Frets, on ukuleles, violins, and - tangentially - minds

Earlier in the year we acquired a ukulele. Having played violin years ago, I was impressed by innovations - a digital tuner is much better than the pitch pipes whose pitch varied depending on how hard you blew - I know I should have been able to do it all with an A and an ear…) And I only now learned that the metal bars running across the fingerboard of ukuleles, guitars, etc. don’t just guide the fingers but actually stop the string themselves, making tuning more precise - which set me wondering why I never had frets on my violin… ...

19 Nov 2022 · 2 min · 337 words · Terry

The History Boys, and teachers real and archetypal (August 2004)

[This post - on Alan Bennett’s play The History Boys when it was still new, my own French and maths education, and comedian Adam Bloom’s narrative maze-hedging - was originally published on LiveJournal on 4 August 2004 and is re-posted here as part of a migration from Livejournal. It has some minor editing, interjections from 2022, and fixing/replacement of broken links - not everywhere has been able to follow Tim Berners-Lee’s 1998-and-still-there advice that Cool URIs don’t change.] ...

9 Sep 2022 · 5 min · 978 words · Terry

Book Closing Lines Quiz (October 2021)

In May 2020 I compiled a quiz based on the openings of a variety of books on our bookcases - a mixture of the well-known and the slightly obscure, the literary and the popular, with a dusting of SF/fantasy sprinkled in. I’ve now put together a second quiz, this time on book endings. This page has the book endings but not the answers - there is a version with answers also available. ...

30 Oct 2021 · 2 min · 296 words · Terry

Book Closing Lines Quiz (October 2021) - with answers

In May 2020 I compiled a quiz based on the openings of a variety of books on our bookcases - a mixture of the well-known and the slightly obscure, the literary and the popular, with a dusting of SF/fantasy sprinkled in. I’ve now put together a second quiz, this time on book endings. This page includes the book closing lines and the answers: there is a spoiler-free version with only the questions also available. ...

30 Oct 2021 · 3 min · 446 words · Terry

Book Opening Lines Quiz (May 2020)

I recently compiled a quiz based on the openings of a variety of books on our bookcases. It is a mixture of the well-known and the slightly obscure, the literary and the popular, with a dusting of SF/fantasy sprinkled in. This page has the questions only: when you’re ready, there is a version of the quiz with answers also available. ...

24 May 2020 · 2 min · 416 words · Terry

Book Opening Lines Quiz (May 2020) - with answers

I recently compiled a quiz based on the openings of a variety of books on our bookcases. It is a mixture of the well-known and the slightly obscure, the literary and the popular, with a dusting of SF/fantasy sprinkled in. This page includes the book openings and the answers: there is a spoiler-free version with only the questions also available. ...

24 May 2020 · 4 min · 672 words · Terry