»»» eBay yay!    October 5th, 2005:
  A package that I've been excitedly awaiting for arrived in the mail today from the UK. It's a album of 198 different public transportation ticket stubs that I won on eBay recently. Most of the tickets are from Northern Europe, but there are a few from as far east as the former Soviet Union and as far north as New Jersey. The ages range from the early 1960s to the mid 1980s.
  Now, I know that some of you might be scratching your heads right about now, wondering why I would get something like this. I must admit that it seems pretty strange, but I'm a collector of ephemera, or historical documents like maps, books, or, like this collection, tickets. I plan on scanning each ticket and adding them to my growing database. Who knows... when I become rich and famous (well, maybe just well-paid & recognizable to a few) as a graphic designer, you'll see one of these tickets in my artwork and you'll remember this moment. *wink*

Here's some pics. Go ahead and click on 'em!

Page example #1

Page example #2

Here's a random ticket... for using the streetcars
of Stettiner, Germany

Since it's written in the cyrillic, I can only guess that
this one is from the former Soviet Union.

Unfortunately, the tickets were placed in one of those terrible 'magnetic' photo albums where the adhesive might have permanently bonded the tickets to the pages. If you know of a way to remove them without damaging the tickets, please email me.

Link of the Day: The Voynich Manuscript ~ In 1912, the antiquarian book dealer Wilfrid M. Voynich bought a number of mediaeval manuscripts from an undisclosed location in Europe. Among these was an illustrated manuscript codex of 234 pages, written in an unknown script. Voynich took it to the United States and started a campaign to have it deciphered. Now, almost 100 years later, the Voynich manuscript still stands as probably the most elusive puzzle in the world of cryptography. Not a single word of this 'Most Mysterious Manuscript', written probably in the second half of the 15th Century, can be understood. Check out the website for everything about this puzzling piece.