hildy89: (lion gate of mycenae)
So I've spent most of my Christmas afternoon watching the Mythbusters marathon on Discovery. I hadn't really watched the show, but their approach was hysterical.

I had given my father Decoding the Heavens: Solving the Mystery of World's First Computer by Jo Marchant for his Christmas gift. It's a fascinating jigsaw puzzle, part history and part engineering. Nature published several articles on Antikythera Mechanism, including a lengthy one by Marchant. Some of articles are archived on the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project

Wired has even gotten into the act, posting about Michael Wright's attempt to recreate the Mechanism. Apparently there's a fair bit of controversy over the x-rays and whether it's being put together or analyzed correctly. Oh, archaeologists and their "You're doing it wrong!" attitudes always amuse me. (This after watching half a special on Schliemann and his charming approaches to the field...)

And appropriately enough for me, the remains were found in a shipwreck.
hildy89: (underwater archaeology)
I finished the first draft of my alternate history story for my latest CVS submission. It needs a little polishing and changes before it's sent forward, but it'll be ready. I'm actually rather pleased with how it turned out... even more so that I actually sat down and wrote this idea.

Robot spots Ancient greek shipwreck: Described as a "buried UPS truck", it was laden with wine and olive oil when it went down in the Aegean over 2000 years ago. Also the Woods Hole site survey website.
hildy89: (underwater archaeology)
So I've gone back to one of my initial goals at New Year's, revising that pesky first chapter of "Going Under". My father's library proved useful when I discovered a book called Lost Warships, a large coffee table sized book on warships and maritime archaeology. He found me a copy after Christmas, along with books on the Swedish ship the Vasa. I'm hoping I will have the chapter finished by tomorrow. The opening is still eluding me though.

[livejournal.com profile] neadods posted a nice long post on her take on reviewing cozy mysteries with examples of the good and the bad points. She also recommended [livejournal.com profile] jimbutcher's occasional posts on writing F&SF.

Tokyopop is apparently doing their own free magazine Takuhai. You can sign up for the first issue here.
hildy89: (underwater archaeology)
I spent a lovely portion of today out at the main Fairfax campus of George Mason University to see if I could finally sign up for that underwater archaeology course. After a lot of running around, because of administration issues, the course won't be offered this coming semester, more likely the following summer or fall. Disappointing though the news is, this actually works out fine for me, money wise, but I dearly wish I'd known that before hailing out there. I had forgotten how hilly that campus is and how many odd staircases abound, not adding in about ten years of change in the campus. Buildings were there I didn't remember, including a whole Student center that now housed the campus bookstore and food court. I had no trouble actually finding the building I needed, but when I wanted to find a place to wait around and have lunch, I was quite spectacularly lost and worn out.
hildy89: (underwater archaeology)
GIP! I decided to turn this into my underwater archaeology icon. Very apt choice, after watching a program on National Geographic's "Mysteries of the Deep", which featured two wrecks. The first one was a classical Greek ship off the coast of Turkey at Tektaş Burnu. That one fascinated me because the team was led by George Bass from Texas A&M's Institute of Nautical Archaeology. The other ship was the 17th century Swedish warship called the Kronan lost in the Baltic. Because of the Baltic's lack of shipworms, the divers brought up some glorious pieces of ornate woodwork.

Good wishes to my parents and other Floridians who are facing Charley who turned into a Category 4 Hurricane. I looked at the radar on the Weather.com just now and there isn't much of the state showing right now.

I thought of my PotC fans and the Slayers campaigners while reading Crossgen's "El Cazador", their gorgeous pirate comic. A pity the company is filing bankruptcy, so they won't at least release a trade.

The Olympics start tonight, so I'll probably be curled up in front of the tv, watching the opening ceremonies. After that, who knows what events I'll catch. I tend to watch less of the Summer Games than the winter ones.
hildy89: (inkribbon)
From [livejournal.com profile] kaygo

What's my Ice Cream flavor? )

If I can't have all the chocolate ice cream, why bother?

Deep Sea Detectives is back on History Channel. They ran a bunch of older episodes today, including a few ones I hadn't seen, like the Edmund Fitzgerald and the Andrea Doria. Tonight's episode focuses on the Queen of Nassau, a a Canadian warship turned into a passenger vessel that sank off the Florida Keys in the 1920s. On that front, I had bought Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson about a German U-boat found sixty miles off the coast of New Jersey. The divers are the initial hosts of Deep Sea Detectives, John Chatterton and Richie Kohler. Although they interact jovially on the show, they apparently hated each other when they first worked together.

I'm also finally reading Charles Todd's Ian Rutledge series, featuring a shell shocked WWI veteran. I'm halfway through the first book Test of Wills. The descriptions are extremely vivid. Todd is occasionally guilty of a little head hopping. Most of the book is from Rutledge's POV, but every once in awhile, he abruptly shifts to a POV from one of the other characters.

I also heard from Books for America today. They'll be picking up my two bags of books tomorrow.
hildy89: (Default)
The latest "Deep Sea Detectives" focused on the "Empress of Ireland" who sank in the St Lawrence River after ramming into a Norwegian coal ship. Two years after the Titanic, the Empress lost over 1000 lives, sinking in under 14 minutes, compared to the slow descent of the Titanic. Not unlike the Titanic and Estonia, public inquiries went back and forth trying to shift the blame for the accident. Who blinked in the fog? Who forgot to leave the doors opened? The show mainly focused on what happened to sink her with only a brief excursion at the wreck herself. The dive appears to be one of the more dangerous ones they've covered on the show, claiming seven divers in its history. So I'm a little shocked to see pieces of the Empress, including china, being sold off on ebay. Not surprised, but still a little shocked.

I also watched a charming program on the Science Channel called "Ancient Arsenal" which reminded me of Junkyard Wars for the Ancient World. In this program, they were recreating the Byzantine fire ship, with one group devising the catapult, one the flamethrower and an explosives expert on the "greek fire". The Byzantine emperors decreed the technology a state secret, so extremely little is known on how they were made. The Byzantine military historian kept arguing for the historical accuracy, claiming the texts said they heated the fuel before spraying it through the nozzle. The engineering experts, including a very very good looking metal working expert with a nice accent (like no one knows I'm a sucker for a good British accent, right?), pleaded with him to consider safety. At one point, the metalworker said he would make it but he wouldn't want to be actually pointing the thing, especially when it was dripping fuel all over all the place in its early stages. They were actually slightly more successful than the catapult. The latter worked, but it didn't seem particularly effective. I was amused by using mayonnaise and egg yolks as the main ingredient in the ancient Molotov cocktail. Inventive at least.
hildy89: (Default)
The bright side of keeping a LJ? I can easily check what was happening on a particular date and know if I had a doctor appt. It still means having to dicker around with the idiot insurance people, but at least I have the vaguest notion what it is about!

New York Times had a lovely long article on the search for that Persian fleet I've been so fascinated with. The print version includes illustrations of triremes, including possible differences between Greek and Persian ones. The Herald Tribune has a version of the same article. I'm still amused by the comment made by Robert Hohlfelder from University of Colorado-Boulder in an earlier article about the octopus hoarding artifacts - "I've always loved to eat octopus, but I'm going to forgo it the rest of my days, because you're only supposed to eat colleagues in department meetings," Hohlfelder joked. "They're really quite good collectors, and often the piles they build up around their nests give us the first clue that wreckage is underneath."

I'm almost finished with Fudoki, which is a Good Thing since it's supposed to go back to the library today. Erp. This weekend will be the dreaded Arlington Library book sale. Then hopefully I can attack Fitcher's Bride. My non-fiction reading has been a fascinating book called Mysteries of the Snake Goddess by Kenneth D.S. Lapatin about the Boston Snake Goddess and its possibly shady origins. It fits in unfortunately with Arthur Evans and his Knossos reconstructions. It will be useful prep work for the online class I caved and signed up for, an "Archaeology for Amateurs" class with the focus on Minoan and Cretan archaeology.

EDIT: Oh, yay! I could renew Fudoki after all. I thought it was in their nonrenewable group.
hildy89: (Default)
Oldest pet cat discovered in Cyprus

I watched "Lost Ships of the Mediterranean" on the National Geographic channel last night about two shipwrecks found by the US Navy off the coast from Ashkelon in Israel. The wrecks included hundreds of amphoras strewn in a huge pile across the Mediterranean. The Navy contacted Robert Ballard, the Titanic & Bismarck discoverer, who in turn, brought in archaeologist Lawrence Stager from Harvard. He could pinpoint the amphora shape to the Iron Age, maybe 8th or 9th century BC, but the footage was fuzzy. Then they actually relocated the wrecks and pulled up some of amphoras. Both appear to have been Phoenician wine merchants possibly on the way to Egypt or Carthage. official paper explains some of the background details left off the program, including why an American submarine would be off the coast of Israel. (They were helping Israeli officials search for the lost sub Dakar which they eventually found in 1999.)
hildy89: (Default)
Sci Fi Channel is bringing back "Farscape" in a four hour mini-series. Someday I will catch up with that series. I lost track after the first couple of seasons and never quite saw enough of the episodes.

The most recent "Deep Sea Detectives" followed a recent case, the sinking of the ferry Estonia off the Swedish coast in 1994. With the loss of nearly 900 lives, it was the worst maritime disaster in Scandinavia. The investigations were plagued with problems, prompting several independent ones. The officials believed that the visor ripped off the ship, causing it to take in water. Other divers noticed differing details. They also described a rather sickening sight of bodies littered on the Baltic floor. (I did cringe, though, when they described DNA forensic work and showed the WTC footage. It's still too soon for me clearly.)

Spanish archaeologists have pieced together a full frontal portrait of a Egyptian pharaoh in a courtyard in Luxor. Traditionally Egyptians have done portraits of Egyptians in profile, limiting full shots to foreigners, gods and mythological characters. Some have hypothesized that this portrait is a sketch for a statue or perhaps a student piece. The archaeologists believe it dates from 1400 BC and may show either pharaoh Tuthmosis III or his mother Hatshepsut.

Meanwhile in Wrexham, Wales, metal detectors are also coming up golden, finding a fresh new hoard of Bronze Age jewelry and pottery. The same area yielded the gold cape discovered in Mold in 1833. The cape is apparently something of a bone of contention with the Welsh locals, since it was given to the British Museum because they don't have a secure enough museum in their area.
hildy89: (Default)
The air conditioning finally kicked on in the apartment. Ah, bliss! At least I don't feel like I'm in a deep fryer.

Deep Sea Detectives continues to feed my interest in underwater archaeology. This week's program focused on the wreck of a Dutch cargo ship called the Vrouw Maria. The ship wrecked off the Finnish coast in the Baltic Sea in 1771. Besides the obvious cold waters, the Baltic sea has very little salinity and none of the worms that eat away most shipwrecks, so the wreck is in beautiful condition. However the sediment creates poor lighting conditions. They showed them having to rig up the equivalent of the lighting rigging needed for a Rolling Stones concert to see the wreck below.

Vrouw Maria's cargo included a bunch of paintings by Dutch masters purchased at auction by Catherine the Great. Gerret Braamcamps, a Dutch timber merchant died, leaving behind a large collection of paintings. They're not even entirely sure what was on board the ship. Through the process of elimination, they've wittled it down to a possible eleven paintings from Braamcamps collection. The one that fetched the highest price was a triptych by Gerard Dou. Some of the remainders which were not bought by Catherine, including a Vermeer, wound up at the Rijkmuseum in Amsterdam.

The situation has legal issues as well. The ship was discovered off the Finnish coast, but was a Dutch ship on the way to Russia. So who owns the wreck? The Finns think the answer is quite straight forward. Their legislation basically states any wrecks found in their waters belong to the government. The person who spent years trying to find the wreck obviously thinks otherwise. I haven't quite found out what is the status of the lawsuit. I almost wish I was still working at LC. Researching foreign law stuff is so much easier there.
hildy89: (crumblingwalls)
May be regretting my con trip. I appear to be not completely recovered from my illness last week. And since the "con crud" is a time honored tradition among fen, it probably combined with whatever I already had. Charming.

I slept for a large part of the day and drank several water bottles worth. You'd think I'd be improving just a little. I worked some on my writing submission but we'll see if I get it finished in time. Also discovered to my horror the "Stars on Ice" cast on "Family Feud".

Over dinner I watched a few episodes of "Deep Sea Detectives" the DVR had taped. One focused on a B-29 Super Fortress that disappeared into Lake Mead into 1948. The mystery around the B-29 was about the instruments it was carrying, precursors for the Sidewinder heatseeker missiles. The other focused on "Henrietta Marie", the slave ship, which I remembered from the exhibit at that Florida museum my parents and I visited. At the end, I noticed a "in memory notice" for Michael Norwood, the British host. After several searches online, I discovered he had died in a deep sea accident in Palau in December. Such a shame.
hildy89: (Default)
Mother Nature attempted to interfere with my Saturday errands by giving me snow flurries, but it had cleared out by the time I hit the groceries. DC is the land of the famous panicked milk, bread and toilet paper run to the grocery whenever snow is predicted. For me, it was simply my normal visit. Whatever.

The Arlington library visit was a mixed bag. Having become fascinated with the Persian fleet, I decided to do some further research. Finding info on the ships themselves was frustrating, even with help from the reference staff. I'll need to nag my father about the subject. Or maybe just hit a large Borders and simply wallow in their classical/mediaeval section. Visiting the library is probably cheaper.

On a more interesting front, I'm delving into old classical histories. (Certain friends would be amused to learn the sources include Herodotus. At least he isn't writing about goblin rebellions.) So I lugged home a recent translation of Herodotus and part of the older translation by Rawlinson. I read a version of the fleet's destruction on the Perseus Project, but I wanted a comparison. It's interesting how the difference in translation affects my muse. In the recent version, they describe the storm and how the sailors were killed by sharks or dashed on the rocks of Athos, but Rawlinson describes how the waters have all these unknown monsters that lurk below. My muse clearly prefers the older and flowery one.
hildy89: (lion gate of mycenae)
At the CVS meeting, I was looking at Nature when Mike, one of our members, mentioned another interesting recent discovery. Archaeologists are searching for the remains of a Persian fleet sent by the Persian king Darius to invade Greece in 492 BC, only to find a wicked storm off Mount Athos. For the amount of lives and ships they claim were lost, I'm surprised all they've found is a few helmets and that spear. (Nicely guarded by a friendly Aegean octopus. Can you imagine trying to convince him to give up his toy? "Pretty please?" "Mine!")

While looking for more info on the groups doing the research, I came across a PotC archaeological gold mine: Port Royal Project investigating the submerged portion of the city lost in the 1692 earthquake.

I'm reminded of the programs I've watched with my father on the subject, including the Bronze Age shipwreck off Turkey. The ship basically moved raw materials, including these ingots they couldn't recognize after all those years. They were glass. There were other ingots, but that was the most remarkable find.

Profile

hildy89: (Default)
hildy89

April 2017

S M T W T F S
      1
23456 78
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
30      

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jun. 6th, 2025 09:35 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios