/karen/

Blinks

Wednesday, 14 November, 2007

• An interesting answer as to why they don't let you use mobile phones on planes;
• Old mobiles breed designer jewellery: curiouser and curiouser;
• May we congratulate you on your divorce: post-divorce celebrations (but how could there be anything to celebrate???);
• You are what you package: how packaging influences perceptions;
• Illustrated Guide to the Studio Ghibli Museum: my cousin went recently and said it was awesome!;
• Plans for a public transport system so frequent, there's no need for timetables (like Singapore and Hong Kong): I never thought of it that way but they're right. I too dream of a timetable-less existence;

• Mark Hadley on internet mission: Not sure I 100% agree;
• “These Naughty Gifts Don't Clutter a Closet”: The New York Times on Facebook applications (and a bit of parental mischief). Note this:
  

  Mr. Goldstein told me to relax because trying to keep up with every application has become futile.

  “I throw a cheeseburger at you and smelly socks at my brother, but send virtual flowers to my wife,” he said. “What every single one of these applications is really offering is a different dialect, a way to communicate very specifically to friends and family and colleagues and different social groups ...

  “The magical applications on Facebook are the ones that enable you to do things you can't in everyday life ... Everyone wants to have a food fight, but they can't.”

  I suppose that's one way to think about Facebook poo.
• “Why Google Turned Into a Social Butterfly”: Google taking social networking beyond the Facebook island;
• Macs are better value for money—because of their re-sale value:
  

  Instead of choosing what to buy based on its price tag, we'll take into account “how much it will fetch on eBay next year, which corresponds to how much it will really cost you to own it up until then.”

  
  What ever happened to buying a computer and running it until it runs into the ground? That's what I do.
• “What teen girls are made of”: And Salon.com reminds us that this is probably the first generation of writers:
  

  ... in the introduction to “Red,” editor Amy Goldwasser makes the case that her book offers 58 stories from a generation, “perhaps the first, of writers.” Between blogging and Facebook and e-mailing and texting, Goldwasser writes, these are kids who are regularly “generating a body of intimate written work.”

• Speaking of writing, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is on now, but of course I am too busy to participate: I like the FAQ about why they (i.e. the organisers) do this:
  

  NaNoWriMo is all about the magical power of deadlines. Give someone a goal and a goal-minded community and miracles are bound to happen. Pies will be eaten at amazing rates. Alfalfa will be harvested like never before. And novels will be written in a month.

  Part of the reason we organize NaNoWriMo is just to get a book written. We love the fringe benefits accrued to novelists. For one month out of the year, we can stew and storm, and make a huge mess of our apartments and drink lots of coffee at odd hours. And we can do all of these things loudly, in front of people. As satisfying as it is to reach deep within yourself and pull out an unexpectedly passable work of art, it is equally (if not more) satisfying to be able to dramatize the process at social gatherings.

  But that artsy drama window is woefully short. The other reason we do NaNoWriMo is because the glow from making big, messy art, and watching others make big, messy art, lasts for a long, long time. The act of sustained creation does bizarre, wonderful things to you. It changes the way you read. And changes, a little bit, your sense of self. We like that.

  (See also Guan's post on the subject and the Genesis of Sam the Pirate month—and my intense dissatisfaction at not being able to participate. And there's no use saying “There's always next year” because next year is Ben's fourth year—Ben who may well be doing a project and another truckload of exams, and really only one of us gets to be off the planet at once, otherwise the house will well and truly fall apart.);
• Seven can't-miss ways to kick-start the writing habit: via ... I don't remember. I never would have thought to edit your old articles or type out other people's articles. This tip is also illuminating:
  

  Schedule regular time and show up, even if you think you can't write. Sometimes your brain will freeze, your motivation will leave you, and your car won't start. Showing up at your keyboard will solve two of those problems. If you've scheduled 8am to 9am to write, and you sit there for an hour and nothing comes out, you've still followed through on your appointment. When you sit down tomorrow your chances of breaking writer's block skyrocket. I've never met anyone who followed through on showing up and had long term writer's block. When you show up, you're subconsciously telling yourself that you're serious about writing, and that sets you up for a win.

• Ted Hughes's form of guidance:
  

  Carey says this about the shamanic fashion with which Hughes approached his poetry: “But critical or analytical prose of the kind he had to write at Cambridge was, he saw, a danger. He had a dream, now part of literary legend, in which a fox, singed and smelling of burnt hair, came into his room, put its paw on an essay he had been writing, leaving a bloody mark, and said “You are destroying us.” So he changed from English to anthropology. This trust in dreams and in his animal, instinctive, pre-verbal self brought with it a gamut of other beliefs, disturbing to people who like poets to be rational. His ouija board and tarot pack were of real importance to him. He spent “thousands of hours” studying astrology and requested Faber to publish his books only on days when “the special conditions of the earth's electrical field” were propitious.”

• “The Nerd Handbook” (via Dave but Guan's linked to it too): probably needs to be tweaked a fair bit if it focused on female nerds; I don't see a guy being as understanding as the female audience of the article;

And more things to knit:

• Juno Regina wrap;
• Oblique cardigan.

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