lundi 7 avril 2003

Lavatory humour? "An internet toilet roll browser and a net-enabled chopping board are among cutting edge designs at the Ideal Home Show." (Another yesterday story, full of tomorrow's waste matter. Thanks, blogdex.) 8:07:47 PM  link   your views? [] Stunning looks and sidebar links Darned cold it may be, but it's spring! Hormones are doing their thing, the sun's shining, the sap rises, a feller sees a lovely woman in Monoprix and momentarily forgets what he meant to buy. He smiles, she smiles back, he checks out of the supermarket, goes to get the bread. And she suddenly decides to cross the road after walking straight past the bakery, joins the queue. There's another exchange of smiles. He fantasizes that she just might have turned back because of the first smiles ... but then he thinks better of it (and anyway -- he fools himself -- she looks a little too young for such risks)! Those accustomed to the world of "blogs" already know how varied it is, but most of us are still finding out. In a previous reference to Rebecca Blood, I omitted to say how good I found her 'Weblog Handbook'. With considerable skill, she tackles ethical aspects of blogging in a chapter to set a dozen bells ringing in the heads of fellow journalists. Rebecca brings a fresh approach to ideas we've discussed ourselves, worth reading and reflecting on in a webbed world. In a footnote, she adds that she's "indebted to Dave Winer", (described on an interview on WebReference as "scripting pioneer and founder of UserLand Software", and thus, as it happens, my current 'host'), though she says their views "diverge greatly". Since Dave doesn't seem to have written a book, I'll link straight to his remarks on integrity. Rebecca also mentions, in her "afterword", a phenomenon I've now seen for myself: the way webloggers form clusters. She warns that by doing so too closely they "risk amplifying their own view of the world to an extent that distorts their perception of reality." And part of her conclusion is a plea: "If you asked me what the weblog community needs, I would answer, Stronger ties among webloggers from various clusters, more independent thinkers, and more irreverence. Much, much more irreverence." I hope you'll find plenty of that here when the mood takes me. There's a full moon on the way. Where does that gorgeous lady come into it? In the wake of an ... irreverent fancy in the bread queue, I remembered one of many sex clusters (and shan't mention who sent me there; it's already raised eyebrows in a place where the computers are, of course, purely for work). It'll suffice to note that the writing of, say, some polyamorous people is spiced with quite remarkably graphic tales; the further to broaden our minds, perhaps. Indeed, the LiveJournal community has for four years offered many ways of linking people, 900,000 of them. In very different corners, I've stumbled on a Rabbinical blog network and a TheoBlogical Community. Google attempts to classify weblogs, but lists fewer than 3,000 personal ones out of scores of thousands. At 'the ageless project', you can search for blogs or other personal sites by their authors' dates of birth. And the Weblogs Compendium offers a range of other directories. Matt Haughey was another pioneer with 'MetaFilter', a community "blog" which bills itself "more addictive than crack". Brigitte Eaton set up the EatonwebPortal as a "labor of love (...) back in early 1999 when there were less than 50 known weblogs-there were a lot more than that out there, they just hadn't been discovered. as more kept turning up or getting started, i kept adding them to my list. it's grown a little since then." A little: Brigitte presently lists 10,491 logs in a mere 112 countries and 38 languages. The answer to those who ask why my sidebar contains what it does is three-fold. First, it's a very small sidebar! Secondly, there are places I'd like to add and some that I will, with the emphasis on variety and, occasionally, irreverence, even if there's still no escape from The War. Finally, while some links there are already well-known, they're among the best invitations I've found to look further. Well, I'm clean out of bread again... 7:50:23 PM  link   your views? [] White Stripes and razor blades "Along with engineer Liam Watson, Jack and Meg recorded and produced 'Elephant' in the same way they would have had they been recording decades earlier. Microphones, a piano, drum kit, reel-to-reel recorders, lots of tape and a carefully wielded razor-blade." Wielding razor blades was good fun in 1970s radio, when the technique involved what we called "Emm-ing and ah-ing" too (slashing out some of the most tedious pauses in interviews and remembering to make sure intakes of breath stayed in the right place). What Mark Coles talked about on the radio this morning, though, was how 'Elephant', which went straight into UK charts at Number 1, was recorded by White Stripes on sound equipment of the kind the Beatles would used (and perhaps did). The interesting audio interview can be found on a 'Today' page (requires Real- or RealOne Player -- and the fine print for the free version). A handful of the finest quality recordings I enjoy date right back: things like Antal Dorati conducting Prokoviev's Fifth (1957) and other wonders on the Mercury Living Presence label. The same is true of many musical genres a far cry from the classical. Many a small miracle is worked with today's more sophisticated techniques: for sheer recording quality, 'Les Chronovoyageurs' by Stone Age is nice. It's available on Amazon, where it's called 'Time Travellers', as an alarmingly expensive Japanese export ($36.99 -- ouch!). And I learn that Stone Age is known in the United States and Canada as Stone Edge. Amazon's own reviewer, Jeff Bateman, disagrees with me completely about their first album: "too often the traditional strengths of the players are suffocated by electronic textures and progressive rock overkill." A right pair Six other people share my ears, though. ;) To each their own: "electronic overkill" is a phrase I'd use to sum up a gripe about one or two of the records my daughter likes. Until she grew on from 'fun radio' to 'lemouv'', where there are mercifully no ads, it was the repetitiveness of some of the music that was like Chinese water torture to me. "In my day, lass, people played the drums -- they didn't use these mind-numbing loops!" The reply, of course, was equally sharp. "She's really the teenager now," warn my friends often. "You ain't seen nothing yet!" She's in Morocco now, first week of the school hols. Leaving us to listen through the gateway. 1:34:45 PM  link   your views? []

nick b. 2007 do share, don't steal, please credit under artistic licence terms; contributing friends (pix, other work) retain their rights.