Theo Honohan

"As far back as the old Dundalk days, when the simple v. compound controversy raised questions almost of honour with the steam men of the last generation, I was an all-out doctrinaire compounder and equally an implacable opponent of the piston valve. I saw even then that the secret of a well-set poppet valve – short travel – was bound to win out against prejudice. I remember riding an old 2-8-2 job on a Cavan side-road, and my readers can believe me or not as they please, but we worked up 5392 I.H.P. with almost equal steaming in the H.P. and L.P. cylinders, a performance probably never equalled on the grandiose “Pacific” jobs so much talked about across the water. The poppet valves (“pops”, old Joe Garrigle called them – R.I.P, a prince among steam men) gave us a very sharp cut-off. And we were working on a side road, remember."

"There is not the same stuff in the present generation as there was in the one gone by, trite as that remark may sound. In hotels, public houses, restaurants, theatres and other places where people gather, I hear on all sides sneers and jibes at compound jobs. They eat coal and oil, they are unbalanced thermo-dynamically, they “melt” on high cut-off, and all the rest of it. Really, it is very tiresome. Your old-time steam man understood nothing but steam, but at least he understood it thoroughly. To see some of the sprouts that are abroad nowadays and to hear their innocent gabble about matters that were thrashed out in the Dundalk shops fifty years ago is to wonder whether man is moving forward at all through the centuries."

Sean Day-Lewis' book about OVS Bulleid is a good read and is not too serious to quote a relevant Myles Na gCopaleen column ("I will not be Bulleid"). Not this memorable column, though.

quoteinvestigator.com/2021/04/02/c...

A colour photograph of carved stone relief of a idyllic rural scene. The bearded William Morris is sitting under a tree in front of some farm buildings, his hat and cane on the ground beside him.

Relief of Morris designed by George Jack
via www.architectural-review.com/essays/reput...

Photograph showing a large woodblock for printing a botanical pattern on wallpaper or fabric

Morris & Co woodblock
via www.homesandgardens.com/advice/morri...

"As a child, Wystan Hugh Auden imagined himself as an architect and engineer, more interested in the functions of a lead mine than distinctions in poetic meter. In building this imagined world, he showed an unusually keen sense of pragmatic constraint—at one point, he gave up his aesthetic preference of one type of ore-washing device for another, more efficient one."

I'm not sure how praiseworthy this change of favourite hypothetical ore-washing method really is comment.org/forgetting-o...

"You are traveling now in a country once so famous both for arts and arms, that (however degenerate at present) it still deserves your attention and reflection. View it therefore with care, compare its former with its present state, and examine into the causes of its rise and its decay. Consider it classically and politically, and do not run through it, as too many of your young countrymen do, musically, and (to use a ridiculous word) KNICK-KNACKICALLY. No piping nor fiddling, I beseech you; no days lost in poring upon almost imperceptible ‘intaglios and cameos’: and do not become a virtuoso of small wares. Form a taste of painting, sculpture, and architecture, if you please, by a careful examination of the works of the best ancient and modern artists; those are liberal arts, and a real taste and knowledge of them become a man of fashion very well. But, beyond certain bounds, the man of taste ends, and the frivolous virtuoso begins."

"No piping nor fiddling, I beseech you; no days lost in poring upon almost imperceptible ‘intaglios and cameos’: and do not become a virtuoso of small wares."

www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3...

"The competition for the new extension to the Victoria and Albert Museum was won by Studio Libeskind in 1996. The design for The Spiral, in collaboration with Ove Arup’s Cecil Balmond, pushed the boundaries of engineering and architectural theory. The design is an upward spiral of intersecting planes, creating a jagged vortex inserted between three Grade I listed buildings. The building is derived from an extruded section of a fractal pattern: a geometric pattern relating to the Golden Section. The extruded line was then wrapped upon itself to create the unique shape of the non-axial spiral. The system of continuous, interlocking wall elements required no supporting beams, thus creating unencumbered, free flowing interior spaces that mirror the movement in the façade."

I think this would have been a fun building, and far more of a feat than what has been done to that site. libeskind.com/work/va-muse...

Still, it's what Samuel Johnson meant by London architecture's "showy evolutions".

A mostly white painting of a reclining figure (head not visible) who seems to be wearing satin pajamas.

Refound this image. (I know there's a war on, trying to distract myself)

Florence Reekie
Caught in a lie, 2024
Oil on fabric
www.annelyjudafineart.co.uk/artworks/106...

"... usually strewn with roundels." mistholme.com/dictionary/y...

Colour photograph from ArtUK of a stone yale (mythical animal)

The heraldic yale is covered with spots artuk.org/discover/art...

HOAS-only lambda calculus HOAS-only lambda calculus. GitHub Gist: instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

Andras Kovacs is a very impressive researcher in PLT. Here he "punches up" Hirrolot's implementation of the Calculus of Constructions. Systems evaluate huge terms in these lambda calculus variants, so performance matters. They're not just a hypothetical foundation.

gist.github.com/AndrasKovacs...

"Because of the unusual aero-loads around the windshield, researchers decided to machine the tiles with the grain perpendicular to the Orbiter skin to provide twice the strength ... the heavy framing around the windows acted as a large heat sink".

web.archive.org/web/20240411...

Roland Miller's photo of Space Shuttle Discovery

Handmade, with fragile ceramic TPS tiles and wonky painted lettering. www.abandonedinplace.com/the-space-sh...

Yes, apparently. www.juniperhillfarmnh.com/2013/03/stad...

You can just write 'ℝ'.

Carvings on an ivory casket: "Aristotle lectures Alexander the Great, Phyllis Rides Aristotle, the Lion rends the veil of Thisbe, and Thisbe kills herself on Pyramus."

Box with Romance Scenes - French - The Metropolitan Museum of Art This group of five ivory panels are the reassembled elements of a "composite casket," so called by scholars because the narrative scenes that adorn them are vignettes from a variety of popular stories...

www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti...

Are you sure

The fact that em dashes are a tell for generative AI is just the thin end of the wedge of articulacy being identified with machine writing. "Why are you writing like a bot" etc.

Meanwhile, here's a long dash with some questionable spacing.

I guess using the accurate word "metonym" here would have been too much

One aspect that hadn't occurred to me is that the agencies will unscrupulously take your money even if they don't think you're eligible — at the very least they'll charge hundreds of € for an initial consulation. There I was thinking they'd politely turn me away. www.reddit.com/r/CasualIrel...

Some funny stories on Reddit about Dublin dating agencies. One person paid an agency to be introduced to four people. The agency failed to keep track of who she'd met and matched her with the same guy for dates #1 and #4. Then (is this real?) they refused to fix it. www.reddit.com/r/Dublin/com...

Shooting script has leaked.

It's a fascinating topic. I recall an art theorist discussing the tension between the "individual–aesthetic" and the "supraindividual–evolutionary". These personal enviroments often have conceptual integrity, but a strong aesthetic/poetic aspect goes way beyond that (wiki.c2.com?ConceptualIn...)

A close-up of the corner of a timber-framed building which is resting on a dozen mushroom-shaped stone supports, each a couple of feet high

Staddle stones supporting a 1731 granary www.wealddown.co.uk/buildings/gr...

Richard Rezak's Untitled (22-09), 2022: gloss white painted cherry wood and brushed aluminum, 9½ x 50 x 12 inches A horizontal moulding resembling a Victorian stair rail, but interrupted and offset. It is mounted above a square-section aluminium strut.

www.richardrezac.com/work/2019-pr...

A joint between two pieces of timber rebated to incorporate two salvaged marble modillions.

A joint between two pieces of timber which incorporates a salvaged marble modillion.

www.amorimmeuble.com/pieces-depos... · www.core77.com/posts/135423... · dnlgallery.com/pages#amor-i...

Black-and-white photograph of a classical building with landscape and yew tree.

Erich Angenendt
Palazzo di Sagno

Paul Shaub
Rowing Alone (1962)
Color woodcut on paper
www.nga.gov/artworks/169...