Thursday, March 29

Weirder & more weirder

Okay, the last about emails for now, but this one is really strange, (on at least two counts)

“Hi. My Dad’s cousin in New Zealand emailed me about your blog and when I looked at it, I saw your stone, the one like ET. I have one too. I live in Tasmania (the important bit at the bottom of Australia) and my home is also between two beaches.
Sandy”

Well, how can she have a stone exactly the same as mine, it just a piece of stone, it has definite markings. You can see for yourselves.
[http://beachcomber-alex.blogspot.com/2007/03/todays-find-actually-it-was-day-before.html]

And secondly, like the email from Minnesota, there is nothing on the map showing a visitor from Tasmania. I have thought and thought about this, and I wonder if it is to do with where the ISP is located. I might look into this a bit later.

Judgement of Solomon

I've had a whole raft (I looked that word up, so I know it is right) of emails about the koumboloi!

The first one explained that she was the owner of the koumboloi, she’d lost it while swimming and could I kindly return it to her. There was an address in California (but it wasn't signed Animal Liberator - see previous blog).

Of course, when I opned this, I felt guitly and wondered if I should post it off, or what I should do, then.......

The next email was from a man in Sydney, who said his wife had lost the koumboloi, and they’d appreciate its return. They’d refund the postage.

The third email claiming the koumboloi came from Minnesota (and I can't understand this, because there is nothing on my visitors' map to indicate someone from Minnesota has visited.

So I stopped feeling guilty, because how could I tell who it belonged to, if anyone. I replied to each of them:

“Unfortunately so many people, from so many different countries, have claimed the koumboloi, I feel I am unable to return it to the right person.”

I've even saved it to my drafts, so I can use it again in case I get any more similar emails.

Well, anyway, I was telling my Mitera about this and she said I should add to the reply:
rider “My only other option is to exercise the judgement of Solomon, and divide it amongst you.”

Then she said “Just for the fun of it I’ll get your Father to bring one home from the hotel gift shop, and if anyone accepts Solomon’s judgement we’ll send them a single bead.”

Weird email!

Someone has emailed me complaing about the dead seahorse - so, I can't help that it was dead when I found it! What am I expected to do about it?

But please, keep the mail coming, it makes interesting reading.

So thanks, Animal Liberator, of California

Sunday, March 25

Six Degrees of Separation

When I was telling my parents about this blog (well, I was telling them about the IT project, which meant telling them about this blog) I said that I was going to email friends and family to email their friends and family asking people to visit the blog, so I could build up a chain of visitors, hopefully from across the world.

My Mitera said this reminded her something she had heard, about everyone being related within six links. My Pateras said she had it wrong, and she was thinking of a BBC programme they had seen. But he said there was a theory called "six degrees of separation." I thought this might be quite interesting, and I might be able to track something from the emails (If anyone reading this blog notices any evidence, please let me know. Ευχαριστώ πάρα πολύ.)

I went webwise to see what else I could find out.

"Six degrees of separation is the theory that anyone on the planet can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than five intermediaries."
http://digbig.com/4sbac [Points please, Sir - shortened url]

E-mail Study Corroborates Six Degrees of Separation
By Dan Cho
" Chances are, you don’t personally know any Australian policemen, Estonian archival inspectors or Norwegian army veterinarians. But you could probably get in touch with one of these distant individuals through a friend, or a friend of a friend, or a friend of your friend’s friend. The notion that every person on the planet is separated from everyone else by a chain of about six people has been around for some time. A report published today in the journal Science provides experimental data from the Internet in support of that claim."

And if you want to put it to the test - http://smallworld.columbia.edu/

Saturday, March 24

Today's Find (Actually it was the day before I started the new blog, but I wanted to be dramatic.)

I had a sort of adventure this morning. I was on the beach at Skouthaki. The sky was grey and threatening, and the grey roiling sea, breaking on the wide curve of shingle that formed the shoreline. (Hope my English Language tutor looks at this, maybe I can score some marks there, as well!) I love it when the weather is like that, as long as I am warm.

I was counting the waves because, according to tradition every seventh wave is bigger, but I didn't know when to start counting? I thought I'd solved it, I just had to wait for an extra big wave, that would be number seven, then start counting from the next one. Flawed logic, as my Pitera would no doubt be quick to point out. How could I know that the next wave after the one I thought the biggest, wouldn’t be even bigger.

Then this wave came in, bigger than all the rest. There was a bird, black against the sky, screeching as if in warning. I felt sort of weird. And the next moment I must have looked sort of weird, flat on my back with the wave trying to wash me back out to sea. I was trying to empty the water out of my boots, standing on one foot, and shaking out the other boot. Something really painful hit my foot (the bootless one) and in my shock I dropped the boot and another wave grabbed it and tried to carry it out to sea.

Once I'd retrieved the boot, I started looking around to see if I could see what it was that had fallen out of my boot. And then, in the water, I saw it!

Friday, March 23

Κούκλες ανησυχίας

See, you learn things all the time. Had trouble uploading this photo into the last blog, because I hadn't resized it, (at least, I think that was the reason,) so now it gets a blog entry to itself, again, with many thanks.


Good News & Bad!

The good news is that my IT tutor has approved my submission for my project, the bad news is that I foolishly submitted it before cross-checking with the old blog, so I promised several things that I will have to cover for in some way. I could have played around with the posting dates but decided not to mess with them. I hope people (well, my IT tutor at least,) will just ignore them.

Update: more good news.
It urns out my old blog had at least one visitor; she (I think it is a she, apologies if not) tried to visit the old blog, couldn't find it (I told you I had messed it up!) and actually searched to find the new one. (The titles were/are similar!) Anyway, she has kindly sent me a photo of her worry dolls, (Σας ευχαριστούμε) because the photo I used before I had copied from the web, and as I said, I am being careful not to do that again!

Now of course you are asking - why did I mention worry dolls at all. I am sure you can work it out! All answers in an email! (No prizes)

Wednesday, March 21

Geneology, and other things

Was just thinking as I signed in that it would be quite good fun (and look good in the project report!) if people with a similar surname doing family history came across the blog, so I have added variations on the transliteration of the surname as keywords.

Old Blog
This had photos of things I found on the shore (Beachcomber, nai;) I had photos of a dead seahorse I found dried out on the sand at Nausicaa, lots of different bits of driftwood, some strangely shapped stones, and different coloured stones. Photos of sunsets and the olive groves and rocks above Skouthaki, that kind of thing. Just things I liked, I don't know if anyone ever visted the blog. (This time I will know, because I have included a map to record where visitors come from - another point for my project.)

Probably the best thing was the koumboloi - (the one I said yesterday, that I can't find the picture). I found it very early one hot morning. There was no-one around and the light was a bright, shining white, the world seemed to be waiting for something to happen - expectancy, that's the word. I walked round from our beach to Nausicaa Plaz. I waded across little bays and through rockpools, and the water soon felt quite warm. I was wading along the watermark, just looking about, in the water too, seeing if anything had washed up, and I saw this flash of blue in the water. (That just gave me a great idea - more good marks for the project.) I had to feel around in the sand, which eddied up so I couldn't see, but then I felt the beads, and I pulled them out, they were still a brilliant blue, and on the end was a flat blue stone, painted with a yellow and white eye. It looks quite evil, but really it is meant to protect you from evil.

So later on I took this great photo of Laki, who's a fisherman, and looks old, brown, with a cap on his head, just as he should. He was sitting on the edge of his boat which had the same (well, similar) eye painted on it, and he was playing with the koumboloi. I managed to get the boat's eye in, as well as the koumboloi, quite clearly. And now I can't find it, the photo, that is, but then if I could, I wouldn't have thought of linking to a photo on the web (not downloaidng it, Ο κ. δικηγόρος).

Sometime later
So, alright, I thought it was a good idea, but when I did an image search I got 733 hits, so I started looking through them and couldn't find anything like mine, so then I did a search on 'komboloi blue' and got 146 hits, but none of them look like the one I found, which had blue glass beads, silver links, and the matia on a separate little strand. So I've linked (above, under flash of blue, to a matia which is nearly like mine, although mine has a yellow iris, and there is komboloi on the same page, though not the right size, colour or what have you.

So I promise I will get around to photographing, or maybe scanning, mine again later, and posting it. (If you check the text and tags you might notice I've been quite clever, or you might not, or you might think it is simply commonsense.)

Tuesday, March 20

Trials & tribulations

I was going to try and get some of the stuff from my old blog into here, so at least it has some content, but some of my images are ones I took off the web, and I have had an email from one of my classmates in England, telling me that lots of people are being threatened with lawyers' letters, because they have downloaded images.

In one way this is good, because I can add it to the report on blogging, gives me more to say, but it means it will take me longer to get entries on. And I had a great photo of a koumboloi, which I really wanted to include, but I can't find it now - I've just had a quick scroll through Picasa and it isn't there. I will try and write more about that tomorrow.

I didn't use any keywords on yesterday's entry, so I think I will go back and edit that. That will be another element to document! I think I am doing quite well on that front. But I must get some content, so I can start sending out the emails to ask people to look at it. The idea is that they will then email their contacts, and hopefully it will grow like a ripple in a pond, or a wave in the ocean.

Monday, March 19

The first day of a new blog......

I woke up while it was still dark, and remembered I had to do an IT holiday project. At first I couldn't think of anything, but then I thought "my blog". I had to write a proposal, and in it I put I would be using keywords. Only after I had sent it off to the tutor, I realised my blog doesn't do keywords! (Or tags, labels, whatever you want to call them.) I tried to move the blog but must have done something wrong, so I've started again.

I wanted to use beach sort of colours, to reflect the content but couldn't find a good colour for hyperlinks. I may have to change it later.

There were some things in my old blog I really liked, so when I get time I will do them again.