Author Archives: dgm

About dgm

Former IT professional, previously a digital archiving and repository person, ex research psychologist, blogger, twitterer, and amateur classical medieval and nineteenth century historian ...

Retro photography – just do it

Almost a year ago I blogged about how I was going to go play with my old film cameras. Well, like the grand old duke of York, I marched them up to the top of the hill, then marched them … Continue reading

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Life experience and documentation

Down at Dow’s, quite often I come across things to do with photography. Not just film packets, which you’d expect, but items such as contact print frames, developing trays, and even some very old photographic developing powders I’ve even found … Continue reading

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Makhorka

A few days ago I was idly browsing instagram (my instagram feed is full of posts from various archive services) when I came across the item above. It had been misclassified as a packet loose tea – when it in … Continue reading

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Pubs with tile exteriors

Recently I posted the following on Mastodon in response to a post about a recent article on why some Aussie pubs have tiled interiors The urban myth is of course that during the time of the six o’clock swill beer … Continue reading

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An Arabian Baboon

I follow quite a number of blogs, including the University of St Andrews Special Collections blog which deals with the rarer early printed books in their collection. Every year in the run up to Christmas they do a series of … Continue reading

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Of letterpress and sellotape

I’ve been puzzling over the labels on a lot of old bottles, mostly of aromatic oils, I’ve been documenting down at Chiltern. I was assuming that because some of the bottles looked to be nineteenth century (the glass had a … Continue reading

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Using Notable for family history research

A few weeks ago I wrote about using a Linux based laptop for research and documentation. At the time I suggested that you could use a local install of Notable to keep work in progress notes – I suggested Notable … Continue reading

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Nellie Bly as an inspiration …

Last night, J and I started watching the David Tennant version of ‘Around the World in Eighty Days’. It’s a complete romp, and very enjoyable for that, ideal Sunday night viewing. It’s been years since I read the book, but … Continue reading

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Arsenic and old books

A few days ago I retweeted the following from the Yorkshire Post Rare book laced with poison found by Leeds librarian who came across a list of toxic tomes https://t.co/7AI9BOnpMd pic.twitter.com/quBi44l9QM — doug moncur (@moncur_d) October 30, 2022 Strangely, I … Continue reading

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Reverse N’s

I was looking at the Facebook paleography group recently and came across the following post Now I’ve seen the reverse N before in old grave markers in country areas in Scotland. If you look at the inscription you can see … Continue reading

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