Ramblings
Greg - Setting Orange, 46 Bureaucracy 3169 @ 02:56 PM
Although I didn't spend as much of it online as I'd expected, Talk Like A Pirate Day was a lot of fun. Local radio stations apparently picked up on it and capitalized in their morning chatter shows, so I didn't have to explain nearly as often as I'd thought I would.
BlogShares was down most of the day, so that part of my plan didn't do so well. I promised three artefacts, though, and one of them (as of my writing this) is still up for grabs. Go here and snag it if it's still available - the secret word is grapeshot.
Pirate/nautical trivia gleaned:
I hadn't been aware of Cornelius Jol before, but his story is quite interesting.
Culverins and demiculverins traded bore size for range - I had always thought they were just light cannons.
I finally noticed the term "studdingsail boom". I suppose I had always figured that studdingsails were rigged to existing stuff rather than having small booms to themselves (I also tend to confuse studdingsails with staysails); it helps explain a line in a song that I associate mostly with Stan Rogers. It's a great line, very poetic, but I never could figure out how you'd get from sailcloth and rope to bones.
Snopes has a nice page about tapping the Admiral. In the version I heard, he wasn't drained dry; the "Lord of the manor" variant was new to me as well.
