Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
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).
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.
Saturday 9th September 2006
Since the site started, most of the places listed in the Encyclopedia have had links to their location on Streetmap. I’ve now replaced these with a map from Google Maps which shows the location in the page, which is more convenient.
Monday 5th December 2005
A. Hamilton suggested in an annotation that we could use a section in the Encyclopedia for information about the Pepys household. I’m certainly finding it hard to keep track of which servants are currently working there, for example.
Thursday 29th September 2005
As most readers are aware, I add new entries to the Encyclopedia section as we progress through the diary, as Pepys meets new people, visits new places, etc. Until now I haven’t included pages for all the plays he’s seen, but this was becoming an increasingly obvious omission. So I’ve created pages for all the plays Pepys has seen or mentioned so far and will keep it up to date like everything else.
Sunday 24th July 2005
Update: The first article has now appeared!
You might notice a few things around here have been tweaked. This is to make room for a new section of the site: In-depth Articles. This will, hopefully, be a home to occasionally essays about aspects of Pepys’ life or the world in which he lived. If you would like to write something that doesn’t seem to fit elsewhere (perhaps because it’s too long for an annotation or covers too many topics to find a home in the Background Info pages), either drop me a line or raise the idea in the discussion group. The first article will appear this week…
Friday 24th September 2004
Kal Ahmed has been busy creating topic map of events in Pepys’ Diary. What is it? Kal takes the events of each day and transforms them into XML, a format that can be easily interpreted by computer programs. From this he’s generated web pages that, for example, show you when Sam sent and received letters, what plays have been mentioned, or what happened when he journeyed from Brampton to Hatfield.
Thursday 22nd July 2004
The Story So Far section of the site is now up to date, providing a monthly summary of events in the diary. Hopefully this should help people who haven’t been with us since the start, who have to take a break from the diary, or those of us who simply need reminding of past events occasionally.
Sunday 28th March 2004
The old Further Reading page didn’t allow anyone to post their suggestions to it, so we were ending up with book recommendations scattered through the annotations. I’ve now created a new Further Reading section in Background Info, so if you would like to recommend something that isn’t already listed, feel free!
If you want to recommend a book but can’t see a page that’s right for it, do email me and I’ll add one.
Monday 4th August 2003
It’s been suggested before, but the need for it has become more apparent as the diary goes on. I’ve created glossary category in the Background Info section for words that are used reasonably often, that need explaining, and that don’t have a more suitable category. “Link boy” is the only entry so far, and if you think of anything else (in past or future diary entries), just let me know. It should help cut down on anyone having to explain the same things too often!
Sunday 27th July 2003
In the past we’ve debated whether there’s a need for a more informal discussion space, aside from the diary annotations. While we didn’t reach a conclusion, I think it’s worth a go. There have been a number of off-topic annotations recently and I think we would all benefit from somewhere we can dicsuss things, or ask questions, that don’t fit anywhere else.
Saturday 1st March 2003
I made a few little changes today:
Wednesday 19th February 2003
I’m often adding new categories here and there in the Background Info section but I thought I’d just mention a couple of bigger changes today. I’ve added a lot of new categories and pages in the Food and Drink category and I’ve split the Places category into some sub-categories to make it more manageable. Thanks to David for his exhaustive efforts in the former case! As ever, let me know if there’s anything else you think would be useful in there.
Friday 14th February 2003
No doubt you’ve noticed the new section by now. Hopefully it’s pretty self-explanatory. It’s a directory of pages each devoted to a specific topic. These pages can then be annotated with information or links to other sites. The information should stay rather more “current” than that posted to diary entries which tend to “fade away” as we move through the diary. The People and Places pages are now integrated into this section.
Tuesday 4th February 2003
I’ve been working on improving the Recent Annotations page format, as it was rather unwieldy. I’ve now set it so that rather than listing the last 30 annotations chronologically, it lists the last 10 entries ordered by whichever has the most recent annotations. I hope that makes sense! There didn’t seem much point in the previous listing where most of the comments were on the current diary entry. This way, it’s easier to keep an eye on new annotations appearing on older diary entries.
I’ve also worked out how to include the start of each annotation, which makes it a bit more interesting. I’ve changed the recent People/Places annotations list to the same format too (I’m trying to split this into two separate lists but haven’t worked out how yet). I hope you feel this is an improvement; let me know!
Monday 3rd February 2003
I’ve made a few changes this weekend, some or all of which you may have noticed already…
Wednesday 8th January 2003
I’ve added a new page that lists the annotations posted to all diary entries and the People and Places pages. Ideal for those of you who like to keep up with what’s happening on the site!