Day: August 10, 2007

Rare Book Room

Posted on by Nimgimli

There are times when StumbleUpon really earns its keep.

Rare Book Room is a site that features page-by-page photographs of (surprise!) rare books. From their front page:

Over the last ten years, a company called “Octavo” embarked on digitally photographing some of the world ’s great books from some of the greatest libraries. These books were photographed at very high resolution (in some cases at over 200 megabytes per page).

The photos are high enough quality that you can easily read the books. Or just enjoy the artwork inside, in some cases.

Image from Chaucer's 'The Works Now Newly Printed' from 1896
Screenshot from Chaucer’s “The Works Now Newly Imprinted – 1896”

The return of Flash Gordon

Posted on by Nimgimli

So tonight, Flash Gordon returns to TV (on the SciFi Channel). The chances of it sucking are reasonably high, but I still have to see for myself. The fact that it seems to be using the old Queen ‘anthem’ alone makes its prospects quite grim.

But SciFi does have a knack of making mediocre tv shows that I still enjoy watching. I’m thinking of Eureka and Stargate:Atlantis. I can’t call either of them great TV, but I still get a kick out of them, and in both cases I think its about casting and the ‘family of character’ aspects.

And of course, SciFi has Battlestar. I was *extremely* dubious about BSG before it started to air, and look how amazing that turned out.

So we’ll see.