And another article about weblogs

U.S. News: Blogging burgeons as a form of Web expression, by Holly J. Morris.

“Say this three times fast: A ‘blog’ is a blob of blurbs. It’s short for ‘weblog,’ and like many newly coined technology terms, blog serves as both verb and noun. Though some bloggers will disagree, a blog is a frequently updated Web page consisting of brief, dated entries, with new ones pushing the old to the bottom of the page. Most catalog the author’s chronological musings and are often a mix of personal journal entries and links to whatever caught the blogger’s fancy.”

Link via the Curmudgeon.

Cinema

Have you read “Bridget Jones’s Diary”? I have, and I think it was really fun, so I’m looking forward to the movie, which starrs Renée Zellweger (Bridget) and Hugh Grant (Daniel Cleaver).

Here’s an inofficial website, Singletons of the World Unite… everything you wanted to know about the making of Bridget Jones’s Diary the movie, with a weblog-style news page.

The film is going to be released in April, and I guess I’ll have to wait a little longer before it’s coming to Germany.

Lego

I just found a link to the Lego Brick-o-lizer in a magazine. Sounds like a cool idea: The demo version (online) allows you to load a picture into the Brick-o-lizer, and it converts it to a Lego mosaic. You can then print out the instructions to build the mosaic. The full version also allows you to order exactly those Lego bricks you will need to actually build your mosaic.

The whole thing has two disadvantages. First: You have to accept Cookies in order for the site to work. And second: “The LEGO Brick-o-Lizer is not available for use on Macintosh browsers at this time.” I wonder what kind of fancy technology they use that doesn’t work on a Mac. So I can’t play with it.

But maybe you want to try it out?

Yet another article about weblogs

New York Times: Invasion of the ‘Blog’: A Parallel Web of Personal Journals, by David F. Gallagher.

“The concept is simple enough. Create a Web page. Update it regularly with brief personal reflections or witty commentary, sprinkled with links to other pages. Put new entries at the top of the page, pushing older ones down. Voilà, you’ve got yourself a Web log.

That may not sound like the recipe for a social movement. But in the past two years, thousands of people have started their own Web logs, crating a vast sprawl of sites that, to the uninitiated, might feel like a parallel Web universe.”

Link via Schockwellenreiter, who found it on Arturs Weblog (German).

FAQs ohne Ende

Auf der Suche nach FAQs zu einem bestimmten Thema? Vielleicht kann www.faq-index.de weiterhelfen. Die FAQs sind in Kategorien sortiert. Hier findet man auch z.B. auch FAQs zu Tinnitus, Hörspielen oder Schülerverbindungen.

Link via mein Papi (per Telefon! ).

Und falls die gesuchten FAQs dort nicht zu haben sind, lohnt ein Blick auf www.faq-now.de.

Link via FAQ-Index.

Weblog Awards

A couple of days ago, Garret posted a link to the First Annual Weblog Awards, or the 2001 bloggies for short. This is the latest feature on Nikolai Nolan’s Fairvue central.

While I like the idea in general, I’m not sure whether a contest like this really makes sense. I mean, it’s pretty obvious that the so-called a-list bloggers will win most of the awards since they have the most readers, maybe except for the ‘geographical awards’ which are for non-US blogs.

The category I like best is the ‘best-kept-secret weblog’. Kept-secret blogs are all blogs that are not on the Weblogs.com Hotlist at the time of submitting. (Therefore, my weblog is not considered secret.)

I hope many voters think the famous blogs will get enough votes anyway, and vote for less-known blogs instead.

However, I have to admit that I’m curious about the results nonetheless.

Ein denkwürdiger Tag

Der Schockwellenreiter ist auf den Internet Explorer umgestiegen. (Ob jemand seine Beschwerden über lineheights etc. vermissen wird? )

In einem allerdings stimme ich mit Jörg überein: Ich warte auch sehnlichst auf die Mac-Version von Opera. Ich habe den Browser bis vor einem Jahr auf meinem alten PC (486er) benutzt – einfach klasse!

Macros

Scott is playing around with macros in Manila and has gone one step further than just linking to others:

Look at this page. And look at this one.

I wonder why both got his background. Maybe that’s because his background is a graphic, while mine is just a color, and graphics “overrule” colors?!

Sunset

Garret had a beautiful one yesterday.

Diese Woche in der Zeit

Lehrermangel:

Ein Königreich für einen Lehrer, von Roland Kirbach und Martin Spiewak. “Aus dem Nichts taucht ein neuer Schrecken auf im Land der Schulmisere: Lehrermangel. Jetzt jagen die Kultusminister einander Pädagogen ab.”

“Eine fünftägige bundesweite Telefonaktion wurde gestartet, bis die Hamburger Schulbehörde vor Weihnachten einen Lehrer für Mathematik und Physik fand.”

Wenn der Wahnsinn Schule macht. “Wer neue Lehrer einstellen will, bleibt im bürokratischen Gestrüpp hängen. Ein Erfahrungsbericht von Friedrich Mahlmann.”

“Zunächst tun wir einfach mal so, als gäbe es den gesunden Menschenverstand auch im öffentlichen Dienst, und fragen: Warum werden Lehrer eigentlich nur zu Beginn eines Schuljahres – im Ausnahmefall zu Beginn eines Schulhalbjahres – eingestellt? Krank dagegen werden Lehrer auch zwischendurch, pensioniert ebenfalls, und wenn sie weiblich sind, fragt die Mutterschaft auch nicht nach dem Dienstplan. Nichtsdestotrotz sagen die Politiker: Unterrichtsausfall gibt es nicht!”

Die Suche nach der Elite, von Michael Schwelien. “In Amerika ist die Abwerbung von Lehrern alltäglich.”

“Es sind goldene Zeiten angebrochen für die Lehrer in den Vereinigten Staaten. Überall herrscht Lehrermangel. Besonders stark ist er in den Großstädten und im Süden und Westen des Landes. Eine Folge der Vollbeschäftigung, die in den vergangenen Jahren auf den wirtschaftlichen Boom folgte. Die Industrie konnte nicht genügend Naturwissenschaftler, Mathematiker und Techniker finden und suchte sie deshalb in den Schulen. Da Lehrer in Amerika nicht Beamte auf Lebenszeit sind, sondern normale Anstellungsverträge haben, sind sie auf dem Arbeitsmarkt ebenso beweglich wie jeder andere Arbeitnehmer auch.”

Schule: Schulen im Netz, von Ulf Schönert. “Die deutschen Lehranstalten haben das Internet jahrelang verschlafen – doch jetzt sind sie drin.”

“Seit sieben Jahren setzt die kleine Hamburger Grundschule Computer im Unterricht ein, seit zwei Jahren auch das Internet – in allen Fächern und Klassenstufen. Wenn die Klassenlehrerin Conni Kastel morgens den Unterrichtsraum betritt, schaltet sie als Erstes den Rechner an. Schon die ABC-Schützen lernen Lesen und Schreiben am Bildschirm. Eltern schreiben Entschuldigungen per E-Mail, wenn die Kinder krank sind; die Schüler verschicken Mails oder SMS-Nachrichten an Freunde aus anderen Schulen. ‘Wenn der PC nur eine halbe Stunde in der Woche läuft, bekommt er einen Sonderstatus’, sagt Kastel. ‘Wir wollen ihn aber in den Alltag integrieren.’ “

Erinnern: Der Duft der Babys, von Hugo Rupp. “Gerüche gehen direkt ins Gehirn. Ein ganz besonderer geht dort nie wieder raus.”

Der Artikel hat mich an eine Geschichte von Al erinnert: Babies. “Babies smell…well, like babies. Nothing else like it. G*d puts the smell of babies on them so that grownups will nuzzle them and hold them and cuddle them. A lot. It works.”

Books and education

Yesterday, Craig wrote:

“When I reflect on my formal education I can think of three things that stuck with me–three things that I actually use on a daily basis. First, the ability to solve simple math problems, in my head.[…]

Second, I learned to touch type. […] I took the typing class because it was easy and there was no homework. Now, there isn’t a week that goes by that I don’t reflect on my good fortune for having taken that class.

Third, I acquired a love of reading and books. Reading, in my youth, was a type of rebellion. I could sample the exotic and forbidden. I was introduced to philosophy and critical thinking. I learned to ask questions–questions that often had no answer. I was able to travel and explore the world. That youthful rebellion became an obsession and a habit that lead me to my lifes vocation. I’m a bookbinder and book conservator. A good part of my career has been spent either in libraries or in the service of libraries. I have spent my life studying the book, its history, form, structure, design, content and influences. And the more I discover and learn, the more I find there is to know. How lucky can I be?”

Right on, Craig! I totally agree with you!

Books are the most important media for me. Like Craig said, they allow you to travel and learn a lot about the world. I don’t need a TV if I have access to a library.

Books, books, books

Talking about reading and books: The day before yesterday, Garret wrote:

“i’m one of those strange people who laughs out loud while reading books in the bookstore. young mothers pull their children away … as if that’s a socially unacceptable way of reading a book. books are a sort of religion for me, but they’re certainly not a cloister. i’m pulled so thoroughly in to the world of that book, the real world melts away and i’m transported in a fashion much more satisfying than any movie or video.”

Except for the laughing in the bookstore part, this is also true for me. André and I got so many books for Christmas, we have to get some new books shelves soon…

Inspired by Craig, I took a picture of our bookshelves in the living room. We each have more books (science, computer) near our desks; the ones in the picture are fiction, philosophy and popular science. We also store our books on cooking and traveling on different shelves and have one reserved for large books that don’t fit onto the normal shelves.

For dessert, a link to a great article in the Washingtion Post: Biography of a Bookstore.

Link via BookNotes.

Silly Putty

Guess what! John sent André and me some Silly Putty! Yay!

Thanks, John!

Berlin

Bastian has some very cool photos of Berlin.

I definitely think I should visit Berlin for a couple of days. I’ve only been there once, for one day in 1993, and it seems the city has changed a lot since then.

Origami

Craig has lots of origami links today. Cool!

(I had a few origami links a long time ago.)

Happy New Year!

We’re back in Bonn. I’m tired, but I have to unpack my stuff and get a few things done before going to bed. Updates should be more regular again now…

Unfortunately, we came home too late to go to the post office to collect the mail from the last two weeks. I’ll go there first thing tomorrow.