Category: General

General

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Deadman Hill

I have a particular affinity with Deadman Hill. Anyway, Darren managed to find some information about it recently…

Deadman Hill
This is a stretch of the B3078 along a ridge from Godshill The most likely origin of the name is that a gibbet was situated at one time near the junction with the Redlynch road but a more colourful local story tells how in the mid-eighteenth century a smuggler named David Smith, in return for the promise of a free pardon, betrayed his associates including the infamous Captain Diamond. But not all were apprehended and Smith was waylaid near Studley Head by some of Diamond’s crew who had evaded capture. He was dragged down into the valley east of Cunninger Bottom, now known as Deadman Bottom, where his tongue was cut out, he was cruelly beaten and finally hanged from a tree.

Original text taken from New Forest Walks…

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November Rain

So the whole of September and October passed by without me making a single post to my blog. And indeed half of August and some of November!
There are a few reasons for that. One being that I am extremely busy in the evenings with my current iPhone app. This should change soon as it’s about to get submitted for release. Second being that I can’t blog during the day, because I cannot get access to my site from the office that I currently work at. Thirdly, I have caught a bout of the usual private bloggers disease: nothing of interest to say.

Will endeavour to post my 1st take on how to keep your baby from getting RSV and more over the coming weeks, even if some of it may be boring tech stuff.

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Lords of the Rings

I’m just coming to the end of The Fellowship of the Ring, and you know…
I don’t think I care…

I first read LOTR about 14 years ago after many false starts. I just could
never get into it. However while I was at SCi we started working on a LOTR
game so I figured I needed to read it. So I did. I remember enjoying it
but not be particularly blown away by it.

I’m listening to it now on audio book and it feels like pulling teeth. I
understand better now why I found it so hard to get into. It’s just so
dull. I always used to say that I found it verbose, that Tolkien liked to
describe too many sunsets. ( NOTE: I’m not sure he ever describes one,
it’s just a figure of speech. ) But now I think that he doesn’t even
describe them well. I still think he’s verbose but I now think that he is
not very flowery. I don’t find myself getting lost in the prose. So I find
myself coming back to the thought that the book needs a really good edit!

I’m not a person that gets hung up on language. I read a variety of
authors. Some are better storytellers than others. Some are better writers
than others.

I always considered Tolkien as a very good writer with a reasonable story.
Now I think I’m going to have to downgrade him to and OK writer with an OK
story! I just find myself now thinking that there is nothing in LOTR that
makes me want to read it again, therefore do I really want to spend the
next 40 hours of my life listening to the the next two books?

All that said, I aspire to be that OK! 🙂

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Translations of poetry and songs

While grimacing my way through Lord of the Rings, I thought about
something that I have considered before, not just with LOTR, but with
other fantasy books that I’ve read.

Many of the poems and songs in LOTR are given in the common tongue as
translations from some other language, Elvish, Dwarven, etc… so why to
they all rhyme? Surely they would only rhyme in their original language?

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Audio Books – The Problems

I’ve now listened through a few audio books, some of them multiple times, and I have to say that it’s a most enjoyable way of passing those long journies or gym sessions.
However, I finally have a problem with them – SINGING!
I’ve just started listening to “The Lord Of The Rings”, which in itself is an interesting concept as it’s narrated by Rob Inglis who sounds a little like Oliver Postgate narrating Ivor The Engine or The Clangers. Anyway, the real problem is that LOTR us littered with damned songs, especially near the beginning! And the narrator sings them all… no easy fast forward button especially when you’re driving.

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