to drown a rose

• where have I been: a survey on recent online life 3

...tutto ciò non significa che non si dia ogni giorno un'occhiata al google reader che annovera vicini di rete antichi e recenti sotto forma di blog.

a questo proposito, devo ancora ringraziare giulia di giardinaggio sentimentale che mi ha attribuito il badge

i destinatari del premio devono:

ringraziare e linkare chi ha assegnato il premio
pubblicare il logo del premio
elencare 5 blog con meno di duecento iscritti
informare i nuovi vincitori con un commento nei loro blog (se non siete pigri come me, cioè)

ora, questa cosa degli iscritti immagino sia una diavoleria di blogspot, ma siccome i miei preferiti per fortuna non sono mai diventati delle star, credo di non sbagliare citando alcuni preferiti che non sono i soliti (voisapetechisiete) con cui chiacchiero spesso online e magari anche dal vivo, ma frequentazioni più occasionali cui peraltro non rinuncio:

filo (filoglotta) vive e lotta non proprio insieme a noi ma al momento in germania, dove insegna eroicamente l'italico idioma. e ce lo racconta con tragica arguzia.

cassandra (la nuova fortezza) vive e lavora a firenze. fa la traduttrice di notte. ho appena scoperto che ha un blog dal 2005.

michelangelo (uova fatali) scrive recensioni di dischi. come dovrebbero essere. con un occhio di riguardo per la new wave (come sempre dovrebbe essere).

susner (la zona) si occupa di (forse anche fa?) arte contemporanea. scatta foto enigmatiche. emana essenziale autorevolezza.

luca (totentanz) polemizza con calda razionalità napoletana da francoforte, e fa foto favolose.

no, così, per chi si chiede che scopo abbia ancora tenere un blog nell'epoca dei social network: resta l'unica formula di sito personale agile e sensata allo stesso tempo.
(e suscettibile di complicità tale da rendere plausibile scambiarsi marchietti con un cuoricino sopra... alla mia età... invece di ambire a record di followers da qualche parte!)
se i suddetti ancora leggono blog, oltre a farne uno, piglino pure il testimone e ce ne dicano almeno 5 che magari abbiamo trascurato.

• were have I been: a survey of recent online life 2

I'm actually talking about places I haven't been, this time: I don't have a tumblr account, and while I have a pinterest account, I haven't got round to use it yet.
my problem is that images collections lacking contest and source always feel shallow to me, unless the choice is very strongly edited. I'd say that my only comfort zone for collections of this kind is the marvellous if charlie parker was a gunslinger, there'd be a lot of dead copycats, which is not a tumblr, hasn't even got a cool layout, and yet is as fine a choice of culture-related pictures (photos, screenshots and ephemera) as one can imagine: a pronounced taste (for the witty, the popular, the oblique, and the artistically relevant) and a structure based on ongoing series keep it all together, so that the lack of sources is not a lack at all, but a main feature.
as for me, while I may be prone to spin out endless turns of unrelated and unrelevant photo shots of my own making, I'm not prepared to give out a flow of documental/inspirational images... yet (but the occasional squatting of my instagram account by record covers may be a worrying signal).

[notice: normal blogging in correct italian will be resumed as soon as possible.]

• were have I been: a survey of recent online life

well, it seems that instagram really sucked up what little free time I had recently: I completed not one, not two but three self-imposed monthly challenges (of course I have to set goals and take things seriously, but that's just how I am).
so, what did I found out about it: it's satisfying not only because it's crazily easy to access from a smartphone (I mean, like twitter, but most of the time you don't even have to read), but because, while sharing things – moods, daily wanderings, meals, favourite objects etc. – you end up with a nice collection of details in your image folder, whose staying power is far superior to your twitterings', for example (if you happen to be keen on that--I am).
on twitter you edit news and links, and your thoughts and words, to the very bone, if you're so inclined. on instagram you edit your gaze, and and the effort of fitting that square cut is rewarded by the merciful influence of the app's filters on your photographs. I'm a bit ashamed to say I had not really understood what the iphone pictures' hi-res was about, up until now: but it's for enlarging and cutting, of course.
I still have to tidy up that folder and see what's really for keeps, if anything, but the ease of use and the networking motivation combined make instagram so often accessed that a nice photo app like hipstamatic, for example, feels cumbersome like using a reflex in comparison. and, while I'm all for slowness in general, I welcome quickness if it allows me to do something I wouldn't do at all otherwise.
the networking on instagram is very quick and apparently shallower than exchanging words through blogs and twitter, but it's more continuous (it depends on how many people you follow, of course, but keeping up to date seems doable) and therefore pervasive. exchanging pictures is so immediate that following people from the other side of the world on instagram instantly make a lot more sense than following them on twitter (and that's even if you share a common language).

(to be continued-probably)

 

• marzo, mese della storia delle donne

dal 1987 è un'iniziativa ufficiale del congresso degli stati uniti per promuovere gli studi in materia.
nonostante la mia usuale allergia per quote rosa e separatismi vari, mi è piaciuta la proposta lanciata su instagram da herbie:

 visto che ciò è una costante storica indiscutibile.

anche senza avere un account instagram ci potete seguire (lui più underground, io più generalista) via statigram.
contribuite pubblicando (anche non tutti i giorni!) contributi in tema via instagram o twitter (con il tag) o su un blog (con trackback a questo post).

• my apple «cards» experience

so I decided to send myself one of the custom cards you can make with this new app: it is indeed a lovely printed cream cardboard, and my melancholy lake sunset turned out quite good.
I put no text inside because I wanted to be able to use it afterwards, so I don't know about that, but there is a nicely embossed border.

the only thing is: if you forget the crazy price and plan to use this service to send cards from your vacation, do keep in mind they might get to destination bearing a stamp from the czech republic.

• «the bob» and colleen moore

a few links about the actress whose eye (probably the brown one, as I can see from colorized pictures) & bangs I stole for my favourite buddy icon.
I'm not comfortable with buddy icons, but this stuck somehow – though I had never heard about her, when I found her portrait in the book il futurismo e la moda (in a page about the change of role models in the 20s and the french novel la garçonne).

it turns out moore was the first american actress to make bobbed hair popular (not louise brooks) and that she was (massively, we could rightly say) into doll houses.

colleen moore's fairy castle

colleen bobs her hair

the colleen moore project and a forthcoming new biography.

(seeing her movies seems nearly impossible now, but I'll look into it and report back.)

 

• dal passato

che tenerezza, aprendo typepad vedo che oggi è arrivata una visita da un link del 2005, e ieri addirittura da uno del 2004... da quando in italia, insomma, si parlava di blogosfera! (che brutta parola.)

comunque, ciò mi offre il destro per fare il punto fra i 24 lettori, o returning visitors, o visiteurs revenants (meglio, che fa proprio racconto di fantasmi):

temo di aver perso il primato, perché nel frattempo la situazione generale è peggiorata, inutile negarlo...

• blog-serie dell'avvento (che io invece leggerò dopo natale)

music:

braccia rubate alla logistica
if charlie parker was a gunslinger

comics:

spari d'inchiostro

all things festive:

chatiryworld

• bye by google

google has become something obscene: it only gives you shopping links or torrent links.

sample search from italy, no language specified:
farocki, stilleben
(a documentary I've seen last saturday)

good old yahoo (hi yahoo! remember me from 1995?) gives me torrents, but also the documenta site and a few italian media-related sites on the first page – including saturday's film program –, and the filmmaker's site on the second page. by the end of the second page I've also learned the film has been shown at the cinemateca brasileira.

nice little bing (why have I neglected you for so long?) gives me torrents, but also the filmmaker's site as a fourth result, saturday's program (though from an outdated cache), and a few german links I may well be interested in (mind you, I don't speak german, but I did search a german word didn't I?).  also: my beloved even.fr and content-packed rouge on the second page.

google gives me 3 whole pages of downloading links, with one mymovies link thrown in on page 3, before going all intellectual and giving us... rottentomatoes and imdb on page 4!

(scusate lo pseudoinglese, trattasi di irritazione planetaria...)

 

• poiché ieri era il compleanno di agatha christie

e lo sapeva chiunque stessa usando google ma non la sottoscritta, impegnata a sgomberare arredi morti e riorganizzare scaffali, potremmo utilmente riutilizzare per i nostri inventari l'autoctono scaffale agatha christie nonché monsieur poirot visto da cadavrexquis.  ormai irreperibile invece il post su agatha christie letta da totentanz.  per quanto il graduale abbandono di splinder non possa che farmi felice, sono preoccupata per tutti quegli archivi dispersi negli anni passati...