Search Hits

I'm not too sure how I feel about people find their way onto my blog by entering keywords such as this into Google:

While "annoying belgians" might not be a hit to be too proud of, I had two hits just last week from people googling for "wringing pigeon's neck"...

I think the world is finally catching onto the pigeon conspiracy! Thank sod for that.

Introducing...

The frequency and content of my blogging seem to have become increasingly scattered of late. While that is partly due to the fact that I have jumped headlong into my new job and am still very much trying to re-organise my private life around this new situation, that is not the whole story...

These last two months have heralded the arrival of a different level of distraction entirely. It presented itself in a highly compact, dangerously spiky and tremendously vibrant packaging. And I've taken the last two months to slowly unwrap it and figure out what place to give it in my life.

Frequent visitors to this blog undoubtedly know that I have been single for pretty much 19 months now. About a year and a half ago, I made the conscious decision to take some proper solo time for a change. It was time well spent on thesis-writing, travelling, re-establishing old connections, making new ones, physical and emotional recovery, finding a job and buying a flat. It seems odd, if not a little indulgent then, that one would find oneself at a point in life where things seem to fall perfectly into place, and to feel utterly contented with what one has and where one is in life... only to be presented with some unexpected icing on the proverbial cake.

I've taken some time to let things sink in and have refrained (as much as I could without exploding of eagerness to shout it over the rooftops) from recounting the events leading up to this point. But it seems fairly obvious to me now that this is the right time to introduce "the icing", as she'll undoubtedly feature in more than one of my future blogposts, if I continue the level of personal-account blogging I've accustomed these last two years. I don't feel very comfortable holding stuff back, and I'm sure you've all picked up on the fact that my posts have been less coherent as well as more impersonal, and I've just about stretched the limits of self-containment anyway...

So, ladies and gentlereaders, voila ma petite-amie: Jo.

Ye can't really tell from her picture (what with her being uncharacteristically pretty for a Scot *ONLY JOKING*... *not*), but she is in fact Scottish. Sexy accent included. And yes, yes, I KNOW I have just bought a flat and landed myself a fantastic job here in Belgium, but then I like the road less travelled. More than that... the combination of those various elements in my life seems to make perfect sense just now.

I could quite easily list a thousand things about her that make me go all mushy, but then I would like to keep my readership and it would seriously interfere with the high standard of blogging you're all accustomed to *cough*

Actually, sod that. She's fab. She's got bump 'n grind dancemoves that make MC Hammer look like a wallflower in comparison, her funky hair would turn even the most well-endowed hedgehog envious and when she smiles, it totally tugs at my heartstrings. She's in my system and it feels like that's exactly where she was meant to be. So yes, Jo's likely to feature on this blog in future. By association.

And now that I've managed to get this all out on "paper", I've cleared the path for my blogging to regain its natural flow...

Hierarchy on its way out

A friend introduced me to del.icio.us a few weeks back and while I was initially a bit hesitant to use it (unlike her I'm not an early adaptor), I am now absolutely besotted by the concept.

Del.icio.us is a webbased feature which lets you store you favorite links and bookmarks online on the basis of semantic categories. Most of us organise our computer files and links in a hierarchical manner: we create files and subfiles to store them under.

For instance, if I am trying to hunt down a picture of a friend's party a while back, I would open a file called "LePew" then "Pictures" then "Olympus Camera" and then I need to rack my brains to remember when exactly this party took place, because I have stored all my private pictures by month. So if the party was in August 2005 I'd have to click on a file called "08-2005" to locate it. It's a bit of an effort, to say the least.

My weblinks were stored in a comparable manner. But del.icio.us now allows you to tag your links. For instance, if I was to store my own blog as a favorite, it would first of all be stored under its own name "Ubiquitous" and then instead of placing it in a file or subfile, I would simply attach tags to it: "blog, Pew, science, entertainment, ubiquitous, lesbian, Ghent, physics, life" etc... whichever term I would associate with this link. When I next try to find the link, I merely need to type in a few key-words to hunt it down, instead of trawling through a hierarchically structured directory.

What makes it easy, is that this type of storage is based on semantic and associative thinking. You don't need to remember dates or filenames. You simply think of keywords that naturally spring to mind when you yourself think of that file. And I'm becoming increasingly aware of just how associative my brain thinks. I rarely remember exact facts (which can be frustrating at times). But I do remember concepts, ideas, keywords,... that link into and out of others to connect the general dots and to see connections between otherwise unrelated or distantiated topics. I guess this is a common characteristic for people used to interdisciplinary environments and for conceptual thinkers. But what strikes me, is how different my keyword structures are from other people's.

Del.icio.us allows one to make "Tag Clouds" which is a visual representation of all your keywords. I've browsed the del.icio.us pages of several friends and they are generally very succinct and logical it seems, with keywords such as "blog", "music" or "fun". Whereas my tag cloud... well... see for yourself:

Thru the Lens

I started my new job just a little over 10 days ago now and I'm still trying to find some sort of rhythm that will allow me to fit all my normal activities in and around my new work-shedule. It'll take a while before I'll successfully strike the right balance, and so I will have to ask you to bear with me on this, both in terms of blogging and social contact. I crammed as many social events into my after-work hours last week and it still feels like I've got major catching up to do. But the new workload is challenging and intense, and because I'd like to make a good contribution to the team as soon as possible, I feel like I (for a while at least) need to devote a few hours after work to catch up with all the new things I've been introduced to at work. So I don't loose grip on things until I've been properly trained up.

I have some personal news to tell you all and have mentally drafted 4 non-personal blog topics as well, all of which I'd like to jot down when I find some spare time later this weekend or week. Suffice it to say that I love the job, and that I'm confident some sort of new structure of social life/ work/ blogging/ personal stuff will emerge before too long, which will allow me to take everything on board as usual.

The quickest way to document things right now, is by using my camera phone for easy snapshots. My Fisheye Lens got scratched and I've yet to find a good replacement, so my stencil-shots are taken with a standard lens at the moment.

- Life In Transit -

- Pigeon Domination -

I'm sure most of you have at one time or other been witness to one of my infamous pigeon rants. You know the one: That I have a sneaky paranoid suspicion that pigeons are secretly plotting world domination. Because if you think about it, it all adds up. They have strategically positioned themselves in all our open spaces (easy mass-attack positions), they persistently shit on all our important landmarks and monuments (acts of rebellion), they embody breeding grounds for all sort of nasties and evil germs to which our own immune systems have yet to build resistance (mass production of biological weapons) and well, they look downright shifty what with their beady eyes snapping back and forth constantly on those freakishly dislocated heads of theirs. So I'm convinced pigeons are evil creatures plotting world domination.

Needless to say the recent emergence of pigeon-based stencils around Ghent is making me feel a little uneasy. They are everywhere. This one was positioned right next to an ATM machine. Call me paranoid, but I'd say the Pigeons have stepped up their plotting a notch. I am highly in favor of initiatives such as those taken by Faits Divers (a resto in Ghent), where you are promised a free beverage if you successfully snap the neck of one of the pigeons on their terrace.

[Disclaimer: A highly squeamish individual myself, I would never dream of wringing a pigeon's neck (despite the allure), so all you treehuggers: Back Off!]

- Don't Hold Back for My Benefit -

- Ghent Stencils -

- Cracks in the Foundation -

Trivial Intermezzo

Due to a few too many captivating late-night chats this week, my brain's totally gone to mush. I racked my brains for a blogtopic today, and came up totally empty. Don't we just love a bit of writer's block?!

Anyway, I found this online and figured it'd be a nice little time-filler (sense the pun) (Thanx Jo for pointing this out ;-)

The Weight of Words

There's few things I like more than spending an evening in conversation with a close friend over a few drinks. I'm fortunate to have friends who speak their minds at any given moment in time. I thrive off the feedback because I know that every word spoken, is softened by the warmth and safety of a strong friendly bond. My close friends - each and every one of them - have challenging minds and ways of thinking. It keeps me on my toes. It motivates me to take a step back and take stock of who I am and where I am at. It helps me redefine ideas, wear down my sharper edges or, failing that, to at least become aware of them. I might not always agree with their points of view, but I'm inclined to at least take them on board, because they come from minds I very much respect and admire.

Last night, over a quiet drink in a cosy li'l caff, the topic floated to the use of words. How to use them, when to use them and the subtle shifts between them.

It was pointed out to me that the language I use in my blog is becoming denser over time. That I increasingly use expensive words and that my sentence-structures have become more intricate. He pointed out that he didn't mean to focus on this in a pejorative light, but rather, as a simple observation. I have to admit that I wasn't really aware of any of this but he's right in that it's an important notion to consider when your writings are intended to reach an audience.

I think it's important to situate who your target audience is, because that generally determines your choice of topic and your choice of style. I gave my friend's opinions a lot of thought last night, because he of all people is someone who's viewpoints I value greatly. While his analysis is undoubtedly right, I think I've finally honed in on where I stand on the matter personally right now.


If I'm honest... I write this blog predominantly for myself. The average amount of time I spend on compiling my blogposts is about 10-15 minutes. I generally don't weigh my words nor my topics much. It's like a stream-of-conscious finding an easy outlet. My blog is like the proverbial shoebox of memories and thoughts stacked under the bed. And your part in this, as a reader, is to shine different colours of light on those memories and thoughts, so I can see more of the subtle aspects of them. So they become richer.


And the way I write, on a personal forum intended for no audience in particular, comes from deep within my belly. It's the raw, unpolished version of the language that reigns my thoughts. I love words. I love the richness of language. If I were to write science for the general public, I would adjust the level of language. But in personal matters, I revel in the richness of it all. I like thinking that my readers, like me, will go search for the meaning of a particular word they don't know yet, so words get replicated in more minds and grow stronger in their existence. My friend is one of those who do make the effort to look things up and keep learning. I think that is exactly the target audience I wish to attract, for that is exactly the person I am.

To finish off this post, I want to leave you with a gem of a phrase I recently came across in a French obituary:

"Il a basculé pour l’imparfait,
ce vilain temps où l’on ne parle de lui qu’au passé... "

QED ;)

Anonimity Cloak Thwarted

Only two months in, and my decision to return to a life set in Ghent has had some fascinating consequences already. I was determined to enlarge my current social group here beyond its old established boundaries and like the true geek that I am, I enlisted the help of the wonderful medium of blogging for that quest. These last few weeks I've met some wonderful people both through blogging and some renewed efforts IRL. But last night, the reality of decloaking... of losing my blogging "anonimity", really hit home.

I was invited along to Spass and shortly after my arrival, someone asked whether I'd managed to unshrink my favorite sweater. It took me a moment to realise this question related to one of my recent blogposts. Much later on in the evening, someone else proclaimed they would start taking my writings with a pinch of salt from now on, because I had quite successfully disproven my statement that I rarely drink, by being so disgracefully trashed. *grin*

Which brings home a few rather painful realisations: (1) people pay attention, (2) if I distort the truth in the name of poetic freedom *cough*VANITY*cough* then I WILL be caught out and (3) I will have no more stories to tell IRL, because it's all been read on my blog.

On another note, I've observed a rather bizarre phenomenon. Three different random strangers I engaged in conversation at different points during the night, likened me to an L-word character somewhere mid-conversation. I found this immensely odd. "You know, you're so ***** from the L-word". Erm. No. I'm so me. It's fascinating how much this series seems to have infiltrated the mindset.

Anyway: D&TC and The Girlfriend did an excellent job last night with Spass. I look forward to the next effort.