McMurdo's Camp

Compliments of the Season

Matilda — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 14:35:38 +0000

Here’s wishing the compliments of the season to all our members, friends, and readers. And especially for Sig, God Jul !

Movie Review Game of Shadows

Matilda — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 04:32:21 +0000

Added: Review of the new Downey-as-Holmes movie, A Game of Shadows. See Cultural Items, in the sidebar on the right. We are hoping to add a couple more reviews of the same movie in the next week or so.

Class Project ?

Matilda — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 22:42:49 +0000

McMurdo’s Camp is provided some feedback about its visitors and their activities by WordPress, host of the site. We cannot identify our visitors but we can see a little of what they are doing. One thing we see is counts of visitors and terms used by search engines to find us. We are seeing today a large increase in the number of visitors, maybe 4 or 5 times normal, as well as some school-type search terms, involving things like themes, class projects, and so on. Strangely many of them are from outside the USA, places like Canada, Australia, UK, India, Pakistan, and Russia, and they are related to The Valley of Fear (VALL). Can anyone clue us in? Just add a comment.

If you are a student writing a paper for an assignment, visit Sherlockian.net. Look at the home page, and find How to Write a Term Paper. You will get good hints, but no-one to do your work for you. In fact, since the author of that site is an academician, you will find almost a lecture on the sanctity of doing your own work. Here at McMurdo’s Camp, we are less helpful, but also less caring about your personal ethics. The best place on this site to learn about The Valley of Fear is in the Story Info Sheets. Go to VALL. As noted on our Front Page, the material on this site may be used by any person or organization for any purpose, up to and including plagiarism for profit. (Good luck on that one!)

Holmes to Visit Ohio, January 2012

Matilda — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 03:20:41 +0000

In the Holmes Commerce section there is a new entry on a seasonal Victorian Village during the Christmas season, in Cambridge, in Southeastern Ohio. It culminates in a Sherlock Holmes mystery weekend. If you are headed to any Birthday celebrations in New York, this might be an interesting stopover. Or, just join Holmes and Watson in Ohio. They might need your help in case they run into a thorny little investigation.

Fort Lauderdale

Matilda — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 01:34:15 +0000

We have added a new location in McMurdo’s Travelogue, Fort Lauderdale. This is a city in Florida, in the USA, never visited by Sherlock Holmes (that we know about). But there is a connection, and a small amount of interesting history linking it up.

Coptic Patriarchs

Matilda — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 22:23:25 +0000

Perhaps when you read The Adventure of the Retired Colourman (RETI) you breezed through the reference to one of Holmes’ unrecorded cases involving two Coptic Patriarchs without bothering to figure out what Coptic Patriarchs actually are. Or, if you were older when you first read it, you may have heard of such a thing or even knew something about them. In either case, you will now have the opportunity to learn more about them than you probably knew before, thanks to MEW and her latest Trifling Monograph. Find it under Trifling Monographs in the sidebar on the right.

Drebber’s Pockets

Matilda — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 02:39:43 +0000

What did the dead Drebber have in his pocket in STUD? One of the more fascinating items was a copy of Giovanni Boccacio’s The Decameron.

Find out more about this salacious little item in the “CULTURAL ITEMS” section in the sidebar on the right, thanks to MEW.

A Question of Identity

Matilda — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 18:17:35 +0000

In the Travelogue, Ross-on-Wye, we posed a question about the identity of the man with the Hereford heifer. We had two people interested enough to contact us about it, but nobody knew how to apply the methods of the Master and arrive at the correct conclusion. The answer has now been added to the article, along with the explanation of how Sherlock Holmes would have determined it.

Drebber’s Pockets

Matilda — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 14:47:53 +0000

Once again, we offer apologies to our regular readers for lack of updates. Here in the North Woods, our internet provider seems incapable of providing service. In our area, summer tourism is quite heavy, as is the tourists’ cell phone and internet usage. The result is that our internet service provider is spread a little thin (at least that is our theory). Uploading heavily formatted files and, forbid, graphics is beyond what can be done. Short e-Mails without attachments usually work, but not much beyond that. Since Alltel went away we have no choice beyond Verizon, and they continually demonstrate a lack of interest in providing service. AT&T is here, which if you live on a high hill can do the job, but on our little lake their signal is at zero level, unlike Verizon’s which is simply very low.

In the meantime, readers can wait in anticipation for MEW’s explanation of one of the objects found in Drebber’s pocket, the pocket edition of Boccaccio’s “Decameron”. If you are a dirty old man like Drebber, or alternatively, a scholarly or literary type, you probably know all about it.

In the meantime, let’s hope our 0.05G signal edges a little closer to the 4G signal we keep seeing bragged up on TV commercials.

Hound Origins

Matilda — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 18:03:37 +0000

In writing the travelogue, Donnithorp, we ,mentioned the intro to HOUN, regarding a friend’s relating a “West Country Legend” to Doyle, while the two gentlemen were on a golfing holiday. Now it appears that there are many hound legends going around in Britain and elsewhere. So where did the idea come from? We’ll stick with Robinson, but now, who knows?