The Adventures of Lorie and Brian Groth

Microsoft and The British Library have teamed up and created something very cool: You can flip through very old and unique books online, but you do need to be running Windows Vista or Windows XP Service Pack 2. Here is a screenshot of flipping through Leonardo Da Vinci’s Codex Arundel and a close-up of Mozart’s Thematic Catalogue, which is a manuscript of his compositions in the last seven years of his life, so you can see how he wrote music.  

It uses something called Turning The Pages. A description from http://www.bl.uk/ttp2/ttp1.html is:

This preview version of Turning the Pages 2.0™ allows you to ‘virtually’ turn the pages of our most precious books. You can magnify details, read or listen to expert commentary on each page, and store or share your own notes.

Go to http://ttpdownload.bl.uk/ to try it out.

It snowed! We woke up Wedensday (Jan 24) morning and saw our first snow in London. Here is a photo of our street with snow on the cars and trees.

I wish it had snowed when we were in Chamonix!  

I have posted all of the photos from our trip to Chamonix and even have a video of Cullen snowboarding, including one face plant. Don’t let the photos fool you, the skiing was terrible. One day we got to one of the ski areas (there are about 5 or 6) and it was raining so hard and so windy at the top that the woman selling tickets told us that skiing that day was a bad idea. When it didn’t rain, we had either ice, really thick wet snow, or just hard crud. At least we had some great sun at times so we could see the Alps, which are certainly impressive.

The next ski trip will probably be in Austria or Switzerland and we will stay at someplace that allows us to ski-in and ski-out. In Chamonix you have to rely on the city bus or a taxi to get from town to the ski areas and back.

I also have short a video from inside the gondola as it starts to descend from the Aiguille Du Midi peak at Mont-Blanc, which is very is steep.  

You can take a gondola ride from Chamonix up to Aiguille Du Midi, which is a peak on part of Mont Blanc. Lorie and I got lucky on Wednesday with good weather and went up to check it out. The observation areas at the top are built in the rock and the size of the mountain (mountains?) is just massive and very impressive. 

We had great weather, but needed new snow. It was OK at the very top (3725 meters), but icy below that. The Chamonix are consists of about five ski ares, I think. We skied at Domaine Des Grands Montets. A few photos:          

Today (Saturday, Jan 13), Lorie and I went to the Tate Modern with a couple of friends. Our intention was to ride the big long slides that they have installed, but we would have had to wait for over 3 hours. So instead, we walked around and saw all the art, which I suppose is the point of going to a museum.  

After a couple of hours at the museum, we did the normal London thing and went to a pub for drinks and an early dinner.

And just for the heck of it, here is a photo of our house and our little Mercedes (Lorie’s really) in front of the house. Yes, we can park in front of our house!