2016

I've kept this blog, on and off, since 2006. In 2015 I used it to chart daily encounters, images, thoughts and feelings about volcanic basalt/bluestone in Melbourne and Victoria, especially in the first part of the year. I plan to write a book provisionally titled Bluestone: An Emotional History, about human uses of and feelings for bluestone. But I am also working on quite a few other projects and a big grant application, especially now I am on research leave. I'm working mostly from home, then, for six months, and will need online sociability for company!


Friday, February 06, 2009

Pepys' Diary

Thanks to Hannah at mony wylsum way, I've found a wonderful website based on The Diary of Samuel Pepys. It's updated daily to correspond to what Pepys was doing on that day — they are now up to 1665/66. I haven't explored the site comprehensively, but its annotations and resources look excellent.

What a clever idea! I know there are a thousand differences between an online blog and a diary, but there is something about the daily updating of this old diary that captures the immediacy, and what I will call the provisionality, of a blog. Provisionality? the sense that the blog is never the last word on anything. This is what makes it such an attractive medium for academics, perhaps. And do we think Pepys might have had a sense of a reading public? Or anticipated future publication?

Anyway, I'm going to be checking it daily, I can tell. I'm going to see if the experience of readingthis diary is at all similar to the experience of reading other familiar blogs.

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