Electricity in Ulysses

Dublin was just beginning to be electrified.

Neither the Tower nor 7 Eccles seems to have any electricity.

The Library does, the Pigeonhouse is a power station, the trams are electric.

Bloom dreams of electrical devices, and theorizes about its effects.

Some street lights have been converted from gas to electric.

The ballast office clock works by electric wire, and the race results come by telegraph.

The newspaper and some stores have telephones.

(Would the printing presses use electric motors?)

The theatres probably used arc lighting.

[Dublin VR volunteers needed]

while Eoghan Kidney is currently rebuilding Sandymount Strand using the Unreal VR engine, it's not clear to me if this is/ should be the kernel of the inevitable longterm group project to do all of 1904 Dublin.

the open version of Second Life, called OpenSim, seems to have lots of advantages, so long as the content we create for it can eventually be scaled up to more powerful engines (like Unreal).

i'd like to get started on three locales: #7 Eccles, the Tower, and Westland Row (post office, alley, church, Sweny's). Even blank polygons are fine with me if they convey scale and spatial relationships.

i don't want to get derailed for more than a month or two, because this project is not especially dear to my heart-- it just seems to need some cheerleading to get a community seeded.

from the top of the 'tower' you can see-- over a 'wall'-- bloom's house on eccles

a giant contemporary Lisbon project

[Background on the viceregal cavalcade]

the whole concept of a viceregal cavalcade seems pretty foreign to modern eyes, and poorly documented by contemporaries, so we mostly have to try to reconstruct it based on Joyce's clues.

the viceroy represented the British king, and had only been in that position for a couple of years, the eighth viceroy since the Phoenix Park murders.

cavalcades were occasional big productions with lots of horsemen in fancy outfits, which average Dubliners enjoyed as a spectacle unless their politics intervened. the female observers were most interested to see the women's dresses. ("pearl grey and eau de Nil")

the newspapers would have announced the approximate time and route, so you'd expect pedestrians to gather, but we don't hear about any. (p174: "Hello, placard. Mirus bazaar. His excellency the lord lieutenant.")

everyone was encouraged to greet the viceroy and these greetings were returned as far as possible. (cf the fine old custom about funerals in episode 6)
traffic was apparently supposed to stop to show respect?

p238: "Clatter of horsehoofs sounded from the air. --What's that? Martin Cunningham said. All turned where they stood. John Wyse Nolan came down again. From the cool shadow of the doorway he saw the horses pass Parliament street, harness and glossy pasterns in sunlight shimmering. Gaily they went past before his cool unfriendly eyes, not quickly. In saddles of the leaders, leaping leaders, rode outriders. --What was it? Martin Cunningham asked, as they went on up the staircase. --The lord lieutenant general and general governor of Ireland, John Wyse Nolan answered from the stairfoot."

"William Humble, earl of Dudley, and Lady Dudley, accompanied by lieutenantcolonel Hesseltine, drove out after luncheon from the viceregal lodge. In the following carriage were the honourable Mrs Paget, Miss de Courcy and the honourable Gerald Ward, A.D.C. in attendance." (so just two carriages?)

"sunshades spanned and wheelspokes spinning"
"outriders pranced"
"the leaders' skyblue frontlets and high action" [are leaders and outriders different?]
"glossy horses pranced"
"gent with the topper" "fellow in the tall silk"
"with his following"
"hoofirons, steelyringing"

[William Kirkpatrick Magee (John Eglinton) on the Web]

[bio] [Boyd]
why no photos?


1894: "Two essays on the remnant" [ebook]

1899: "Literary Ideals in Ireland" [ebook]

1901: "Pebbles from a brook" [ebook]

1904: in Dana [ebook]

1905: "Some Essays" [ebook]

1906: "Bards and Saints" [ebook]

1917: "Anglo-Irish Essays" [ebook]

1918: Orage intro?

[George William Russell (AE) on the Web]

[bio] [1916 Figgis bio] [Boyd]

1899: "Literary Ideals in Ireland" [ebook]

1900? "The renewal of youth" [ebook]

1901: "Nationalism and Imperialism" [etext]

1902: JAJ's visit

Russell 1901, 1911

1894? 1901? 1904? "Homeward; songs by the way" [ebook] [ebook]

1903: "The Nuts of Knowledge" [etext]

1903 self-portrait

1904: "The divine vision, and other poems" [ebook]

p31: "Russell, one guinea"

p135: "What do you think really of that hermetic crowd, the opal hush poets: A.E. the master mystic? That Blavatsky woman started it. She was a nice old bag of tricks. A.E. has been telling some yankee interviewer that you came to him in the small hours of the morning to ask him about planes of consciousness."

p152: "My literary efforts have had the good fortune to meet with the approval of the eminent poet A.E. (Mr Geo Russell)."

p157-158: "—Of the twoheaded octopus, one of whose heads is the head upon which the ends of the world have forgotten to come while the other speaks with a Scotch accent. The tentacles...
They passed from behind Mr Bloom along the curbstone. Beard and bicycle. Young woman.
And there he is too. Now that's really a coincidence: second time. Coming events cast their shadows before. With the approval of the eminent poet Mr Geo Russell. That might be Lizzie Twigg with him. A.E: what does that mean? Initials perhaps. Albert Edward, Arthur Edmund, Alphonsus Eb Ed El Esquire. What was he saying? The ends of the world with a Scotch accent. Tentacles: octopus. Something occult: symbolism. Holding forth. She's taking it all in. Not saying a word. To aid gentleman in literary work.
His eyes followed the high figure in homespun, beard and bicycle, a listening woman at his side. Coming from the vegetarian. Only weggebobbles and fruit. Don't eat a beefsteak. If you do the eyes of that cow will pursue you through all eternity. They say it's healthier. Wind and watery though. Tried it. Keep you on the run all day. Bad as a bloater. Dreams all night. Why do they call that thing they gave me nutsteak? Nutarians. Fruitarians. To give you the idea you are eating rumpsteak. Absurd. Salty too. They cook in soda. Keep you sitting by the tap all night.
Her stockings are loose over her ankles. I detest that: so tasteless, Those literary ethereal people they are all. Dreamy, cloudy, symbolistic. Esthetes they are."


"Holy Office":
"Or him who once when snug abed
Saw Jesus Christ without his head
And tried so hard to win for us
The long-lost works of Eschylus."

1905: "The mask of Apollo and other stories" [ebook]

1906: "Some Irish essays" [ebook]

1906: "The earth breath and other poems" [ebook]

1909: "The hero in man" [ebook]

1909: "The building up of a rural civilisation" [ebook]

1913

1913: 'interview' published
1913: "Co-operation and Nationality: A Guide for Rural Reformers" [ebook]
1913: "The Dublin strike" [ebook]
1913? "Collected Poems" [etexts]
1913? poem "Forgiveness" [etext] [audiobook]
1913? poem? "The Hour of Twilight" [audiobook]

1913?

1916: "By still waters, lyrical poems old and new" [ebook]

1916: "The National Being: Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity" [ebook]

1916: "Ireland, agriculture and the war; an open letter to Irish farmer by the editor of the "Irish homestead."" [ebook]

1917: "The Irish Home-rule Convention: Thoughts for a Convention" [ebook]
1917: "Thoughts for a convention : memorandum on the state of Ireland" [ebook]

1918: "The Candle of Vision" [ebook]

1920: "The economics of Ireland and the policy of the British government" [ebook]

1921: "The inner & the outer Ireland" [ebook]

1921: "Imaginations and reveries" [ebook]

1922: "The interpreters" [ebook]

1933: "The avatars; a futurist fantasy" [searchable]

1934 w/Mary 'Poppins' Travers

[Future pix]

I need a place to stash pix I come across that won't be useful until future episodes...


Amiens

Nighttown: pic

Ithaca: Sinbad


Chapelizod: pic

Leeson street gate: pic

Hole in the Wall: pic

Phoenix park races: pic

Strawberry Beds: pic



Jeyes fluids (FW)

[From photographs to historical VRs]

before photography
location data included
paintings and drawings
verbal descriptions (diaries, journalism, novels)
government data (tax records, building records)
maps


so any vr that tries to recreate any part
of the world before photography
will inevitably be mostly guesses
and semirandom algorithmic variations
on plausible basic rules


but with photography
unreliable depictions of places
were gradually supplemented
by much more detailed and trustworthy and convenient and numerous
captures of moments in spacetime

that enforce severe local constraints
on those algorithms
(especially building facades)

with 'tourist attractions' documented best at first
while building interiors (and backsides)
were rarely documented at all

so Ulysses is set in a time
of painfully finite photographic documentation


most Dublin streets remained unimaged
maybe even until StreetView

and the first step towards a Ulysses VR
must be cataloguing all known photos
and refining the algorithmic simplification
of known architectural styles
to plausibly fill in gaps

---

is there already a way to grow a simcity on a dublin streetmap (and then descend into a streetview for exploration)?

from simcity 3000 in the year 2000 i find a free 271k 'Real-City Terrain'

and from 2012 a 3.76Mb SimTropolis terrain ("requires SC4TerraFormer")

Zynga's CityVille is free but my googling for 'Dublin' is flooded with discussion of that company's real customer service center in that city

it would be nice if you could say 'grow a city on this empty dublin streetmap' and watch it gradually populate the streets with residential and business neighborhoods, as property values fluctuate...

[Comparing online Ulysses maps]

James Joyce's "Ulysses" alludes to hundreds of specific, mappable 1904-Dublin locations. Various Ulysses guidebooks have made preliminary attempts to pin these down and illustrate them.

Even lifelong Dublin residents will find many perplexing references, requiring research.  The Internet is beginning to make such research much easier, but a new problem has arisen in that simple Google searches don't necessarily deliver the clearest or most reliable resources.

Google Maps now allows us to build innumerable free custom maps, using a powerful, evolving interface. (As a rule of thumb, it's easiest to add new locations by address-search, not copying from other maps.)

At its worst, this may confront us with a slow-loading, zoomed-out worldmap dotted with hundreds of anonymous-looking pins, or 'paddles'. Finding a particular location requires non-trivial skills in zooming, panning, and reading labels, followed then by doublechecking and 'antiquing' the modern map.

2008's Boston College Guide to Ulysses [gMap] has the most labeled locations, but it allows anyone to edit it so the reliability is uneven, and the hundreds of pins are slow and awkward to negotiate. There's a partial subset here.

Mulliken's 2010 project [gMap] is specific to Dubliners but more consistent and quicker.

Wilkins [gMap in frame]

Carlin/Evans [gMap]



Someday we'll be able to play StreetView paths as movies


Because GoogleMaps are free, you can break out subsets:

Ulysses episodes ['classic' version]

Proteus
Calypso ['classic' gMaps version]
Lotus-eaters


My new favorite nonGoogle map is this giant 1909 edition. The zooming function is buggy, and the cursor-key panning/scrolling doesn't update the url, so to create a link you have to trial-and-error unzoom-and-zoom until you land where you want.


Wandering Rocks is a special case
animated gif


antique: 1903 Thom's, 1836, many, 1909 linkable,

For tourists: pdf1, pdf2

boardgame 

Nabokov


jpg1, pdf, jpg2, 

gif

Joyce/Dublin gifs, ascii

[Dublin addresses and phone numbers in 1904]

I don't know enough about how Dublin assigned street names and numbers in 1904.

The 1904 Thom's 'phonebook' is the consensus authority but it's not online yet. (The 1901 and 1911 census database does allow search by street: Newbridge, Eccles St N, Eccles St S. And this 1909 map has tons of useful detail.) 1862 Thom's transcript

Solving the Hades seating riddle will require perfect certainty about which side of the street particular addresses were.

House numbers on Eccles street started at 1 on the northeast corner and went 1-2-3 up the north side of the street, then turned and came down the south side ending up in the 80s.

On Newbridge Avenue, however, odd numbers were on the north side and even on the south. (Joyce himself may have mistaken this.)

Some major streets have Upper and Lower halves, which must have affected the numbering.

Presentday numbering ought not to bear any resemblance at all, but somehow it often seems to. (counterexample: Thom's was at 87-89 Abbey St Middle, which address is now blocks away)

Who decided when changes were needed? Where are those changes documented?


Phone numbers: 2844 (p118)

(four digits can handle only 10,000 locations, but adding 'exchanges' broadens this without limit)

[fweet]
Kimmage Outer 1767
17:69
Gobelins 1769 [French]
Clontarf exchange, 1014
0009
Ségur 5008 [French]
Gobelins 4015

[The Freeman's Journal and Evening Telegraph offices]

[trying to clarify the architectural geography]

Abbey street would have been the prestige address, so the public would have been met there for subscriptions and ads, etc.  But the FJ had an equivalent front counter on the Prince's side because LB lifts the counterflap.

The heavy presses should be on the ground floor, between, closed off to reduce noise.  The editor and publisher seem to be upstairs, different editors for FJ and ET but the same publisher.


Ellmann, re 1909:  "During these last days in Dublin Joyce visited several times the offices of the Evening Telegraph, where the editor, Patrick J. Mead, introduced him to the staff. The Evening Telegraph, closely associated with the Freeman's Journal, was one of Dublin's old newspapers, dating back to 1763... The offices which the two papers shared were also old, and very big and rambling; they extended from Prince's Street to Middle Abbey Street. The editorial staff used the Abbey Street exit, and Joyce, who remembered these visits in the Aeolus episode of Ulysses, has the newspaper boys using the same exit, when in fact the despatch room was on the Prince's Street side. This transposition may have been inadvertent, but was more probably a deliberate decision to add to the Aeolian atmosphere of haste and confusion."

1907

"History of the Sinn Fein movement and the Irish rebellion of 1916" by Francis P. Jones: "Some sixty yards below the corner of O'Connell Street in Middle Abbey Street were the offices of The Evening Telegraph, the afternoon edition of The Freeman's Journal. These offices extended right back to Prince's Street, where the front door was labeled with the name of The Freeman's Journal."

-- Just cut it out, will you? Mr Bloom said, and I'll take it round to the Telegraph office.

The door of Ruttledge's office creaked again.

-- I'll go through the printing works, Mr Bloom said, taking the cut square.

Mr Bloom turned and saw the liveried porter raise his lettered cap as a stately figure entered between the newsboards of the Weekly Freeman and National Press and the Freeman's Journal and National Press. Dullthudding Guinness's barrels. It passed stately up the staircase
[is this another of Ellmann's transpositions, with editorial staff(?) using the wrong entrance?]

The door of Ruttledge's office whispered: ee: cree. They always build one door opposite another for the wind to. Way in. Way out.

A telegram boy stepped in nimbly, threw an envelope on the counter and stepped off posthaste

A meek smile accompanied him as he lifted the counterflap, as he passed in through the sidedoor and along the warm dark stairs and passage, along the now reverberating boards.
[up or down? same stairs as Brayden?]

He pushed in the glass swingdoor and entered, stepping over strewn packing paper. Through a lane of clanking drums he made his way towards Nannetti's reading closet.
[glass to avoid collisions?]

The foreman, without answering, scribbled press on a corner of the sheet and made a sign to a typesetter. He handed the sheet silently over the dirty glass screen.

-- If you want to draw the cashier is just going to lunch, he said, pointing backward with his thumb.

Mr Bloom, glancing sideways up from the cross he had made, saw the foreman's sallow face, think he has a touch of jaundice, and beyond the obedient reels feeding in huge webs of paper.

A typesetter brought him a limp galleypage. He began to check it silently. Mr Bloom stood by, hearing the loud throbs of cranks, watching the silent typesetters at their cases.

The nethermost deck of the first machine jogged forward its flyboard with sllt the first batch of quirefolded papers.

That door too sllt creaking, asking to be shut.

He looked about him round his loud unanswering machines.

-- Monks, sir? a voice asked from the castingbox.

He walked on through the caseroom passing an old man, bowed, spectacled, aproned. Old Monks, the dayfather.

He stayed in his walk to watch a typesetter neatly distributing type.

Mr Bloom passed on out of the clanking noises through the gallery onto the landing.
[this is the 1st/only mention of a 'gallery']

He went down the house staircase. Who the deuce scrawled all over these walls with matches?

A sudden screech of laughter came from the Evening Telegraph office. Know who that is. What's up? Pop in a minute to phone.
[the social group is on the ET side]

-- The ghost walks, professor MacHugh murmured softly, biscuitfully to the dusty windowpane.

Mr Dedalus, staring from the empty fireplace

-- Is the editor to be seen? J.J. O'Molloy asked, looking towards the inner door.
[FJ editor's 'inner' office is 'inner' door from ET office?]

-- Very much so, professor MacHugh said. To be seen and heard. He's in his sanctum with Lenehan.

J.J. O'Molloy strolled to the sloping desk and began to turn back the pink pages of the file.

The inner door was opened violently and a scarlet beaked face, crested by a comb of feathery hair, thrust itself in.

Mr Bloom, seeing the coast clear, made for the inner door.

-- Just a moment, Mr Crawford, he said. I just want to phone about an ad.

He went in.

Lenehan came out of the inner office with Sport's tissues.

Screams of newsboys barefoot in the hall rushed near and the door was flung open.

Professor MacHugh strode across the room and seized the cringing urchin by the collar as the others scampered out of the hall and down the steps.
[ET side transposition, ET office is 2nd floor?]

-- Throw him out and shut the door, the editor said. There's a hurricane blowing.

He hustled the boy out and banged the door to.

-- Yes... Evening Telegraph here, Mr Bloom phoned from the inner office.

The bell whirred again as he rang off. He came in quickly and bumped against Lenehan who was struggling up with the second tissue.

He went to the door and, holding it ajar, paused... The noise of two shrill voices, a mouthorgan, echoed in the bare hallway from the newsboys squatted on the doorsteps
[bare hallway is 2nd floor, music from 1st?]

-- I'm just running round to Bachelor's walk

The editor who, leaning against the mantelshelf

-- Back in no time, Mr Bloom said, hurrying out.
[he has to go down one flight?]

Both smiled over the crossblind at the file of capering newsboys
[looking down?]

He began to mazurka in swift caricature across the floor on sliding feet past the fireplace

They're gone round to the Oval for a drink.

The editor came from the inner office

Mr O'Madden Burke, tall in copious grey of Donegal tweed, came in from the hallway.

[Ulysses: the board game... or text adventure?]

‏BobRBogle  16 July 2014 asks "So why doesn't someone: #Ulysses: the Board Game?"

[revised april 2015]


there's a million different ways to approach this, all sharing the common 'mechanic' of moving from place to place in 1904 Dublin.

many of these approaches can be created and hosted free at existing dedicated websites, if anyone is willing to invest the time.

at minimum you'll want 18 'places', one per episode. (but if you want to retrace characters' paths, you'll have to include hundreds of separate places.)  you'll need a text description of each place that's vague enough to allow anyone to visit it at any point in the game.

(writing these vague descriptions is a good exercise, and making them freely available will allow them to be refined by others, or ported to other game formats. as we add images, this database could gradually evolve towards a VR 1904-dublin wiki.)

Second Life could be very cool but would charge $100s/month rent as I understand it.

There are free Minecraft clones but it seems like a huge amount of work for a very blocky sim.

Do any SimCity-types allow real city street grids? Can you explore them in 'streetview' mode?

ideally we need a platform optimized to make worldbuilding simple, where you can draw streets and paste buildings with a few clicks. it should allow multiple builders with a wiki-like undo.

most of the buildings can be empty/featureless, but a few need detailed rooms. the 1909 map supplies streetwidths and detailed layout.

choose-your-path text adventures [eg] can force readers to follow the book as closely as the author likes, while adding some forward momentum for lazy readers.

fixed-map text adventures [eg] allow more exploration via NSEW-mapped exits, but consequently permit much less fixed plot and require much trickier implementation.

d&d-style or 2ndLife-style platforms might even allow online socializing as you explore...?

an oldfashioned monopoly-style boardgame with multiple players competing will require a pretty complete reinvention of the book, but again it's a usefully educational challenge to try to boil things down to an essence:

pieces:
SD: latinquarter hat? ashplant
LB: bowler hat, potato
MB: bed/cat
BB: boner?
BM: coin? key?
Mac: raincoat
Bella: bustier, highheel, whip, dildo?
SiD: pince-nez?
Citizen: biscuit tin/dog/eyeball

places: Tower, school, Eccles, Strand, Nighttown, pubs...

maybe each place comes with a table of possible adventures?

vehicles? postal letters? dogs and cats?

SD & LB build social credit in different ways
alcohol or not, food, orgasms
trading small favors (tobacco)

each pair has changing friendship level?

   SD LB MB BB BM
SD             -5
LB       +9 -9
MB    +4    +3
BB
BM +4   

meeting friends cheers you somewhat, making new friends, meeting strangers

where do we put Church/King/art/freedom/Paris/Martha/Gerty?
each character could be haunted by 'ghosts' they have to face?

SD: mother, church, art, sex, 'nets', BM, Cranly
LB: MB-BB, Rudy, outsiderism

a hexmap can clarify geographic relationships:

GoogleMap

(do SD and LB start at opposite ends and wend symmetrically toward each other?)

[Street widths in Ulysses]

the online 1909 map (at full magnification, 1mm = 2m) makes it easy to compare various street widths, from:
Eccles' 10mm = 20m
Sackville's 22mm w/sidewalks, 18mm w/o
Grafton street's 5mm w/o sidewalks
Tyrone's 5mm with

a traffic lane needs to be 3-4 meters (2mm on map) so Grafton barely allowed 2 cars to squeeze past each other