Author: Roger Pearse

Choking off non-Americans from Google books?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Non-US readers of Google Books aren’t allowed to see most of the content.  This is because of threats by European publishers afraid that somehow they might suffer some financial loss if their captive market could see books before 1923.  Google responded by simply barring access to people outside the US.  After all, if people outside the US want to be uneducated, how is that Google’s problem, they doubtless reasoned.  But it has always been possible for the techno-literate to get around this, albeit with some effort.

But it looks as if Google books might be raising the drawbridge even further.  Today I tried to get access to volume 13 of Texte und Untersuchungen, published in 1895.  Of course as one of the humiliores of the internet, I knew that I would not be allowed to see it.  But I tried my usual methods. 

Unfortunately the download link still did not appear.  With some wrestling, I was able to get a page with a link on, albeit not on the usual page, but for a while I feared the worst.

Never presume that Google books will always be available.  It may not.

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Philip of Side update

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I forgot to mention that fragment 7 of Philip of Side arrived over the weekend as well.  It’s the bit which is alchemical in nature. 

I’m always wary of alchemical texts.  I have a degree in Chemistry, but I find them quite hard to understand.  However this one is clear enough, and refers to dyeing copper.

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Mischa Hooker’s links – a new incarnation

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I can’t be the only one who has found some pages compiled by Mischa Hooker of links to material on Google books extremely useful.  His table of links to the PG was long an aid, although these days I prefer the Cyprian project list.

It seems that Dr Hooker has started a new set of links.  This appears in wikispaces, presumably for the same reason that I have used a wiki — that it’s easier to add links when you find them, ad hoc, if you can bash them in online.  Likely to be very useful.

The list of authors down the left hand side stops with Commodian, in IE6.  I’m not sure if that is the browser or the list.

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Chrysostom’s sermon on new year (in kalendas) now online in English

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The translation that I commissioned of John Chrysostom’s sermon on the new year festivities is now online here.  I hope it will be useful!  It’s public domain – do whatever you like with  it!

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Up early and to the laptop to work on QuickGreek, my tool for working with ancient Greek.  It really has suffered from being worked on in bits and pieces.  Moving bits of code around to simplify things, so I can build on top of it.

While doing so, downloading more of the RealEncyclopadie in PDF form from the web.  The download site places obstacles in your way.  For each PDF you have to click on a link, then “request a download ticket” (just an excuse for another click), wait while the advertising downloads, then click on “Download”, then wait as IE blocks the download, then click on the “if it didn’t download click here”.  If you download more than one or two, it adds an extra step and demands you type in a “captcha”.  All very wasteful of time and energy, but the RE is worth it, even in so many, many PDF’s.  How else would someone like me ever even see a copy?

Rainy and dull and cool, which is all to the good.  If the sun was shining I’d feel morally obliged to go out and do something summery.  But as it is, the pressure is off!

UPDATE:  One of the nicest days I’ve had for a long time, in fact.  I spent most of the day working on QuickGreek, untangling some code that had given me pain for years.  It is strange, tho, how long it all takes!  Also I got my upgrade to Office 2010 downloaded and installed, and I finished getting hold of the RE at long last.  I didn’t really post online much — my alternative to working! — but I stuck to the job.  I also went out early and got a haircut, which mysteriously made me feel more cheerful as well — I don’t know why.  Did all the hippies take drugs to get away from the fact that they all felt so unkempt?!?  I walked down to Sainsburys at lunchtime to get a baked potato and a scone and some very necessary diet coke, or liquid caffeine as I think of it.  There’s always a queue, but somehow I timed it right and didn’t have to wait long. It rained on and off all day, just a cool, quiet, grey, and comfortable day. 

Today was one of the good ones, in other words.  As ever, tomorrow is Sunday and the PC goes into the cupboard in a few moments.  First to run my backup software!

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Greek and Latin books at Google

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An extremely useful list (thanks to George Kiraz):

http://www.google.com/googlebooks/ancient-greek-and-latin.html

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve pulled QuickGreek out of the drawer and I’ve been working on it again. 

It’s always hard to remember where I was with the code.  Software development is definitely NOT something best undertaken in short bursts with weeks in between.

This time I’m trying to include some matching for Greek words by stripping off the accents.  Quite a lot of words are unique, even without an accent.  It should improve the hit rate.

Reading about software is tedious.  My apologies!

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The manuscripts of Socrates Scholasticus

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I have Gunther Christian Hansen’s evidently excellent new critical text in the Berlin GCS series of Socrates Scholasticus before me.  So I have placed online a summary of what he says about the extant manuscripts of that work, plus their translations into Armenian, Syriac, etc.  The notes are here.

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Translation of Chrysostom “In Kalendas” has arrived

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The translation that I commissioned of John Chrysostom’s sermon In Kalendas, on the kalends of January — i.e. on New Year — has arrived and looks good.  It will be released into the public domain and placed online this evening.

There may be a bit of a hiatus with various projects over the summer.  I imagine that translators will want to get a break — to run barefoot in the meadows and bathe in the mountain streams, frisking with … with whatever is frisking at this season.  I find my own urge to sit before a keyboard is diminishing too!

UPDATE (June 19th).  After writing which, I promptly forgot all about it!  Oops!

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Working on QuickAccents and other things

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A few years ago I wrote a little tool called QuickAccents.  What it did was add the correct accents to a Greek word as you typed it, using the accentuation in the New Testament.  Hardly anyone ever bought a copy, and it languished until I finally withdrew it a year back.

Over the weekend I had an email from one of the few, asking me if it would run on Windows 7.  The answer was that it would not.  But in response to pleas, I located the source and tried to port it to the current version of Visual Studio.

I wasn’t very hopeful, but the port more or less worked.  Well, Microsoft to Microsoft… it ought to!  But certainly earlier versions did not.  So I have the new version.  This I will package up, and the gentleman will be able to run it.

In those days I tended to list the date in the files.  I notice, ruefully, that I wrote QuickAccents in 2002.  It didn’t seem so long ago… And where did the time go?

I’ve been feeling really incredibly tired over the last couple of days, with lots of headaches and toothache in the upper jaw.  I started to feel better last night, and suddenly realised that it must have been a virus!  The virus gets into the sinuses, and thus the other symptoms.  I mention this only in case others are afflicted, and have not realised what is happening.

Last night I started to look at the preface to Hansen’s edition of the Church History of Socrates Scholasticus.  We’re so accustomed to having this in English that it was a shock to learn that no German translation had ever been made!  Interestingly there is evidence that a complete Syriac version exists.

If the virus will let up, I will digest down the manuscript tradition and place it online.

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