Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:00 AM

I guess even Michelin guidebook writers get punchy now and again.

Take a look at this datasheet for Museo Nazionale Romano (one of several branches):

More Roman statues ! Well yes... Rome is so full of statuary that after a few days there, you can walk in front of masterpieces without even thinking of raising your head to see them. However, it would be a great pity with this collection of masterpieces from the Republican and Imperial eras, which make up the largest section of the National Roman Museum.
  You should examine the very expressive faces in the collection of portraits from the Republican era, admire the statue of Augustus draped in his great pontiff's gown, marked with a solemn majesty, stop in front of the Wounded Nioride, a Greek original dating from 440 B.C. and which come from Sallust's garden (one of the first nude women in Greek art), or in front of the realistic portrait of the Emperor Vespasian (he's not at all idealised !), l'Crouching Aphrodite and Lancellotti Discobolus (both copies of Greek originals).
  But you've had enough... What about mosaics and frescoes for a change? Those from the House of Livia and Villa Farnesina are absolutely superb: delicate plant decorations, birds, visual effects, shades of colour: these are masterpieces of ancient painting !
  Are you still fit ? In the basement, a numismatic collection takes you from the 4th century B.C. to the Euro, then you can see a Roman silver and gold plate collection.

I have to say, though, for good quality travel maps (particularly given Google Maps' printing problems), that ViaMichelin has one of the better mapping sites for travel plannings.

Just FYI...

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:31 PM

No pictures, but read the thread over at the Nielsen Haydens'.

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:05 AM

An open letter to LiveJournal/SixApart and crusaders for children's rights:

• It does not protect children to delete journals devoted to discussing Nabokov's Lolita.

• It does not protect children to delete the journals of adult survivors of abuse with information on support groups.

• It does not protect children to delete journals of obviously fictional characters roleplaying villains.

• It does not protect children to delete journals used for fanfiction -- fiction being the operative word.

As Erastes writes:

Dear Livejournal - if you are going to cave into pressure and remove accounts that have fiction that depicts incest and underage sex (don't let me get started on the fact that the great and Mighty America doesn't have the world rules on the age that people are allowed to have sex, please, 16 is the age of consent here, and it's 13 in some european countries) then please don't stop there. Don't discriminate. Make sure that all law breaking is treated equally.

Delete all accounts from all writers who have ever written fictional stories about:

Murder

Prostitution

Violence of any kind

Speeding in cars

Theft

Genocide

Ethnic Cleansing

Underage smoking

Drug Use

Jay walking

Littering

Streaking

.... discrimination....Yes. That's a crime too. Or it is over here.

where do you draw the line, Livejournal? Just where?

Delete the LJ of George Martin, the RSS feed of Neil Gaiman and many others. remove John Dallas Lockhart, and EVERYONE else on this list remove the Darwinians and replace them with creationalists.

Posted by Lis Riba at 4:30 PM

Okay, I'm stumped and could use a little help.

We've got a D-Link wireless router (DI-624M).

All of a sudden, sometime mid-morning, we lost wireless connectivity.

Connecting through the wireless gives us "Little or no connectivity"

However, if we physically plug the computer network cable into the router (as I'm doing now) I have no problem reaching the worldwide web.

This is happening on both Ian's and my computers (so it's not related to a change on one or the other), and we'd made no changes to any of our networking... stuff... before this problem occurred. Since then, we've rebooted the various equipment (cable modem, firewall, router) and even downloaded a firmware upgrade for the D-Link, but nothing has helped.

The fact that we can connect when plugged into the D-Link, but can't wirelessly suggests the problem is something with the D-Link itself.

Any ideas?

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:10 PM

Dreamer

Ok, I like Bill Richardson and everything. He's an extremely well-qualified fellow who seems to have a gift for diplomacy and foreign policy --- two things I think this country needs desperately.
But it's one thing to broker deals with Kim Jon Il or manage hostage releases. It's quite another to say you can bring Red Socks Sox and Yankee fans together as he did on Meet The Press this morning. Let's get real.