Posts Tagged reflection

Beauty unrecognized

Ever wonder what would happen if you took a renowned artist and put him to work an environment where he’s least expected? Would this artist still be the recipient of the recognition that society bestows him when put in the proper limelight? These are some of the questions that reporters at the Washington Post asked themselves almost two years ago when they devised a little experiment to test what would happen in such a case. The results were, unfortunately, not surprising. Read the rest of this entry »

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Bettering…

OK so that previous post was a bit laim. I admit it, I just had a brain fart and felt the urge to post something - anything really - just so that I could say : “I’ve posted something”. I’ll better myself. Starting right now.

Although I have not taken to any New Year resolutions - whatever my better half may have hoped for - I do feel the need to better myself a little in regards to this blog. Besides my wife, family and 1 or 2 other people this blog has been the longest standing relationship I’ve had with anything in my life. Lately, and the measure is broad, my relationship with it has been shaky to say the least.

If postings were a measure of the health of my relation with the blog we’d be in real trouble. Postings have become few and far between dropping to an all time low of less than a dozen over the past year. Driven by a general reluctance to posting anything which could make a blimp on my ego-meter, an all too busy work and home schedule and you’ve got yourself the desert of thought this space has been over the last year or two. Perhaps these are just excuses though – it might very well be that I just had nothing to report which I though was share-with-the-world worthy.

Perhaps the right question to ask is who I believe the target audience for this blog to be. Mulling this over I have to admit that there have been a number of times in the past when I’ve started writing and simply aborted. Concern for who might actually read the post-to-be was a killer: “Would a colleague read it? Some have my personal email address and thus might stumble across the domain! What about family? do I want them to read my deep dark thoughts? Etc. etc.” Solving the audience question appears to be part of the solution for my relationship with this blog. Being true to my audience, not caving in to the influence of others – perceived or otherwise – will also have an enormous bearing on the quality of the relation.

So there we have it. A start of a new year. Who are you?

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The blogging thing

The Register, a respected if sometimes satirical news site for the IT world, recently ran a story covering Google’s specific search tools for Blogs. Most of the article was quite informative - as one would expect. Its coverage of indexing issues in a blog infested world was to the point and even enlighting. Reporting on the outrage of some bloggers at being given a specific subset of Google may even have been appropriate. Yet in the midst of the article I stumbled upon this:

“… There’s a case to be made for Weblogs as the most anti-social software yet devised. No wonder they’re so popular with egotists, as the right to speech without consequences reaches its apogee on the web soap box. Compared to bulletin boards, or group discussions, there’s no one to temper the conversation, or steer it to more useful outcomes. There is a lot of posturing, however, in this fragmented world of a Million Nation States of One. And as anyone who has tried to follow “the conversation” across dozens of fragments can confirm, it’s the antithesis of coherent discussion. So it’s revealing that one site which started as a weblog, and dropped the restrictive format in favor of editorial control and a Slashdot-style system, has become a runaway success: DailyKos” …

I do not disagree with the opinion set forth. Weblogs are inherently anti-social in nature. I do however object to foundation of the arguement - that a weblog should be social in nature and thefore bear the burden of checks-and-balances. In Freudian terms I do not believe that the Over-I (das Uberich) necessarily should be taken for granted, or even expected, in blogworld.

The very origin of a Blog is a extremely personal in nature. A Blog is in essence a public web site where a person posts informal journals of their thoughts, comments, and philosophies. If one accepts this to be true, then by definition this media is not meant to be sociable. A blog in this sense is a personal journal, in the traditional sense, but kept online, in publicly accessible space.

In my eyes the more interesing question then becomes: “why would one make publicly available private thoughts if not to undergo the scutiny of others?”

It has often been said that it is human nature to pry. In psychology, a parrallell can be laid with the “keyhole complex”, the need to know or assist what no one could ever assist, the moment of their own creation. That being said, perhaps it is not completely unthinkable that some of us like to be peeped in on - just look at the number of “stars” out there that tip off the papparazzi themselves.

Could it be that a good proportion of the blogs, at least at some level, exits to satisfy the need of some to be exposed and others to read the forbidden?

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Big three oh

So I’m 30 years old now. I suppose that makes me part of the “adult” crowd. Weepeee :-)

Seriously now. Today is a day of reflection of sorts. As I look back it does feel like I got my stuff together, the wife, the apartment, the kid, the car - albeit due for replacement but I’m working on that - and soon a new job….

While life at the moment is pretty stressful - I’ve got some big projects due soon - I can’t help but feel some sense of satisfaction with my current situation. Things feel like they’re falling into place. Such reflection also makes you think how you got where you are in the first place. For this I’d like to thank Maya, my wife. Without her I certainly would not be where I am today. Thank you honey.

O yeah the shameless plug: wanna buy my love?

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Introspection - MetaSoda Revisited

Paynter was recently heard to say:

I started blogging because I wanted to learn to write. “Write what you know,” Isaac Bashevis Singer told the creative writing undergrads worshipfully assembled at the University of Wisconsin 40 or 50 years ago. I took him at his word and shut up.

Leaving aside the obvious conflict between keeping a blog and shutting up, the words prompted me to go back and re-assess the existence of this particular blog. Poring over the posts since its inception, I realise that there was one attempt at explaining why this personal space exists: “To support my creative process”. On retrospect this sounds a little silly, even if it did provide a plan for the development for the site (in the technical sense). The purspose of this blog was thus defined as a medium in which to express my creative process around the medium itself. As Rory Blyth puts it:

Imagine this: You go to a newsstand and buy a copy of the New York Times (for example). This is the headline: NEW YORK TIMES ADJUSTS WHITESPACE

To this I say: No. Hell no. This will not be yet another blog of a blog. Caught by a sudden doubt regarding my objective setting and accomplishments in this blog (if any) I’ve resorted to re-visiting all the posts of the last year trying to categorise them as I go along. As I read over archives I noted the following:

  • Many self-centered posts with little relevance for those who do not know me personally. This leads to the obvious question: Do the people I know actually read this mental masturbation?
  • A number of short articles relating to web development, standards and IIS development. That’s my techie inclination
  • A few attempts at humoristic or even realistic autobiographical stories.
  • A whole slew of posts regarding the various trips I’ve taken and the pictures I’ve put up on the site.

So where does that leave this blog?

Going back to the opening quote I feel I should write about what I know, an opinion I’ve expressed before. Besides that, I feel that for blogging to stay fun for me it should stay raw, unedited, an opinion I share with David Winer. I may from time to time attempt something more erudite like Andrew Sullivan so masterfully does, but by and lagre this should stay simple. “Download thoughts directly to the machine” I wrote last year. Perhaps this is not so far from what I still feel.

As far as content goes, I think I’ve managed to get past the stage of blogging about this blog (expection taken of this particular post). I still need to weed out some of the navel-staring blab but otherwise I feel pretty comfortable with the whole thing.

Post Scriptum:

I hate it when you write a couple of paragraphs and then realise there’s no point to it! If you’ve read this far you might even agree. It just goes to show that a short attention span has its problems. Can’t seem to think everything through before starting to write.

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BadSoda.com Anniversary

I can’t believe it’s been a year already since this site was first launched. What has been going on all this time? It seems like a blur right now but lucky me: I’ve got a blog! Like a trusted friend it’ll tell me everything I already forgot by now.

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Bagdad Cafe

Here’s a little piece of interesting news. While channel surfing last night I paused on a documentary about Bagad Cafe, the coffieshop made famous by the movie of the same name.

To my astonishment the closing of the documentary said that the place was for sale, the owner being close to retirement. They apparently even took out an advert in “Le Monde” a French newspaper to give the sale international exposure. How about that. Anyone up for buying a shack in the middle of the desert?

Unfortunately I was unable to verify any of this through online sources.

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Fiction at Kuro5hin

I just came across a nice piece of fiction over at Kusro5hin. The storyline is set in a not so distant future relaying a “tranche de vie” of an undescript knowledge worker. We follow him as his daily routine suddenly gets jarred by events outside his control. It is well written and leaves much to the imagination. I especially like that, the author sets a framework but does not load you down with details leaving your imagination running wild.

Here’s a little taste:

T.E.U. (Fiction)

The bump was enough to spill a small quantity of his drink.

He reached over to the table, close at hand in such a confined space, and picked up a napkin. He carefully blotted up the spill, avoiding the printouts strewn across the desk.

As he opened the trash panel and threw the napkin in, it belatedly occurred to him that the bump had been unusually strong. He frowned, then checked his watch. Time for a break anyway. Time to play his favorite mental game–where, exactly, was he?

By adamba - read more

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Trouble

You should know something is wrong when you stand outside a grocery store waiting for it to open in the hope of finding that latest chocolate-sprinkled dessert for which you saw an advertisement the night before.

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Humor

Earlier this week I received a humorous mail from Tomas:

“You know the world is going crazy when:
- The best rapper is a white guy.
- The best golfer is a black guy.
- And Germany doesn’t want to go to war.”

And the world is going crazy. By all accounts. In a few days we will probably hear that the economies of the world are once again coming to a grinding halt as their populations sit at home, glued to their cathode tube, like mosquitos drawn to a blue night light on a hot summer’s eve .

Strip the news broadcasts, downplay the importance of the event and the world would continue to go round as if nothing happened.

… Wait a minute, isn’t that what happens most of the time? How many countries are currently at war? What atrocities do we simply not care about? What is the situation in Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, Columbia, ….

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