If you're typing your transcription into Word, turn off auto-capitalisation and auto-correct!
If you're confident in the letters but still don't know what the word means, an OED search returns matches with variant historical spellings. Or if it's a proper noun and you have some context, Google it.
05.03.2026 19:54
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It was not many years ago I learned that the plant called flax in New Zealand (Phormium tenax) isn't the same as European flax (Linum usitatissimum). I knew Maori used (phormium) flax for its fibres, but one day YouTube recommended a video on flax to linen and it was a completely different plant!
26.02.2026 08:50
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Dates: www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/...
Data: hfroehli.ch/2013/02/19/h...
Visualisation: Me
Inspiration: βMen speak most in Best Picture Winning Filmsβ BBC infographic
(www.bbc.com/news/world-4...) from data by Hannah Anderson, The Pudding (pudding.cool/2017/03/film...
21.02.2026 04:26
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A bar chart showing the percentage of words spoken by women in Shakespeare's plays vs that spoken by men. The purple bars for female speech are in all cases significantly shorter than the green bars for male speech.
Henry VIII: 17% female
Tempest: 7% female
Winter's Tale: 22% female
Cymbeline: 22% female
Pericles: 15% female
Coriolanus: 12% female
Timon of Athens: 1% female
Antony and Cleopatra: 25% female
King Lear: 15% female
Macbeth: 20% female
Measure for measure: 20% female
Othello: 19% female
All's well that ends well: 35% female
Troilus and Cressida: 11% female
Hamlet: 9% female
The Merry Wives of Windsor: 29% female
As you like it: 41% female
Julius Caesar 5% female
Twelfth Night: 32% female
Henry V: 5% female
Much ado about nothing: 27% female
Midsummer Night's Dream: 22% female
Richard II: 10% female
Love's labours lost: 21% female
Romeo and Juliet: 31% female
Two Gentlemen of Verona: 25% female
Taming of the Shrew: 12% female
Titus Andronicus: 13% female
Richard III: 22% female
Henry VI,Part I: 13% female
Henry VI, Part II: 15% female
Henry VI, Part III: 13% female
Comedy of Errors: 10% female
The other day I came across this visualisation of the percentage of female/male speech in Shakespeare that I made back in 2019 from @heatherfro.bsky.social's data and thought it was worth reupping. At the time there was a similar graphic for female/male speech in Oscar-winning films doing the rounds
21.02.2026 04:23
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Script/Print/Code
Who can copy a text faster: a pen, a printing press, or a coder?
A few years ago there was an event where the organisers got a calligrapher, a letterpress printer, and a web developer to produce the same text, to make this exact point about the relative labour involved. There's a brief write up at www.digitalscholarship.ox.ac.uk/article/scri...
17.02.2026 23:51
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From time to time when I'm faced with a viewer like this I use the website/extension Dezoomify, which sounds like it dates from this era
dezoomify.ophir.dev
15.02.2026 19:32
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Pencil sketch of two figures in ermine-topped robes and coronets. Both are holding a sheathed sword attached to a cord around their necks, the left figure holds a sealed document. These represent a duke and a marquis.
Pencil sketch of a man in robes and a coronet holding a heart-shaped shield, and pointing to the left. This figure represents a baron.
The figures in robes remind me very much of the depictions of the different ranks of nobility in John Guillim's notebook (Folger MS V.a.447 fol. 31β35) which I believe he copied from elsewhere.
digitalcollections.folger.edu/bib234631-28...
#heraldry
15.02.2026 02:02
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Top section of the very large parchment roll entitled 'Genealogy of the right worshipful and worthy Captain Sir William Cole of the Castle of Enniskillen, Co. Fermanagh, in the kingdom of Ireland'. It comprises an extensive family tree with many coats of arms painted on it. Beneath the introductory text are five figures, holding a banner or shield of their coat of arms, who are the progenitors of five of the lines from which William Cole descended
There are lots of things to admire in this image of a pedigree shared by in this recent post by @shamrockroots.com I particularly like the illustrations of people at the top of their lines of descent, and the diapering on the middle two flags
(Original pedigree is held by PRONI, reference D1702/7/5)
15.02.2026 01:51
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Very large parchment roll entitled 'Genealogy of the right worshipful and worthy Captain Sir William Cole of the Castle of Enniskillen, Co. Fermanagh, in the kingdom of Ireland'. It comprises an extensive family tree with many coats of arms painted on it.
Top section of the very large parchment roll entitled 'Genealogy of the right worshipful and worthy Captain Sir William Cole of the Castle of Enniskillen, Co. Fermanagh, in the kingdom of Ireland'. It comprises an extensive family tree with many coats of arms painted on it.
Close-up of a section of the very large parchment roll entitled 'Genealogy of the right worshipful and worthy Captain Sir William Cole of the Castle of Enniskillen, Co. Fermanagh, in the kingdom of Ireland'. It comprises an extensive family tree with many coats of arms painted on it.
Close-up of a section of the very large parchment roll entitled 'Genealogy of the right worshipful and worthy Captain Sir William Cole of the Castle of Enniskillen, Co. Fermanagh, in the kingdom of Ireland'. It comprises an extensive family tree with many coats of arms painted on it.
Heraldry! This is a huge family tree for William Cole, who established the Plantation town of Enniskillen. It asserts that he is related to many English nobility families, with wonderful illustrations of their coats of arms.
#GenHour #Genealogy #IrishGenealogy
12.02.2026 20:13
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Will let you know once he finishes a project!
10.02.2026 08:34
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#DHMakes friends: my son has started a new school, and got into their Maker class. This means his normal education takes place in (and using the resources of) a makerspace! (3d printers, sewing machines, etc) He is absolutely loving it.
09.02.2026 19:56
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Thanks for organising! It was great to meet people, and fun to do some live paleography :)
03.02.2026 22:44
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Photograph of a stone door frame with very tall metal doors. The doors are panelled and the perimeters studded with stars. The doors have a green patina so are presumably copper or bronze.
Latin was one of my favourite subjects at school and university. My first textbooks were the "Using Latin" series. Its cover was the a photo of the doors of the Roman Senate. When I went to Rome some decades later I made sure to take a picture :)
29.01.2026 07:37
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Photograph of native bush with a bird on a tree branch in the background, and another bird on a flowering flax frond in the foreground.
Update: the pΕ«keko has shifted trees, and is now joined by a tui in the harakeke #kikorangi
27.12.2025 22:09
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A photo of the green foliage of some trees. Sitting in the middle is a bird with blue and black feathers and a red head and beak
Spotted over breakfast: a pΕ«keko in a (not a ponga) tree
27.12.2025 19:38
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14/20 here. I did better on the Christmas carol questions than the popular culture :)
26.12.2025 06:49
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I think we need a mega thread of everyone's craziest archive stories.
22.12.2025 15:38
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That tracks with my experience doing some work for a US university. Payment, when it came via international mail, was a physical check drawn not on a bank but on the treasury of the relevant state. I had to open an account at the one bank in my country that still accepted foreign cheques!
21.12.2025 00:12
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I've just had a quick look and I don't think I have photographic evidence from that era either! Though I am impressed I can remember the names of people I haven't seen for 25 years!
03.12.2025 05:18
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Congratulations! Nice to see some familiar faces in the early photos too :)
03.12.2025 03:42
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Which seal is that? I can't quite make it out.
01.12.2025 22:51
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Diagram defining critical making, data physicalization, visualization, edibilization, sonification, visualization, data art, and interpretive object.
Have you seen this definition/situation of data visceralization amongst other forms of representation? startwords.cdh.princeton.edu/issues/1/dat...
25.11.2025 17:51
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Congratulations Meghan!
22.11.2025 03:00
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Floorplan of Epsom Library with annotations in red as to where the shelves were, and what they contained. The base document is Auckland Council Archives ACC 015/5837-18 (Epsom Library alterations and additions 1973)
Photograph by Henry Winkelman of the Epsom Public Library in 1924. The image shows what looks like a white stuccoed house with bay window and tiled roof, with the higher gabled roof of a hall rising behind. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 1-W0607.
The brain is a wonderful thing! Yesterday I had occasion to look up a photo of the old Epsom library, where I worked during high school and the start of university. Almost three decades later I can still remember the shelving layout, and what books went where, almost down to the letter!
22.10.2025 07:29
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Ceremonial trowel | Records | DigitalNZ
There are also some ceremonial trowels (from laying foundation stones) if you're interested digitalnz.org/records?text...
21.10.2025 19:52
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A Century of PhD Dress in Aotearoa New Zealand
This article provides a brief overview of the history of the PhD in Aotearoa and explores its first academic dress, the disbanding of the federal university, and the evolution of independent universit...
Very proud to share that one of my articles celebrating the 100th anniversary of the PhD in Aotearoa has now been published! This article explores how PhD dress in Aotearoa has changed in the century since the then University of New Zealand introduced the degree. newprairiepress.org/burgonsociet...
20.10.2025 23:00
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Photograph of pink macarons inside a glass domed cake stand on a kitchen bench.
I made some macarons for a shared lunch today, and I'm very pleased with how they turned out! #DHBakes
19.10.2025 00:28
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Unicode burlesque
A #DigitalHumanities song inspired by 'Welcome to Burlesque' from the movie Burlesque
In honour of the release of "The life of a showgirl" I've finally gotten around to adding "Unicode burlesque" to my website of DH songs β "What is #DigitalHumanities? The Album" β after only two years!
Thanks again to @quinnanya.me for the inspiration
what-is-dh-the-album.netlify.app/singles/unic...
05.10.2025 23:05
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Zen Browser
Beautifully designed, privacy-focused, and packed with features.
There is a clone of Arc called Zen which is based on the Firefox browser engine, which I need to check out.
zen-browser.app
26.09.2025 21:32
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