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May 04, 2006
~Riddle me with glee.~
Just a short post tonight, I was busy with a Cisco lab practical (a tweaked version of one of the NetMasterClass practice scenarios for the CCIE). On the other hand, with that I am done with what's been a somewhat busy semester, so I'll have a few weeks during which I might be able to do some housekeeping, like totally rewriting the CSS stylesheet. I think I've figured out a way to make this blog a little more legible.
Here's a concise article about John Donne: via
Donne was more than a poet. He was also a politician, a pop star of sorts, a man of God and a man of passion, a young rake and an inspired preacher. Satire and seriousness run through his poetry like veins through marble. In both his life and works, Donne represents a particularly British ideal: the adventurer-poet, the pirate-priest, exploring intellect and emotion, the sacred and the secular. Even his failings seem peculiarly British: a charm alloyed with arrogance, self-recrimination and self-irony.
His poetry is so deeply embedded in our culture that it has become cliché, the highest honour. His words are so well known that most people don’t realise they know them: “No man is an island”, “For whom the bell tolls”. “Catch a falling star,” warbled Perry Como, four centuries after Donne wrote: “Go, and catch a falling star . . . teach me to hear mermaids singing.”
Donne’s poems struggle with the paradoxes and perplexities of the things that have always mattered: love, sex, death, truth and belief. His lyrics were set to music by contemporaries, sung to the accompaniment of the cittern (a sort of lute) and played in barber shops while customers were shaved. The poems were passed on from hand to hand; various composers offered different musical versions. A 16th-century Bob Dylan, Donne’s new releases were downloaded by fans, copied and covered, just like a modern album.
He lived, at first, a rackety, rock star life. Born a Catholic, he saw his brother perish in prison, and an uncle hanged, drawn and quartered for his religion. He sailed on the 1596 naval expedition against Cádiz. He knocked around London in his show-off hat and frilly shirt, went to the theatre, wrote exquisite poetry and fell in love, a lot. The Newbattle portrait may well be an elaborate chat-up routine, a love letter in paint: Donne strikes the pose of the melancholy lover, and in the corner is written the inscription illumine tenebr(as) nostras domina: oh lady, illuminate our darkness. History does not relate who the lady was, or whether she succumbed.
In a scandal that would sit easily in the 21st century, Donne eloped with the teenage Anne More, the niece of his powerful patron. Her outraged father had the poet imprisoned. With bleak wit Donne wrote: “John Donne, Anne Donne, Undone.” Their marriage produced 12 children and some of the most delightful love poetry in any language: To His Mistress Going to Bed, The Flea and A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning. When Anne died, at the age of 33, Donne was heart- broken: “She whom I lov’d hath paid her last debt . . .” He is thought never to have written another love poem. By then, he had been adopted into the Establishment: he renounced Catholicism, become MP for Brackley, took holy orders and ended up as Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral.
Like an ageing star, the respectable churchman looked back on the Newbattle portrait as a memento of a libertine youth, with a little embarrassment perhaps, but also a hint of pride: “That Picture of myne wch is taken in Shaddowes and was made very many yeares before I was of this profession.”
The Nintendo DS Lite is only going to cost $130. This is awesome. Makes it oh-so-much-more irresistible for those of us who've got the chunky old DS.
The DS Lite is 42% smaller in volume and 21% lighter than the original DS. Also differing from its bulky brother are the start and select buttons, which are now placed underneath the A/B/X/Y buttons. The sturdier and thicker DS stylus now attaches to the system sideways, and the microphone has been relocated to the hinge on the center of the system. The power button, now relocated to the right side of the system, is now a switch to address gamers' complaints regarding the accidental presses during gameplay.
More importantly, DS Lite's screens have been significantly upgraded, allowing up to four different levels of brightness to increase battery efficiency. Amazingly, the lowest setting on the back-lit DS Lite still outshines the original DS. According to report estimates, the battery life for the system is 15-19 hours on the lowest brightness setting, 5-8 hours on the highest. The screens also now touch when the system is closed, which now appears in a more secure clam-shell design (similar to that of the GBA SP). Of course, backward functionality is maintained with the DS Lite, as GBA cartridges can be played from the bottom side of the system by opening the "placeholder cartridge", which can be used to maintain the system's sleekness.
Wallet Notes is a pen and notepad the size of a credit card for 13 bucks. via
Posted by Jon Rubin at May 4, 2006 11:56 PM
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