Heck Of A Guy

A pastiche of posts, featuring song, dance, snappy chatter plus notes on prose, poesy, love, lust, life, and beyond

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Elegant Footbridges, Nude Travelers, Sacred Translating, Fake Pix and The Real Fix

October 26th, 2007 at 11:59 am · DrHGuy · 2 Comments

Cyber-Bookmarks From DrHGuy: 26 October 2007

Cyber-Bookmarks From DrHGuy are annotated links to arguably worthwhile, recently published online reading, new or revised websites of potential utility or ostensible interest, and other internet-accessible experiences that, were it not for the casually collected, cavalierly collated, & capriciously collocated components comprising these posts, could easily be overlooked - which would be, in some cases, a shame,

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Suspended Elegance

Walking On Air: The Joy Of Footbridges By Witold Rybczynski
Slate. 24 October 2007

I’ve long had a thing for footbridges. Indeed, one of the few disappointments in the process of designing Heck of a House was that, regardless of how the house was sited, I couldn’t rationalize a footbridge or two. Consequently, it’s no surprise that I’m taken with Rybczynski’s footbridge slide show with annotations featured in Slate this week. The specimens shown range from spectacularly functional to wonderfully aesthetic with some combining the best of both qualities.

This display of fascinating footbridges can be found at Walking On Air: The Joy Of Footbridges

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In The Nude For Travel

Top Places In World To ‘Let It All Hang Out’ By Amy Rosen
CanWest News Service. October 2007.


I suppose I’ve had a thing for naked even before I had a thing for footbridges. In any case, when I ran across this article about the best buff beaches and boats, it seemed worth exploring, but I was convinced to include it in this edition of Cyber-Bookmarks after I read the intriguing, albeit ambiguous declaration that

Clothing-optional activities account for
$400 million of the U.S. economy

OK, I admit I am also enthralled by the vision conjured up with the discovery of “the 12-hectare Mira Vista Resort, a nudist dude ranch in Tucson, Ariz., which is done up like an 1800s Wild West town.” Immediately the picture of DS wearing only spurs comes to mind.

Several resorts in the US are listed as well as a retreat in the Mexican Caribbean, a French coastal resort in a town of 40,000 naturists, and a luxurious nude cruise marketed under the name - get ready - Hidden Jewels of the Caribbean.

This piece on travel au naturel is available at Top Places In World To ‘Let It All Hang Out’

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Putting The Fix On The Pix


Altered Graphics From The Heck of a Guy Files
[Click on graphic to view larger image]

Top 15 Manipulated Photographs By jfrater
TheListUniverse.com. 19 October 2007

DrHGuy has, as indicated by the above collage of samples taken from Heck of a Guy Blog, occasionally fine-tuned a photo to remove a distraction or highlight some portion of the image. These amateur-level antics, however, are not in the same league as the big-time manipulations on exhibit in this listing. I’ve included one sample below to give readers a taste of the offering.

This nearly iconic portrait of U.S . President Abraham Lincoln is a composite of Lincoln’s head and the Southern politician John Calhoun’s body. Putting the date of this image into context, note that the first permanent photographic image was created in 1826 and the Eastman Dry Plate Company (later to become Eastman Kodak) was created in 1881.

This impressive and worrisome photo essay can be viewed at Top 15 Manipulated Photographs

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Once You Go Mac You Can Still Go Back To PC

The Complete Guide to Mac/Windows Interoperability By Gina Trapani
Lifehacker.com. 19 October 2007

If, like DrHGuy, you’ve got a crush on a Mac and are considering leaving your PC but can’t afford to lose those PC programs in the property settlement and don’t want to worry about the incompatibility problems between the blended families, now you can set up housekeeping with your beloved Mac and still enjoy a friends with benefits arrangement with your old PC.

Today, Mac OS and Windows can work together on the same network, share files, and use many of the same gizmos. Lifehacker offers a nifty primer about what does and doesn’t work when one dallies spontaneously with Mac and PC.

This timely info can be found at The Complete Guide to Mac/Windows Interoperability

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Welcome To Babel: Translating Sacred Poetry


Psalm Springs - How I Translated The Bible’s Most Poetic Book By Robert Alter
Slate. 26 September 2007

Translation of poetry is a puzzle so complex, multifaceted, and difficult that it seems to most of us as mystical as advanced physics calculations. In the case of the Psalms, of course, one adds to that task the burden of dealing with one of the world’s major religious texts that is also replete with historical import. Oh, and also add the fact that the Psalms were composed by “anonymous poets over a period of more than five centuries,” and one quickly realizes that this is not a job for the timid. Yet, the process involved in translating poetry offers a unique insight into the workings of literary thought. I’ve re-read this essay about the translation of these Hebrew poems into contemporary English a half -dozen times in the month since it was published and found it rewarding each time.

This excerpt is typical:

In many lines, however, a little resourcefulness can produce rhythms resembling the Hebrew’s. The King James version of Psalm 30:9 reads: “What profit is there in my blood, when I go down to the pit?” (The 1611 translators used italics for words merely implied in the Hebrew.) From a rhythmic standpoint, this sounds more like prose than poetry. My version reads: “What profit in my blood,/ in my going down deathward?” This rhythm is virtually identical to the Hebrew, the second half of the line just one syllable more than the original. The alliteration of “down deathward” has no equivalent in the Hebrew, but it helps the rhythmic momentum and compensates for other places (including the first half of this line) where alliterations in the original could not be reproduced.

This article, as well as a link to a sound file of the author reading from his translations, is online at Psalm Springs - How I Translated The Bible’s Most Poetic Book

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Mr (and Ms) Fix-it

25 Skills Every Man Should Know: Your Ultimate DIY Guide
Popular Mechanics. October 2007

This is in every way a prototypal Popular Mechanics article, full of useful information presented with a moral imperative of self-reliance. Or, as the introduction puts it,

These days, you can outsource almost any job—but some things you need to know how to do yourself. Study our master list with step-by-step tips from the experts, and test your DIY aptitude each step of the way.

My only criticism is the gender-indicative title. I find none of the tasks listed, from Fillet a Fish to Perform CPR to Protect Your Computer to Patch A Radiator Hose, to be testosterone-specific.

Come to think of it, with the possible exceptions of the items dealing with computers, I suspect1 Mary from View From A Farm House Window can perform each of these items better than I can.

Regardless, this how-to guide can be found at 25 Skills Every Man Should Know: Your Ultimate DIY Guide

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Footnotes

  1. ”Suspect” in this sentence is a face-saving word for “am absolutely certain,”↩

Tags: Aha! Items · Fascinations · Media Mayhem

2 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Mary // Oct 26, 2007 at 8:14 pm

    You are right regarding the computer skills.

    And 19. Never done it, can’t imagine why “every” anybody would need this skill. Frightening thought.

    Thank you for the mention, I think.

  • 2 ben // Oct 26, 2007 at 10:07 pm

    quite a mix