This is a reproduction set of the Isle of Lewis Chessmen (or Uig Chessmen). It is the earliest know chess set. Discovered in 1831 in Scotland, a total of 78 pieces were recovered including 8 kings, 8 queens, 16 bishops, 15 knights, 12 rooks and 19 pawns. The heights of the pawns range from 3.5 to 5.8 cm while the major pieces are between 7 and 10.2 cm. It is believed they were probably made in Norway, by craftsmen in the 12th century. They are owned and exhibited by the British Museum in London, which has 67 of the original pieces, and the Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, which has the remaining 11 pieces. Sarah, in 4th grade now, joined the chess club this year and I can’t wait to play a game with her using this set. The board arrives next week!

Caroline purchased this wonderful medium format 120mm Yashica-Mat film camera for me for Christmas. I love this camera, it is so beautiful. Also in the picture is an #168 Boxwood antique wood and brass two foot ruler. It folds both vertically and horizontally, very unusual. And to the left of the camera are some Buckyballs. If you don’t have any of these, you need to get some. Seriously.

There was a light fog this morning and I tried to catch it but I was a little late. You can see it in the tree lines. I wish I had been 30 minutes earlier. Even so the heavy frost and early morning sun were great. The tree on the right is the second biggest dogwood in America. Wait until this spring!! And yes, it is haunted! We have video proof.

Anna has developed a new hobby in part due to her cousin Clara. She loves to make jewelry now. These are some beads from one of her favorite bead stores here in Bowling Green.

This afternoon Leah, Sarah and I went to share some treats with the horses down the street. We were hoping to see King and Tinkerbell but instead we found only Pepe. He was whinnying at the fence when we arrived and kept it up until he realized what we had at which point he trotted over to investigate. We shared some apples and carrots with him and I think he must have appreciated it because it struck a very nice pose fore me afterward. Thanks Pepe!

iPhone and Instagram enabled picture.

Yes, that right! Free iPad backgrounds for all my friends. This was a fun little project. Nothing like a little Rain-X and glass to create some really nice water beads. I struck them with the flash about about 45 degrees and set the aperture to F22. I don’t have a macro lens so I converted my F2.0 100m lens to a macro by inserting a lens extender between the lens and the body. This simultaneously shrank the focal length and lowered the depth of field. The results are pretty neat I think. They don’t even look real, but they are! Enjoy.

I love the hour glass with black sand that has been sitting on my desk since I started working here. I can’t believe it took me this long to take a picture of it. The trees outside my window and the gray sky made the perfect monochromatic backdrop for the picture. I used my iPhone 4 to take the shot. If I had my 5D I would have been able to capture the sand frozen in space.

I welcomed in 2012 with the usual eats. Black eyed peas? Check! Cabbage? Check. Collards? YUCK, thank goodness for the peach juice. Check! And last but not least, the pork product of your choice. Check! Ummmm good and here’s to the new year.

As promised I took Anna and Sarah to Chicago for the weekend. We had a blast. We purchased a CityPass which got us in the Shedd Aquarium, Field Museum, Art Institute, the SkyWalk at the top of Sears tower and the Science and Technology building (which we didn’t make it to). The hit of the trip as it turns out was Navy Pier as well as tea at the American Girl Doll store.

Testing out the share link from FLickr

Boxee Beta from boxee on Vimeo.

The Boxee Box is a $199 piece of hardware co-developed D-Link and “Powered by Boxee” that hooks to your home theater system. The hardware includes an Ethernet, HDMI out, optical audio out, composite audio out jacks and two USB ports. The Boxee application itself is a free cross-platform HTPC (Home Theater PC) application that you can download here. Boxee was originally a fork of the free and open source XBMC media center software which Boxee now uses as an application framework for its GUI and media player core platform, together with some custom and proprietary additions. Boxee’s software application is still considered to be in its early development stages but I have found it to work quite well on my PC with almost no problems. Set-up time was 10 minutes.

Because of its integration with social media sites as well as various kinds of media, it is marketed as the first ever “Social Media Center”. Boxee enables its users to view, rate and recommend content to their friends through many social network services and interactive media related features. One notable feature missing in Boxee is the ability to watch and record live TV received via over-the-air TV, cable or satellite signals.

The installation was a snap and it seamlessly integrated my local files (mp3, mp4, wav, m4v, jpg, png, gif) with all my media located on the usual sites like pandora.com, flickr.com, youtube.com, facebook.com, Netflix.com, IMDB, etc . . . . Setup was a snap, just plug in your credentials for each site and away you go. Browsing your local machine or network was also a snap; boxee gobbled up media like Pacman running a maze. The user interface is simple and effective and most importantly openly extensible (unlike the approach larger players like Apple take). This is perhaps why you can buy hacked iTV boxes on ebay that run the Boxee application. The developers of Boxee have stated that their goal is to have Boxee media center software run on as many third-party hardware platforms and operating systems as possible.

If consumers are lucky, perhaps Boxee will find its way into DVD players and TVs as the social media OS. I’ll keep my fingers crossed but won’t hold my breath too long as it would clearly be too good to be true.

It was all fine and dandy until I realized I had to bring it into the dock without sinking it at the end of the day. Thankfully, some stranger on the dock helped me guide it in otherwise I am not sure what we would have done.

We shot a bunch of pictures on the trip. Wildlife seen: Wild Turkeys (besides the children), Chipmunk, Raccoon, and only Deer tracks (but no deer). Lots of Geodes were cracked and many fossils were found while exploring the area. Evening fires were prepared, Marshmallows roasted and hot chocolate consumed.

You can clearly see the 4 Galilean moons in this shot. They are the largest of the many moons of Jupiter and derive their names from the lovers of Zeus: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. They were discovered sometime between 1609 and 1610 when Galileo made improvements to his telescope, which enabled him to observe celestial bodies more distinctly than had ever been possible before.

The castle dominates a steep hill overlooking the picturesque village of Dunster. The hill has been fortified since Saxon times, although nothing now remains of these early defenses. During the early medieval period the sea reached the base of the hill offering a natural defense, and strong walls, towers, ramparts and outworks protected the other sides. By the 15th century the sea had receded and the Luttrells created the deer park. When Sir George Luttrell inherited in 1571, the castle was dilapidated and the family were living elsewhere. In 1617, Sir George employed the architect, William Arnold, to erect a new house in the lower ward of the castle. During the Civil War, Dunster was a Royalist stronghold under the command of Colonel Wyndham. In November 1645 Parliamentary forces started a siege which lasted until an honorable surrender of the castle in April 1646. Dunster shared the fate of many other Royalist castles and had its defenses demolished to prevent any further use against Parliament. All that now remains of the medieval fortifications are the impressive gatehouse and the stumps of two towers.

The house was modified and developed over the following centuries, and much of the current appearance dates from the 18th century when the park was landscaped and the Green Court, terraced grounds and follies were created. Much of the furniture in the house also dates from this period.

Links Related to Luttrell Family and Dunster Castle

• Dunster Castle Slideshow
• A history of Dunster and of the families of Mohun & Luttrell (1909) – Volume 1
• A history of Dunster and of the families of Mohun & Luttrell (1909) – Volume 2
• Medieval Rural Life in the Luttrell Psalter
• A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Commoners of Great Britain. Colburn. 1835. pp. 143.
• Allied families of Read, Corbin, Luttrell, Bywaters, by A.M. Prichard
• Notable Souther Families – Volume I – Luttrell (page 124)
• Britannia Entry on Dunster Castle
• History of Luttrellstown Ireland
• Sir Geoffrey de Luterel (1175-1218)
• Robert Luttrell of Luttrellstown, Ireland (bef 1390 – 1436 or 1437)
• Sir John Luttrell (c. 1518/19 – 10 July 1551)
• Luttrell Family in England and Ireland
• Luttrells in England website

Click here —> Full Screen Slideshow of Deep Creek Adventure

For those of you with the Ceviche itch to create your own. You can find a pretty good Ceviche recipe on allrecipies.com.

Sorry for the blurry iPhone photography.

I need an iPhone upgrade.

Finally finished the 2009 Adventure book – (Preview Book). 470 Photos in 240 pages using BookSmart by blurb.com. This is the third year I have used blurb.com to produce our custom print on demand annual. A new feature of the application I really enjoyed this year is that you can now edit the fixed layouts and create your own new custom layouts. I didn’t use that feature as much as I would like to have done on this years book mainly because of the rush to get it out. I intended to do more customization going forward. If I can just discipline myself to build this thing each month vs. the entire thing at the end of the year.

Below are links to the 2008 and 2007 books.

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“Pilgrims on The Ohio” was published in 1997 over a century after Ruben Twaites river trip and features a never before published personal collection of photographs taken on the journey in 1894. The book includes 74 photographs from the trip as well as his narrative descriptions of the images and page references to his journal. Also included are essays by Reid and Fuller discussing Thwaites’ life and the development and influence of the Kodak #2 in the history of photography.

Thwarts personal journal from the same trip is entitled: Afloat on the Ohio by Reuben Gold Thwaites. One of the things Thwaites does in his journal is describe the journey in context of what the early pioneers were experiencing. I am particularly interested in these photographs and his journal writings because my 4xGreat Grand father migrated from either Redding, Wheeling or Pittsburg on a flat boat (or raft) in 1798 (almost 100 years prior to Thwaites journey). I was hoping reading this text might give me some perspective into what it might have been like.

In the spring and summer of 1894, Reuben Gold Thwaites (noted American historian and Society Director), traveled with his family down the Monongahela and Ohio rivers, taking photos all the way. Thwaites’ photographs of the six-week trip offer a unique opportunity to take a glimpse into the gateway to the nation’s interior.

Thwaites used a #2 Kodak camera to take the circular black-and-white images. Thwaites was an early adopter of the Kodak #2 camera, purchasing one in 1891 to document his travels on a bicycle through England. This particular Kodak model, introduced in 1889, was one of the first cameras designed with the amateur in mind. It replaced the heavy, cumbersome glass plate with flexible film on a long roll. Photographers could shoot the entire roll and then send the camera into Kodak to have the film developed and prints made. It was from this generation of camera that Eastman Kodak coined the slogan, “You push the button, we do the rest.”

Afloat on the Ohio by Reuben Gold Thwaites (PDF)
Afloat on the Ohio by Reuben Gold Thwaites (Full Text and other versions)

Some of the photos below were taken in Cannelton, Bridgport and Owensboro, which are all near where my ancestors eventually settled some time around 1810. They first spent about 12 years in Bridgeport Kentucky area which is couple miles outside th of Frankfort.

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