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Notes

  • Jan. 18th, 2008 at 2:47 PM
Vanitas desk
owlfish
  • I have a set of minutes dated 16/01/20081. They're from the far future! I wonder if all the people listed in them are human beings as we would recognize them.

  • For all of you who are less obsessed (or, at least, not on the relevant mailing list), the 2008 Playmobil catalog is out. I want the exploding volcano with dinosaurs. I am not wholly convinced about the fairyland sets, although they come with nice flowers.

  • Thanks to a passing mention by purplecthulhu, I downloaded a trial of Scrivener yesterday and worked through the tutorial. My first impression is that I wish I'd had this to help manage writing my dissertation. On the downside, it reminds me of my perennial discontent with ways of managing reference databases. I started off with FileMaker, and gave up and just used text/word processing documents to manage mine. (FileMaker is still handy for other things though.) Why are bibliography management programs so expensive?

Comments

( 13 comments — Leave a comment )
darkling_dreams
Jan. 18th, 2008 02:58 pm (UTC)
Oooh, Playmobil! The Roman Colosseum is incredible. And I am still adoring of Noah's Ark.

Yeah, the Fairyland sets aren't doing it for me either. They are a bit too cutesey. The Fairy Tale sets look more interesting. The new circus is pretty cool too.
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owlfish
Jan. 18th, 2008 03:04 pm (UTC)
The Roman sets came out here in July. The only one I have so far is the sacrificial altar. (How could I resist!) I am very tempted by the Colosseum too, though. And Noah's Ark. And the mini magnetic sets, also out since last year, and still tempting.

I'd like the Fairy Tale sets more if I didn't already have so many of the figures they've used for them. The basic idea is inspired though.
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whatifoundthere
Jan. 19th, 2008 05:08 am (UTC)
SACRIFICIAL ALTAR WHAT

Dude, where can I get this? I don't see it under the "Roman" category on the main Playmobil web page. I MUST HAVE ONE!
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cliosfolly
Jan. 18th, 2008 03:01 pm (UTC)
Also the Coliseum is pretty nifty. I especially liked its viewing platforms with the columns. The fairyland flowers are also neat--you could stage a scene from Alice in Wonderland in the Queen of Hearts' garden with those, particularly the rosebush with red and white blooms.

Edited at 2008-01-18 03:01 pm (UTC)
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owlfish
Jan. 18th, 2008 03:16 pm (UTC)
I don't think I'm allowed to get the Colosseum until we have a house. Whenever that is.

Garden photos! I still need to take the Gawain ones. I may already have enough garden stuff to stage an Alice in Wonderland scene. (Although I don't own any of the bunny-headed people Playmobil make.)
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cliosfolly
Jan. 18th, 2008 05:11 pm (UTC)
Oh! Oh! You could do Wynnere and Wastore, I bet--I was almost drooling over Wynnere's description of Wastore's feast. It was meant to illustrate waste, but Wynnere described the foods a little too deliciously. You could have a scenario that's half Wynnere and half Wastore! Competing medieval economic theories, illustrated in Playmobil!

I'm looking forward to the Gawain photos whenever you have a chance.
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the_lady_lily
Jan. 18th, 2008 03:22 pm (UTC)
Rutgers offers free use of RefWorks to its students and faculty; they have training sessions on how to use it in February and March, but I'm not sure whether I want to go to that bother or just have it all in MSWord documents. I say this - I managed to write the MPhil essays and thesis fine working out of notebooks without any of this fancy referencing lark, but I do think having legible notes somewhere you know you can find them is a move forward rather than going 'which bloody notebook did I write that in?'
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rymenhild
Jan. 18th, 2008 04:02 pm (UTC)
I can't use any of the Windows equivalents of Scrivener because I keep my diss bibliography in a bibliography management program, and none of the alternative word processors out there seem to be compatible with EndNote. I would like to leave the world of Word, as soon as I find a solution that works with EndNote.
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purplecthulhu
Jan. 18th, 2008 07:19 pm (UTC)
I haven't bothered with bibliographic management ever since I had issues with BiBTex and my thesis. I just do it by hand in papers these days. Of course if I was doing a review article or a book things would be harder. But then I'd just go back to BiBTex and that's free.

Why do people persist in using useless word processors like Word for academic articles when TeX and LaTeX solved the problem years ago? And they do proper typesetting not the half-arsed mess that Word produces...
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jennybeast
Jan. 18th, 2008 08:35 pm (UTC)
I'm impressed that the dinosaurs have so many teeth, and yet look friendly and cheerful. I'm a fan of animals in the forest, but I suspect you already have all of those. I dig the fairyland flowers and tree as well. Can you stick the little animals from the mini set to the refrigerator? 'cause that would be inspired.
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theengineer
Jan. 18th, 2008 08:52 pm (UTC)
I want the exploding volcano with dinosaurs.

This set also features human explorers. The catalog doesn't make clear if this is a Lost World, the result of genetic experimentation, or if time travel is involved. We need to know this!
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intertext
Jan. 19th, 2008 12:49 am (UTC)
You had to post that catalogue, didn't you? I'm doomed. I want Rome. I love the SPQR trireme. And the Fantasy Wedding. And I rather fancy the hospital, but doubt that one could do much with it in SF/fantasy vein. Except perhaps a zombie movie or something. I like the pirates, too.
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noncalorsedumor
Jan. 19th, 2008 07:58 pm (UTC)
Oooh! May I ask a Playmobil question?

My husband got me a Playmobil advent calendar for Christmas, because I showed him the ones you'd considered getting for this year. :-) I was wondering: what do you put in the boxes on the calendar part? I'm not sure what to do with them.

It was SO MUCH FUN to assemble--I think I might get another one this coming December. :-D
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( 13 comments — Leave a comment )