This photo was taken in 1839 making it one of the earliest known self-portraits in the history of photography. I have looked at it often. He feels so alive, so human. It is a far cry from the stilted portraits which were to follow in the decades to come.
I was reminded of this when I came across First Sounds, a website set up “to make mankind’s earliest sound recordings available to all people for all time.”
Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville recorded phonautograms around 1860 and although the sound is distorted, it makes for facinating listening material. Scott’s recordings predates Thomas Edison’s far more famous recordings by some seventeen years, although there is arguably a significant difference in sound quality.
Last year the re-discovery of a young girl singing Au Clair de la Lune – a recording made by Scott in 1860 – made the headlines. Thanks to Mefi I just realised that experts are now thinking that Au Clair de la Lune was being played at twice the speed and the actual singer is Scott himself. While somewhat less romantic than a young girl’s voice being heard after 150 years, it made me think of how inventors and pioneers are often left on their own as they try to make their ideas reality.
Kraków is not a great place to shop if you are into your crafts. I managed to track down a couple of pasmanteria (I have no idea how to pluralise the word – it means “haberdashery”) on Ul. Karmelicka, but the best one I found was on the corner of Ul. Królewska and Aleja Juliusza Słowackiego. I had to pass through a room of children’s clothes and another filled with children’s shoes before hitting the tiny pasmanteria. 
Yes, I know I said stuff about knitting with grey wool. The phrases “never again”, “not in the winter months” and “I need colour!!!!!” may have passed my lips. 
Oh, my Glasgow. She is pretty even if we do not see the sun all that often and it rains a great deal. She is pretty.
(this is the staircase in the Lighthouse Tower. pretty, no?)
If you are familiar with the history of photography or an Arthur Conan Doyle
Finally, we spent some time at 
And what is this? Could this be a sighting of the increasingly common februarii ladius sweaterae? I believe this one is the organic Scottish Gray variant with mother-of-pearl features.. 
