An old English dictionary gets a modern treatment

I've recently been asked to help proofread a few scanned pages of a 1300-page old English dictionary as part of the Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Project. The project aims to digitise the 1898 dictionary, based on the manuscript collections of Joseph Bosworth.

Project coordinator Bekie Marett says the skills of volunteers and English-studies students are vital to the success of digital content projects like these, that contribute to a wider historical knowledge.

While it's important to preserve ancient texts in their original state, making publications like the Anglo-Saxon Dictionary freely available to a wide audience is essential in providing easy access to original research materials.

Interesting site of the day is: The British Mule Society. I guess that at any given time, somewhere there really is a community of people devoted to every last thing on earth.

Have been reading and chuckling over Mil Millington's extremely amusing Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About. I've never read a whole lot of it in one go, but it really is very funny. I think my favourite bit would have to be:

"Margret is sitting at this computer (which is in the attic room, incidentally) typing something. I'm flopped in a chair close by with a paper and pad, scribbling away at a bit of work.
I pause and say to her, 'Tortoise and turtle is the same word in German, isn't it?'
She stops typing, reaches over, pulls off one of my Birkenstock shoes, throws it down through trapdoor (I hear it thud below, then flip-flop down the stairs) and returns to her typing. All in a single, silent movement.
Your guess is as good as mine, frankly."

Oh, late breaking news! I stand corrected on the most interesting site for today as I've just been sent the link to this auction on ebay: Totally bizarre carrot with a vagina !!!!!!. A must have item for any household.

More snow! It's been an exciting 24 hours as snow blanketed our area and I built my first ever proper snowman.

A friend thought it was a photoshopped in banana, but I assure you it's real.

It's now brilliantly sunny and everything just looks so pretty, the snow is still feathery soft and such a pure white. However, I'm sending warm thoughts to the poor people who were stranded in their cars overnight on the motorway - that really can't have been much fun.

Okay, another rant about TV and sex. Or rather, TV and taboos and intrusion of privacy. Or more particularly the new show Infamous Fives.

I've seen the advertisement for this show a number of times and the first episode was last night. I didn't watch. If celebrities want to have sex, it's none of my business. In fact, it's none of anybody's business really - if Eddie Murphy wants to pick up a transsexual prostitute (as the show claimed) then WHO CARES?!!

Right, rant over. Onto the new Nescafe ad (yes I've been watching a lot of TV recently - partly because I've been ill and blobbing on the couch of an evening, and partly because the new series of Sex and the City, Buffy, Friends and Enterprise have started. No I don't think Enterprise is much good but am persevering, and don't ask me how I got into watching Friends, it just happened somehow).

I know I'll appear an incredibly mushy idiot when I tell you I really like the new Nescafe ad and it makes me go all dewy-eyed when I see it. It's the one where a bloke has his girlfriend in a tent festooned with African paraphernalia and is making her drink a cup of coffee. She thinks it's all a bit silly so when he asks 'where are we?' she says, 'in a tent, with my silly boyfriend drinking coffee'. She takes a sip (inhaling the 'exotic aroma' or some such) and closes her eyes, then opens them and says 'okay, I'm on safari with some gorgeous bloke who's made me coffee in the back of his truck', he says 'a year ago', she says 'today?' The camera pans out to show them in a tent on the top of a building in cold, wet London. Okay so it doesn't do much in the retelling, but I think it's a really sweet ad...call me soppy.

Onto iTV. I was reading ITV: Making the Same Mistakes yesterday and was thinking about a great application for interactive TV that never seems to get mentioned. Sometimes while I'm watching TV, an ad for a programme I'd like to see comes on. It won't be for a show I usually watch and so am not likely to remember when it's on. I'd love to be able to 'press the red button' and set a reminder to watch that show, just like the reminders I can set when I'm looking through the on-screen TV listings.

Even better would be having an SMS reminder sent to my phone 10 minutes before the start of the show. I think people who work on iTV applications sometimes forget that often, all you want from your TV is to be able to watch TV! I don't want to email from my TV, or order pizza through it, particularly, but an application that would help me remember the things I want to watch would be great.

I also want a TiVo...

After a really hectic week I am spending the day doing what makes GAIGRing worthwhile.

My fiance has been packed off to Florida on a weekend business trip, I've just had a long hot bath and have a stack of books, a newspaper and some glossy catalogues to peruse. I've changed into my comfy, snuggly clothes, taken some pillows downstairs and plan to sit and completely relax.

Ordering a pizza and watching some chick-flicks is definitely on the cards, and after I finish this, I'm turning my PC off. Tomorrow, Sunday will be a GAIGR day, getting bits and pieces organised, tidying the house...

...but right now, I have a date with the couch.

Something irked me this evening. I saw an ad for 'Girls Behaving Badly', a show about women who are strippers or something and it bothers me that we still have a double standard with female and male sexuality.

If this was a programme about male strippers, it would be called 'Blokes Gettin it Out and Getting Loads of Cash, Wha-hey!'

Well the snow came down for about an hour and covered everything. I've just been out and played in it and made a teeny weeny snowman about four inches high. I didn't realise the snow would crack under my feet or that it would be soft as cotton fluff in my hand. It's SO MUCH FUN!

Am no longer a home-snow virgin.

Our back yard
Snowy fir branch
Pity it wasn't a white Christmas
Bare but for snow and orange berries

I've been feeling really disappointed all morning. London is covered in snow. Hertfordshire isn't. It's dry, it's freezing, but no snow.

Oh my god, it's just started coming down!! Just as I write this. Oooooooh, tiny weeny flakes, but I hope they get bigger, and stick. It really does look like little feathers floating through the air, oh I could just sit and watch it all day.

Well that perks me up a bit.