Schlagwort-Archive: almost a diary

almost a diary, music

(barely) aLive and (rather) Acoustic

Cindy AlexanderGentle readers, it’s a shame.

The very talented Californian singer/songwriter Cindy Alexander is touring Germany for the second time in only two years and I won’t be able to attend any of her concerts for I am not in a state to leave my bed for much more than brief stops at the trusted pharmacy and, of course, the videostore around the corner.

Even if I could leave the house for longer I suppose I would immediately be sent home by a police officer for disorderly conduct – sure it’s getting better, but sometimes I am still coughing in a way that would most certainly make late 19th century tuberculosis patients pale in comparison. Of course, spreading cold germs is not yet a crime. But there’s a reason it’s frowned upon…

So, much to my dismay, once again I will have to turn to Ms Alexander’s recordings instaead of “the real thing”. However, all of you who are not confined to your beds tonight and live not too far from Marburg, Hessen, Germany, should leave right now and attend “The Acoustic Meeting” in the Waggonhalle at 8pm.

Unfortunately none of Cindy’s songs are legally available online since c|net has shut down the mp3.com servers in January. Well, not quite – there are at least some samples at amazon.com, even including my favorite song of hers, “Better Than I Am“.

So listen quickly, and then get going.

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almost a diary, photoblogging, self-referential

Helau! I’m Guilty.

I want you for Rosenmontag

But don’t call the cops just now, my gentle readers.

As a matter of fact, I’m guilty of a crime that is not part of any tort law in the known universe. And actually, most people probably wouldn’t consider it a crime but simply a fun weekend. However, sometimes, things aren’t as simple as the seem on the first glance… so, in a way, yes, I am a traitor.

I am from Mainz and I am going to Cologne this weekend to celebrate this year’s carnival with some friends from abroad. And in a way, this is really bad, as Mainz and Cologne enjoy a healthy competition when it comes to the question which town has the bigger Rhenish carnival tradition. And being part of one of these traditions is like being part of a ‘family business’ – you do remember The Godfather, don’t you?

Well, I’m not really afraid of a concrete funeral. But I do indeed feel a tiny little bit guilty about the prospective enjoyments within the “enemy’s” heart. So I’m going to make it up: I will certainly make an effort to convert Koelsch infidels to finally say “Helau” instead of “Alaaf”…

And you best believe it takes a man to do that ;)

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almost a diary, oddly enough, Science

The Rose Wars or The End Of Vegetarianism.

I’m still laughing at the thought of half of my female friends’ denial to eat anything but chemically engineered, synthetic food…

Why would they do that, you ask?

Well, it’s simple enough. They are vegetarians – some more, some less. But about half of the women I know (while hardly any men) voluntarily renounce to eating meat on a regular basis. Some claim to do it “because it’s healthier”, but whatever they say, in most cases it is fairly obvious that it is only the thought of personal responsibility for the suffering and eventual death of a creature with a nervous system that was only bred to be eaten which prevents them from enjoying this particular form of carnal pleasure.

There are some exceptions – I call them “fashion vegetarians” – to this rather fundamental rule, but to the benefit of all lobsters on this planet “nothing-with-a-face” aesthetic discrimination is actually rare these days. It’s just too un-pc.

On the other hand, the days of politically correct foodstuffs may be over for good. The Three-Toed Sloth calls our attention to a recently published study which presents “Evidence for complex, collective dynamics and emergent, distributed computation in plants“.

In other words, some scientists claim that plants can think.

So how long do you think will it take until we will see the first starved Vegetarians? Until men will be considered compassionate for forgetting to bring flowers for a date? Until we will see naked models fighting rose wars in front of flower shops, demonstrating for the rights of plants?

I don’t know. And probably this will never happen. But just the thought of my vegetarian friends being forced to decide between spacefood or starvation was worth writing this entry.

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almost a diary, photoblogging

White Christmas, 2003.

I’m a little bit disappointed. Usually, the pre-christmas shopping spree leads to at least a handful of interesting discoveries, with respect to shoppers or the products they bought. But this year? Hardly anything exciting to report from my ventures into consumer wonderland, maybe apart from the almost strange impression that the age of “Wham-christmas” seems to be over. I heard it only twice this year.

It’s not that people aren’t in holiday shopping mood anymore. But they, just as the marketers, don’t seem to be quite as willing to opt for experiments as they were in the past. There might be a correlation with the recently passed reform bills, which, in the expectation of stilll too many people are the official declaration that poverty, big time, looms over Germany now.

But lack of cristmassy enthusiasm could, on the other hand, simply be climatically induced, as this winter seems to become as cold as the summer was hot. I literally drove through a snow storm at Frankfurt Airport today. So at least we won’t have to listen to Bing Crosby dreaming of a White Christmas this year.

Speaking of orange trees in LA… I think there is an immediate lack of good new christmas carols these days. I wonder if EndeMol entertainment can’t find a way to create a tv show around this theme ;). Well, I think I will be able to find an hour or so for a final entry of 2003 during the upcoming festivities. But just in case I don’t…

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almost a diary, oddly enough

Less Almost, More Diary.

I have no idea what made me take the test Lillimarleen advertised on her page tonight, but there you go. I usually don’t take “personality tests”, certainly not personality tests that consist of eight questions.

No one has ever been able to pin me down and maybe it’s a good sign that the headhunters who tried to do that by playing a ten minute game have since gone out of business. Anyway, I thought it was time for another slightly more personal entry. So here we go.

Dear almost a diary,

today I did this eight questions personality test on the internet… here’s the result. What do you think?

holding hands

hand holding – you like to be in constant physical
contact with your special someone but you don’t want to take things too quickly.

Hey almost a diary, want to the test, too?

[ brought to you by Quizilla ]

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almost a diary

Happy Birthday! We’re moving!

My gentle readers, let me tell you that today, this blog is celebrating its first birthday. While you might or might not have been disappointed that I have been rather silent lately, the reason for this has been the preparation of a movable type installation over on www.almostadiary.de (no need to link, the auto-forward to blogspot is still working). The “tschwarz.blogspot.com” installation is going to stay in place for the moment.

Of course, MT offers a better functionality and having control over my archives is certainly worth a lot. But if you’re not happy with the MT templates, getting an MT installation (with a few bells and whistles) to work across just the most common browsers does take a lot of time and determination. If it had not been for my annual coding adventure, I likely wouldn’t have done it.

Especially importing your comments from reblogger to MT was a hazzle that involved creating a caif standard xml file from html through word’s search and replace functionality. Not a recommended method, but one that can work. However, while all comments have been atributed to the right posts in MT, Phil Ringnalda’s Yaccs comment import script wasn’t able to work with Reblogger’s timestamp, so don’t be surprised when comments seem to have been posted in 2005…

Also, many older posts still have headlines that are compiled from the first 5 words of the entry given the lack of a title tag in blogger’s free version, and I haven’t assigned categories yet. Neither have I installed the trackback feature.

So there are still things to do, especially as I just decided against using the prepared autumn design for the moment for reasons of recognition and weather. This means I have to do some table adjustments which will take another half-an-hour or so. Despite almost complete reliance on CSS, I am still using tables for the main columns for the moment. With just CSS I couldn’t motivate Netscape to do what I wanted. As for 4th-generation browsers, I have decided against trying to support them.

But anyway, “almost a diary on MT” is going online tonight. Let’s celebrate!

But now I’m off to celebrate something else first.

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almost a diary, Iraq, media

Quality Journalism?

At least for the mo­ment, I am not real­ly com­men­ting the quar­rel bet­ween the Labour go­vern­ment and the BBC that very like­ly led to the tra­gic sui­cide of Dr. Da­vid Kel­ly, who was the ori­gi­nal sour­ce be­hind the BBC Radio 4’s de­fen­ce cor­res­pon­dent An­drew Gil­li­gan’s claim that the British go­vern­ment, most pro­mi­nent­ly Alas­tair Camp­bell, Tony Blair’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions ad­vi­sor, ‘sexed up’ the Bri­tish Iraq dos­sier to make a more con­vin­cing case for war.

But wha­tever you think of the go­vern­ment’s, or the BBC’s, or Dr. Kelly’s, or any indi­vidual jour­na­list’s res­ponsi­bili­ty for the tra­gedy, some peop­le in go­vern­ment ob­vious­ly for­got some ba­sic rules of po­li­ti­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tion. When some­one says “liar”, you don’t fuel that dis­cus­sion by sul­king­ly re­ply­ing “no, you are” when the only result will be that bad situ­ation be­comes an even wor­se one.

I just don’t un­der­stand why Mr Camp­bell felt the need to re­live Shell’s 1995 Brent Spar com­mu­ni­ca­tions disaster when there was no need what­so­ever?

Whatever the truth to his or An­drew Gil­ligan’s po­si­tion, tal­king about it cer­tain­ly made things worse at a time when the pub­lic dis­cour­se was “shame on you if you fool me once, shame on me if you fool me twice”. What­ever the truth to either side’s alligations, with­out fi­nal­ly fin­ding some buckets of poi­son some­where in the Iraqi de­sert, the only way for the British go­vern­ment to deal with the si­tu­ation would have been to shut up, not to hunt down an al­le­ged trai­tor or char­ging the BBC with jour­na­lis­tic mis­con­duct to ma­ke every­one be­lieve that there must be really some­thing to the story.

That’s all I’m going to say.

My for­mer em­plo­yer Ben Brad­shaw on the other hand, for­mer BBC jour­nalist and now Par­lia­men­tary Se­cre­tary in the Bri­tish Depart­ment for Envi­ron­ment, Food and Ru­ral Affairs, is very invol­ved in this row.

And, again, what­ever your opinion of all this: his re­cent de­plo­ring the lack of qua­lity jour­na­lism and sour­ce veri­fi­ca­tion seems to have some point when even “The Guar­dian“, even in a time­line of the affair publi­shed on July 19th, makes him a “For­eign Of­fice Mini­ster”, a po­si­tion he left in June 2002 when he was appoin­ted “De­puty Lea­der of the Hou­se of Com­mons”.

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