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voynich
Would that I had more time to post to the list. I hardly have time it seems
to breathe. I do however monitor the list on a regular If quiet basis. I was
particularly amused by the account of the Dodo in Prague. I have been doing
some traveling myself, Although I missed Prague this time. I did get an
article published in the British Horological Journal on References to Clocks
and Watches in the works of Charles Dickens.(I sometimes think CD would have
been amused by the Vms. Then again he left us that Mystery of Edwin Drood,
Which Sherlock Holmes proved to be unsolvable. (there are 7 unique solutions
and 1000+ variations.) Even more if one includes the stage play where the
audience gets to vote on a different culprit every night.
Some of the older members may recall that my background is in the print
industry. That I participated on some of the first efforts of a type 1
postscript font of the Voynich alphabet. I am also a big fan of Dr. Dee.
Over the last few months I have had a few thoughts on the Vms. In the
process of book design, the designer will sometimes look on edge at a page
to see how the rivers of text flow. These are caused by gaps in the spacing.
I had the Bennett book open to page 189 on my desk when I had dropped
something like a pencil. Reaching down to retrieve it, It seemed that the
rivers of the text spacing seemed to continue from the illustrations.
Enhanced by what look like pen refills. It is interesting to compare this to
the other 'random' texts in the book like the Balzac cypher on page 184. This is
of course a function of the word break spacing. I looked at a few pages of
my Petersen copy. His markings seem to get in the way.
I think I have mentioned before that I have played about with several
different western calendar calculation from time to time. (Including the
Hebrew calendar.) Still no luck finding any Metonic (19) or solar cycle (28)
repeats. Then again I have not made an in-depth study of such as related to
the Vms. There is a really Good Calendars.FAQ and the Catholic archives
online have some interesting points on some of the more subtle an esoteric
attributes. (Like leap day is really Feb 24 and not Feb 29th)
Not really related, I picked up a book to read on fairies, while traveling.
It seems to be written to the same audience (and even credits) the Fortean
times. About 20 or so years back someone gave me a copy of Les Matins des
magicians and an English translation of Les mysteries of the cathedrals.
This book reads about the same. I also got a book _A cabinet of Medical
Curiosities_ on historical beliefs once considered science but now
unconfirmed. Not that any of this has more to do with the manuscript than
the Dodo. It is interesting to see how people in the past may have thought
from a 21st century perspective. Some of this still remains. There is
currently on US TV a credit card commercial which features spontaneous
human combustion. Exactly as Dickens wrote it.
Most of my free time, when not making 18th or 19th century dresses, has been
on the depth recovery of multiple images in order to recover a 3d model of
the scene. I put together a translation to the Macintosh of an image
analysis program called Tina <http://www.delectra.com/tina>. It still needs
a lot of work, but is partly usable. Now If only I had some good scans of a
certain manuscript...
-julieP