Y, posiblemente, el más importante: puedo actualizar el blog desde cualquier sitio gracias a WordPress para iPhone y mi iPod Touch.

Eso, estimados lectores, es algo que inevitablemente nos acerca a la felicidad.

Por cierto, esta entrada está enteramente escrita y publicada desde el iPod Touch, estirado en el sofá y no frente al mac.

Me voy a dormir, que son las 8:45 y aún no he pegado ojo. Bon soir.

I could use my old computer, or DrBob's old computer, or DrBob's new computer, which is what I'm actually using - since he'll be in transit a lot, he bought this eensy-weensy laptop (ha! spell-check accepts weensy, but not eensy), which I can use until he goes to Utrecht. And I do use it to check email once a day, and right now to let you know that I'm going on semi-hiatus, but it's tiny and makes me squint and produce too many typos, and besides: I really do need to take a break.

On Thursday I got the Sniglet's bedroom floor clear and his sheets changed, organized the living room so that it's now ready for the move (the challenge will be keeping it that way) and got caught up on the laundry. Today I reorganized my whole yarn stash and washed all the kids' winter things. I'm getting stuff DONE, now that I don't sit at a computer all day, and that is very, very good. So I am going to see this setback as an opportunity. I'll still check email and ravelry every day, so you can reach me if you need to, but otherwise, I'll be out indulging my inner clean-freak. I'll miss you, but seriously, this tiny screen makes me crazy. And I'll be back.

Song du jour of the day: Say A Little Prayer, by Aretha Franklin

Quem quiser, pode me acompanhar no twitter: http://twitter.com/cintiabl . Como lá os posts têm, no máximo, 140 caracteres, é mais rápido e fácil para escrever de um cyber ou da casa dos parentes ;)

Mas não se acostumem: logo, logo eu volto para atazanar todos vocês >:)

At the time, I never ventured into blogging as a teaching tool, however.  The world of blogging has really opened up recently for me.  I have used it as a tool in several classes, most effectively in my intro composition course, "Knowledge, Culture, and the Liberal Arts." Here, too, I have "seen the light" and am incorporating blogs into my courses fairly frequently now.  My primary interest in using the blog is as a way to help students see writing as an act of community.  Writing is too often presented as an act within a vacuum rather than a form of community dialogue.  The blog really opens this up for students.  It is also a very easy method to do the logistical work that I had learned to do through my web page.

One of the great things about a web page initially was that with very few skills I could have a central page where everything could be posted, assignment updates, readings, etc.  Now I use moodle to update any assignments, and I post any other changes onto the blog and tell students they need to check the blog for my postings and each others' every day.  It works like a charm.

The question now is what purpose I want my web page to serve.  One of my goals for August was to spend a little time with my webpage, update it, learn how to make it look a little more spiffy etc.  But I also find myself asking why.  I am no longer sure what role it plays in my personal or my teaching life.  It's as if I outgrew my webpage before I even learned how to really make an effective one.  I'd like to still work on it, but given the limited projects I can really invest in, do I have the time to really make working on it worthwhile?  It has lost priority and now sits out there in limbo.  So, what I really need to do this August is spend some time re-evaluating what tools I most want to use and why and how and consider where to put my meager efforts.  I feel sad, though, thinking of my poor little website adrift without a purpose.  Maybe it's really just an advertising medium now to sell my book.  My webpage goes commerical.

Yesterday, when I made the final change to my thesis (which, amusingly enough, was adding 'Mysterious Skin' to my bibliography... am totally proving my academic thoroughness there!), I sent a copy to my supervisor, with a message that ended 'I feel very strange...!' Yes, I could have read over it once more. Yes, this could have been a moment to say 'but it's still not done!' and gone into re-read mode. But at some point all of those good and virtuous concerns, I think, would have simply supposed that the thesis could be done, could be complete, wrapped up, tied neatly with string and packed away in an archive box; that that perfecting, that closing up was possible, and even a good thing. (I'm hoping that my examiners agree with the balance I've made, then, between tying off and fraying ends).

Now I am not suggesting that there's not a mound of relief flushing through me. There is. And when it's all done and handed in, I'll likely be ecstatic (and drunk). But it's a strange space, this one, because it feels like a false end. In undergrad, I always paused before letting my essay drop into the collection box. I paused because it marked an end. A stepping away from a neatly curtailed bit of knowledge, one which I didn't need to pursue. But this is different, because in the end, this is what I have chosen - without will, often - to do with me, and my future, at least for a while. And so this thesis is a mark, a cairn on the path, certainly, and yay! for that. But it doesn't feel like an end, strictly... and that's not only because, as my supervisor keeps telling me, I really need to get this stuff out there. It's more that this is a venture forward, a career not in the sense of the careful teleology of a working life but rather in the wild and uncontrolled movement (downhill?). Whatever I do next - and yes, I have thoughts, scary and intimidating as they are to entertain - will inevitably be shoots grown from this wordy, inelegant, heavy-handed and densely theoretical patch of moss. And even this patch of moss will be worked over, and worked over (especially, as everyone keeps promising me, 'for the book' - such adorably naive faith!).

It's also hard, I have to say, to compass that four years of work can come down to these 95,000 words, to this print-out, to this moment of photocopying, this handing over to the printery, this waiting. It makes everything feel weirdly laden, dense with a seriously hard four years of work. I find myself worrying about whether the double-siding worked perfectly on every page, in every print-out, about whether I've left someone off the acknowledgements, about the dire consequences of missing the typo 'hiearchisation'. I suppose when there's no major theoretical moves to make, stances to adopt, or practices to prise open, this is where you wind up. Stressy space.

But oh! An end to formulating sentences as I go to sleep! An end to worrying about how clear I am! An end to worrying that I'm being less than generous in my critique of Merleau-Ponty, or worse, in my adoption and adaptation of those scholars I admire, whose work I want to keep alive and moving and working with. An end to disliking my bluntness, to dreaming of when the points I was making were so clear and easy to me I could prettify them. I get to move into new ways of writing now. It's kinda a relief.

And it's a relief to be able to let myself do some other things. The idea of actually juggling my time between a range of things without feeling like every single one of them is procrastination... yay! Such relief! And I'm looking forward to being able to socialise properly again, to get drunk without guilt, to be properly present to these things, rather than having half a brain still turning over thesis thoughts. It's a relief, my friends, to be back in the blogosphere, to feel able to venture into new thoughts, play at virtual promiscuity, and not feel like I'm risking investing time badly. Actual fun! :-)

So I want you all to imagine that this blog is temporarily your favourite pub, and we're all drinking together, talking shit and profundity all at once, griping and laughing. [raises glass of beer] And please remember to meet my eyes when we glass-clink. I'm not risking 7 years of bad sex... Cheers!

I wonder how many found what they were looking for. I hope that who entered the top search found something, though I'm not sure about some of the others!

Search Terms for all days ending 2008-07-22 (Summarized)

All Time

No petrol here, that's for sure!

Cobus van Wyngaard (left) is a theologicial student at the University of Pretoria (Tuks). He's doing a mini-dissertation on David Bosch as a public theologian, and has a wiki page to discuss it here.

David Bosch was the best-known South African missiologist of the 1980s, tragically killed in a car crash in 1992 just after the publication of his magnum opus Transforming mission, which has been translated into several different languages. It strikes me as an interesting project, because I worked with David Bosch in the missiology department at Unisa in the early 1990s, and had several unfinished discussions. I'm not quite sure what public theology is, though -- I'll have to look that up.

One of the things that is quite interesting about Cobus's Wiki pages, however, is that 75% of the recent visitors are from the USA, and only 20% from South Africa. Perhaps a case of a prophet not being without honour, except in his own country.

Anyway, it was Cobus's birthday (which seems a good enough reason for posting his picture), and he had to leave because there were still some people sleeping on the floor at his place after a party the previous night.

Roger had recently been on a TV show about megachurches, and had blogged about it, and I had posted a comment on it on my other blog, because I couldn't get the comment feature on his blog to work.

One of the reasons for choosing Greenfields was that they used to advertise free Wi-Fi on their menu. It wasn't on the menu this time, but Roger managed to get it to work, and posted a Twitter tweet about the gathering. Another reason was that Greenfields has the best coffee in Hatfield, if not in Pretoria, if not in the whole of Tshwane.

I'm not talking about the ads for limos or products I've never heard of. In the case of WordPress those are painlessly removed by Akismet (over 20000 of them in the 18 months this blog has been in existence), which I never see unless I deliberately go to look for them.

But there are comments that have clearly been written before the writer has ever read the blog post they are supposed to be commenting on, and so are not a comment on the post. I haven't reported them as spam so far, but have usually written to the commenter and suggested that they get their own blog and post it there.

The most recent, which I deleted this morning, was a long rant about mental health prisoners in the USA.

Maybe we will see more of that kind of thing, as access to Usenet newsgroups is made more difficult by ISPs in the USA. The alt.religion.christian newsgroup used to be full of rants about that and about something called CPS. But it's easy enough to start a blog on WordPress, so I wonder why such people don't do so.

Y para celebrarlo, esta bonita foto tomada una noche de desvarío en la que me dio por jugar con fuego... y velas ;)

In any event, I just wanted to let all two of you who read this site regularly that I'm still here and plan to be updating soon.

I'd like to get a good amount of diggs so the blog can get more exposure.

Thanks!

Click here for more details. If you know of others who should be invited, you can invite them there too, or just refer them to http://tinyurl.com/6ru3gg.

"Care-i treaba cu blogul lu’ Chinezu? Treaba-i simplă: blogul lui China Birta e bun; e mişto; e pus mai tot timpul pe şotii, iar tot acest conţinut e îmbrăcat într-un limbaj băşcălios, atent selectat şi prăjit, şi toate astea pentru a distra şi bine dispune cititorul, dar şi pentru a spune adevărul gol-goluţ de prin politica românească, care se spune mult mai bine în glumă, de unde tot timpul ai o poartă de scăpare: „e…am zis şi io în glumă…ce?...tu ai luat-o în serios?”."

Note about the blog-- Sorry I've been a bad netizen lately-- had my frenzied last day and a very busy field trip with the kids which may take me some time to recover from (*yes, I'm an old lady and my knees were definitely shaky with a spinny head after the water-coaster!)... I'm going to either be an incredibly prolific or incredibly sporadic poster in the next few weeks, depending on how things shake out, so my apologies in advance if I turn out to be the latter.  Wish me luck-- I'm flying free again.  For those of you just tuning into the blog-- I'm not in chronological order, or keeping up with the present (this should be no surprise for those of you who know me...) ;P

Hope everyone stateside has a fabulous Fourth of July and sings the "Star-Spangled Banner" at the fireworks for me!

But 1) having gone back to the gym after five weeks of thoroughly sedentary life, I was reminded that "very busy" is often a sign that my priorities need readjustment. Besides, endorphines (positive reinforcement) plus sore muscles (negative reinforcement) make me promise myself never ever let so much time go by without exercising. And physical exercise and writing exercise follow similar principles.  

2) having recently watched “Stranger than Fiction" I was reminded that no life is so uneventful that absolutely no story can be written about it -- not even my own. So here's another dose of Ester being unabashedly self-absorbed.

*****

May 24, a lovely summery saturday, saw me put together a reading list consisting of 87 items. An entire sunny Saturday spent in the basement of the OISE library (not that I would have known whether it was sunny or not -- for all that I knew 3 o'clock might have been AM or PM, and I wouldn't have known the difference). What was I doing?  I was checking every volume of a certain periodical, to see all that they had published that might be relevant to my thesis -- relevance being sometimes a difficult concept to measure, especially from the title alone. The online searches and databasis hadn't been very satisfactory, so I decided to take matters with my own hands -- literally rolling up my sleeves and getting down to work.

After compiling the list, which was a much harder ordeal than I had expected, I thought that the rest would be relatively easy: I just had to read all the articles, checking them off my list one by one. Given that each article was about 5-7 pages long, and I'm quite a fast reader, I thought that a week or two would be more than enough to read what I thought were aproximately 500 pages -- with time to spare to write a report about all this reading.

Gross underestimation. First, because you'd think that 1 item = 1 article, but that equation didn't always prove correct. In some cases, the item read something like "all of issue 13.3" which could be forty, or even eighty pages (if a double issue).

Second, because those 5-7 pages weren't really standard pages, of the type that you can fit two side by side on a letter-size sheet oriented horizontally. In fact, each of these pages occupied a full letter-size sheet ("portrait", instead of "landscape"), with three columns each page, and very tiny print. Which actually meant that each page was actually three, and a 5-7 page article was really a 15-21 page article squeezed in 5-7 pages. Consequently, the approximately 500 pages really felt more like 1,500...

So I took a deep breath, a red pen, a cup of coffee, shut off my cell phone and my social life, and dived into it, pretending it was just like marking.  In the process, I made several discoveries.

1. Even though 1,500 pages can be squeezed into 500, 500 pages are still a lot of pages to photocopy, in terms of time, money (@10 cents a page = 50 bucks!) and, most importantly, wrist action.   I got particularly stingy when the article didn't even turn out to be good, and the only satisfaction it could provide me was the checking off of another item on my list. And as this journal does not circulate, I decided therefore to spend as much time in the library as possible, and only photocopy those items that really turn out to be worth keeping.  

2. However, this periodical is only available at the OISE library, which has reduced hours in the summer: it closes at 8pm Mon-Thurs; 5pm Fri-Sat; and it does not open on Sundays. Given that I work until 4pm Mon-Fri, I've had to be very strategic about getting enough library hours every week.  More than once I was interrupted in the middle of my reading or in the process of photocopying an article: "Ma'am, the library is now closed, you have to leave!" "But I've only got three more pages to go!" "Ma'am, please, you have to leave now!" "But... but...."

3. Coffee shops are very bizarre places when observed with attention and regularity. Most people's experience of coffee shops -- and up to two months ago I belonged to this majority of people -- either does not go there very often, or go often enough, but do not stay for very long. That is, some may go every day for years, but just get their order and leave, while others may go and stay for a couple of hours, but not do so very often. There is also the attention factor, which gets maximized if one is unnacompanied. This is all to say that the situations that I witnessed these past five weeks spending 2-3 hours a day, six days a week, at different coffee shops would render pretty interesting stories. Which I may get to write about in the near future. Or not.  

4. A few days ago, I was combing my hair when I discovered some red marks on my scalp. I got worried for a few seconds: was that blood? After examining my head as carefully as I could (very hard to examine one's own scalp) I realized that the marks were made by red pen... I have the habit of scratching my head when I read, which often gives my hair the appearance of a lion's mane. But I'd never done that with a red pen in my hand -- at least not that I was ever aware of. Being in a hurry to go out, I tried to change my hairdo so as to hide every trace of scalp doodling. Which would have been an excellent solution to this problem, were it not for the fact that I had actually doodled all over my head...

This is all an extremely round about way to say that this weekend I checked off the last item on my list! Admittedly, it took me five weeks, instead of one or two. But that doesn't mean I don't get to celebrate it -- on the contrary, it makes it all the more worth-celebrating for being over! The only "however" in this celebration is that now I have to write a report about all this reading, and said report is due Friday... Unfortunately,  the time and energy I had allotted to this project has already been exhausted in the process of the reading alone. Which means that I now have to completely rethink this project's mental-emotional-physical-chronological budget. 

And all this writing was just to explain why I have no energy left for writing... Poor reader... let me give you and I a break, before I drag us both into utter exhaustion...

Hoy he comprado el número y el orgullo se ha desvanecido en una nubecilla de hilarante decepción. En la pagina 8 encuentro un extracto de mi crítica en la sección de "Correspondencia" como si yo me hubiese dirigido a la revista para dar mi opinión sobre la película, y bajo ella, un leve comentario del redactor bastante insípido (tan poca gente les escribe que lo tienen que simular?).

Como podéis ver citan mi nombre y la dirección del blog, confundiendo una URL con un email. (el resto de la "correspondencia" aquí)

Y es que tras ojear la revista, uno se da cuenta de la baja calidad de esta prensa especializada, que con la proliferación de blogs temáticos, esta de capa caida.

Lejos de ser una guía que ilumine al espectador antes de malgastar 8€ en una entrada de cine, no veo mas que anuncios, publicidad, prensa rosa (que más me da el apodo de la ex-mujer de Colin Farrel o el si la hija de George Lucas quiere ser boxeadora profesional), entrevistas ridículas (muy interesante saber que nombre se pondria Santi Millan si fuese actor porno...) y una supuesta crítica especializada de risa.

Y es que mas allá del anecdotario de rodajes y las biografías de saldo, la crítica cinematográfica se reduce a un cuadro calificativo (si, de estos de estrellitas) en la pagina 58 donde 11 críticos evalúan 20 películas, y solo 4 quedan suspendidas por poco, confirmando las sospechas de muchos, en las que la industria, dado el pauperrimo nivel del cine actual cree necesitar estos panfletos propagandísticos para atraer gente a las salas.

Lo dicho, no gastéis un duro en estas cosas porque no hay nada de interés o utilidad en estas páginas que no lleve semanas publicado gratuitamente en internet. Por mi parte dudo que vuelva a colaborar con Cinemania (sobretodo despues de lo que estoy soltando... jejeje) y esta publicación ira directa al revistero del baño (que algo hay que hacer mientras actua la naturaleza...)

]]> http://weispeaks.wordpress.com/?p=36 Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:38:07 +0000 jianweigan http://weispeaks.wordpress.com/?p=36 Okay, I should blog more. It forces me to think more, to share more; it forces me to try to write better-better not in a bombastic sense but better meaning more people can understand exactly what I'm trying to say. Sometimes it feels like there's nothing much to write... but if there's nothing much that I want to say, I'd be a pretty boring person huh.

Life seems to be full of moments of despair, and it's hard to go on when you feel like one moment of despair will be followed by yet another moment of despair not much later. It feels like they punctuate our lives, to the extent that the words and sentences between those punctuations feel so fleeting, and it makes the bigger picture very unlivable. But it's not that bad really... the mundane bits of life are punctuated by moments of pure bliss as well, and though the moments of despair overwhelm everything else sometimes (espcially when you're in one of those moments), the moments of happiness are what make life worth living. It's the highs and lows that make life the rollercoaster journey that it sometimes feels like, and the rollercoaster journey that I feel it should be. I just need to crawl out of those moments of despair, and remember all that's worth living... I've never been the strongest of people, especially when it comes to dealing with emotional pain, but I've got to try, and I can't fear, lest I get so consumed by the fear that I forget to enjoy the moments of happiness. What's the point of living if you never experience these highs and necessarily the lows that accompany them? I wouldn't give it up for anything.

Agora que eu vi que eu cheguei a mil visitas desde a mudança do blogger pro wordpress no final de fevereiro. Sinal que mais pessoas (além de mim) dão uma passada aqui de vez em quando. Nice.

E já aproveito pra avisar que agora eu tenho um twitter e um facebook (esse último a mais tempo). Só conferir na coluna ali do lado direito.

Fascinante essa tecnologia, não é mesmo?

Wat er dan nog gaat komen? In de eerste plaats ga ik van deze webpagina proberen een echte blog te maken, dus werken met hyperlinks en categorieën die het mogelijk moeten maken om de schrijfsels beter te lezen, volgens en tussen de lijnen. Dat betekent dat ik de voorbije stukjes ga bijwerken. Ik zie mezelf ook nog een tijdje kauwen op deze fietsvakantie, vooral ten behoeve van rookies die zelf een trip plannen. Talking 'bout glory days. Er zullen ook een aantal nieuwe thema's en formats komen om het wat aan de gang te houden. Over de tomaten die ik nog moet kopen en zo, want dat lezen mijn collega's graag. Voor de rest ga ik het werk er zoveel mogelijk buiten houden. Werken moet buiten mijn kantoor zo weinig mogelijk bestaan.

Ik begrijp niet veel van de automatische statistiekjes die deze blog genereert, maar ze maken me wijs dat meer dan honderd mensen dagelijks hun weg naar mijn schrijfsels hebben gevonden met een hoogtepunt van net geen driehonderd op een dag. Ik weet niet of dat iets voorstelt, maar in mijn ogen is dat veel. Ik vermoed dat de examenperiode er iets mee te maken had.

Ik ken geen honderd mensen.

(Ik kan meer dan honderd mensen bij naam noemen, omdat in mijn ogen interesse hebben in je studenten een taak is voor een monitor en interesse begint bij een naam, maar is dat kennen?)

Sigh. So much for the betting-table supremacy, I'm headed downhill from here. But last night DrBob's soccer buddies all drank to me and made jokes and that was very fun. Moment in the sun and all that.

Anyway, I'm here to say, I'll be kind of... less present for awhile. It's crunch time at work again, the books go to press at the end of next month, so they need as many hours as I can give them. And DrBob's just finished working in the revisions on his (um. Third? Fourth? well, his latest) book, which means I've got 300 or so pages to proofread before he sends it in to the publishers. Therefore, time spent at the computer for the next five or six weeks will be spent Not Blogging. At least not very much. If anything happens I'll be sure and let you know, but there won't be so much of the random pointless nerbling of which you've all grown so fond.

I'm sure you'll find a way to cope.

Song du jour of the day: I Will Remember You, by Sarah McLachlan.

P.S. 1) Mangiami. 2) Azzurro.