Monthly archive: October 2002

Mmph. Fell asleep in front of the TV last night before 9 (on the floor, due to the temporary couchlessness of my living room) and missed this programme about violence in the streets of the favourite city (town? Overgrown village that used to go dark and shut down at 5pm?) I've ever lived in – not!

No offense to Mike – I'm sure a large part of my problems living there was that at that time I was not willing to give Nottingham a chance. A friend of mine lived there for one academic year and had the time of her life and, judging from parts one and two of Mike's "Nottingham, My Nottingham", it sounds like it has changed quite a bit over the last ten years since I was – briefly – living there.

The final prize for the winner of the BBC's Fame Academy is a recording contract for an album, plus "all the glamorous accessories associated with a celebrity lifestyle" for one year.

Does that include an unlimited supply of drugs, free fist-fights with top photographers, and the unique privilege of being sued by strangers who claim they're carrying your baby?

Wales 2 – Italy 1. Ha! I feel a perverse kind of pleasure thinking that the people I've left behind are now contemplating taking up macramé as a national sport.

This can't be a good day. Not when you wake up and The Ketchup Song (Asereje) is in your head, and it won't budge. Someone give a life sentence to the person who had the unfortunate idea to introduce the track into this country. In the meanwhile,

aserejé ja deje
dejebe tu dejebe
deseri iowa a mavy

an de bugui an de güidibidi

That's it, now you're singing it too, right? Diabolical, I agree.

I have a confession to make: I've started smoking again. I managed to stay quit for almost two weeks, and went through what I considered the first few tricky situations (going out, packing and moving, job interviews) without lighting up.

Then one Monday evening at Compton's (I think sometime between the fifth pint of beer and the third round of Jack Daniel's shots) I crossed the street, bought some fags and took up the filthy habit again.

Would you think that my current cold/cough thing (yep, still there and going strong) has made me cut down? Nope, and it's unbelievably idiotic, I know.

When my flatmate and I moved into our new apartment a little over one month ago, the movers had to leave both his settees on the pavement because they did not go through the door (even after unscrewing the frame to gain a few inches). The following evening a couple of hot Australian neighbours (I trust G.'s word, I was out that night) asked him if they could have them.

This morning IKEA delivered a new couch that G. had ordered a month ago. He chose a narrow model and then measured it three times in the shop, to be absolutely sure that it would pass through the main door and then through the door to our flat. It did indeed, only to get vertically stuck in the narrow staircaise that leads to the second floor where the living room is. He had forgotten to measure how long it was.

I will therefore have to work for a couple more days while sitting down on cushions on the floor, my laptop exactly where it was designed to be (on my lap) – G. has bought a pair of two-seaters and they will be be delivered on Friday afternoon – if they fit.

I can hardly wait, this could be never-ending fun.

Tom has linked to an Italian article on weblogs on the online version of Il Sole 24 Ore and was wondering what it meant.

As I am currently working on a translation from English into Italian (some instruction manuals for a multi-room, multi-media, multi-remote-controlled system), I took a short break from it, put my brain into reverse and quickly translated the Italian article into English.

I normally do a much better job when I translate into my native language (and when I get paid for it), so if you find something that does not make any sense in English, please let me know either by posting a comment or by sending me an e-mail through the links at the end of the post, and I'll amend if necessary.

Notes:

- Antonio Cavedoni's weblog is not mentioned in the original article. Neither is the fact that the pioneer of Italian weblogs is a 23 year old student of communication sciences in Modena, Italy, and is currently living in Bristol on an Erasmus exchange programme until March 2003.

- The links at the end are part of the article itself.

It's a Blog epidemic
Behind the success of the viral process of self-diffusion of personal websites.
by Giuseppe Caravita

"Blogorrheic" is nowadays a well-known term. It was coined by the person who is generally considered the Italian pioneer of blogs: Antonio Cavedoni, a web designer from Modena and the author of the first of these personal websites in the summer of 2000. "Blogorrheic" is not a derogatory term: it means loving what one feels the need to say, finding joy in writing and regularly updating one's website.

Spreading like an oil stain. This is the start of what is perhaps the most extraordinary characteristic of this phenomenon: its viral quality. Unlike classical virtual communities (getting together several individuals engaging in discussions on a centralized site run by rules set by moderators), weblogs behave like neurons, exchanging signals among themselves in a chain pattern, or like multicellular organisms which are capable of reproducing themselves. "Let us imagine the simple case of someone starting writing a blog about their own life and interests", Tom Coates, weblog expert, explains, "they will gradually start linking to others sharing the same themes, and if they produce particularly interesting content, they will then be linked back. That way, through continuous layering, specific communities of interest are formed, enriching one another. The blog's authors will also have a natural tendency to spread the experience to friends and relatives, thus generating further "departures". Moreover, "geographic" groups are often developed, where personal friendships can developed on top of virtual ones, through meeting in person".

The virtuous circle. It is a sort of virtuous circle with three directions of development: a community of interests, family and real friends, and the creation of local groups. All of this is enhanced with the help of aggregation sites (such as Bloggando or Blog.it) and, most of all, by the way search engines work, in particular Google with its way of ranking the search results according to the number of times each website has been linked to. This method tends to highlight weblogs with the wider readership and further widens their spread. Bloggers evidently produce all sorts of material: journals, music, digital art, books, advice, opinions, hobbies, associations and an great amount of spontaneous journalism. A few examples. For instance, a website such as Kuro5hin, created by Rusty Foster (a young American physicist), organizes spontaneous discussion groups around topics that are mostly taken from current news items, and boasts about one hundred thousand regular readers, with 6,5 million pages per month. One other among the best known websites is Scripting News by Dave Winer (CEO of Userland Software, a company producing one of the best blog publishing softwares). It has a "circulation" of around ten thousand readers and, especially on the topic of Open Source software, is considered one of the best sources of technical information in the USA. According to the Online Journalism Review, the half million active weblogs reach an audience of 150 million readers all together in the USA and almost half a billion worldwide. These are big figures, to such an extent that honourable publications such as the New York Times have started to form alliances (with Userland, for instance) in order to launch news channels that are specifically meant for bloggers. Moreover, online newsrooms like Salon are testing a connection between websites run by their editors and external communities, often enriching (or destroying) their articles.

On the journalism front. The fears of big publishers (first and foremost those online, like Aol-Time Warner itself) being progressively pushed over by of the new and unstoppable blogging networks have recently multiplied in the USA. A key instance was September 11: while television networks could only report the images of the burning towers during the hours of the attacks, New York bloggers were reporting live (albeit often in an approximate way) what was really happening in Manhattan – all the while without the crashes and overload that the big media's centralized websites were experiencing. That lesson is today pushing a large part of US publishers to develop new online communication areas with their readers, and to supply taylor-made information services to the blogging population. As Murray Fromson (Professor of Journalism at the University of Southern California) observes, this is because "every online community, whatever its size, always needs traditional news channels for its informative activity". Within the Userland environment alone there are today dozens of channels that users can "subscribe" to in order to receive the raw material around which they can then produce comments and discussions. The result is that, starting from the USA, blogs will certainly change the structure of the information business. The signs of a possible innovative synergy are already on the horizon.

Evectors
Plasticbag
Blog
Bloggando
Blogger

I have always been fascinated by the BBC's mission of providing a service to the public without adverts. You have to pay a license to RAI (Italian national TV), but you get exactly the same shite as the other channels, interspersed by handfuls of ads and infomercials between and within the shows themselves).

So far I could only justify the obsession with ratings as a way to keep the fees charged for adverts as high as possible, so I find it quite odd that the BBC is worried about the number of their viewers and moving shows around consequently. Or is it because they are so concerned about their viewers' satisfaction that they'll do anything to please them? (Somehow I just cannot not buy this).

In related news, Diamond Geezer has just discovered how intoxicating it is to check your own website statistics and see them grow, so be nice and go pay a visit, 'cuz he's one of the ladz, and he's got something to say. Make sure you also check out his A-Z to London , you will hear the glottal stops as if you were here.

What is Christina Xtina Aguilera's problem, wearing rubbery/leathery chaps on CD:UK, with a sticker saying "dirrty" on her bum? Is that the kind of image we want our nation's youth to see at 10am on a Saturday? Put the genie back in the bottle, girl. (Now, if J. from 5ive was wearing the same outfit, you would probably not hear me complain).

Kylie and Madonna must have asked gay men what they'd like to see in their new videos, and the answer was probably a chorus of: "More Kylies!" and "More Madonnas!". That is why in Kylie's video for Come Into My World there are several Ms. Minogues walking around happily through the streets of Paris, and in the Die Another Day video Madonna gets to engage in a fencing duel against Mrs Ritchie. If this is a new trend, I hope Britney Spears does not pick it up – one is more than enough thank you very much.

I am convinced that watching television is bad for you. Or that it's bad for people who are prone to addiction. Ok, let's face it, it's bad for me. (Note: while typing the previous sentence, in twice out of three occurences, I typed "good" instead of "bad" – Sigmund Freud / Analyze this).

So I have a bad cold (me? nagging about my health? pass the Lemsip). So I sit in front of the telly more often than usual, and it's full of crap, but still I sit through anything just to avoid working on my translation (it's not fun to have to wipe your laptop display clean of cough and sneeze debris every two minutes or so – yuk).
It is much more entertaining to hear the host tell one of the participants "Go away and play with your boobs" after she surgically enhanced her bust.
And what a coincidence that the same show host is dishing out the dirt in today's edition of one of the UK's tabloids (can't be asked to find out which one, and won't put myself through a Google search for such a rag). Needless to say, her upcoming revealing interview with the press was much plugged in ad breaks before, during and after the show.

What I don't get is why the networks provide mindless entertainment at peak time, and then show Atom Egoyan's Exotica at 12:10 am (or is that pm? I could never understand – well, midnight. And I missed it. Again). Oh wait, I'm afraid I sadly understand why they do it.

One of my favourite reads is away and has one of his closest friends guestblogging for him. If you enjoy The Search for Love in Manhattan, go check out Upside-down Hippopotamus too: equally sharp and witty, just as many laughs (and the same exact design, which can be quite confusing at times if you switch over from one to the other. I have to keep reminding myself that the internet is a happy place full of honest people, to stop me from thinking that Faustus and David are in fact the same person playing with his or her readers' attention. Remember Kaycee Nicole?

The Italian word for FULL is PIENO? Then imagine being so FULL you have to sit on a PIANO. (What?)

According to this language-learning method (associating images as a way of memorizing words in a foreign languages) David could learn up to 600 Italian words before he sets off for Bologna on Monday.

I must say I had devised something similar when desperately striving to learn one of the most complicated languages in the world in order to impress my Icelandic (ex) in-laws. It did not work. And I am good at languages.

The flu (now finally turning into a mild cold and a nasty cough) has enabled me to watch both the Beeb's Fame Academy and ITV's Popstars: the Rivals. Lucky me.

Fame Academy: triple yawn. I got so bored that I went into my room to read, and then I realized I had missed the first half of Friends. I did not even bother to switch over every now and then to find out who was voted out.

Popstars: the Rivals – I'll just say that I've picked up the telephone and voted for the first time in my life in one of these reality tv shows formats. Cutie Mickey was worth it though.

G. and I could not believe we were staying in on a Saturday night and arguing over who was the best singer looker on Popstars. It'll be easier next week, the girls are on and they almost all look like one of Atomic Kitten, we'll just pick one at random.

Or, better still, we'll go out.

Isn't it ironic? Dontcha think?

It's official: I have come down with a flu. It is highly unlikely that I'll be able to go and see J. in his play tonight. I feel some sort of perverse satisfaction in the fact that this time I'm the one cancelling out, although this hardly compares to that time I cooked him a fantastic meal and he cancelled at the last minute because of his own flu. I doubt that tonight he'll refuse to go on stage because I can't make it, he's not such a star. Yet.

Is there life outside this week's top 40?

Working from home lately, I've started listening to the radio, but can't be bothered to go through the dial to find an appropriate station and stick to it, so I randomly choose one of those that are already stored (probably by my flatmate, although I doubt it, because he seems to resist technology taking over his life, his recently acquired mobile trouble proving it – "Please read the effing instructions, G.!" – But that's a different story).

The wireless, then. I find that most of the stations are quite destitute, so I am thinking of relieving their distress by raising funds for them to afford buying some more records (can you still say records, after the quasi-disappearance of vinyl?) and stop playing the same five tracks over and over and over and over…

Why oh why, of all people, do I have to share the same three initials with "the UK's favourite interior designer"? There's another of my domain names down the drain then.

Powercell my (hairy) arse!

I knew it as soon as I gave the pound coin to the guy who was quickly packing away his collapsible cardboard stand outside Tottenham Court Road tube station as he saw the police approaching. One pound for 16 (sixteen!) AA batteries? I thought what the hell, even if they don't last just as long as the leading brand from which they obviously rip off their name, it's no big deal. It's just one pound, roughly one-third of a pint of beer, right?

Yesterday afternoon the sunset was casting some interesting patterns of light in my living room, and I loaded my bulimic camera with four new Powercell batteries. I took 1 (one!) picture, then tried taking another one but the camera did not respond. The batteries had already gone flat (were they full in the first place?), and I hadn't even used the flash light or activated the greedy power-consuming display. I decided to laugh over it, for it obviously wasn't such a big deal for just a pound, but I am quite puzzled: surely it costs just as much to manufacture batteries with or without energy in them? I don't know much about it, but the support, circuits and packaging might even be more expensive than the actual content. Beats me.

As my friend Christophe used to say:

Il n'y a pas de petites économies
(there's no such thing as a small saving).

I'm going to go back to those funky yellow IKEA ones.

Last night I've beaten a personal record for the shortest date in my (very short and very recent) dating history. There was absolutely no reason to cut it short on grounds of dislike or, worse, deception ("eew, so that's what he looks like in daylight!"), it's just that I must have caught that nasty cold / bug thing that's going around at the moment (either that, or that I'm allergic to work).

• 8:35 – first pint;
• 8:55 – a video from Kylie's latest concert is shown on the big screen in the bar (and consequent silence in an otherwise lively and flirty conversation);
• 9:05 – second pint (him, not me – I can never remember if you should starve a fever and feed a cold or viceversa, but I'm pretty sure lager is no good for either);
• 9:20 – second Kylie video + conversation hyatus;
• 9:30 – drove home in his cool convertible (I suppose that's why he insisted so much in driving me home, and I don't blame him for that);
• 9:38 – goodnight peck on my doorstep, and tentative plans to meet at the Vauxhall on Sunday;
• 9:40 – back in time for Sex and the City – a girl can definitely have it all.

Was anything the matter with blogger? I haven't been able to access their site (nor any site hosted at blogspot) between last night and late this morning.

It felt quite odd, as I could access Yahoo but not Google; bitful and plasticbag were fine, but not diveintomark and notsosoft; overyourhead and garoo got through, David was OK, but Marcus was AWOL.

?

Was I sleepblogging again? Did I find a new way of Googlebombing and wrecked their brand new algorithm? Did I post insults to a few websites I read who subsequently banned my IP from reaching them? Did I break Blogger's regulations? (Oops – I didn't know I couldn't talk about sex / What was I thinking?).

I am going to see J. perform in his latest play on Friday night, and probably joining him and the whole cast for drinks afterwards. I am very, very curious to finally see him on stage, and even more so to see him interact with other people. So far, we have always met on our own, and I am dying to find out if he is one of those unbearable thespians who always need to be the centre of attention and monopolize the conversation by bringing it back to "Me, me, me!". In which case I'll gracefully retreat in the background, let him go on with his show – and never see him again.

Somehow, though, I have a feeling he won't be that obnoxious.

My nightlife is turning out to be a cheap Jules Verne-inspired porn spoof titled Around the World in 80 Shags, and last night it was "New Zealand: twelve points – la Nouvelle Zélande: douze points". All in the comfort of the swanky 5-star Le Meridien hotel in Piccadilly.

No wonder that when I took the "what kind of porno would you star in" test, the result was "gay/lesbian movie". No, really? How could they possibly know? I even intentionally flunked the "sex swing" question to sidetrack them.

Another Sunday with exceptionally gorgeous weather in London. My flat is flooded with light and quite warm (if only it also were tidy…).
We are being quite spoilt with all this October sunshine, I wonder what kind of grim and rigid winter mother nature has in stall for us.

Now please excuse me while I go lie down with 200 shirtless skinheads on the hill behind the RVT.

Sainsbury's has a "Be Good to Yourself" and a "Taste the Difference" food range. Both imperatives that harshly push you to eat sensibly and treat your tastebuds to a feast of flavours.

Why is it then that other, equally worthy of attention, products do not get a chance to scream about their own qualities? What about a "Make Your Cholesterol Shoot Through the Roof" series of ingredients for big fry-up breakfasts? Or a "Make Your Insuline Level Go Giddy-Up" line of not-so-fine patisserie? And, of course, the whole range of "Say Bye-bye to Your Liver" bottom-shelf spirits (my favourites).

Does anyone know if there are any plans to introduce a ".blog" domain extension in the future?

Am I the only one thinking that "Winnie the Pooh" sounds very much like "We need a poo"?

J. was 40 minutes late for lunch, but abundantly made up for it. After lunch.

I got a job today. It's a translation from English into Italian and it's only for a couple of weeks, but it pays well, I get to work from home and I can get my hands again on QuarkExpress, with some help from David if necessary.

I got the lead from a friend of a friend, who met me this morning to discuss the assignment. There we were in a conference room, both dressed in our "casual Friday" chinos, unbuttoned formal shirts and loafers, thinking that the last time we met at Fist there was enough leather on us to give a couple of cows a complete makeover. (My leathers are fake though – no animals were harmed in order to feed my fetish).

Parlay-vous françay?

3am. Can't sleep, won't sleep and, since I've recently had my land line connected, I'm freely roaming the interhighweb from the comfort of my humble abode. I've finally got round to catching up with some blog-reading from my list of links on the right.

While Googling bitful searching for links to it, I stumbled upon Garoo and got stuck with his site, his photos and designs, and most of all with his fantastic writing. If you can read French, go and enjoy!

I also started looking around at the other French blogs that he links to, and I found a link via A.L. to an article containing the following statement, that George W. Bush allegedly told Tony Blair as means of explanation for France's economic decline:

The French trouble is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur.

I can't believe he could have possibly uttered such an idiocy and yet, at the same time, I fear it might be true.

The first encounter.

Our first date.

Our second date.

The time I cooked for him.

I'm having J. for lunch later today. No, let me rephrase it: I'm having him over for lunch today, but this time I'm not going to spend the whole day cooking, for the meal is not the reason I've invited him over. In fact, I would love to find the guts to bluntly ask him "So, shall we eat before or after sex?"