Treasure Island

I love the way Google choose, from time to time, to commemorate some occasion of note by replacing the normal Google logo with a customised one which loosely reflects the Google theme but more explicitly illustrates the occasion being commemorated.

They've done it again today. This (13 November 2010) is the 160th anniversary of the birth of Robert Louis Stevenson, author of, among other things, Treasure Island.

I remember Treasure Island and the voyage of the Hispaniola from my youth. When I was in school in St. Louis, Rathmines, Dublin, aged about 6, my mother had arranged with the class nun to collect me at lunchtime, on a school day, and take me to see the newly released film of Treasure Island.

I grew up on this sort of stuff, and that probably explained why I took to a rather strange version of map making in later life.

Then when I got a printing press I used to print big black spots on small squares of white paper. I don't think they worked, though. Nevertheless they brought with them feelings of immense power (of the voodoo kind).

Thanks to Robert Louis Stevenson for hours of pleasure as a youngster.