Archive for June, 2006

Frans Masereel : Passionate Journey

Sunday, June 11th, 2006
Pages from Passionate Journey I first chanced upon the work of Frans Masereel (1889-1972) some 20 years ago, a copy of Passionate Journey (1919), a wordless, graphic novel in 165 woodcuts, published by Subterráneo Press, and I still find it an inspiring read. Highly recommended.

Graphic Witness, a site dedicated to social commentary through graphic imagery, have made available 2 complete publications from Masereel: Die Stadt (The City) (1925), and Landschaften und Stimmungen (Landscapes and Voices) (1929).

On the left I have reproduced a selection of pages from Passionate Journey, without giving away too much of the story.

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Posted in Books/Magazines/Printed Papers, Culture/Politics | Leave a comment (2) »

Keith Thomas – Religion And The Decline Of Magic, Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England

Wednesday, June 7th, 2006
Keith Thomas - Religion And The Decline Of Magic, Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England Keith Thomas – Religion And The Decline Of Magic, Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England
[Penguin 1991]

Witchcraft, astrology, divination and every kind of popular magic flourished in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from the belief that a blessed amulet of wax could prevent the assaults of the Devil to the use of charms to recover stolen goods. At the same time the Protestant Reformation attempted to take the magic out of religion, and scientists were developing new explanations of the universe. Keith Thomas’s classic analysis of beliefs held on every level of English society begins with the collapse of the medieval church and ends with the changing intellectual atmosphere around 1700, when science and rationalism began to challenge the older systems of belief.

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Michael Kasper – The Shapes And Spacing Of The Letters, Verbo-Visual Non-Fiction

Wednesday, June 7th, 2006
Michael Kasper - The Shapes And Spacing Of The Letters, Verbo-Visual Non-Fiction Michael Kasper – The Shapes And Spacing Of The Letters, Verbo-Visual Non-Fiction
Illustrated Essays
[The London Institute of 'Pataphysics 133 EP / highmoonoon 2004]

"…skywriting is one place where visual and verbal imagery together make up the art…the shapes and spacing of the letters (taking into account the wind), the color of the vapor trail against a blue sky…and the message."

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Too fresh for freshmeat.net

Tuesday, June 6th, 2006

Yesterday Sylpheed-Claws version 2.2.1 was released. This was a bug-fix release from the stable branch, details of the fixes can be found in the release notes. As per usual, I updated the freshmeat.net project listing.

Today we discovered (and fixed) a failing in the URI check which protects against phishing attacks, and, feeling that this was nasty enough, we promptly released version 2.2.2, (release notes). So I duly updated the freshmeat.net project page again. Shortly afterwards I received a mail from freshmeat saying, 'Since this project has had a front page announcement within the last few days, this second release will not appear on the front page'. We're too fresh for freshmeat!!

UPDATE: It seemed strange that a project could be too fresh to be included on the front page, but the release announcement has also not been included in the daily freshmeat newsletter, that just doesn't seem right.
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Posted in Claws Mail, Software | Leave a comment (1) »