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Kevin Kelly has written about the Rosetta Disk — a Long Now project that has microscopically etched text in over a thousand languages onto a nickel disk, encased in a glass sphere. The intent is that it will physically last as long as possible, and also increase the likelihood of readability well into the future. (The disk is analogue rather than digital, and the microscopic nature is implied by text decreasing in size on the opposite side.) Provided that at least one of the existing human languages is still known, the disk should enable future scholars to read the others, as it reproduces several standard texts translated into the variety of languages.

(It’s not explicitly stated, but what might be the probability of a civilization with no prior knowledge of any of the languages being able to decode it, to some extent at least?)

Saving one disk for all time is pretty unlikely. The goal is to produce a sufficient number of these, and have them stored in enough different locations that one or two can be expected to survive. Total cost (as quoted by Kelly) is $25 000. Seems like a lot, if you’re considering buying one for yourself.

But compared to the sort of money that large organizations deal with, it’s hardly anything. Get enough people together, and it would be easy to buy as a group. I’m sure that any number of university libraries, national libraries and archives, and similarly large institutions will be able to pick one or two up without blinking.

And if I can find 99 other people to put $250 in, then no problem!

I got in the mail today my package from Bleep Labs. There are a couple of major for-fun projects coming up in my personal time, and assembling the synthesizer will be one of them. Watch this space for more …

When I started working on the time capsule project, what I didn’t anticipate was what would be the most challenging part: putting up a sign above the exhibit.

Just something simple, reading “Time Capsule” rather than the existing, inaccurate signage. Not something I can do by hand, but it shouldn’t be that much trouble, right?

When you’re dealing with government, though, there are certain channels that one must go through. I needed to contact one person to design the sign, two to approve it, and another department entirely to put it up. It should have been finished today, more than 2 weeks since the process was started. I’ll go by the exhibit to check it out tomorrow.

Of all the things I’m not an expert in, right?

Book: “Flight of the Hummingbird: A Parable for the Environment,” Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, with Wangari Maathai and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Greystone, 2008. Another lovely free book through Mini Book Expo for Bloggers.

The story “Flight of the Hummingbird” itself is very short, and the entire contents can be viewed as an animated short film. It tells the story of a forest fire, that all of the animals flee, except for one hummingbird who attempts to quench it one drop of water at a time. While it appears that she can’t have much impact on the entire situation, the attitude “I am doing what I can” is the only one by which anything can be accomplished.

The artwork for this volume is beautiful. Again, samples can be seen in the animation, but Yahgulanaas’ style is just perfect, and I’d definitely look for more of his work. The book itself is small and the printing and binding are of high quality.

The real content, of course, is in the “additional matter,” with a foreword by Wangari Maathai and an afterword by the Dalai Lama. Again, these are very short writings, but they pack in the essential message.

A pleasure to read, and I’ll shortly be passing it along to others.

One of the challenges I encountered last week with the Time Capsule project was the small “collection” of stamps and coins. A set had been placed into the first capsule in 1903, and then again in 1966.

Which of course leaves me cursing the “archival” habits of the 1960s. The stamps were placed flat onto construction paper, contained in a plastic page protector. (Not great, but not as bad as it could have been.) The 1903 coins had been glued to a piece of paper (in 1966 I assume.) The 1966 coins were stuck on with double-sided tape. Lovely. The glue separated away pretty easily without damage or much residue, but the tape was still nastily sticky. I’m assured that this pretty much decimated the value to collectors.

(Not that it’s strictly ethical for me to be thinking in those terms, is it?)

The other thing that made this challenging was my total lack of knowledge of anything relating to stamps or coins. I wasn’t able to find much coverage in my usual sources for preservation and conservation information. Stamps, not mentioned at all; coins listed along with medals in one bulletin.

I’m certain that this is due to the monetization of stamp collecting and coin collecting — as these are two popular hobbies, the artefacts become the province of amateurs and collectors, and are not considered to be of nearly as much interest to archives or museums. (With exceptions of course, stamp museums and currency museums do exist. But I wasn’t able to find much information from them on what I should do.)

Sites directed towards collectors treat the issue very simply: don’t use bare fingers, use protective enclosures that one can buy at your local hobby shop. Not much technical there.

Having hit a dead end doing things the usual way, I followed the advice and headed off to the local hobby shop — and success! Not only did I get lots of very detailed information about history (and aforementioned values) of these very display-friendly objects, but I was also freely given the supplies needed to take care of them a little more properly this time.

I’d been expecting that the special status of these things as collector items, as objects with known monetary value, would make it more difficult for me to deal with them properly. Instead, in a situation where I was the amateur, I found it possible to take advantage of some wonderful expert advice.

Compositions is a collection of short essays on a variety of topics connected to the subjects of writing, poetry, the publishing industry, and the creative process. The chapters are short (most ranging a little over ten pages) and in some cases only loosely connected.

My main complaint with this book is the lack of coherence: there is little sense that these individual essays are written for the same audience, or with any intent to be gathered together. Some are well-structured and effective, and some wander like a first draft or journal-writing exercise.

Wakan admits to this in the first paragraph of the Foreword:

The essay allows me to meander. It allows me to stop here and there to consider more deeply some vantage point. The essay encourages me to adventure down some side road that may, or may not, rejoin the main. If it doesn’t, I often find myself in a mess of brambles through which I have to scramble in order to get back to the theme.

All of which may be a wonderful way to write, but it is slightly less rewarding for the reader.

That being said, many of the individual essays are clever and interesting. I enjoyed the Foreword and first chapter on creativity, the chapters on writing poetry on demand, detective stories, and on dedications, particularly. Far less impressive was the chapter on copyright, which should have required much more research. (In my view, it’s not a subject which benefits particularly from generalities and glossing-over.)

I would be remiss not to mention the poems and excerpts from other writings generously sprinkled throughout this volume. In each case, they make a point where plain old explanatory prose cannot, whether it’s about some facet of the world, or the nature of poetry itself. Wakan is, I think, best as a poet, and it’s the sparsely distributed poetry in this book that makes it a pleasure to read.

(volume obtained through the fantastic Mini Book Expo for Bloggers. Author: Naomi Beth Wakan. Publisher: Wolsak & Wynn.)

The exhibit that I’ve been working on this week, and this week only, is now available for passersby to admire!

As you can imagine, I’m quite proud of this. Got the go-ahead to start work last Friday afternoon, and managed to get ready to set up the minute the replicas were back from the print shop.

I had a lot of help with this, of course, but in many ways I feel like it’s my project. My first real successful, completed project since finishing school.

There’s a companion web exhibit that is not yet done. I hope to get it finished early next week.

Lessons learned:

• Decide what you want in the display before arranging for reproductions.
• It’s possible to make things work on almost no budget if you have a really, really steady hand with scissors.
• Outsourcing is more expensive and takes more time. Do it yourself, or get a summer student.
• Everyone likes old stuff.
• When installing an exhibit in a display cabinet, don’t forget that you’ll also have to deal with the stuff that’s already in there.

I think this is about time for a long weekend, yes?