The Sunday Struggle #9

Right then, today's Sunday Struggle is bound to have a minimal target audience, what with the lovely weather out, but here it goes nonetheless. I've amassed the following links/gimmicks/curiosities for you for today:

1. Design your own tie: Girl-ties are all the rage again, and I quite fancy some for the dressed-up days at work. Unfortunately, the only website that seems to sell ties specifically designed for women is a rather crap one. So until someone can point me in the right direction, maybe designing my own tie might be the best alternative.

2. Floor & Wall-stickers: I spotted these and thought they were a good idea in terms of decorating, if you don't fancy going for the regular wall and floor arrangements. Tango-steps explained on your floor or a cheeky plug-socket. They come in at around 50 euros each and I think that's a tad overpriced for something you could quite easily do yourself in the space of a few lost hours on an overcast Sunday...

3. Publish Yourself: (Thx to Ine for pointing this one out). It's one of the several "print yourself" sites out there, but it gives itself a bit of a leading edge by providing an easy downloadable tool with lots of templates that guides you through the process of publishing your poems, your photos, or even your entire blog... in a neatly bound book that would fit well on your lounge-table. I am currently publishing Ubiquitous 2005, Ubiquitous 2006 and a photo-album of my round-the-world trip.

4. Livingstones Lounge: I won't have enough space in my new flat, but if I had, I would most definitely splash out on creating a wee corner like this. It looks fab for kids, or for a lazy comfi Sunday-afternoons, leisurely splashed out across some pebles with yer book or sunday paper.

5. And for the most random inventions of the week: The Jonny Glow Toilet Locator and the Hamster Shredder . Designed to help men aim for the toiletbowl in the dark (a problem I am unlikely to encounter in my house-hold what with the absence of men, but I can imagine this would be problematic for some other family arrangements), and an ecological way to shred your paper. I am actually all up for that Hamster thing, and may even suggest it to my boss at our next meeting. Every office needs a mascote. It might as well do something useful too.

6. Photography: Kelli Connell: Look closely at the pictures and you will notice that both people in the image are actually one and the same person. On Connell's website she explains:

"This work represents an autobiographical questioning of sexuality and gender roles that shape the identity of the self in intimate relationships. Polarities of identity such as the masculine and feminine psyche, the irrational and rational self, the exterior and interior self, the motivated and resigned self are portrayed. By combining multiple photographic negatives of the same model in each image, the dualities of the self are defined by body language and clothing worn."

This play with the duality of identity, and sometimes the seemingly contradictory co-existence of both aspects, is very close to my heart. Fits in perfectly with my own Queer identity and daily introspective moments.

7. Organic Fizz: Delish British goodness. With this warm weather, I find it hard to stay away from the Diet Coke. But in terms of rehydration, these fizzy drinks are by far the better choice. May have to import those when I go out to York in a fortnight.

8. Word of the Day: My girlfriend has a thing for words. She knows a plethora of them and they get me hooked on her story-telling. She's introduced me to Dictionary.com, a site that sends you a new word of the day every morning. Today's word was rather appropriate, so I decided to include the link ;-)

prolix
\pro-LIKS; PRO-liks\,
adjective:
1. Extending to a great length; unnecessarily long; wordy.
2. Tending to speak or write at excessive length.

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:

The Meaning of Liff

"In Life, there are many hundreds of common experiences, feelings, situations and even objects which we all know and recognize, but for which no words exist.On the other hand, the world is littered with thousands of spare words which spend their time doing nothing but loafing about on signposts pointing at places.Our job, as we see it, is to get these words down off the signposts and into the mouths of babes and sucklings and so on, where they can start earning their keep in everyday conversation and make a more positive contribution to society."

-Douglas Adams & John Lloyd-

I know this is old grub and I suspect most of you have read at least parts of the Meaning of Liff, but the topic of language and ideas came up in an intriguing conversation last night, and it instantly reminded me of the Meaning of Liff.

We talked about how certain terms are hijacked by a subset of people (or organisations) and taint the concepts related to the terms in such a way that people will instantly categorise them when they hear it. Take, for instance, the terms "energy" or "flow". Many people will instantly link these terms to new age concepts or "hippy-esque" ideologies, while in fact, the concepts behind these terms are universal and uncoloured by any ideology. So we discussed the importance of the evolution of language. How language needs to continuously be enriched. How concepts need to be defined by words that keep them approachable for anyone. How terminology needs to be altered so that the concepts themselves aren't instantly incorrectly categorized.

Language can be both rich and inadequate and I do believe we need to conciously and subconsciously work at its adaptations and growth.

The Meaning of Liff is a playful example of this. Do we have a word for that feeling of sitting down on a chair after someone else has just sat on it. You know... sitting down on that warmth left by a previous owner? Nope. Well, the Meaning of Liff conjures up a new word for it. And hundreds more. Fascinating and fun. You can buy the "dictionary" here.

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 ;)