Well, it’s not actually a meme unless anyone copies the idea, but hey-ho. Or at least, I guess technically it still is a meme, just an unsuccessful one. Don’t get me started on evolutionary theory.
Search Flickr for photos tagged with your first name. View them ordered as ‘most interesting’. Post the most interesting photo to your blog. The most interesting photo tagged with ‘Harry’ is a Dutch cuckooflower:
Free bit of trivia – cuckooflower is also known as ‘milkmaid’ or ‘ladies smock’.
You may have noticed that the site now has randomly chosen header images. And a photo credits page (link on the left) so you can find out where they’re from.
The title of the blog is from the Hopkins poem That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection.
I think Hopkins makes a good touchstone for what poetry can be. His work is difficult – both linguistically experimental and intellectually abstruse – but it is always trying to communicate something. He is nothing if not sincere. And he never stops making beautiful noises.
Or, rather, the old blog in a new place. I hope you like the new look; I think it’s now pretty much set up as I want it, but if you spot any glitches, let me know. I managed to import all the old posts, which was a minor victory (I’ll spare you the techy details), but unfortunately not the comments. All the imported posts seem to have been set to not accept comments as a default, so you won’t be able to post to them, but all the new ones, starting with this, will be open for comments as usual.
Frustrated by the frequent downtime at Freezope, I’m shifting my site, starting with this blog, to a new location. This involves moving from Squishdot, a Zope-based piece of blogging software, to WordPress (php/MySQL based). Since I’ve never used php this is a potentially fraught process that is likely to take up most of my attention for at least a couple of days. Wish me luck.
At the bottom of the left-hand column are books I recommend. They are set up as referral links to Amazon (UK). I’m not seriously expecting a useful revenue stream from this, it’s just a way to liven up the appearance of the site. The plan is to occasionally add a new title, and as books get bumped off the bottom of the page, I’ll move them to a page that will act act as an archive of all the old recommendations.