In 2019, I borrowed from the public library 100+ books, reading slightly more than half of them. As usual, a small selection of quick reads you might enjoy:
photography: Anton Giulio Bragaglia, Fotodinamismo futurista (en), a much discussed and controversial essay on the new (in 1913) feats of photography; bold and dazzling. Letizia Battaglia, Anthology: a photographer with very classical aesthetics who pursued her vision through a unique take on photojournalism.
poetry: Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando furioso – this one is definitely not small, a pinnacle of epic poem, still immensely enjoyable today in both rhyming, poetics, daring metaphors and convoluted plot-lines.
If you want to read it in English, there were a plethora of translations; pick yours with care!
short stories: Ismail Kadaré, The Eagle (oniric) and Nina Berberova Tale of Nine Cities (bitter, dystopic).
essays: Junichirō Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows – a short, weird and sharp disquisition on the differences between Western and Japanese aesthetics. Guido Crainz, Il dolore e l'esilio – un libro ben scritto, preciso nei riferimenti e nelle fonti, sulla storia dell’Istria, delle sue ferite, delle sue vittime di ogni nazionalità a cavallo tra le due guerre mondiali.
Recently I was procrastinating by checking out an old handwritten music volume. It is a compilation of Harpsichord pieces, authored by famous musicians for a Venetian noble-woman, Maria Venier.
The score is unpublished, and probably unperformed since the 1750s. I picked a simple minuet by Baldassarre Galuppi, here is what it sounds like:
Venzone, an ASCII platform/adventure made by me.
Grab it while it is hot; if you like it, spread the word!
<brewton> San Diego is the world centre of taco gatekeeping.Recently I was looking for scientific articles on the differences between composing with a pen rather than a pencil (the latter becoming my writing instrument of choice after the former leaked on my suit).
The search returned empty handed, but one paper on “writing strategies and writers’ tool” was nontheless initriguing; let me share the findings with you.
First table displays the percentage of “frequent use” of writing tool X in different research areas. Keep in mind the article was published in 1993!
Then the author introduces a “writing strategies” variable; I find the descriptions of the different approaches to composing striking and amusing:
Finally, crosstabs of strategies/area and tools/strategies:
Writing strategies and writers' tools, Daniel Chandler - English Today April 1993 (I feel guilt in saying I got it via Sci-Hub)
more: catchpenny prints.
Playing: Tile World. The game is addictive in itself, but what makes it special is the plethora of levels designed by the community.
From classic puzzles to sokoban style, arcadeish run-against-the-clock sequences, riddles, even story based sets; shows how much depth an enthusiastic fanbase (and a level editor) can add to old titles.
On this day Giuseppe Verdi was born: enjoy Di quella pira.
150 years ago (not on this day), Ferdinand Magellan set sail from Seville, in one of the most daring adventures in the history of humankind. Antonio Pigafetta kept an accurate and vivid diary of the voyage:
To explain the kind of fruits above-named it must be known that the one which they call cochi, is the fruit which the palm trees bear. And as we have bread, wine, oil, and vinegar, proceeding from different kinds, so these people have those things proceeding from these palm trees only. It must be said that wine proceeds from the said palm trees in the following manner. […]
sfe:
I learned never to mistake an aesthetic for an ethic. That the signifiers of style can’t be relied on as the signs of a lived belief or a worked understanding. That a keg in the break room and a high tolerance for stoner hijinks makes a pretty good smokescreen for lousy wages and bad faith.
bonus: food forest / books by the foot.
Read The Queen of Spades, a very short story by Alexander Pushkin.
“That same evening my grandmother went to Versailles to the jeu de la reine. The Duke of Orleans kept the bank; my grandmother excused herself in an off-hand manner for not having yet paid her debt, by inventing some little story, and then began to play against him. She chose three cards and played them one after the other: all three won sonika, and my grandmother recovered every farthing that she had lost.”
“Mere chance!” said one of the guests.
“A tale!” observed Hermann.
“Perhaps they were marked cards!” said a third.
“I do not think so,” replied Tomsky gravely.
“What!” said Narumov, “you have a grandmother who knows how to hit upon three lucky cards in succession, and you have never yet succeeded in getting the secret of it out of her?”
80/starcraft vibe, a good blend of eerie synth and guitar, listen to Ant Empire Colonies (OST).
Fix your Control key: I have laid out a similar modification (switching Shifts to the keys at the side of the spacebar) and awkward wrist pain after a typing session is no more. Recommended!
At regular intervals the Power Station emitted a dry, low sound; the one you feel more than hear.
I find myself using the pencil as my writing instrument of choice more and more: pleasant feedback, good line variation, does not leak while flying. I just needed a very small sharpner to keep in my pocket along a tiny notebook.
Yesterday I found this one, by Muji, which does the job fine (sharp point, shaving reservoir, pocket-sized).
Archivio Diaristico Nazionale: “un archivio pubblico, che raccoglie scritti di gente comune in cui si riflette, in varie forme, la vita di tutti e la storia d’Italia: sono diari, epistolari, memorie autobiografiche”.
Speaking of which, I just finished reading Viaggio in America (en: Diary of a Woman at Fifty). Enjoyable, witty and insightful on French revolution:
But abandoning preambles, let us return to our entrance into the port of Boston. Our ecstacy, I admit with shame, was entirely concentrated upon an enormous fresh fish which the pilot had just caught and which, with a pitcher of milk, fresh butter and white bread, composed what the captain called “a welcome breakfast.” While we were eating with voracious appetites, we were advancing, towed by our boat, up this magnificent bay. At two cables’ length from the land, our captain dropped the anchor and then left us with the promise to return in the evening after having found us a lodging.
Play Los amores de Brunilda, a mystery retro adventure.
Available for ZX Spectrum and MSX2 and translated to a plethora of languages.
Pepper and Carrot an exquisite webcomic illustrated with open source tools (and itself libre).
The Afghanistan you never see.
I have a portfolio of over 2,000 images shot on three trips to Afghanistan in recent years and to keep track of them, I conceived of the rather unwieldy hashtag #TheAfghanistanYouNeverSee.
At one point the water disappeared into the dark, basalt rock, the ancient lava swallowing the brown, tannin-rich water. We walked down to a second platform and finally saw the full glory of Big Manitou Falls!
How I decide between many programming languages (A problem I seldom have, since I know few).
Welcome, deciduous carnival!
Today is gorgeously sunny, and it’s clear that summer is staging a comeback. But still, there are signs of autumn about. Dusk is dropping earlier, and some mornings the air is cool.
Books were expensive in Scotland between the 17th and 19th centuries. But literacy was comparatively high, and people were keen on reading. There was a large market for cheap, easy-to-get reading material: so-called street literature because it was simply sold on the streets.
This particular blue I noted, known as Reckitt’s blue, was painted as a disinfectant in the hallways, along a very catching red, in hope to make drab tenements more salubrious. A blue as a disinfectant, is it possible?
<@BrutalSlakt> we looked in a magazine I have from 2000, and the things in it
are suppose to be "omg how crazy", but looking in it today it was
more "yeah, that's things people do these days.." xD
<me> haha like?
<@BrutalSlakt> some guy killed by his friend, a hippo. a girl that can dive 35m.
some fat people. some dudes that put patterns of diseases (what
you see in the microscope) on clothes. some psychologist that
uses a therapy which one person pretends to be dead and the others
tell them stuff they couldn't "when they were alive".
<@BrutalSlakt> some hindu festival called Holi.
<me> haha
<@BrutalSlakt> a hotel under the waterNot in the 2000s:
Photography has created a chronic voyeuristic relationship to the world that cheapens the meaning of all events.
A study of paper vs. computers: an excellent experiment on how to write on both paper and PC and integrate the two with indexing.
My answer, actually, is that we’ve built a false dichotomy for ourselves. There is no reason why a system needs to be limited to one medium, or why a system should be limited to one medium, except for lack of imagination, laziness, and the kind of technological elitism described above.
Alyssa is not flying, on the beauty (and usefulness) of moving by train.
It’s 06:00 UK time, and the first of my 4 trains of the day just departed. Edinburgh to London, London to Brussels, Brussels to Cologne, Cologne to Berlin.
Enjoy:
My friend Carina has finally found some time to try her typewriter. Ribbon might need to be replaced, results are encouraging:
Moonlight Smugglers, a pleasant surprise announcement by friend and game-dev Qptain Nemo:
Program routines (click to zoom the images)
Did he write that journal? And what was in it?
Bonus: <BrutalSlakt> 300SEK (didn't buy, don't have the space) (pic)
Play Kerfuffle by KKairos!
To play it you need DosBox and the ZZT engine. Move the .zzt into the engine folder, select a world with W and pick KRFFFL-C). The game is worth the setup pain, I promise!
Other: Dokmelody, (eo) Mazi en Gondolando.
