bsag's micro blog

I’m a huge fan of C.J. Sansom’s ‘Shardlake’ books, and have read all the previous books in the series. His writing seems to get better with each book, and the Tudor world in which you are immersed gets richer. His characters have deepened and matured too. I’m glad Jack Barak is back, as I love his tough chippiness. It’s such a good foil for Shardlake’s quiet seriousness.

This book is set in 1549 and tells the story of the peasants’ rebellion in Norwich, lead by Robert Kett. My knowledge of history is not great, admittedly, but I had never heard of this rebellion before. The detail was fascinating, and the way that the plot strands of the crime that Shardlake has to solve weaves in with the historical events is superb. As ever, the plots are gripping, even over such a long book. It is also very moving in places, because we get so fond of many of the characters. I had a particular fascination with this book, because part of it is set in Wymondham and Hethersett, where I spent quite a bit of time as a child, visiting friends and relatives.

By the way, don’t skip the Historical Note at the end. It is fascinating to see how much of the action (and some of the characters) was based on historical facts. It is an incredible piece of work.

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Growing up in Suffolk, Nathaniel Mann, heard stories passed down by his grandma about a tradition of the village Rough Band, made up of pots and pans, iron and metal implements, including meat cleavers - delivering a sort of sonic warning to anyone stepping out of line, committing adultery or behaving in way considered unacceptable.

As part of the Avant-Folk trio ‘Dead Rat Orchestra’, Mann, a singer and composer, has long been playing music with strange percussive instruments. Coming across an old meat cleaver in his dad’s garage he was inspired to make a set of cleavers to play music on - so turned to a bronze bladesmith to help turn meat cleavers into musical gold.

I listened to this yesterday and found it fascinating. The sound that comes out of the bronze cleaver when struck is eerie and beautiful, and I love the poetic terms used in smithing like ‘The Cry of the Tin’. There are so many interesting layers here, including the social standing of blacksmiths (respected, but feared and mistrusted), the soundscape of traditional crafts, old traditions of social justice through ‘Rough Music’, and work songs from around the world. If you can access BBC radio, I definitely recommend giving this a listen.

BBC Radio 4: Dead Rats and Meat Cleavers →

Mr. Bsag is a printmaker, and often submits his work to open exhibitions. The requirements for this process are many and varied, but these days the initial round of selection usually involves submitting a digital image of your work. He now has a copy stand, and so he takes a photo of his prints. This is a tricky process in itself, because his engravings are often small in size, so difficult to capture in a photograph at an appropriate level of detail.

But then the fun starts. Every submission seems to require a different combination of DPI, maximum or minimum image dimensions, maximum file size and so on. Over the years we’ve tried a range of image editing applications to process the images for submission. It seems as if it would be an easy task, but (for example) the ones that allow you to set a specific DPI don’t give you a live estimate of file size, so you have to use trial and error to optimise the pixel dimensions and quality while remaining within the file size limits.

What I really want is an editor that would allow me to enter filter-like constraints (less than 3 MB, longest edge more than 1920 px, 96 DPI) and it would then pick the combination of variables that maximised image size and quality while satisfying all the other constraints. If anyone knows of anything like that, do let me know!

I enjoyed this as much as the first. This section of the Marvel Universe has been a playful, creative, action-filled joy, and this second instalment was no exception. The rapid changes in scale at unexpected moments really tickle me, as did the drum-kit playing giant ant.

International Trade Secretary, 2017: replicating the 40 free trade deals that the UK currently benefits from via the EU before Brexit? Should be simple to just roll them over.

Me (knowing nothing about International Trade deals, free or not): 🤔 Really? Because it seems as if it might be kind of complicated.

ITS, 2 months from Brexit date: So far we’ve completed 0/40 deals, but we’re really hopeful that it will all work out!

Me: YOU ASTONISH ME.

Over on the main blog, I wrote about my TWSBI Go fountain pen a few months ago. I had almost emptied its fairly substantial ink reserve, so yesterday I cleaned and refilled it. It was as easy as I had hoped.

Squish out the remaining ink by depressing the spring, dunk the nib in some clean water and squish, squish, squish a few times, and — hey presto! — you have one clean pen. Dunk the nib in the ink bottle and squish again (a bit more slowly this time), and you have a full pen.

I love my Lamy 2000 to bits, but my heart sinks every time I’m faced with laboriously turning the piston knob about 3 million times when I need to clean the pen. The Go is stupidly easy to clean and ridiculously fun.