Friday, December 31, 2004

Blogdex 31 December 2004 - moleskines

(1) Blogdex

# 101 is further than I would normally go

(2) Blogwise
(3) Blogwise search : weblogworld
(4) Blogwise info on weblogworld

Tells me what the world knows about weblogworld


(5) Blogwise

".. The Way Of The Intercepting Blog .." catches my eye:

(6) A weblog Sen for Sen


entry > Fri 31 Dec. 2004
A del.icio.us study

If one hasn’t used them yet, one could easily overlook the fundamental importance and enormous potential that is evolving in and around del.icio.us and Flickr.

In the coming year, I suspect, it will no longer be so easy to overlook.

Here’s an interesting study that may help to illustrate why: Bookmark, Classify and Share: A mini-ethnography of social practices in a distributed classification community:

(7) weblog ideant

eads to first look at

(8) del.icio.us

which is reasonably clear but begs many questions which, ineffectively, notepad.

S
everal pages later,overcoming instinctive desire not to bother, try

(9) del.icio.us (2)

Finding

(10) NY lady writing in French


at the top of the list.

Now for some inexplicable reason at:

(11) del.icio.us (3)

which leaves me baffled with long list of the same link repeated down the page.

Trying the first one for no reason, at last in territory I understand:

(12) del.icio.us (4)


(13) 43folders.com

A weblog of someone, like me, who agonises about the integrity of self-produced + others facts and ideas.

An unpretentious 43folders del.icio.us blogroll sends me to :

(14) 43folder's del.icio.us

which is the simplest way of understanding what this is all about, making me think it might be worth hacking it for a basic set of keywords which would encourage reading of my old stuff.

A 43folder mention of moleskine makes my mind race. I feel sure I know what this is about, on the tip of my brain. Puzzle over the second "e". Does not come. Is it the famous trousers? A left in 43folders takes me to Amazon , with its mention of famous writers who bought these notebooks.

A question comes to mind...Did famous moleskine notebook buyers have anything in common, apart from being mainly writers/artists?

Look up at bookshelf: thick paperback of Nicholas Shakespeare's biography, "Chatwin", read with both pleasure and frustration 5-6 years ago. Search index for moleskine: none. Paris, London, nothing. Curse poor index, having made a few professionally, myself.

Memory says he bought Moleskines from a special shop in Paris: desperate urge to confirm.


Recall distain at Chatwin's "trifle" poseurism on reading biog. NS told me Chatwin was probably a liar and fantasist and some sort of genius, much like T E Lawrence whose sexual orientation disclosure model BC seemed to have followed.

Fascination, I recall, with idea that could create yourself from nothing. If Chatwin could do it, so could anyone.Well, no: had to have a memory like a computer first! It was said he could go home with a thick tome and return the next day an expert on the subject.


Look for my two ring-bind A3 note books recently brought back from Andalucia (pose 1). "Bloc epiral micro", with durable, brightly coloured, plastic see-through covers - chose one yellow, one blue - with continental-style squared paper all French pupils seem to use: difficult to write on, prefer plain because less restrictive.

Manufacturer, Linderpapel and rainbow style logo named Tsunami....

Good, though chicqueless notebooks because:

(a) good value - 15 mm thick
(b) probably long-lasting and impossible to break
(b) being spiral bound they can fold to current page,
(d) pages colour-coded along page edge, each page with 5mm colour band on the leading edge. Blocks of 30 pages, making 150 pages in all.
(e) Integrity plus longevity: each page can be torn out from the spiral ring with ease like a reporter's notebook, but each too has the added bonus of an additional fine seration, inside the holed edge, to remove the untidiness created by the tearing, and a set of binder holes allowing filing in a variety of ring folders, large or small.

Like so many intent on organisation: ease of recall, plan had been to make these two notebooks serve for specific categories of subject matter. Never mind they don't go too well on shelf with series of variable sized and variable coloured cheap Woolworth's notebooks. Such is life: no sooner promise made than broken, when looking for somewhere quickly to scribble something down, out comes the new notebooks.

Ameriorating on the hoof, tend to turn twenty pages over from the last piece of writing to leave room for expansion, or, write from the back inwards, upside down. All methods ultimately end in tears, with increasing numbers of different categories making it increasingly difficult to find a particular detail on any one subject. Better, by far, to have invested in a swatch of loose-leaf pads. Or, maybe to have followed Bruce's modus: buy in bulk.


Over the years the A4 ring binder tended to be my most popular, though there have been times, especially on reading about other people's systems, evident words less likely to be lost in a notebook.

Somewhere, long ago, learnt pencil lasts longer than ink, which can fade or be blotched with water, so intermittently use soft pencils, which have one other advantage - erasability.

Following my arrival at ideant.typepad.com, started, with its aid, a general piece on metadata. Knowing someone who acted as a meta data consultant to a variety of large companies, thought might have a head start. Ideas grinded into each other within half a hour as lack of knowledge got the better of me, with a series of damn fool questions too embarassing to ask anyone. If I don't go to this soon it will never be finished.

Following 43files's writing unblocking ruminations, write vigorously and freely for at least half an hour on Notebooks and Life, mind reeling with any number of associations. 43? Was it The answer to the Great Question of Life, the Universe and Everything? No, that was 42. But would 43 have been a better answer than 42, perhaps? Pity we can't ask Douglas Adams, who would feel sure had much to say on the matter, but who died ridiculously and God denyingly young at the age of 49.

Checking 43files biog, original belief that 43 is a woman is confounded but simply explained: I have confused 43, Merlin, with Guillaime, the previous weblog. Vaguely disappointed. Can't believe that a man would willy-worry about files, paper or otherwise. Put own squarely in the insecurity camp: mostly due to fears over poor long-term memory.

Fleeting idea of long correspondence, and follow-on book, in style of now famous correspondence by lady who worked in a London book store. Quickly fades. Determine not to let 43's gender get in the way of a comment to his site.

Firming up of follow-ups from today's Blogdex:

* moleskine notebooks

* Bruce Chatwin: some revision and look into his Spanish interlude. Spent 5 months in Ronda, according to NS. Interesting serependipity, since recently visited (pose 2) this ancient town with foreknowledge Hemingway stayed there. Learnt, subsequent to Andalusian adventure, British painter, David Bomberg also lived there for a number of years.

Rush Google "Moleskine", finding Moleskines abound:

General info on authors said to use them, BBC

Chatwin/Moleskine dedicated site

Bruce Chatwin, The songlines, Vintage, 1998

My reason for coming to Australia was to try to learn for myself, and not from other men's books, what a Songline was - and how it worked. Obviously, I was not going to get to the heart of the matter, nor would I want to. I had asked a friend in Adelaide if she knew of an expert. She gave me Arkady's phone number.

"Do you mind if I use my notebook?" I asked
"Go ahead."
I pulled from my pocket a black, oilcloth-covered notebook, its pages held in place with an elastic band.
"Nice notebook," he said.
"I used to get them in Paris," I said. "But now they don't make them any more."
"Paris?" he repeated, raising an eyebrow as if he'd never heard anything so pretentious.
Then he winked and went on talking.


Paris Street where Chatwin stocked up on Moleskines


Weblog dedicated to "moleskinerie"


Danger with weblogging: to use weblogs as one's moleskines can result in other people stealing your ideas. However, since I have no intention of writing about moleskines for dosh, the world is welcome to my efforts in this regard.








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