Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
News about this site and other Pepys-related events.
Wednesday 20th February 2008
The site has been mentioned favourably a few times in the press recently, mainly due to its inclusion in Ultimate Blogs: Masterworks from the Wild Web by Sarah Boxer (Amazon US, UK). Here’s a quick summary for those who are interested.
Thursday 14th February 2008
Glyn Thomas has discovered a series of monthly talks about Pepys, given at St Olave, Hart St, London. Here’s a PDF flyer with the full information and here are the dates and topics for the rest of the year:
Sunday 30th December 2007
As I mentioned a couple of months ago I’ve been adding Wikipedia content into the Encyclopedia pages. I’ve now looked through the 2,797 Encyclopedia pages and 535 now feature Wikipedia content.
Saturday 10th November 2007
First of all a big “thank you” to those of you who voted for Pepys’ Diary in the 2007 Weblog Awards for Best Literature Blog. It was a close-run thing toward the end. The day before voting closed we were 3-400 votes behind Neil Gaiman’s Journal but on the final day we’d caught up and got nearly 100 votes ahead. So thanks to all of you who made the effort, and particularly those of you who emailed many more people asking for their support (and thanks to all the friends and colleagues of mine who voted and encouraged others to take part too).
Sunday 4th November 2007
I’ve now added the ability for some pages in the Encyclopedia to automatically pull in relevant content from Wikipedia.
Sunday 28th October 2007
I have added a bit of extra contextual information in the sidebar next to every diary entry. You can now see:
The average temperature for that month (daily data isn’t available until 1772) as recorded by Gordon Manley of the Royal Meteorological Society. You can view the full dataset on the Met Office’s website.
Links to the relevant daily Journals for the House of Commons and House of Lords from British History Online. These will hopefully give some context to Pepys’ more political activities.
My thanks to Terry Foreman for finding both these sources of information that help bring Pepys’ world alive. If anyone can suggest anything else, do let me know.
Saturday 20th October 2007
I updated the Movable Type software this afternoon, which meant shutting off annotations for a short while. Everything should all be back to normal now. If you see notice anything not working quite right, do email me or post a message below. Thanks for your patience!
Friday 19th October 2007
At some point this weekend, probably on Saturday afternoon, UK time, I’ll be upgrading the software that powers this (and other) sites. This will mean that first I’ll hide all the forms for posting annotations (so nothing is lost or broken in the switch-over) and then things might look a bit odd if I break something. Hopefully it won’t take too long and I’ll post here again when it’s all up and running.
Saturday 13th October 2007
The most requested feature for the site has been to receive daily diary entries by email. It may have taken me nearly five years for me to manage this but, finally, it’s now possible.
Sunday 9th September 2007
Just a reminder of two meet-ups happening this coming Saturday 15th September, in London and Boston, coincidentally marking our half-way point through the diary. First, the London gathering, suggested by Glyn Thomas:
Wednesday 27th June 2007
I’ve been very bad at organising another get-together for anyone who can make it. But Glyn Thomas has gently badgered me enough and has a good suggestion:
Monday 5th March 2007
Thanks for all your comments on the new design. I’ve made a few changes based on what you said, as described below. If things look a little odd you may need to visit this file and click the Reload button in your browser.
Friday 2nd March 2007
As you can tell, the site’s had a lick of paint! Everything should be working OK now, so if you come across anything that looks broken, or that doesn’t work as you expect, do let me know (and tell me which web browser and operating system you’re using).
Friday 2nd March 2007
All being well I’ll be making some changes to the site sometime this afternoon/evening (Friday, UK time). I’ll be temporarily switching off the ability to post annotations while I do this, and the site may look broken during this whole process. I’ll post another note when everything’s finished.
Sunday 21st January 2007
Although I hoped to make a lot of changes to the site today, I haven’t quite got everything ready. Rather than start now and stay up into the night I’m going to postpone the changes for the time being. Sorry for the false alarm! I’ll try and give some warning when I next have a chance to get this done, sometime in the next week or two.
Friday 19th January 2007
Sometime this Sunday (21st) I’m going to be doing some major work on the site. I’ll be switching off the ability to add annotations while doing this. The site may well look broken for a little while too. I’ll post a message when everything’s up and running again. I thought it was time for a new lick of paint around here…
Tuesday 2nd January 2007
Some time ago I raised the possibility of readers of the diary adopting pages in the Encyclopedia and becoming editors of them. I made a few changes to the site that made this possible, and a couple of press-ganged “volunteers”, Jeannine and Todd, have so far given this a try.
Friday 13th October 2006
I’ve now finished updating the code that runs the encyclopedia section of the site. There are a few differences to the layout of pages, but the biggest reorganistion is invisible. It will now, at last, be easier for volunteer editors to manage individual encyclopedia pages. Stay tuned…!
Friday 13th October 2006
Today I’m making a lot of structural changes to the encyclopedia section of the site, in preparation for allowing people to volunteer as editors for specific entries. So expect things to look broken from time to time until I post a message to say it should all be working again…
Friday 15th September 2006
Apologies for the lack of new diary entries — I haven’t been any busier than usual, but what with one thing and another I completely forgot to enter another week’s worth of entries this week and the supply has run dry! I’ll catch up later today or tomorrow.