Ramblin' Rosen

I’ve decided to move my blog from my own host to WordPress.com, as I’m tired of having to maintain the software myself and have been overrun by spam. Instead of upgrading to the latest verson of WP, I’m going to be lazy and let someone else deal with the maintenance from now now. Please unsubscribe from my old feed and subscribe to the new one.

Old blog: http://www.lilitu.com/wordpress/
New blog: http://lilitu93.wordpress.com/

I’m still in shock about what’s happened today in London. Fortunately, everyone I’ve contacted has been OK, but it’s still been pretty devastating.

I had my husband call my parents early in the morning their time, just so they’d find out we were OK before they saw the news. They were already worried by a call so early, but it was better that than a panicked call once they turned on CNN.

A friend of mine in the US called my folks to see if Tony and I were OK. Even though I didn’t get to talk to him, I’m very glad he rang. He was first person I called after my parents on 9/11, as he lived near DC. I found out he was actually planning on going to the Pentagon that day and just hadn’t made it there. I didn’t have any near misses like that today–I no longer work in Central London, and today was the first day I was glad of that–but I’ve heard similar near-miss stories on the news.

For those of you who have been hurt or have had loved ones hurt, I send my depest sympathies.

I’m going to finish this post now, as I don’t know what else to say, and I’m worried anything else I’d say would be trite.

Our Pink Christmas Tree
Originally uploaded by lilitu93.

Last year, my husband and I decided not to buy a real tree but instead to buy a fake tree. Not just any fake tree, mind you, but the tackiest, most fake tree possible. At first we considered a fibre-optic tree, but they are much too common now and just aren’t kitchy enough.

When I saw this pink tree at Argos, I knew I’d found the perfect tree for us. And we already had the perfect angel to go on top of a pink tree—Hello Kitty.

Italian mustard – packaging close-up
Originally uploaded by lilitu93.

I went to an Italian deli today and bought this mustard with “unique” artwork on its package. There’s not really much you can say about it, except my husband pointed out that it’s a good thing that it’s not mayonnaise.

Wife
Originally uploaded by TW.

I haven’t had time to blog lately–I’ve been busy working on the new tursa.com shopping cart, plus I’ve been swamped with work at my day job–but I haven’t abandoned Ramblin’ Rosen.

To tide my readers over until I have time for a longer post, here’s a picture of me taken by my husband.

Feathers 4,
originally uploaded by lilitu93.

Today I took some photos of fur and feather textures. I was inspired to do this by the Textures group on Flickr, since this month’s theme is textures that are soft to the touch.

This is one of my favourites of the photos I took today. It’s a close-up of my cockatiel Fred’s neck and shows three of the four colours on a standard tiel. It isn’t obvious at first what it’s a photo of, unless you know cockatiels well, and it really shows off the feather texture.

I have other photos I took today in my Textures photoset. One of the ones of Vic will be used in the CD art for the forthcoming Sol Invictus release, The Angel.

Two of the main symbols people associate with the Olympics, the torch relay and the five rings, are not ancient Greek, as is commonly assumed but were either created by or popularised by the Nazis according to this article on Newindpress.com. The torch relay was originally planned for the 1916 Berlin Games that were cancelled because of World War I, and Hitler was very keen for them to be used in the 1936 games as a testament to Aryan superiority:

Hitler, who admired the powerful imagery of Greek gods such as Zeus, wanted his Games to promote his belief in Aryan supremacy. The torch relay, memorialised in Leni Riefenstahl’s film Olympia, was part of the Nazi leader’s elaborate attempt to add myth, mystique and glamour to an Olympics intended to intimidate pre-world War II Europe. In Hitler’s eyes, the torch symbolised the perfection and victory of the German nation.

Of course, the black American runner and long-jumper Jesse Owens ruined Hitler’s plans to show off Aryan supremacy by winning four gold medals. And the torch relay is now an international event that promotes values like international brotherhood that the Nazis would have abhorred.

The five rings were also popularised during the 1936 Berlin Games, although they were originally used during the 1920 Games in Antwerp to symbolise the first five Olympics:

Riefenstahl, the Olympia filmmaker who also chronicled Hitler’s rise to power, had the rings carved into a stone altar at the ancient Greek city of Delphi, spawning the myth that they were a symbol dating back more than two millennia.

With Hitler’s influence, the rings became part of the Nazi pageantry at Berlin - and they’ve come to symbolise the Olympics ever since.

[Link courtesy of Explorator]

I hate spam! OK, I’m sure I’m not the only one, but I’ve recently had to change my email address that I’ve had for over eight years because the amount of spam I received had gotten ridiculous—I was getting thousands of spam emails a day, and each week it seemed to be increasing.

So as to avoid drowing in spam again, I no longer publish my email address on my website. Instead, I now have a web-based feedback form. There’s an icon linking to it below the Bloglines icon in the left-hand column on this page.

I hate having to keep my new email so private, as one of my favourite things about the Internet was the ease there used to be in contacting such a wide variety of people, but unfortunately, the spammers are ruining email for us all. I don’t know what the solution is to stop spam, but it will have to be stopped, since it is really destroying the use of email.

Recently at work, everyone in my team was asked to make a list of eight things people should know about him-/herself because the UK part of the team has a new manager starting soon, and it will be helpful for her to get to know everyone more quickly. I thought I’d post it here, as I thought it was a good, albeit work-safe, overview of me and my interests.

1. Languages: I love learning new foreign languages and am interested in linguistics in general. One of my BAs is in German, and I also have studied French and Dutch. My whole family has a gift for languages, and I’’m the only person in my family not to have studied Latin. I’’m also the only person in my family to have studied Dutch.

In the future, the modern language I most want to learn is Japanese, and the ancient languages I am most interested in are those from the Ancient Near East, especially Biblical Hebrew, Akkadian, Phoenician, and Sumerian.

2. Pets: I have a cat named Pussolini and two cockatiels named Fred and Vic. I’’ve been a cat lover since I was a child, but I only recently discovered how wonderful parrots are.

I hate to admit it, but I think my tiels are smarter than my cat.

3. Music: I play electric violin (as well as regular acoustic violin). I’’m not currently in a band but play off and on with Sleeping Pictures and Sol Invictus. I’’ve played violin since I was 5, and I also play keyboards sometimes.

My other BA is in Music Theory.

4. Big cats: Someday, I want to pet a leopard. I was watching a show on a big cat sanctuary, and one of the people who worked there was explaining how you can feel a leopard’s rosettes (the “’spots”’) when you pet them. So now I want to feel it for myself.

5. Nationality & residency: I’m American, but I live in England. This is the fourth country I’’ve lived in, including the US. I lived for 9 months in France when I was four, and I spent a year studying in Germany as a student.

I’’m originally from Kansas, and, yes, I have heard that Dorothy joke before.

6. Mythos: I am fascinated by myth, folklore and fairy tales, both in their original forms and modern retellings of them.

7. Gadgets: I have a Treo 600 (a mobile phone/Palm OS PDA in one), and I love it. I use it for all kinds of things, including reading books on it with eReader.

Before the Treo 600, I never thought I’’d want a phone/PDA combination, but I’’m now a convert. Only things I wish were better about it were that it was high resolution and had a decent camera (decent by phone/PDA standards, that is).

8. Décor: Last Christmas, my Christmas tree was a pink artificial tree with a winged Hello Kitty plushie as the angel on top.

I’ve made a couple of changes to this blog today. First, I upgraded to WordPress 1.2. One of the new features is a spam detector that prevents most spam from being automatically posted. Because of this, the blog is now set to post your comments automatically, and if a legit post is accidentally categorized as spam, I will approve it as soon as I can.

Also, you can now subscribe to Ramblin’ Rosen with Bloglines. This service is free and allows you to see headlines from all your favourite blogs and other sites with feeds in one place. If you want to subscribe to this site, just click on the Bloglines icon at the bottom of the righthand column.