The TwilightShadows

Due to “public demand” I have decided to post Elephants Dream here too. It is not as good looking as Big Buck Bunny, however it is interesting in many ways. Partly because of the open ended and rather mind bending story. The visual do take you on a journey through the mind. The other reason is that it is the worlds first Open Movie.

Enjoy!

Thobias

On a warm summers day you rarely feel like eating a lot. At least not for lunch. But the problem is, heat makes it even more important to both eat something and get fluid into the system. That’s why I want to share a favourite of mine: Gazpacho.

Gazpacho is a cold soup from the Southern region of Andalusia in Spain. It descends from an ancient Andalusian concoction based on a combination of stale bread, garlic, olive oil, salt, and vinegar — a cold breadsoup. With the Columbian Exchange beginning in 1492, the tomato and the bell pepper were brought to Europe, and are now widely used as a base for the soup.

Here is one recipe I found on Wikibooks (Disclaimer - it seems good, but I haven’t tried this recipe yet):

Gazpacho is a hearty soup that is served cold, making it a perfect way to cool down and replenish the body on a hot, summer day in Andalucía. This is the classic gazpacho recipe, but there are many other variations. Gazpacho is typically served along with the main course, or afterward. Some Spaniards serve it in a glass, as a beverage to accompany the meal.

Ingredients

• 1 lb /450 g tomatoes
• ½ lb / 225 g green peppers (bell pepper, capsicum)
• ½ cucumber
• a few cilantro leaves
• clove of garlic
• 2 oz / 50 g white bread, 2-3 days old (also optional, leave out for a thinner soup)
• ½ mild Spanish onion
• 1 tbsp white wine vinegar or sherry vinegar
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• ⅓ pt iced water
• sea salt and black pepper
• ice cubes

Optional

• ¼ chilli pepper, seeds removed

Garnish

• 1 tomato, skinned
• ½ green pepper
• ¼ peeled cucumber
• bread

Procedure

Skin the tomatoes and cut into quarters. Remove seeds and stalks from peppers. Peel the cucumber and cut into chunks. Tear up the bread and soak it in water for 30 minutes and then squeeze it dry. Cut up the onion.

Blend all the ingredients until roughly chopped, not too fine, because the soup should have texture and discernible vegetable bits.

[Here I just want to add that you don't have to blend it at all, you can just dice it finely, add the ingredients in a bowl and stir it till it starts to blend. In some ways I think that is to be preferred, as it often gets too smooth in a blender.]

Pour into large bowl with some ice, add salt and pepper. Then prepare the garnishes. Dice the bread and fry it in a little olive oil until brown. Chop the other vegetables finely. Serve in separate little bowls on the table, so that guests can sprinkle on their own toppings.

Serve chilled.

Eat and enjoy!

“I live on good soup, not on fine words.” - Moliere

Thobias

Blender is an Open Source 3D animation program with a lot of promise. But perhaps the most intressting thing about it that there is also an Open Source based moviemaking community around it. They have previously released Elephants Dream which was OK, but nothing special. However, the look and feel of this movie, Big Buck Bunny, is more or less on par with Pixar. There is hope for the Open community still!

If you want to know more about Blender, you can for instance listen to FLOSS Weekly, Ep. 25.

Enjoy!

Recently I found my self at a party in the north (well, Småland…) and after a while the subject turned to the meaning of the word druid. What does it mean to be a druid? Who decides who can call him/her self a druid? Does the word druid mean anything if it means different things to everyone? Neina recently blogged about all this, and I thought I’d add my two ¢ to the mix.

What does the word mean? This is a tricky question, even though it seems it would mean something like “the wise one” in a literal sense, even though we are not quite sure. But that is a general term if ever there was one. But it still offers an interesting thought. If it means that the person attached to that epithet is wise, that would suggest that you have to earn the title from someone. But who would that be? An election-style grove? Certainly. Given that the grove and/or order in question is anything like reasonable, getting your self chosen to become a druid should be a guarantee that you do hold some wisdom, at least in the eyes of the elders of that grove/order. In addition it could be an application style one as well, since the goal would be the same: screening. Possibly your friends could refer to you as “a wise one” as well, that is; society gives you the title, but needless to say, that is a lot less common these days…

So, it would seem that if you define “druid” as someone who is wise, then you can’t really give your self that title. But at the same time, I do think you could use it as a solitary for instance. That would mean though, that the literal meaning of druid means less to be wise. You can call your own person wise, but in the tradition of Socrates, that would be considered unwise… In the discussions at said party, most seem to hold the position that anyone could call them selves druids, as long as they were true druids. Needlessly to say, there is a flaw or two in that argument. Also they were very keen on separating wicca/witches and druids by saying that wiccans were much more dogmatic, needing paraphernalia and physical altars to do their thing. That is an issue for another day, as I do not agree.

Thinking about it, it doesn’t bother me that people call them selves druids. But, at the same time, the word needs to be defined in other ways. My thoughts on this would be that true persons would know if they can call them selves druids or not, but the world doesn’t work that way. Maybe the simple truth is that it has to be defined through deeds rather than definitions, at least in the solitary sense. If you do x you are a druid. What would x be? Well, I would list a certain respect for nature, connections with the spirits and gods, a will to know and learn etc. But it is still not enough of a definition.

Does this render the word meaningless? Yes, and no. In essence it could be argued that all the words we use are meaningless. They mean what they mean, because we have decided to decipher them in common ways. So to complicate matters further, I think that you can call your self a druid, and also say that someone else is not a druid, provided that you also define what you mean by being or not being a druid. 

Problems will arise in the confrontation between solitaries and grove members. I think the only way to solve that gordian knot, is to add “solitary” or “initiatory” as an epithet to the title.

Thus, in conclusion, I think that anyone can call him/her self a druid, but they need to realise that it is a complicated term, and they need to be ready to answer questions about why they call them selves that. If the answer is simply: “I’m initiated”, then fair cop to you. But if it’s you are a solitary druid, be prepared to talk of your deeds.

Obviously there are other questions surrounding this issue, and not everyone would agree with me. But this is a start. Let’s not forget, that even though the seeds of the neopagan tree are old, the tree it self is actually, at best, only circa a hundred years old. And maybe we need to accept that even if a tree has only one stem, it does have plenty of branches and roots.

/ | \ Thobias

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

In listening to the latest episode of This Week in Tech, I was at first horrified that I would not get my normal weekly dose of half-arsed, funny but still very informative insights into the world of tech and Web 2.0. The tone was serious! Well, I still clung on, and in many ways this must have been one of the more interesting Twits in a long while.

Joining the regulars, this time Leo (of course) and Dvorak (.org/blog…) was the able hands of Denise Howell of This Week in Law fame; and a special guest: Brewster Kahle. Who is he? He’s none other than the guy behind archive.org and as such one of the first persons with foresight enough to realise that not all things are printed anymore, and what that will mean for the possibilities of future research.

Anyway, this time around the round table concerned among other things the FBI screwing up in their dealings with archive.org; dealings it’s very doubtful if they should have commenced with to begin with. But the really tasty bit was the scanning and distribution of printed works over the Internet. Archive.org have in conjunction with such big shots as Microsoft and Yahoo! scanned thousands of books and published them for free on the Internet. Now, recently MS and the big Y decided to pull out, but the project will go on as a public service instead. (Nothing but kudos to MS and Y in spite, they poured millions into a project that they from a business perspective shouldn’t have undertaken in the first place.)

And this is where it starts to get interesting for the rest of us. Where are the European initiatives to something of this kind? We, collectively, own some of the finest historical collections in the world in everything from books and manuscripts to records and art. Why is this not on archive.org or similar services? Why, since a lot of our stuff is owned and produced by the public, can’t the public get at it in a user friendly and informative way? Mind you, the few euro efforts you sometimes find often have a very tangy googlesk feel to them, meaning ugly and not very useful. (As we all know, Google Books is nothing short of a cruel joke on humanity.) But just think of the possibilities, the combined history of Europe (this is from a Euro perspective, but obviously other parts of the world would benefit from the same thing) all tagged and searchable on the Internet. It’s a wet dream for me as a historian.

Of course you already can get a lot of stuff via, for instance, archive.org and the fairly new project Open Library, but there is one snag: what’s on there is predominantly in English. As a Scandinavian I might find that of little or no use depending on what I am looking for. So, to concentrate on my neck of the woods, I urge the governments of Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Finland to digitise books in the same general fashion as archive.org. Preferably add it to archive.org for free while you’re at it! It is a shame that we, as some of the most technological nations in the world, seem to have completely abandon our history just because it’s not in MS Word format. This needs to stop now! Our children, nay the world, deserves it. Otherwise, we will get a truly horrible generation; and we will thoroughly deserve…

For books are more than books, they are the life
The very heart and core of ages past,
The reason why men lived and worked and died,
The essence and quintessence of their lives. - Amy Lowell

Thobias

P.s. To show what can be done with these scans, I want to ask you to have a look at this Cinderella, or this edition of Alice in Wonderland. Both are with archive.org, but the latter found via Open Library. They are beautiful and nothing short of fantastic!

In a continuing theme of testing different things with wordpress, I decided to take VodPod for a spin. This is because, while I do like the blogging system that is wordpress, I find it extremely annoying that you can’t post Flash nor JavaScript. To a certain extent this is alleviated by VodPod. It’s a service that allows you to post just about any embedded flash video to your blog.

For this test I have chosen to do a screening of a Hammer-style horror film called Horror Express. It’s from 1973 and stars Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee and it is directed by Eugenio Martín. (Also see the Wikipedia entry.)

Plot (from IMDb): 

“An English anthropologist (Christopher Lee) has discovered a frozen monster in the frozen wastes of Manchuria which he believes may be the Missing Link. He brings the creature back to Europe aboard a trans-Siberian express, but during the trip the monster thaws out and starts to butcher the passengers one by one.“

It gets a 6.3 rating at IMDb, and I am looking forward to my own first screening, along with you, dear reader. Shall we?

from www.archive.org posted with vodpod

Inspector Mirov: The two of you together. That’s fine. But what if one of you is the monster?

Dr. Wells: Monster?? We’re British, you know!

Thobias

Movie courtesy of the Internet Archive.

Ok, I know it’s not mother’s day (in Sweden) until this Sunday. But, I found this today and if I do not act now, I’ll forget. And to everyone else: no, the TwilightShadows is not turning into another Cuteoverload.com, this is just for my mum. She adores Scottish Folds!

Happy Mother’s Day mum! I love you.

An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy.  ~Spanish Proverb

Thobias

This is just a test to see how I can incorporate music and other media links to blog posts here on the Twilight. I hope you enjoy this Open Source Audio from the Internet Archive: Cry of the Celts.

May the road rise up to meet you!

Thobias

As you may have noted by now, I’ve been tinkering with the visuals of the site. Well, those things I can do with a free account. Anyway, I’ve added some endorsements, some links and a credits space. Just so you can check out stuff I like.

There is also the new TwilightShadows wiki at zoho.com, which I will be expanding as we go along. It is in its infancy right now, and I’m not sure what will come of it, but something will, I’m sure.

Well, that’s it for this short update.

The Owl of Minerva flys in the TwilightShadows

Thobias

I just wanted to share the trailer for a movie that seems to be the animated Halloween movie of the year: Igor. Let’s hope it’s any good. After all it has John Cusack, Steve Buscemi and John Cleese as voice actors. (Yes, that’s a good thing…)

“Pull the switch!“ “Yeth, mathter!“

Thobias