Just back from two weeks away, doing the grand tour of the uk relations with the Wee Man. Back home, and now glued to the internet to catch up.

Apparently, China have just formally defined Internet Addiction as a disease…

Chinese doctors released the country’s first diagnostic definition of Internet addiction over the weekend, amid efforts to address an increasing number of psychological problems that reportedly result from Internet overuse.

I’m loving bookninja’s competition to “rebrand” and “dumb down” book covers of classic novels.

Here it is! two years in the making. First thoughts – jings, thems a lot of words to be writing about images.

Have already found my first typo (the whole copy-editor-changing-the-word-losing-to-loosing thing, grrrrr)… but in general: its all smiles here. Hurrah!

There’s a new book out soon about the Antikythera mechanism, called “Decoding the Heavens: Solving the Mystery of the World’s First Computer” by Jo Marchant which looks like its worth a peek. Interesting discussion about it on the Guardian’s science podcast, too.

Over the last year or so, I’ve been working with Greg Crane, of the Perseus Project, on a special issue of DHQ in honour of Ross Scaife. Its going to be an impressive and hefty volume – 10 very good papers, plus detailed intro and conclusion – about “where classics will be in 2018”. A potentially important roundup of the issues currently being raised about the use of information technology in classics.

We’re working like daemons to get try and get the issue up by the TEI meeting in London at the start of November. If not completely finished by then, it wont be long behind. I’m really looking forward to seeing this issue up – its a very fine testament to Ross Scaife’s legacy.

Have just been told that the book has arrived in the warehouse! will see it in the next few days. eek!

Its all true. Especially the bit about the Dundee Cake.

The Secret Museum of Mankind

Published in 1935, the Secret Museum is a mystery book. It has no author or credits, no copyright, no date, no page numbers, no index. Published by “Manhattan House” and sold by “Metro Publications”, both of New York, its “Five Volumes in One” was pure hype: it had never been released in any other form.

Advertised as “World’s Greatest Collection of Strange & Secret Photographs” and marketed mainly to overheated adolescents (see the 1942 Keen ad, left), it consists of nothing but photos and captions with no further exposition.

Good example of the type of quirky digital edition only a keen amateur would put together. And what a strange imperialistic text….

…. and this passed me by when it came out. Excellent overview by Charles Arthur of the Guardian on why reading stuff on screen is difficult.

Interesting discussion going on over at the Guardian blog, regarding whether

the brave new world of digital literature has been largely anti-climatic.

Worth checking out the comments.