Intute describes itself as "a free online service providing access to the very best web resources for education and research." and is created by a network of UK universities and partners. It says that all its material is evaluated and selected by a network of subject specialists to create its database. One to add to my list, possibly even to my page of favourites.
One of the things I love about living in this part of London is the number of foreign embassies nearby. I'm creating a new page on this site called London Embassies, where I will ‘collect’ embassies as I come across them. It's also a good way of finding out more about the countries themselves.
I'm starting with the Iraqi Embassy, which I haven't actually seen yet, having mistaken the Consular Section at 21 Queen's Gate for the main Embassy. Yesterday it was guarded by police officers. It has the Iraqi flag flying on it, but no signs in English. Past BBC News reports suggest it used to be the main embassy. But according to the Foreign Office's Diplomatic List, it's only the Consular Section.
The Diplomatic List has the main embassy at 9 Holland Villas Road.
For a couple of years now my browser of choice has been Firefox, and whenever I've looked at this, my own website, it's usually been in Firefox. But Internet Explorer 7 is certainly better than IE6 and possibly even better than Firefox itself. On top of which, Googgle Analytics tells me that more visits to the site are made using Explorer than using Firefox.
I've always known that one day I'd have to make the site more friendly for Internet Explorer users. The main problem is there are website features which standards-compliant browsers ought to be able to implement, but which Explorer can't. I've built some of these into the site since I was looking at it in Firefox, which does implement these features.
I'm on holiday right now, so I'm taking time to make the site more presentable for Explorer users. This means making some design compromises, but the result should be an improvement for people using IE.
I answered my mobile last night and discovered I was talking to someone in Khartoum. Worth recording, as I don't suppose it's going to happen again in a hurry.
Charlie Goldsmith was a member of the choir at St Alfege, Greenwich who has been working with the Church in Sudan for almost two years now, helping them to build new schools. We've kept in touch sporadically, by e-mail, text message and visits when he's back in London. I think it's extraordinary what he's been doing - I'm proud and envious at the same time.
A new discovery - "Classic Cat is a directory with links to over 4800 free to download classical performances on the internet, sorted by composer and work."
I went for the first time this morning to the Brompton Oratory for Solemn Mass in Latin. I was leaving the church during the administration - in England I respect the Catholic church's own rule that only Catholics can receive the Mass, though when abroad I overlook it - when the choir started singing Tallis's wonderful anthem O Sacrum Convivium. It is such a beautiful piece of music I can rarely hear it without getting tearful and I was rooted to the spot. Sadly the only recording I have of it is, for me, far too slow and rather dull - a live recording by the Oxford Camerata. So I need to find a good recording.
The last time I heard a choir singing O Sacrum Convivium, it was Choral Evensong at St Alfege, Greenwich on my last Sunday in Greenwich. The anthem is based on a text by Aquinas. The Latin text is:
O sacrum convivium, in quo Christus sumitur;
recolitur memoria passionis ejus;
mens impletur gratia;
et futurae gloriae nobis pignus datur.
And this is an English translation:
O sacred banquet, wherein Christ is received;
the memorial of his passion is renewed;
the soul is filled with grace;
and a pledge of future glory is given to us.
The most wonderful moment for me in the piece is at the words et futurae gloriae. The piece appears to change key and go all mysterious just for those words, as if hinting at something unknowable. Even though I've downloaded the sheet music, I can't yet work out what happens at that point (it's years since I tried to understand a score in that way).
On Friday we drove up to visit our friends Simon and Juliet, about to reach the end of their tour of England's canals on their narrow boat (see my entry Simon and Juliet's awfully big adventure back in May).
We had glorious weather and the final stretch of water, from the last lock to where we finally moored, was perfect - a late summer afternoon in the English countryside.
Earlier I'd had my first experience of opening and closing lock gates. Simon and Juliet looked after Ollie overnight whilst we stayed in a local bed-and-breakfast.
Yesterday we went to the Musée d'Orsay to see the exhibition ‘De Cézanne à Picasso’, based on works of art which went through the hands of the art dealer Ambroise Vollard.
I wish we'd left ourselves more time to take the exhibition in. I was interested in discovering more about Vollard, but expected the exhibition to draw rather heavily on the Musée d'Orsay's own collection.
But for all kinds of reasons, the exhibition was far better than I expected.
It was genuinely interesting to learn something about the provenance of some of the paintings on show, especially those Vollard had bought off one painter and then sold on to another. And I hadn't realised just how many artists there were for whom Vollard had been crucially important.
Then of course, even if many of the paintings were from the Musée d'Orsay's own collection, they included some great works, especially from Gauguin (the Musée d'Orsay's Gauguins have always been my favourite part of its collection).
But there were also stunning pictures from other galleries. For example, from Van Gogh: Armand Roulin (1988) now at Essen; and L'Arlesienne: Madame Joseph-Michel Ginoux (1888 or 1889) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and four paintings by Cézanne: Verre et pommes (1879-80), now in Basle; Madame Cézanne au fauteuil jaune (1888-90) at the Art Institute of Chicago; Le Garçon au gilet rouge (1888-90) at the National Gallery of Art, Washington; and my favourite picture in the exhibition, Chateau Noir (1900-04) from the musée Picasso.
I've just discovered TV5's Apprendre.TV web pages, which allow us to watch a piece of news and then answer questionnaires on it.
The house we live in already had a NEFF dishwasher installed when we came. I discovered today it was manufactured in April 1999. This is an area of almost total ignorance on my part. NEFF's dishwasher pages are here - the repair man was from BSH Home Appliances.
Last night I cycled to the National Film Theatre to see Darratt by the Chad film director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun. Back in 2002 I saw his film Abouna. One clear link between the two films is the theme of missing fathers. In Abouna, two sons were left alone with their mother when their father disappeared without explanation. They decided to leave home in search of him. And in Darratt, a boy goes in search of his father's murderer, to seek revenge.
One of the most memorable scenes for me in Abouna was the musical re-telling by Muslim musicians of the story of Abraham's journey to sacrifice his son Isaac. And it was only in talking this week to Carys about this scene that she made me see how relevant this was to the theme of fathers and sons.
Mahamat-Saleh Haroun talked about the significance of the missing father in Filmmaker magazine in a February 2004 article. The missing father alluded partly to God, he said; and partly to the aftermath of colonialism, when the organizing force has left a country. Elsewhere he has written about being a film director in a country with no tradition of film making - how in that sense he as a film maker is fatherless.