21/8/2015 Paris

21/8/2015 Paris

The MNHM is closed to researchers today (Friday) so I took the chance to sort and put captions on my photographs. Particularly those from MS 1737. Given the importance as my only real source of the Petit contribution I will need to get formal permission to use the Nicolas-Martin Petit artwork reproductions in Bonnemains et al (1988) for my thesis.

I found " Ill-Starred Captains: Flinders and Baudin"   by Anthony J. Brown, and Tim  Flannery,Fremantle Press, (2004)  528 pages, which may give some more background to the Voyages. Their bibliography is excellent. 

On the "house-keeping" front I managed to negotiate a haircut in broken-french and sign language. It was over 6 weeks sine my last trim and I needed to look "professional" at the MNHM Central Library. After that minor triumph (no mean feat) I used the  free sight-seeing bus I had discovered at the MNHM Gardens, and went to see the Eiffel Tower. I also saw a lot of the major Paris "sights" on the way there and back so it was worth while. A slight problem with up-till-now reliable Sony camera. It simply stopped working; I had to take out the battery and put it back in to reset the operating system so it would turn on and off. A worry but I had transferred all my MNHM images across to the computer in the morning so only my sightseeing shots are "at risk". I suspect it was simply the heat.

My collating and labelling of the MNHM photographs taken so far is complete but the quality is very grey (the downside of the low lighting and no flash allowed in the Library) so I have experimented with the photo editing tools in the PMB software. I kept the original image and made copies to manipulate. It has worked amazingly well but I loose definition with every edit/compression.