I learned two things in this process:

• Wordpress updates a lot during one year. The dashboard was almost comical compared to what I’m/we’re used to using today.
• According to the spam laying in wait for me in the comment moderation queue, there is evidently something called “Spongebob porn.” My faith in humanity is reduced slightly.

But I’m going to go see the Robert Downey Jr. Holmes movie tomorrow, and thought this is as good an occasion as any to resume my habit of blogging about the great detective (and other detectives and puzzles and whatnot).

I thought I would have gone to see this movie on opening day, but frankly, it appears to be Holmes in name only, so once again priorities got shuffled. But I do hope it will at least be entertaining.

Later tonight, once I get my camera up and running, I’ll share with you the Holmes-related find I’m truly excited about – a vintage Holmes comic book my buddy Doug at Comic Book World found for me today.

Celia Clark, chairwoman of The Portsmouth Society, said: ‘A small plaque on the side a block of flats is not terribly prominent.

‘It should be quite important to us as a city that Sherlock Holmes came to life on that very spot.

‘People coming from Japan and America must wonder where he did write it.

‘There is very little physical link to the character and Conan Doyle who was such a public figure.’

The 60-minute film is bring produced by Hartswood Films, which also produced Jekyll and Men Behaving Badly.

Notably, one of the writers of the drama is Steven Moffat, who steps into some very big shoes next year as he takes over for Russell T. Davies as the head writer for “Doctor Who”:

“Everything that matters about Holmes and Watson is the same. Conan Doyle’s original stories were never about frock coats and gas light – they’re about brilliant detection, dreadful villains and blood-curdling crimes. Other detectives have cases, Sherlock Holmes has adventures, and that’s what matters.”

That sounds pretty open-ended, particularly the bit about not needing frock coats and gas lights. Holmes without gas lights?

With wit and careful analysis, Bayard makes a convincing case for not only Dr. Watson’s unreliability as narrator and eyewitness to the events in the novel but also the trickier assertion that Conan Doyle, who had actually killed off Holmes in an earlier story and was forced by popular demand to bring him back, became distracted by the fantastical setting and dog he had created and ignored the real killer operating in the margins.

Way to kill the party, Bayard. Next you’re going to tell us that the earth didn’t really stop rotating for a day like it says in the book of Joshua, right?

I’ve ordered my copy of this one … will have my own review in a few days.

“THE UNCANNY APPEARANCE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES” is a carnival-style crime investigation filled with live original rock music, high-energy acrobatics, slapstick comedy antics, cross-dressing, and twentieth century philosophy. The play follows the world-famous detective, Sherlock Holmes, as he investigates the bizarre murders of Dr. Jeremy Nietzsche and Dr. Kevin Freud. To complicate matters, Holmes becomes embroiled in a competition of wits against a formidable female detective, Jacqueline Derrida. As the investigation progresses, the case begins to unravel, and so does the very fabric of Holmes’s hyper-rational reality.

Hmm. Holmes plus rock music plus slapstick plus cross-dressing. The traditionalist in me says no, the open-minded adventurist in me says maybe. It runs through the 21st at the HERE Arts Center on Sixth Avenue.

Have you seen it? Leave a review in the comments, please … would love to hear about it.

Here’s the whole list, to make your to-read pile even more towering!

Such professional brickbats did little to boost the mild-mannered man’s confidence, which had been further undermined when his second daughter Catherine died from water on the brain in October 1858 when she was six months old. As Dicky discovered when he passed through Edinburgh shortly afterward, Charles was in poor spirits and living in distressingly reduced circumstances at 11 Picardy Place when his first son arrived on the morning of May 22, 1859 and was given the names Arthur Ignatius Conan at his baptism at St. Mary’s two days later.

As usual among the Doyles, these names were carefully considered. Arthur signified history and place, albeit a romanticized version, looking back to King Arthur, the mythic architect of Britain; Ignatius faith, evoking the saint’s day on which Charles and Mary were married; and Conan kin, referring to the mixed Irish and European heritage of his mother’s forebears. These three strands were to battle for supremacy in Arthur’s personality.

You can read the whole excerpt here, or purchase the book here.

The childhood home of Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle has been rescued and transformed to house children with special needs.

The neglected cottage and garden adjacent to the Cameron Toll shopping centre in Edinburgh, where the author reputedly saw his first fairies, will be home to Dunedin School for educationally fragile children.

The cottage, known as Liberton Bank House, is a listed building and forms part of a site acquired by the Kilmartin Group for the construction of a new medical centre.

The developer assumed the role of good fairy when it agreed, subject to sufficient funds being raised by the school trustees and their partners, to gift the cottage to Cockburn Conservation Trust (CCT) for a nominal £1.