Theban Moon - Kate's personal blog

I really hate what Google has done with search.  If I search for the Valley of the Kings of KV64 I looking for something I don't already know, for news.  It's bad enough for Valley of the Kings and even worse for KV64 because my News from the Valley of the Kings is the top blog on the subject and I have written much of the material about KV64.

Google's new personalised search algorithm makes matters worse.  It shrinks the world.  So as well as News from the Valley of the Kings, half of the images shown are photographs I took and the front pages adds my review of Nick Reeves' Complete Valley of the Kings on Egyptological.  Far from helping me to find new material it shrinks my world, not just down to things I already know, but down to things I have written.  You'd have to be extremely narcissistic to like a search that works like that.

Fortunately it only works if you are logged in so I work with two browsers and only log in to Google on one of them, the other I use for searching.  I can see the advantage of geo-searches.  If I type in Sutton cinema, I like the fact search shows me the programme.  That is useful.  But not search which makes me the apparent centre of the World Wide Web.

It's irritating because there is news of a discovery in the Valley of the Kings expected in the next few days.  I was scanning for it.  I don't know yet whether it is relatively minor or the discovery to rival Carter's discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun many of us believe will be made one day.  We will have to wait and see, although I suspect somewhere in between the two.  I'm desperately busy for the next three days so I am also hoping it doesn't break until the middle of next week.

Although both my parents could paint and draw, I can't.  My father was an excellent artist.

That doesn't mean I don't have the sense of composition - I just cannot draw.  So occasionally I do things in Photoshop as an alternative.  It has been several months since I did anything, but tonight I did an image of myself in pastels.  I rather like it.

Kate Phizackerley in Pastels

I am struggling with an updated gravatar.  I needed one as the other was a couple of years old.  (Gravatars are picture shown against your personal comments on many blogs etc.)

I swapped to this one, but my friend Andrea doesn't like it and says I am a bit too serious is it - which is a fair criticism of it.

Somebody recently introduced me to Round the Horne and I am glad they did.  Traditional British (English) radio comedy.  The highlight for me is Kenneth Williams - there is a sketch called Rentachap which is great. There is some Round the Horne material on YouTube if you want to try it out.

I've not forgotten about this blog but have been busy with other things.  I had a technical paper to right which hadn't been planned for in my schedule.

Other than that I have been working away at Egyptolgical, our new free online magazine about Ancient Egypt.  It has been a huge amount of work.  We soft-launched several weeks ago and are planning to publish the first edition within a month or so.  Many of the articles are in good shape, but a few need some reshaping and the process is taking longer than we had hoped.

Alongside that I am reworking the code, trying to streamline it and strip out some of the unnecessary stuff and then add in more functionality.  We have done the initial design for our photo library, for instance, and I need to code that up.

That's not eating up all the time though.  This week I went to see Jools Holland in concert.  We love him live.  This time the special guest was Sandie Shaw which was a surprise, I don't think I ever expected to hear her live.  And at nearly 65 her voice hasn't aged very much at all - maybe not quite so sprightly but still fairly clear. 

Rather than embed one of the classics, here is Sandie Shaw with the Smiths singing their classic Hand in Glove.

I am worried I am getting old because I am not listening to much new music.  I am trying.  I treated myself to a couple of new CDs today.  Katy Perry is modern - although the credibility factor is very low.  I made up for it with me other choice - Mott the Hoople.  That is certainly not modern, but then the credibility factor is high.  I just need to find modern music I like with a high credibility factor!

(Schh!  I do also have my fair share of old music with a low credibility factor.)

I have spent pretty much all of the past ten days writing about Egypt, either on News from the Valley of the Kings or on the new Egyptological Looting Database 2011 which I created as a response to the emergency.  It has been a difficult time for the antiquities of ancient Egypt and sadly it looks as though some important and beautiful tombs might have been stripped of their decoration.  It could have been so much worse though had the ordinary people not joined forced to protect sites and even the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

I struggle with the American reaction to the uprising.  It isn't what I see in all the reports I have read, in the blogs of protestors I have followed and in the various posts on FaceBook.  I see nothing of Islamic fundamentalism.  Rather moderation in everything seems to be the wish.  The Coptic church celebrated mass in Tahrir Square on Sunday with the full support of a mainly Muslim crowd.  In Luxor, the Mosques were urging their congregations to protect local Coptic churches.  In the recent past Egypt has been marred by religous tension, but the uprising has been noteworthy for religious tolerance.

It's not just religion.  The Vancouver Sun carried this article about how women have found an increasing voice for our gender in Tahrir Square.

Far from Islamic fundamentalism, Egypt looks as though it could become something wonderful: a moderate, secular and democratic Islamic country.  In all the chaos and human tragedy, there is a phoenix of great hope.  Writing about ancient Egypt has been hugely stressful, but the hope of how Egypt could develop has been the bright light in the dark.

It's always sad when somebody is murdered, but recently there seems to have been a disproportionate number of recent brides. So very, very sad.

My new Windows Phone (which I dislike as I have said several times) has one good feature: it can hold a load of music.  I have literally hundreds of CDs and inevitably some have got stuck at the bottom of piles.  I had ripped some to my PC but I have spent several hours this weekend ploughing through the collection trying to get them all on PC.  That is more than will fit on the phone, but I am selecting favourite albums (and some greatest hits) as I go.  It is a slow process as I am having to manually enter track listings for most of the classical ones.  I also have a few obscure ones like Cab Calloway which it didn't recognise.

As I write this, West Side Story is in the drive.  That isn't one of my favourites.  Next up is John Rutter's Requiem which is followed by a Grieg collection.  The "classical" ones had been stacked separately.

The phone has some classical (The Four Seasons, Verdi Requiem, some Mozart, several organ compilations) but mostly it is rock.  For listening on the move I prefer something which is engaging and preferably loud to drown out travel noises.  It'll be fun over the next few weeks rediscovering some CDs I had forgotten.

On top of that a friend (thak you) has sent me a CD of things I might like to try out.  There are 600 tracks on that.  I'll listen to that over the next few weeks as well.  I'll then buy the full CDs of any groups I like on there . I believe in supporting the artists by buying anything I am going to keep.  Hopefully that will add some new things to my phone over the next couple of months as well.

One of the regulars from the pub ran a Vie party last night.  I was rather more impressed than I had expected to be ... and learned a few make up tips as well.  She did a really good job.  Of course, I bought quite a few things. Some are for presents but the moisturiser  for instance is for me.  I have been using Lancome Hydra Zen but as the weather turns cold it hasn't been providing the moisture my skin needs, so I bought a night cream to try.  I added a day one as well.  The other big advantage is that they are half the price of the Lancome products which is worthwhile.

The announcement of a new Buffy movie should be great news but is instead a tragedy as Joss Whedon is not involved in the project at all.  What a disaster.  The man is a genius.  He and Sarah Michelle Gellar made Buffy into the special series that it was.

Worse, it probably means Joss himself will never no do any sequels.   Fran and Rubel Kuzui who owned the rights have passed them to Warner Bros.