A note on terminology, and an addendum (and correction) to my PhD thesis 1. How did I miss that? Doing research, it’s easy to find yourself going down rabbit holes, chasing answers that seem to always elude your grasp. You do your best, but still have to resign yourself to unsatisfactory results. In my case, […]
Tag Archives: PhD
on the wagon
charrette, n. a final, intensive effort to finish a project before a deadline Thus saith Futility Closet. And I thought, there’s a definition of my state if ever one was. But of course one has to check these things (words) in the OED, which says: charet | charette, n. Obs. A wheeled vehicle or conveyance. ..que? Only by […]
“I like not these gold-makers”
I haue had ferther conferrence with the Scotsman / which came from madrid 15 dais past, he sayeth he hath Letters from my lord Ambassador and that his lordshipp gaue hym fyve hvndred Crowns per order from his majestie of England /. and that an vnckell he hath in madrid gaue hym fyve hvndred Crowns […]
Ahh, procrastination
Where doth time fly? That is the question. Although here are two answers to where some of my time this month has gone (to my shame). – the other day, I spent most of the afternoon chasing after an obscure geographical location on the coast of the Bay of Biscay, only to realize in the […]
more on the vexing matter of assigning dates to documents
TNA SP 94/12 ff.144-147 is a 4-page document entitled: “Note of my letters of aduertisments from spayne, Italy & other parts from Jan 1605 vntill [missing]” In other words, it is a list of letters received during 1605. It was compiled by Thomas Wilson, secretary to Sir Robert Cecil, in charge of intelligencing relating to […]
Lady Day (and the vexing matter of assigning dates to documents)
I just realized that today is Lady Day – that is, Annunciation. Once upon a time, this was New Year’s Day. It probably derives from the date being originally set on the Spring equinox, which makes a pretty sensible first day of the year if your concept of the world derives from observations of the sun. […]
1 Spaniard is worth 100 oranges
From SP 94/14 ff. 47-48, Cocks to Wilson as usual: “the news is still confermed that the hollanders haue taken & Sunke all those Spanish gallions, & now is anexed that they haue Carid the Spaniards into Barberry, and Soulde them for Slaues, to say, on[e] Spaniard for 100 of orrenges & 4 or 5 […]
Rant about code (“MS Office uses XML”)
The new .docx etc formats of the newer versions of Microsoft Office are done in XML. Hence the -x in the extension. The problem with this, however, is something we all know: all MS programs are bloated pieces of shit. Those of you who occasionally fiddle with HTML will probably have experimented with the oh-this-is-convenient […]
NaTheWriMo Day 30 and then some
I meant to post this before Christmas – got derailed for a couple of weeks after my last post (did finish revising the article!), but then got in a week’s worth of NaTheWriMoing before Christmas, so let’s pretend I wrote this wrap-up message then. Right. How did it go; how did I do? Let’s look […]
NaTheWriMo Day 24: Wrong month
This is really the wrong month for me to be doing a NaTheWriMo. What I’m doing atm is fiddling around with the specs of my edition – this includes lots of thinking about little things, namely how to represent manuscript feature X in my finished digital edition, and thus it involves less of the Writing […]