Posts filed under "cerebral-interviews"
I was thinking about this today and basically, blogging involves removing the additional thoughts that are in your head that take up valuable space. Things that you should think about but not necessarily keep in your brain knocking about. That way it leaves you with more time to do other things, like in my case watch ‘The Wire’ (best police series EVER created) and read a few books (got a couple of reviews for books you really should read) and most importantly for my sanity, create things. That’s when I’m most happy, when I’m creating stuff.
The issue with me is that that part of my brain has been laying dormant as I began thinking and doing a bunch of other things that seriously didn’t really add to my being,…overall…in hindsight and all that. Part of the problem I guess is that I’m not angry enough at stuff, so it’s time to start getting angry again and flex that muscle again. It’s time to start creating again, it’s time to start blogging again, none of this 7 posts a month bullshit.
To the internet. So last week we were offline at casa Khaled. Yes, that’s right, no net access whatsoever. At first I’ve got to admit that I was REALLY angry. Not at anyone but at the situation itself. I mean seriously, my computer felt like it was neutered. I felt completely cut off from the world and all because as it turns out one of the cables coming into the house decided to collapse on itself. Maybe because it finally decided to give up the good fight because of the cold weather? Maybe it was because the workers outside moved it a fraction and it was to frail to deal with it, either way I was cut off.
This has happened before to be honest, however this one I was a bit more composed with the whole thing. I was actually able to deal with a few things that I’ve been meaning to deal with for a while; like do a bit of writing, do a little bit of drawing and generally do a couple of things that I’ve been meaning to do for a while. One thing I did miss was this site. I realised that I need this place for venting, something which i’ve been doing a lot less of in recent times. One of the main reasons I continued to blog was because I liked the cathartic process associated with brain dumping, because after all that ALL I’m doing here. Sometimes I rattled a few cages, sometimes I make a couple of people smile, so I think I’ve found that spark that I need to really start making the words on this site start coming alive. So as of tomorrow, you can expect a lot more ‘Kode action coming your way, daily even.
It’s also time I kicked WordPress like a bad habit. Seriously, this shit takes FOREVER to log in. Once you’re in it’s kind of OK, but honestly SLOW as a fat man in water. Some things in 2.5 are nice, but alas I’m thinking too damn little, too damn late, I guess I will write something about it at some point.
It’s been a real eye opening month so far. One of the things that I made sure I did this year was spend more time LIVING. Towards the end of 2007 I kept asking people what their highlight was. What wasn’t surprising was the fact that most people really didn’t have much to give me. It was mainly work related or the realisation came forward that well we all spent more time working or whatever than actually living our lives.
I was guilty of this more than anyone else, with only some real brief moments. So part of the thinking in how I wanted to tackle 2008 was to allow and organise one event, one thing every month, where I can look back and actually live. So far it’s been going pretty well I’ve got to admit.
I’ve been to the 02 Arena and saw the Smashing Pumpkins
I’ve been to the Royal Opera House and watched the ballet (two things I’ve never done in the 6 years in London)
went to see the Terracotta Army exhibition in the British Museum
attempted to queue in line to see Alan Moore (really fucked off about that, so I won’t actually talk about it)
I finally got around to walking around the V&A museum and found one of the best courtyards in London and while I was there I really got into Rodin, whom I’d had a brief encounter with a few years ago, however this was different, this time I was actually really appreciative of what his work actually means.
Inbetween I’ve read one of the best books I’ve read in a really long time, Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart - you may want to check the wikipedia entry as well
And watched several movies, ‘No Country for Old Men’, ‘Sweeny Todd’, ‘Stardust’, ‘Yu Tu Mama Tambien’, ‘Blade Runner: Final Cut’, ‘Tekkonkinkreet’
Been watching Lost and Prison Break, both of which have generally been much better than average. They’ve been good and enjoyable. I’ve been really getting more out of lost by listening to the Transmission podcast and reading the episode elements on lostpedia which definitely enhance your enjoyment of the actual show itself.
Read a load of amazing graphic novels that really deserve your attention, Chris Ware’s ‘Acme Novelty library’, ‘Scalped’, ‘The Nightly News’, ‘Stray Bullets’, ‘Lost Girls’.
Hell I even bought some proper comics this year and happily I’ve not been disappointed either. I got ‘Kick-Ass’ which I thought was well put together and too early to decide either way. Based on how much I enjoyed ‘Chosen’ I’ll be buying the graphic novel when that comes out. The latest ‘Fantastic Four’ issue by Millar and Hitch was good fun. They’ll get me to buy the hardcover when it comes out I’m sure. There was the excellent issue of ‘Criminal’ and the second volume, both of which were very excellent books that you should be reading if you’re into crime noir. I bought Jeff Smith’s new book ‘RASL’ which looks kind of interesting but no where near as tight as Bone. There was something MAGIC in that book when it came out that he doesn’t seem to have with ‘RASL’ I’m afraid to say.
The thing that I find strange, is that usually any one of the elements above would have gotten a post out of me. Be it on this site, or on SplashPanel.
I’ve taken a step back from my involvement with Habari. Not because I don’t believe in the project, because the project is kicking some MAJOR ass. But I think i’ve done all i have the energy to contribute at this particular moment in my life. If this project had come out a few years ago things would be very different. I feel warm inside that the design vision that is leading the boy is Michael as I’m sure it will differently look that part once it gets to that stage. Believe me, in a year’s time the majority of people will be ready to switch over to Habari from whatever system they’re running, so you might as well get in on the ground floor, great group of guys with a lot of enthusiasm and knowledge to share.
So what’s going on with me? What am I planning on doing? I’m not actually sure. It’s actually one of those things that i look at the list above and think to myself, that I’ve done a lot in the last couple of months. I’ve stopped certain things, like my involvement with my sites and open source software, I’ve stopped going to basketball, I’ve started drawing and writing again and it’s time to start thinking where I am with my life and where I want to be.
So the thing that I’m trying to get to is that I’ll be posting less and less in the future. I will continue to tinker on my local machine with things and hope that at some point I finally launch the update to this site that I’ve been working on for months and months and months. I’m proud of a lot of elements of it while other elements I’m not so happy with, but somehow that doesn’t matter to me any more. If I get it done it get’s shown to the world and it’ll be dated the second it goes live :).
It’s time for me to go back to where I was meaning to be 4 years ago. Let’s see what the future now holds.
Now see that’s fucking weird. I was having a pretty rough Tuesday at work, so we went out for a couple of drinks after work. I work in Mornington Crescent, which is like at the bottom of Camden towards Tottenham Court Road, so most of our Friday evening are spent in and around the Camden area. It’s an area that’s got enough food choices to keep even the most fussy eater happy. It’s got it’s cinema, Regent’s Park is a stone’s throw away and there are 100s of pubs and bars around the area.
That’s not the weird part in case you were wondering, the weird part was the fact that on Wednesday we ended up in the Hawley Arms that night. This was actually the first time I had ever been in here, even though I’ve been working in and around the Camden area for nearly 6 years now. That’s what I’m trying to get at, the place has got soo many bars and stuff that it’s impossible to have been to all of them unless you make a real concerted effort. Now the pub (which is famous for bringing in the celebrities in the past…not so much any more I guess) was partly burnt in the fires last night. So I kind of just saw it in one piece just in time, even though I’d past by it 1000s of times in the past 5 years.
Hell, yesterday we were in Old Street and Stathi and I were thinking about dropping by Camden along the way, but decided against it since we were both pretty knackered, had we gone up we would have seen the fires. No doubt I’ll see that sometime tomorrow.
The Chicago Spire by Santiago Calatrava. It’s not a secret that he’s my favourite contemporary architect at the moment. Good little promotional website. The thing is though listening to the interview, you’d get the impression that high rise residential buildings don’t get made…erm I’d like to disagree there, hundreds of buildings exist that are high rise are not for the corporations at all. This is unique maybe in that it does have a certain level of uniqueness in design, although some of these ideas have been used before in something like the Swiss Re building in London, by Foster & Partners.
So yesterday I finally saw a celebrity I actually gave two shits about seeing. I creator who’s work I’ve actually enjoyed greatly. We went for a few drinks in Belsize Park yesterday and then decided to go for a bit of food after that. Of course, four people trying to decide on food sometimes can go smoothly and sometimes can go horribly wrong. Well in this case as we were walking up the road towards Hampstead and we see this little French restaurant that’s part of a hotel. I instantly dismissed it as not something I’d really like to go for, however Sophia had been there and recommended the food as being pretty good. So we go have a look at the menu and it was wide enough to allow us to actually cater for everyone’s crazy mood of food that night.
I was last in line and Stathi was right in front of me, so he quickly turns around to me and says ‘Dude, is that Helena Bonham Carter? I quickly turn around and say “Nah, her hair’s all over the place, she’s not looking as glam as i would expect”. In that split second what I hadn’t noticed of course was the person she was with. As we got seated, I did a quick glance over and lo and behold there was Tim Burton. See for me THAT is a celebrity. The actors are not the important bit (more on this later). The director is the captain of the ship. He’s the one that touches the movie in absolutely every single way, story, script, casting, sets, money, promotion, the whole lot. A great director will take unknown actors and make a great movie. A great actor won’t be able to make a bad movie great. He’ll play his part in a great way and shine himself but the movie doesn’t really benefit…not really because it still remains a pile of shit, regardless of how great the actor’s performance actually was. So I generally will follow directors, rather than actors (there are VERY VERY few exceptions to this rule). This little snippet was the source of a relatively heated discussion yesterday as i tried to explain to everyone that I was properly star struck by a creator’s who’s work I’ve been following since Edward Scissorhands, and well I liked Helena in Fight Club, a lot. But i wouldn’t exactly consider myself a fan of her body of work, since except for that movie I’ve only ever seen/heard her in….Tim Burton movies (Corpse Bride and Sweeny Todd).
So there you go, the first ‘celebrity’ that I actually was kinda star-struck. See NEXT week I will be 100% COMPLETELY and utterly star-struck as I am going for the Alan Moore signing in London. For all those that don’t know who Alan Moore is, you guys really have not been paying my attention.
I know I really shouldn’t be excited about this, but the new Star Trek teaser (directed by JJ.Abrams) does look pretty awesome even for a teaser dammit
This weekend I’ve decided to finally get down to completely my chartership forms. For those in the dark, part of a professional engineer’s life (and I’m not talking about your electrician or telephone repair man, who while both are great fields, they are definitely not engineers) is to try and achieve his chartership status. The status means a lot of things for different people and once you’re in the group you are really part of a group of people that have fulfilled specific criteria (ranging from their technical knowledge to their project management skills to their people skills and so on) and therefore you look at them in a completely and different manner.
I felt it most recently when I was sitting in a meeting this week with another consultant from another company and his business card had the letters CENG. That was in many respect enough for me to understand that the guy in front of me wasn’t pretending, he was the real deal and therefore I could discuss things with him on a specific level. Obviously he couldn’t really look at me with the same light as I’m missing those 4 little initials after my name. The thing is that after 6 years of work experience in the construction and building services industry, I’m no longer pretending either. I’m doing these things that are required of you as a Chartered Engineer. The only thing that is stopping from going forward is myself. So this weekend in the History of Khaled, I will be spending nearly EVERY waking hour to dealing with these forms once and for all. All that vigor that I put into my art, into my work on a regular basis, into my online contributions will now be put into my Chartership status. I will not go into work on Monday without that form completed as a draft and ready to go to my mentor as a first stab for him to pass comments.
However in order to do this, I’m probably going to need to sort out my supplies early in the morning for the weekend, and I’m going to have to turn off the internet. I’m only allowed specific toilet and food breaks. I’ve got the evening off, however the entire weekend is dedicated to this goal, fully and totally. Lets see if I actually get things done.
Today was the first time I used Awaken from Embraceware. It was a whole new experience for me waking up today to a bit of Soundgarden. Tradiitionally I’m jerked out of bet through the bitter sound of my cheap £4 alarm clock that’s been going strong for YEARS. I tell you what, I am most definitely not going to miss that horrible, horrible sound.
Loads and loads of things to write and talk about, especially as this blog is now officially 4 years old today. Got a great deal of exciting things to talk about in the coming month but I think I’ll share this excellent quote by one of my favourite authors Neil Gaiman:
May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.
Seems like the most apt way to begin this new year off. Happy new year everyone.
It’s been a while since i’ve done something like this, but I can’t help myself, i’ve been sitting on this for months now.
Oooohhhh right, now I get it.
So my mac mini arrived last week. Three seperate boxes, one for the mini, one for the wireless mighty mouse and another for the wireless keyboard. What made me laugh was the fact that Joyce, arguably the smallest person in the world was carrying them to give to me. This stuff is actually completely tiny, it’s really incredible. So much so, that I’m not actually sure what I’m going to be doing with the rest of the real estate of my desk, the bottom of my desk is also looking pretty barren, so I’m thinking there’s going to be a trip to Ikea to get a table to put my stereo, thus freeing up enough space to get myself an A1 drawing board, as I see that coming in handy a lot in the coming year.
It took a total of 12 minutes from the second I connected all the wires to the second i was surfing the net and talking to Bonsai online. The machine picked up the mouse, keyboard and wireless router in seconds and I was actually up and running in no time at all.
So what is my initial reactions to OSX now that I’ve played around on it for more than 30 minutes? There is genuinely a hell of a lot to like. Things that as a windows user I came to accept because that was the norm. That all changed last year when I got into Ubuntu and realised that there was actually a different way. The problem I faced with Ubuntu however was the lack of sophisticated software aimed directly at the operating system and the lack of hardware drivers for a lot of my peripherals. Obviously this isn’t the case here.
One of the greatest things for me however is the lack of having to shut down my computer every day. I put it to sleep and that’s pretty much it. Loading it up again takes a total of 3 seconds and I’m up and running again. The quiet nature of the machine is an incredible selling point to me, since my previous machine, although a work horse in it’s own right was fucking load as you like. So this was a breath of fresh air.
Then there’s how it all clicks together. All downloads go into the downloads folder which I can access. Hardly anything is actually on my desktop anymore (save for my blue shuffle icon, which I love btw). Installing a programme requires me to move the downloaded programme into the applications folder. I’ve got several funky ways to see my documents and applications in that is slightly less archaic than the traditional drop down menu and the list goes on.
Reading through that last paragraph you’d think that I had absolutely no negative comments about the system. Unfortunately you’d be wrong about that. However as that’s another post in and of itself I’ve had to split it up a bit.
VectorMagic is a free online application that turns your bitmaps into vectors. It’s the work of two students at Stanford and I’ve got to say that it really does work a charm. I’ll keep an eye on this just to see if there’s any legs in online photo editing tools.
So I had myself a bit of a Facebook purge today. As Facebook is becoming more and more part of the cultural landscape it’s become a bit more important to be a wee bit more careful regarding which people can actually see your details. Maybe I’m being a bit too cautious but the thing is I have been slapped once before regarding the ‘Kode at work. I know sounds strange since I’m extremely careful to make sure I don’t really say anything about what’s going on at work except regarding which projects I might be working on and having a picture taken off the architect’s website. The point is, you never know when certain information is going to come back and really bite you on the ass, and as such I’d really rather not get into too many of those situations in the future (hey I am a blogger and therefore I will no doubt get into trouble at some point down the line).
So I’m off any groups, won’t find me as part of any networks. The only people that can see me are the few that I allow in. Any photos I don’t like I take the tags off and hope they never get seen (exceptionally bad ones are asked to be removed).
The thing is I find Facebook as a concept to be awesome, and I love the implementation of it as well. I like it’s clean lines and distinct design. I like how functional it can be (although finding a decent Flickr plugin is like pulling teeth) I just want all my Flickr photos to be part of my photo albums and that’s it. However as with everything moderation is the best option.
It’s time we all took the word ‘average’ back. I’ve been thinking about this (and actually mouthing off about it as well to anyone dumb enough that will listen to me) but basically one of the things that I have found lacking in the use of the English language is the proper use of words to describe things. When you ask someone about how they felt a movie or an event was, unless it was terrible the general response you’ll probably get is ‘Yeah it was pretty good.’ Or ‘Yeah it was good’. Don’t lie to me dammit. It wasn’t good because if it was you’d be talking about it with a little bit more conviction, a little bit more enthusiasm. Good implies that it had merit to speak of. Clearly you have none to express. No dear sir (or madam), what in actual fact you’re trying to say is that it is merely average. Average is a good word to use when it fits the bill. When something doesn’t shine but moves forward in an adequate fashion it can only considered average.
So for example ‘Cars’ can only be considered as an average movie when you put it in direct comparison to John Lasseter’s previous outings. It had good moments in it for sure, but as a movie it cannot be considered anything but ‘average’ in comparison. Of course there’s the issue of being kind to people. As another example, most definitely do not say: ‘Thanks Grandma, that dinner was most definitely average.’
So like Randall in Clerks II, I’m taking back the word average. I strongly urge you to do the same. Hell you know you want to.
Ok seriously that was as fun as getting my head kicked in by a bunch of chunky school girls while being stuck on a roller coaster feeling a bit nauseous from the doggy fish salad I had last night…. ok you probably get the point. Just recovering from my beast of a man-flu. Monday afternoon I could feel a small ache in my body that only got worse through out the night and then come Tuesday morning that was it, KO on Khaled. I was out. Couldn’t bloody move. Fever. The works. The fact that I’m writing this right now shows that I am actually well on the way to recovery and can actually think straight and get on a do things. So the moral of the story kids? There’s a nasty bug going on that will render even the toughest of men.
Over 1000 photos , but here is a small slither of what is to come:
I have a much larger (and definitely more indepth) post to write when I get back to the UK, however just wanted to tell everyone that I am no longer affiliated with the 9rules network as of yesterday. To make things clear, I chose to leave, however I wish the guys and gals over there nothing but success in the future with everything that they do. I had fun while I was there and now it’s time to start looking into the future of the ‘kode.
So I’m sitting here in Naoto’s house and writing this after experiencing my first week (more or less) in Japan. Seriously i cannot imagine myself staying away from this country. So many things to absorb in such a little time that i could honestly keep writing for a long time. Of course if i did that then i would be at the bloody computer all day and not actually out there exploring things and soaking in everything. Therefore i will try to actually write down as much stuff as possibly can that has made an impression on me and then hopefully elaborate on everything (and include as many pictures as i can) when i get back. These posts i guess will act as placeholders until i get back.
The greatest thing for me is being shown around by ?aoto as there are soo many things that you could not possibly know or understand until you actually lived here or someone told you. The little red triangles that are place on the windows so that the firefighters can see which ones can be used in the event of a fire. I honestly thought it was some weird architectural statement.
Obviously the biggest thing that is easy to notice is just how clean the streets, tube and all public areas actually are. It is completely unreal. No gum stains on the floor, the paint on the roads is as bright as the day they were painted. Not a spec of garbage anywhere, anytime, anyplace.
We went to the Ghibli museum. Unfortunately you’re not allowed to take any photos in the Museum but I have some photos from the roof (which you are allowed to take photos) which is pretty cool. The highlight here for me was the circular strobe light running animation which was beyond incredible. Several rooms where filled with items that where inspired from the movie.
We went to Kamakura with all the temples (the place has got over 64 temples), however easily the best temple we saw was a hidden one that was far away from everything in the city and that was one of the most serene places on earth.
My first Japanese style breakfast was a complete experience. For those that don’t actually know what this entails, it has miso soup, rise, grilled fish, nato, seaweed and various pickles.
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Walked up Mount Fuji. I am completely sun burnt and tired, but by god the views was completely and utterly incredible. It has to be seen to be believed. In fact I’ll be sure to share when I get back because it was definitely worth the trip. We didn’t make it to the top of the mountain, but we got close and it was a mission going down as much as it was going up.
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Tomorrow we are off to Kyoto and Western Japan which is going to be an experience of epic proportions as it also includes my first trip on the Shinkansen (aka the bullet train).
You know what I find the absolute weirdest thing in the world? I’ve got this Canon LiDe scanner right, got it something like 5 years ago and has served me pretty well in all those years. It’s not the best scanner in the world, but to be honest, based on the fact that most of my stuff is put on the web rather than in print, it’s not exactly the end of the world. The weird thing is that my scanner works right out of the box in Ubuntu. Don’t need to download any drivers, don’t need to mess around with anything, and it works quickly and perfectly. Obviously it’s not all roses right, my Ipod shuffle obviously doesn’t want to play nice with Ubuntu, even though the latest version of Banshee is the music player that I’ve been waiting for all my life. So many great little features have been added to the latest couple of versions since I played last with it. Yeah like that’s any good to me as my fekkin sound card that doesn’t work for toffee and keeps giving me trouble all the time.
So I get back on Windows (because it’s got Photoshop) and fekkin Apache has decided to stop bloody working through XAMPP, so I can’t honestly get any work done for Habari as doing it on a live server takes forever.
I did download the latest and greatest Oxygen icons onto Ubuntu and I’ve got to say they are definitely some of the nicest things I’ve seen in a good long while…shame I couldn’t get the latest version of the Crystal icons to fekkin install (lovely redesign by Everaldo btw), as those look great as well.
Obviously I’ve upset someone in computerland and they’re trying to punish me in every painfully frustrating way. Seriously it’s times like this that I think the magic bullet is getting myself a Mac. But then again everyone says that when all manner of software decides not to work right?
So this last week I was in Princeton for my ‘little’ project in Egypt. The highlight of the trip without a doubt however was actually meeting Michael Graves. He was very busy looking at all sort of stones and mural paintings and whatnot for this other project that their office is knee deep into, however he spared some time and we had a bit of chat with him (myself, Steven and Reid) and he signed a monograph for each of us. Incredibly nice guy, very softly spoken and has got this great little smile that shows that he’s seriously enjoying himself.
Going through the monograph and buying stuff from their little design store you get a great feeling of all the different things that they’ve had a chance to influence and design. Notably are of course of all the Alessi products.
My price piece however is an Acme Studios pen (designed by MG) which is not only weighty but is a great little writing tool. The closes thing I can give an approximation to is how the front plates of Zippo lighters are used as a design piece, or statement
(The above image was taken from OC-76’s flickr account, go check it out for more gigs photos)
I wrote this last week but because of various trips I didn’t get a chance to post this properly. So on Monday (3rd of September) Thomas had tickets to go watch Chris Cornell at the Roundhouse in Camden. I’d completely forgotten about this seeing as I’ve had arguably one of the busiest times of my life this past month. So Monday comes around and we go off to see Chris Cornell. Now the issue is that I’m a pretty massive Cornell fan. While I adore the pumpkins, Cornell definitely has the best voice of all the 90s grungers, by a long way. Put him up next to Kurt Cobain, Billy Corgan, Eddie Vedder, Scott Weiland and he trounces each and every single one of them. Until this Monday, I thought that was it really. The thing is though the man has been pretty productive over the last few years, being in Soundgarden, then followed by a solo album, then Audioslave came and then another solo album.
My brother’s a massive fan as well, but like him I felt that the latest album was a bit lacking, which unfortunately it is. However no matter what Chris can still lay claim to being in my top 10 classic alternative albums of all time. With his performance on Monday he also showed that he was without a doubt a superb performer that enjoys himself immensely. Everyone who was there just couldn’t get over the fact about how crisp and clear and POWERFUL his voice actually remains throughout the live act. The man and his band played their little hearts out for 2 and a half hours. The band took a break while Chris continued with an acoustic set and then he only took a 5 minute break and was back for another 30 minutes. To say that they rocked the house is a complete and utter understatement. It wasn’t Chris Cornell, it was Audioslave, soundgarden and Chris Cornell all wrapped into one evening.
This review at Subba cultcha captures a lot of what I felt. Honestly I don’t know where to start explaining which of the actual songs was the best one, because they were all sung with passion. Hard to say this, but easily one of the best gigs I’ve ever been to. Anyone know where to get a copy of this gig?
One year older, one year wiser. Damn that one went by pretty quickly. I’ve got to say that when I was younger I used to get really pretty depressed about my birthday, nowadays I’ve come to accept the inevitable, so now the plan is to grow old with dignity….so I’ll be working on that last part later on. In any case happy birthday to all the Leo/Virgo cusp people born on the 23rd of August have a great one.
I consider myself a relatively well travelled kind of guy. The thing is though with the exception of America last year and this year my travels have been limited to Europe and the Middle East. The furthest east I’ve ever travelled is probably Syria, if I’m not mistaken. On Friday we booked our tickets to visit Naoto (or Hatori-san) in Japan for the first two weeks of October. To say I’m excited is a small and completely inaccurate understatement. I’ve been interested in Japanese culture since I was about 8 when I first Robotech as a kid on Saturday mornings. This was then further augmented with being a complete electronics GEEK. What you thought I became an Electrical Engineer by chance. Oh no no no, it was more than that. At some point in my life I’ll be sure to write a bit further about it.
Then you start adding the sheer amount of Manga and Anime I consume on a regular basis and you might start seeing the trappings of a bit of a fetish. Naoto has already assured me that we’re definitely going to be visiting the Studio Ghibli museum while we’re there (I think he loves it more than me).
So I’ve started looking at my blog feed reader and it hit me that I don’t really read all of my feeds as much as I skim them to see what new stuff might be happening in the world. The issue is though that I’m finding it harder and harder to find something that I must stop and read. I find that seriously strange. It’s not like I’ve got that much more blogs that I’m reading. I tend to add new blogs to my feed every so selectively.
Sure you have Khoi’s little commentary left and right, you have Paul’s exhaustive hardware reviews of consumer electronics I will never buy nor really care about. Michael’s blog is always an interesting collection of links (mainly movie related ones) from all over the place, Chris’s blog usually throws up some cool videos or interesting youtube snippets that I would never have the energy to look for, Journalista always gives me just about everything I could want in terms of comic book bytes and other assorted goodies (oftentimes more than I can possibly grasp). However one trend I’ve noticed is that the raw bloggers out there have reduced in number.
Oh but Khaled aren’t you part of the 9rules network? I’ve said this before (on another site) but I’ll say it again, 9rules is no longer the place it used to be. I’m not saying this is a bad thing, it’s just decidedly different. When I joined a couple of years ago it had something like 50 blogs in total. That’s 50 people I more or less knew from the forums. Knew and appreciated and liked and worked with and helped out etc. There are hunderds of memebers on there now, and honestly I don’t have the time to go through each one and vet each one.. I guess it was just more manageable in the past, for me at least, as I would add the ENTIRE feed for 9rules. Hell I wouldn’t know where to get it now if I tried. Anyone know where the feed for all the blogs from 9rules can be found? Shouldn’t that be a pretty prominent thing on this site? Shouldn’t you be able to taylor make your own RSS feed of all the various sites that are available to you? Kinda makes sense to me. Don’t know how easy it is to implement but I’m sure the guys are more than capable of doing something like that.
A couple of years ago it was this massive buzzing time, where we as bloggers (all of us, including you) ruled the net. Movies lived and died by our buzz (Snakes on a Plane), TV series got second leases on life (Serenity), well partly because of us.
Somedays I honestly feel like we’re not all that important anymore. Is it because all new fads become old quickly? Have we passed the ‘golden era’ of blogging? Is it that there is far too much noise on the net, and it’s becoming harder and harder to actually seperate the wheat from the chaff? Is blogging relevant nowadays or is it simply part of the general zeitgeist that is accepted and taken for granted?