don't pick it up, but leave it where it is. The parents are likely nearby.

raymccarthy,
@raymccarthy@historians.social avatar

@juergen_hubert
Yes, loads of parents chase them out of the nest and feed them on the ground.

Some members of the crow family will take exception to you molesting the dabs and mob you. They are smart enough to know if you have a shotgun!

TarkabarkaHolgy, to folklore
@TarkabarkaHolgy@ohai.social avatar


T is for the Two-person love triangle

When someone thinks they are dating two different people, and then the turn out to be the same person.

Read here:
https://multicoloreddiary.blogspot.com/2024/04/t-is-for-two-person-love-triangle.html

raymccarthy,
@raymccarthy@historians.social avatar

@TarkabarkaHolgy
Slightly related is the play Quality Street, by J.M. Barrie who later did Peter Pan.
Quality Street Chocolates/caramels originally had Regency scenes and characters inspired by the play.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31266

seanbala, to climate
@seanbala@mas.to avatar

I feel a bit mixed about this. On one hand, happy to see more charging ports. On the other hand, it feels like a tobacco company funding a hospital.

raymccarthy,
@raymccarthy@historians.social avatar

@seanbala
Of course some Vape brands are owned by tobacco companies.

Godyssey, to random
@Godyssey@pagan.plus avatar

Gaia is the original Mother Earth, the embodiment of the world we live in according to the Greeks. They swore upon her, and all oaths taken or broken in her name were known to her. All things, man and god, nymph and satyr, come from Gaia, She Who Endures. Now the question is: is she a globe or a spherical disc, as the pre-Hellenistic Greeks believed? #MythologyMonday @mythologymonday

raymccarthy,
@raymccarthy@historians.social avatar

@Godyssey @mythologymonday
Some ancient Greeks and Chinese not only knew the Earth was a "sphere", and some made reasonable estimates of the size.
Watching the Moon gave a clue. So Ancient Babylonians might have guessed first.
Most people in the last 10,000 years didn't consider the issue. The "Flat Earth" idea was invented by Victorians alleging the Church believed in it, to poke fun at religion.

dbellingradt, to Voynich
@dbellingradt@historians.social avatar

News from the Fanclub came in: https://theconversation.com/for-600-years-the-voynich-manuscript-has-remained-a-mystery-now-we-think-its-partly-about-sex-227157

raymccarthy,
@raymccarthy@historians.social avatar

@dbellingradt Didn't Freud think everything was about sex?

TarkabarkaHolgy, to folklore
@TarkabarkaHolgy@ohai.social avatar

It's April 1st!
That means, the A to Z Blogging Challenge is off to a start.

My theme this year is "Romance Tropes in Folklore". I am taking popular tropes, and finding their equivalents in traditional stories.

A is for Arranged Marriage romances.
Read here:
https://multicoloreddiary.blogspot.com/2024/03/a-is-for-arranged-marriage-romance.html

#folklore #folktales #AtoZChallenge #blog #RomanceTropesInFolklore #romance

raymccarthy,
@raymccarthy@historians.social avatar

@TarkabarkaHolgy It's forced marriage is a big issue and should be illegal everywhere.

Been reading Mary Burchell and while she was once a top Mills & Boon author I don't think she created unrealistic ideas for girls or young women. Many seem like warnings, though there was always HEA. But red herrings like cosy detective fiction.

Plenty of romance tropes in Folklore & "Fairy stories". Disney spoils them.

thomasfuchs, to random
@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io avatar

There's a few different camps on generative "AI":

  • "It's our lord and savior" (mostly AI companies pushing this)
  • "It will kill us all" doomerism (it won't, it has no intelligence or sentience or agenda)
  • "It has some use cases!" centrism (problematic because it enables the lord and savior types & it's also wrong as work products are highly unreliable, even for basic things like summaries and tabulation)
  • "It's a bullshit tech hype, paired with theft and environmental waste" (correct)
raymccarthy,
@raymccarthy@historians.social avatar

@thomasfuchs
Good call.
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?p=4410560#post4410560

TarkabarkaHolgy, to 13thFloor
@TarkabarkaHolgy@ohai.social avatar

I'm reading Philostratus' "On Heroes", and it's delightful. It is an alternate history of the Trojan War, but the best part is the frame story:

The whole thing is told by an old gardener who is on friendly terms with the ghost of a Greek hero who fell at Troy. The gardener works the fields around the grave, and the hero visits him quite often to chat, do some hoeing, and occasionally exercise. Oh and he is fifteen feet tall.

I want this to be a webcomic

#mythology #Classics #AmReading #books

raymccarthy,
@raymccarthy@historians.social avatar

@TarkabarkaHolgy
Or Studio Gibi, or the offshoot?

Endangeredalphabets, to random
@Endangeredalphabets@mastodon.social avatar

Remember I posted this Iban poem a week ago, and asked for help translating it? Well, I have been sent a translation by the very man who is working to popularize the script, Dr Bromeley Philip, and I have incorporated both into a short essay you can find at https://www.endangeredalphabets.com/2024/03/23/another-writing-creation-writing-loss-writing-rediscovery-narrative/.
As usual, I see in the poem and its translation some important truths about writing itself. I can't help it. But this essay also includes an idea that came to me in the shower, which turns out to be very significant.

raymccarthy,
@raymccarthy@historians.social avatar

@Endangeredalphabets
What (if anything) was used before the 1947 iban script?

raymccarthy,
@raymccarthy@historians.social avatar

@Endangeredalphabets
So it's currently unknown what script was used before the 1947 invention as it was lost long ago according to oral tradition.
Perhaps someday it will be found engraved on something.

toddalstrom, to random
@toddalstrom@mastodon.social avatar

PSA: https://paddynotpatty.com

☘️🇮🇪

raymccarthy,
@raymccarthy@historians.social avatar

@toddalstrom Very occasionally Patty is a nickname for Patricia in Ireland. I last met a Patty in the late 1960s.
Indeed never for Patrick.

juergen_hubert, to random
@juergen_hubert@thefolklore.cafe avatar

Never update your #TeXLaTeX packages. It will never go well. 😓

https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/712074/hyperref-stopped-working-after-updates

raymccarthy,
@raymccarthy@historians.social avatar

@juergen_hubert
Enthusiast of shiny on Internet: Always update to the latest.

Experienced user, using computer for content creation: I only upgrade if what I have is broken and the upgrade makes it better, not worse.
(See also Vista vs XP, Win8 vs Win7, Win10 vs Win7 and Win11 vs Win10. Or Wayland or Unity)
Also not if the upgrade switchs to a subscription for it to work at all :(

bevanthomas, (edited ) to folklore
@bevanthomas@mstdn.ca avatar

Though the Norse term "Jotun" often gets translated as "giant," the Jotnar could be many different sizes, and many of them (Loki, Skadi, etc.) were no taller than the Aesir. They often seemed less like giants and more like simply a competing faction of gods.

raymccarthy,
@raymccarthy@historians.social avatar

@bevanthomas
Yes, Aesir, Vanir and the more diverse Jotnar which might include "murky elves" (mykálfar or myrkálfar), giants and demi-gods (Loki, Skadi as you mention) like Aesir & Vanir. Elf is often translated as Dwarf, but it's only the Black Elves or Dark Elves (Svartálfar and Dökkálfar) that are like Dwarves, and they might not be actually Dwarves. There are also Light Elves (Ljósálfar) which seem a little like "flower fairies", though without any mention of wings.

juergen_hubert, to Typography German
@juergen_hubert@thefolklore.cafe avatar

#Typography question:

Which typeface would you recommend which

(a) was in common use in the 19th century (especially scientific magazines) and

(b) fulfills modern readability requirements (of which I know little)?

raymccarthy,
@raymccarthy@historians.social avatar

@juergen_hubert Almost all the mid to later 19th C. UK ones (The UK was "invented" in 1801).
I've an 1899 print run of a Kipling set here that's more readable than Georgia, but none of my Victorian books state the typeface used.

juergen_hubert, to random German
@juergen_hubert@thefolklore.cafe avatar

So, let's say I want to publish some stuff for the 2E rules, using the license.(*) This would require using some templates for things like spells, items, monsters etc. which follow specific formats within the Pathfinder rules.

So, what are my options here?

(a) try to develop templates for these using ?
(b) buying , learning how to use it, and develop templates for it?
(c) something else which I am not seeing?

What's the most efficient and least painful path forward?

(*) Yes, I realize that there are InDesign templates for Pathfinder at Pathfinder Infinite. However, they are only intended for Pathfinder Infinite products, and thus not useful for my purposes.

raymccarthy,
@raymccarthy@historians.social avatar

@juergen_hubert
InDesign is ancient & expensive DTP intended for paper and then PDF. Fudged for ebooks. Unless you are corporate and doing magazines and complex paper text books and newspapers it's a millstone.

raymccarthy,
@raymccarthy@historians.social avatar

@juergen_hubert
Free decent tools
LO Writer (fine PDF export for paper). Has Templates.
LaTex (various applications)
Sigil
Calibre

Do epub2 first, proof content, edit source, not epub. Make a copy and change its formatting / styles for a PDF export for paper.

raymccarthy,
@raymccarthy@historians.social avatar

@juergen_hubert Yes, reflowable epub2 is limited and simple. But you can get the content right in LO Writer, save As docx, convert epub2 in Calibre (auto styles to CSS).
Then do something fancier for final layout, confident that the content is proofed.

However, glad it's you and not me. :)

seanbala, to chicago
@seanbala@pixelfed.social avatar

Barrels outside of Dovetail Brewing in Irving Park, Chicago, Illinois, USA.

Photo taken on 23 February 2025.

@beersofmastodon

raymccarthy,
@raymccarthy@historians.social avatar

@seanbala @beersofmastodon
Clever time-lapse photography!

/me checks date again in case I fell asleep for a year after teatime.

oldbookillustrations, to illustration
@oldbookillustrations@mastodon.social avatar

Study of hedgehog stealing an apple.
From "A Book of Cheerful Cats" written & illustrated by Joseph Greene Francis, New York: 1892 #illustration #art #ChildrensBook https://www.oldbookillustrations.com/illustrations/hedgehog-stealing-apple/

raymccarthy,
@raymccarthy@historians.social avatar

@oldbookillustrations
One browser doesn't support Vimeo at all and another wants me to log in.
"Video is not rated. Log in to watch."

I'll have to remain ignorant :(

dbellingradt, to history German
@dbellingradt@historians.social avatar

I like the idea that there was, in 1173 CE, a pigeon post between Baghdad and Cairo with a special thin airmail paper. #histodons #paperhistory #communicationhistory

raymccarthy,
@raymccarthy@historians.social avatar

@dbellingradt
Why not?

Now 3T per flight. A 1.5TB uSD card on each leg.
Faster than DSL.

dbellingradt, to history German
@dbellingradt@historians.social avatar

Here is a small printed "s" waiting to become an illuminated initial in a print from 1503. The small "s" indicates: please include a colored big "S" after the print run. The reason for this: early printed books in Europe, around 1500, kept this illuminating tradition from the manuscript age - the book makers imitated the layout rules of scribal handwriting for decades.
The images show an unfinished and finished initial of the same page from a different copy. #bookhistory for the win. #histodons

Detail from a page from "Philelphus, Franciscus: Epistolarum D. Francisci philelphi equitis aurati oratorisque ac poete tam grece quam latine lingue peritissimi unus et viginti libri reliqui qui post sedecim sunt reperti" (https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/view/bsb10159044?page=20,21 ). The initial "S" has been drawn on top of the small printed "s".
Page of "Epistolarum D. Francisci philelphi equitis aurati|| Oratorisq[ue] ac poet[a]e ta[m] gr[a]ec[a]e q[uam] latin[a]e lingu[a]e peri||tissimi: vnus et viginti libri reliqui qui post sede-||cim sunt reperti." (https://sammlungen.ulb.uni-muenster.de/hd/content/titleinfo/6526468 ). In the upper left corner you see the space left for the initial "s".
Page from "Philelphus, Franciscus: Epistolarum D. Francisci philelphi equitis aurati oratorisque ac poete tam grece quam latine lingue peritissimi unus et viginti libri reliqui qui post sedecim sunt reperti" (https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/view/bsb10159044?page=20,21 ) showing the initial "S" been drawn on top of the small printed "s".

raymccarthy,
@raymccarthy@historians.social avatar

@dbellingradt
Drop Caps still being done, along with small caps first words on ebooks at start of chapter, which reduces compatibility and readability.

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