Tag: From my diary

I am just plodding along OCR-ing Ibn Abi Usaibia.  I was doing a few pages just now after lunch, and I saw page number 254 at the foot of a page that I had just completed.  So I must be approximately a quarter of the way through.  A long way to go yet, of course.

An order for three signed copies of my Eusebius: Gospel Problems and Solutions has come in, which I am dealing with, and is very welcome, of course.

Nearly all the sales of the book are through Amazon, and I don’t have any stock on my floor (thank goodness).  But I bought a box of 20 copies to take to the Oxford Patristics Conference back in August, and never unpacked them even.  However it seems that you don’t get that many sales as such at conferences, and I brought nearly all of them back, still in the box.  This was a bit depressing, but orders direct to me are currently being fulfilled from that box.  It’s interesting watching the box of copies of the paperback get steadily emptier! It’s a salutary reminder that the sales are likely to be constant rather than exciting.

The book seems to be well received by those who have seen it, and the professional reviews will be interesting to see as well. 

The British Library demanded a free copy under the law in the UK which requires copies to be sent to the copyright libraries on request.  Recently the other five decided they wanted free copies too, drat them. 

Every year, I look forward to a couple of things as the evenings draw in, and the mornings begin with frost in the air.

The first of these is that, mysteriously, men appear in the town square on Saturday mornings who sell roast chestnuts.

Admittedly in my own town, they don’t bother to get set up much before noon, so I rarely get to have any.  I’ve been and gone by then!

The best street vendors are in London, where the quick turnover means that all the chestnuts are well-cooked.

But still, it’s something I look forward to.  What childhood memory they evoke I cannot say, but clearly there is something.

You can’t eat too many — they contain something poisonous, I believe. 

But nevertheless, the charcoaled items will be consumed by me this winter, if at all possible.

The other items to which I look forward are also seasonal.  I will welcome the arrival of the new season’s brussell sprouts.  You have to cook these rather exactly — 8 of them, in boiling water for precisely 8 minutes and not as second longer — but they taste good when fresh.  When I had Christmas alone, as I did for a couple of years recently, they formed part of the seasonal meal.

The shorter days do tend to leave us all feeling a bit strange, and a bit jet-lagged.  It can be a sad time too, for those sensitive enough to feel the change of season but not perceptive enough to realise the source of their moods.  But there are good things to be had, and we need to try to enjoy them.

Today I sent off 50 copies of the leaflet promoting the Eusebius book to someone who can make use of them at a conference next week.  I also heard from the translator of the Coptic section of the book, who has some suggestions for improvements.  This will probably become a list of errata — although in fact they’re not errors as such.  I’ll probably host the list here.

An email arrived yesterday with a draft translation of the portion of John the Lydian’s On the Roman Months IV which deals with November.  I responded with my (few) comments — it was really rather super, and excellently footnoted, as you will doubtless see in due course.

I’m still working on digitising the English translation of Ibn Abi Usaibia.  The photographs that I have were done in stages, at somewhat different resolutions and so on.  I’ve just moved into a chunk of 300+ photos.  That’s rather daunting to start in on, when you can only do a few pages an evening.  I spent some time last night peeling off the first 40, and then the next 40 pages into separate FineReader projects, so I could work on the pages in that form.  You get a feeling of achievement when you finish a “project”, and 40 pages is not nearly so oppressive as 350!  When I’m at home, and can spend hours and hours on proofing, of course, it’s different.  In the end it’s all about ways to keep your motivation going. 

This evening I OCR’d some stuff about early Islamic physicians.  It consists mainly of gossipy stories of the various people.  It was all very well to be the favourite physician of Haroun al-Rashid, the Caliph of the Arabian nights; but when the latter fell into his fatal illness, his favourite physician soon ended up observing events from a dungeon!  Those who live by the favour of a capricious oriental despot have no security of property, nor life.

A very interesting article by Alin Suciu reveals an unnoticed fragment of the Coptic translation of Revelation.  As with the Greek world, Coptic writers such as Shenoute seldom refer to the work, it seems.

Here I’m continuing with the OCR of Ibn Abi Usaibia. 

I’ve just completed another 50 pages of the unpublished English translation of the 13th century Arabic writer Ibn Abi Usaibia’s dictionary of medical writers.  Thankfully he has now reached Galen.  It was the material on Galen that led me to look at this work.  It’s much more interesting than the material which has preceded it.

The sun is still shining, but I keep wanting to go to sleep.  The winter sun doesn’t give as much light, it seems.

The change of season is at long last perceptible, and for the last two or three days it has actually felt like autumn for the first time.  The bright warm weather has concealed the fact that the nights are drawing in, but now, suddenly, it is evident.  Waking early one morning by chance, at 6:30, I find that it is only just light, after many months of bright sunshine at that hour.  This morning for the first time I put the heating on.

It is also suddenly colder outside, some 10 degrees colder than it was last weekend.  This morning I looked out to condensation on the car and on the grass and on the inside of the window.  The hour change is only two weeks away.

The change in the light level has left everyone in my office yawning this week, as our bodies attempt to adjust to the new conditions.  In truth I find that the next 8-9 weeks always leave me feeling somewhat jet-lagged, as the days get shorter quickly.

But it also means that winter pursuits are becoming practicable.  It no longer seems like a waste of a nice day to get up this morning and spend an hour on the computer, OCRing Ibn Abi Usaibia, and correcting the results in Finereader 10.  Indeed I have done just that, with great satisfaction.

The sun is low this Saturday morning, but the sky is now blue and  the sun bright on the house opposite.  So I think that I had better get ready to go out!

I learn today that an edition of the Coptic text of the life of Samuel of Kalamoun does exist, with English translation.  It was edited by Anthony Alcock, and published in 1983 in Warminster by Aris & Phillips, ISBN 0856682195.  It is useful to know it exists.  According to COPAC, it is based on his 1972 D.Phil. thesis at Oxford, which was a critical text of the manuscript, Pierpont Morgan ms. Coptic 578.

Dr Alcock also worked on the 4th century Coptic texts from the Kellis excavations, of which volume 1 was published in 2001 and volume 2 is yet (sigh) to appear, as well as a range of other interesting coptica.

I need to think some more about Coptic material.  I’d still like to get more work done on the De Lagarde catena, and there must be other Coptic texts which could usefully go online.

Tonight I completed scanning another 50 pages of the English translation of Ibn Abi Usaibia.  That makes a total of 100 so far.  900 to go!  It’s slow, because my current job leaves me very tired every evening; but we’ll get there.  I started at the beginning of chapter 1, but there is some prefatory matter, mostly rather blurry, which I left to one side, in order to get a bit of velocity with stuff that wasn’t so difficult.  But I’ve started in on that this evening.

There is sad news from Egypt, where the overthrow of Mubarak has led Islamic groups to feel that they can now attack the Coptic Christians with impunity.  Several churches have been burned.  Last night the Copts demonstrated against these attacks, and were themselves attacked by the security forces.   The political instability of Egypt is evident, even now.  

I fear that the Egyptians will come to look back on the days of Mubarak as days of peace and plenty, compared to what may happen.  Little worse is alleged against him than that he grew rich from being president, and a coterie of hangers-on exploited their position.  Corruption is always damnable, and it is the curse of the region.  But Mubarak at least kept Egypt from becoming involved in the pointless wars of the Arab world, and allowed a generation to grow up in peace.  In the end it was the rise in food prices that brought him down, I suspect.  But just changing leader won’t fix that problem, and unless it is dealt with, I don’t see how any regime can be stable.  Nothing will stop his replacements from being equally corrupt, and probably far more quarrelsome.  Let us hope that it all turns out OK.

Following the links on other blogs usually leads you to tedious nutters, although not the ones that lead here.  Obviously.

One such spin of the chamber on the roulette revolver brought me to the Bloggess blog, and this delightful post.

A friend of mine was being hassled by assholes, so I made him this card.  It’s a quote by Plato.  But updated for our times:

The original links through to a greeting card version.

You all know how I feel about “quotations” that don’t have a reference on them.  They’re usually bogus.  Nor am I the first to question this one: Quote Investigator did some digging, although he didn’t get anywhere really. 

A search on Google Books indicates nothing before the late 90’s.  Some thought it was by Philo of Alexandria.  The real origin, I fear, is lost.