split blog personality
I have started many blog projects in the past, always striving to create my ‘ultimate’ blogthing, that’s just not gonna happen..
I have split my blogging activity recently in several blogs that allow me to keep track (even if, since they are all fairly recent, nobody else actually follows them yet. never mind) of the different parts of my life. For now, I am hoping to attract readership at some point in either of the following blogs – or all of them :
- blogging & media – this blog obviously
- life in the suburb, in Oz, as a mum – Suburb
- a collection of kids tv shows with reviews – We watch tv
- …and a professional project – Project
Any comments, visits, encouragements, followers, ideas, referrals, links etc… welcome !
(sticky)
problem loading page
Much has been said in the beginning of the era of home pcs and still today about the benefits of computers and the internet, all that time saved when it comes to writing and editing, researching and connecting .
Everybody talks about social networks, everybody spends time on facebook or twitter, we’re chatting and connecting, we never stop.
We all admit that the sheer possibilities of the net are tempting enough to forget from time to time about our work, our families and that there is actually still a lot to see and explore outdoors, in what is also now called the ‘real life’.
Parents try (often in vain) to limit online times of their kids relating to times – which seem so far away now – where children simply could not seek their entertainment with the help of electronic devices but were found roaming the streets or climbing trees, with their friends, for real and not just via a multiplayer application.
I think it’s a development that can’t be stopped, and we are all ‘connected’ at all times, with more and more sophisticated mobile devices, such as phones, laptops, the ipad, the kindle.. etc…
Fine. So be it. I think it’s up to everybody how much ‘real life’ human interaction they need, and if your life is on facebook, you will find enough people who will live there with you.
What really bothers me though is the time wasted in front of my computer in complete INACTIVITY. Disconnected.
Of course, internet connections vary greatly according to country, location, provider, device and connection type. I know that. I also know that living in regional Australia, I will have to make do with what I can get for quite a while yet.
What I can get is wifi only, we alternate between a box and a usb key but in the end it’s like a mobile phone connection: When it works fine, all is good. I am happy enough with the speed for the use I make of the internet most of the time. When it does NOT work though, I get frustrated and act really stubborn: I sit and wait. I reconnect. I reboot, either my computer or the wifi box. I want my internet and I want it now.
Something certainly will make it work faster again, or bring back a totally lost connection ?! I won’t give up. If the connection is obviously weak or frequently interrupted, I stay put. Sometimes I will get up while a page loads with prehistoric speed, reminding of the old dial-up speeds. Only websites are much bigger now, because – in theory – all our connections are faster. So I wait even longer. I just want to look up one more thing, download one more illustration, recheck facebook for one last time.
I realize hours later that I could have done something far more efficient or simply vegged it out in front of the tv, because sometimes, the connection just won’t get better. And sitting in front of the pc, will not – I repeat – NOT make any difference.
But you never know! It might all be smooth and dandy in a minute!! …And that minute will last for HOURS.
Tonight was such a night. It is raining outside. It is incredibly late. My internet was crook. I have been working on a different blog (project) and needed graphics and illustrations while writing the entry. I have spent hours waiting for Google Images to reload, reconnected a lot to finish a download of this or that picture. Stupid. Tomorrow would have been fine.
I could have written the posts offline, like I am doing it now and left the graphics for the next day when the internet would have been back to normal. I could have watched 2 movies in that time, read a bit or simply gone to bed earlier. I did not.
While I am secretly envying people who can waste their time on social networks without being permanently disconnected off their net, I am promising myself that next time I’ll be wiser.
But I know I will not.
Everybody talks about the time wasted online while pursuing work unrelated, shallow activities such as connecting with your friends, having cybersex, looking at recipes or craft and watching videos. How much time is wasted staring on a reloading screen, a frozen handheld device in the hope that this new interuption will only be brief and even if it is – how much does this lost time sum up to and take out of our online AND our real life ?? Nobody knows.
It’s "The World Game!" – FIFA 2010 in South Africa
Soccer World Cup is ON! and like millions and millions (billions?) of fans I am looking forward to an exiting, colourful and – hopefully – peaceful competition.
I don’t know if the expression ‘The World Game’ means soccer anywhere, but in Australia it’s the name of a weekly soccer show (the ONLY one on free to air TV) that shows all about the leagues, international competitions and cups of the whole world. I quite like the idea of this name, because of all ball games, football, soccer as they call it here, is the most universal, the easiest to understand and – important! – to improvise in the street, in the backyard or anywhere else.
All you need is something that can serve as a ball, some ruffled paper, a discarded tennis ball, a crushed can, and maybe some sticks or rocks to mark the goals. I don’t want to overstrain the picture of the "ghetto child turns soccer legend" but with the scouts of the big (and richer) nations now checking out more and more remoter areas of Africa and recruiting more and more younger boys, it is indeed possible for anyone. At least possible to dream.
And even if you do not end up on the green – what a great party every one of the last World Cups has been! France, S.Korea & Japan, Germany.. yes, there have been incidents, and there will always be disruptive behaviour inside or outside the stadium. It’s a lot of people! It’s only a few that go overboard, on and off the field. Most supporters are out to have a good time, peacefully support their team and cheer a beautiful match.
The South African host will give their best. The enthusiasm of the population is obvious, the opening ceremony was as colourful as we expected and, as I am writing, the first match is starting. What a great opportunity for this country, for all participating countries actually, to show their flag on the map to the world and "give it all", even if there is only 11 players..
It is also a great distraction from what would be the grim reality of the townships, and again, of life in all ghettos and favelas or, closer to us, governmental housing commissions.
Of course, only few people have the privilege to see the matches (or one) in the stadium, but I believe a whole nation shares the fever of hosting this event and South Africa has a lot to give in passion and joy, especially as a country with a painful past and ongoing social troubles and great poverty for many.
I don’t suffer from hunger and don’t live in a cardboard box.
But I know that whatever personal problems I may have right now (and I do), I will find joy and entertainment for the next couple of weeks. I know my boy is looking forward to it too, and thanks to SBS, Australia’s multicultural channel, we will be able to follow the matches live at night, or the next day in full.
I never watched national leagues, but the soccer World Cup, along with the European Cup, are for me a very welcome distraction and I like the idea that, like me, hundreds of millions of fans will be watching and living the matches all over the World. For a moment, World Game becomes a little bit like World Peace, don’t you think ?
I made pancakes today. This isn’t important, but the only reason why I went on Wikipedia to look up baking powder.
I didn’t have any and got the most perfect fluffy pancakes done by separating the eggs and beating the whites into snow! Yum.
But this is not what this post is about.
When I scrolled around in wiki, I found this :
Isn’t that just so delightful ? I bookmarked the page to see how long it would stay.
Well, I think it is, because although I like my pop sometimes shallow, I am not much of a fan.
I wouldn’t even care much, each to their own, and I actually lived happily without even knowing anything about the girl, and I don’t hate her or something.
If she is successful with her stuff, good on her.
But then there was… the ‘scandal’ about the photo taken by Annie Leibovitz. You remember..? 
Now obviously Annie Leibovitz happens to be a photographer who is for decades internationally recognized for intimate, 
often surprising portraits of celebrities, and the whole story about the ‘scandal’ and the ‘manipulation’ of young Miley was such a built up of hypocrisy and stupidities,
that it left me without words at the time. How could that have happened ?
how can a little Disney starlet, after her advisers and guardians consented to the (tame and refreshingly different) portraits of her in a classic, feminine pose, turn around and attack the artist that is Mrs Leibovitz?
I don’t know. When I saw the trolled line, hidden in Wikipedia’s user-edited content, I felt a bit of satisfaction.
This obviously has NOT been posted by some older fan of Annie Leibovitz, most probably not by someone from any conservative or religious camp either.
No, this would be the subversive statement of someone of the target group.
Someone who has noticed, that dancing in tiny school girls uniforms, rubbing on a pole and losing photos in underwear in the internet, is probably more ho-like than
being photographed in a classic pose with a sheet and (only) a nude back.
Thank you, Wikipedia. Thank you, Generation Y.
All is not lost.
Here a few other of "Annie Leibovitz’ hos" :
Almost identical poses for Angelina Jolie and Anne Hathaway.
Lance Armstrong
(obviously!)
(Just discovered this photo, I think it’s totally awesome)
Meryl Streep, Whoopie Goldberg and Bette Middler.
John Lennon and Yoko Ono, 1980 
John Lennon was shot a mere 5 hours after this photograph was taken.
Finally, the Queen posing for Leibovitz in 2007.
All them hos!?
On a sidenote, I was surprised to see that Mrs Leibovitz apparently faced severe financial problems last year and may still be struggling. Odd. I hope she is alright.
All photos by Annie Leibovitz.
World Cup 2010
Only a few more days..!
I’m so looking forward to the Soccer World Cup – might have to buy my son a new ball though…
Although, I might only be able to see a few matches live, the scheduled reruns in the mornings here in Australia actually suit me well, as apart from the puppy and hopefully my boy nobody really cares…!
The World Game ! Bring it on !!
Emile Zola – photographer !
Eiffeltower by nite. 1900
In my opinion, you cannot say
that you have seen something thoroughly,
if you have not taken a photograph of it.
Emile Zola
Following a few typed words, a name or a photo posted on a blog, the internet can sometimes take us on a fascinating journey back into time…
Randomly searching for the exact French original of a quote by Emile Zola read in a blog (i have since forgotten where and what..) I found this interesting quote on photography made by the famous writer .
(“A mon avis, vous ne pouvez pas dire que vous avez vu quelque chose à fond si vous n’en avez pas pris une photographie.”)
Forgive me if the translation sounds clumsy (thoroughly for ‘à fond’?) but when I read this, I was quite confused. Was the man being ironic ? Certainly, the author of ‘The Belly of Paris’ and ‘germinal’, chronicler of the Industrial Revolution and the miseries it brought on the people belonging to the lower classes in 19century France could not mean that literally ? Read more…
Lightroom 3.0 public beta 2
I downloaded the free public beta2 for lightroom 3.0. It will stay functional until the rest of June.
Obviously, it’s not it’s only function, but I was interested in the integrated, even preset, photo editing features. (I use Picasa for cataloguing and sorting my photos.)
First impression ?
It has almost the same colour scheme as spotify 🙂 !
Gray shades look just soo smart, don’t they ?
Ok, that’s not very useful information, but this isn’t exactly a professional review. I am just playing around with it.
Well, I never used it before and I got lost right away…
I clicked a bit too hasty in the Library mode, and Lr3 started integrating my entire photo folder, including subfolders – some odd 20.000 files..and crashed. Ooops! Beta bit unstable maybe. Read more…
Bokeh with point and shoot !
I’ve been posting, a bit randomly, on flickr lately, too, and explored groups for some of the photos. How many dog and cat groups there are ! wow.. the quality of the shots there is .. well, very variable. But I am not criticizing. All those pictures show love. Some are good photos, too. I am experiencing with old and newer photos, some editing and reframing…
So far, I got most comments and views for this shot of a juvenile cow box fish :
It took a few dozen shots to get this one right in our local aquarium shop, last week, I actually was after the whole group but they did not want to line up properly for the camera, and – although slow – just kept moving around. Funny little fellas ! Read more…
So this morning, I went on my laptop, I checked my email, I googled some news I had heard about before and I open wordpress.com.
As the english language and writing in particular are part of what this blog will be about, when I see a blog post on freshly pressed that deals with the “evil adverb” and how you should avoid it, I am reading not only the post with great interest but I think that it would be good to add this blog to my blog surfer list ( I don’t have a public blogroll yet, but follow a certain number of blogs). I don’t feel like commenting because English is not my mother tongue so I might not have the same feelings towards adverbs as a native speaker, but it’s intriguing and informative. I like this post.
Hang on..?
What is this, wordpress ? A “LIKE” feature ??
*dislike* Read more…
So there. This is the new blog. Not much happening.
And why ? Here are 10 reasons that keep me from actually posting.
It’s annoying. I am really struggling. (in no particular order: )
1. I am not sure if wordpress.COM is the right choice for me.
The idea of this blog was to finally post more general views and thoughts about (my) life in public, and everybody is going on about how AWESOME wordpress is.. especially when you host your blog and use the actual software. WordPress.com seems like a compromise for me to get myself familiar with the whole environment, but I keep coming across things that I canNOT do and I wonder if I should jump immediately over and set up a blog with wp.org.
2. I keep changing themes
I love the whole part of the set up and design of a blog. I am a visual person and I want people to see that when they come on my blog, but as I am new to wp, I have to tweak and fiddle A LOT with each theme to see if it suits me.
And then again, there are things I simply can do (see 1). So I change again.
3. I keep setting up, and changing widgets
With theme changes, I have to readapt the widgets and I also keep changing my mind about what I want in them.
It’s like a vicious circle, change theme, adjust widgets, change again, re-adjust…
4. The ‘freshly pressed page’
This page is such a source of totally random yet superbly interesting blogs, I keep going back to it, read, sometimes comment, start following a blog, read again.. Explore a blogroll..
5. Self doubt on “interestingness”
At times, I simply wonder if the whole idea of a public blog makes sense to me. Would total strangers like to read my thougths, insights and stories. Why ?..But then, I LOVE to read theirs! Read more…
box2010 
