(also check She Good Writer #1)
The second girl blogger that I want to put in the spotlight is Trish, a friend of mine who writes Havedaydotcom. She’s an American copywriter who has been living in Brussels for more than 10 years now. Her dad is Italian and her mom is Irish, which might explain her expressive body language and impressive drinking skills.
This is a quote from a conversation she had with a Hungarian carpenter, while on holiday in Ireland, standing just outside a bar (obviously).
“What do you do in America?”
“Well, I don’t live in America anymore, I live in Belgium – in Brussels.”
“Brussels is a nice place. Not have I made a visit there but I have friends who visit.”
“It’s a nice place. I like living there. I am a writer but nothing as impressive as working for a newspaper. My writing is only on websites and in brochures and catalogues.”
“But that is still writing. You like writing?”
“Yes, I do. I like it very much. One day I hope I will write a book, but it’s progressing slowly.”
“It goes and you must go on doing it. It will be finish one day.”
“What is your book about?”
“I want write— I want to write a book called IRISH SUMMER.”
“I like the title. Where does it come from?”
“It will write about the summer in Ireland that all of the people are speaking about coming, even though, it never comes.”
I laughed and asked him about his life as an expat in Ireland (collecting expat stories is my obsession.) My friends came outside to announce that we had to leave. One of them handed me my pint and dared me to down it in one go. Their sudden presence added to the ambiance of our discussion: that living far from our native countries gives us the advantage of viewing people and places from a different and often interesting vantage point. (I downed the pint, no problem, I am also part Irish.)
from havedaydotcom.blogspot.com
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Published on
April 27, 2006 in
movie.
Jim Emerson has listed the 100 movies (103 actually) one should have seen to form an opinion about film
(…) the movies you just kind of figure everybody ought to have seen in order to have any sort of informed discussion about movies. They’re the common cultural currency of our time, the basic cinematic texts that everyone should know, at minimum, to be somewhat “movie-literate.”
from rogerebert.suntimes.com
That is a brave thing to do, because movie buffs will never agree on what those 100 movies should be, so his effort is bound to get contested. Which is what I’m going to do now.
Looking at his choice, I would say the said Mr Emerson is English speaking and born before 1960. Look at the histogram:
Quick stats
85% of the listed movies are English spoken (mostly American). 70% of the movies were made before 1970. The best decade was the fifties (20 movies – from Hitchcock, Kurosawa, Wilder, Kazan, Godard …), then the seventies (19 movies – from Coppola, Scorsese, De Palma, Altman) and third the sixties (18 movies – Fellini, Kubrick, Bergman, Lean, Nichols).
Continue reading ‘100 essential movies’
More than a year ago, I wrote an piece on Playing mp3 with an embedded Flash player. Things change quickly in this area, so it’s time for an update.
These are all tools to play either individual MP3 files or playlists (e.g. podcast RSS feeds) in a web page. Most of them are based on Macromedia/Adobe Flash. Where possible, I’ll use my Smoothpod Mashups as an example feed.
Hosted Service (insert HTML code)
- Pupuplayer Free
- License: no details – I presume it’s free to use
- Format: expects a podcast feed as input
- Pickle Player
- License: no details – I presume it’s free to use
- Format: expects a podcast feed as input – or can work with individual MP3 files
- FeedPlayer
- License: no details – I presume it’s free to use
- Format: expects a podcast feed as input
- Webjay (now Yahoo!)
- free
- can work with feeds or MP3 files, can also generate a playlist from an HTML page
- Webjay Wizard
- This tool of mine can also be used to create the HTML code for Windows Mediaplayer, RealPlayer or Quicktime embedded players
Continue reading ‘Click to hear the MP3 (playlist)’
(post in Dutch)
Tiens, normaal krijg ik die dingen nooit toegeworpen, maar Claudia steekt het “1-5-10″ stokje in mijn pollen. Een gegeven paard van een schoon madam … Hier gaat ie dus:
1 jaar geleden
April 2005: An maakt voor de eerste keer een toneelstuk met D°Effekt, amateur-gezelschap van De Markten, en ik verzorg de techniek (ik krijg toch een kick van mengpanelen). Ik leer een boel nieuwe mensen kennen (waaronder Bieke) en doe ze dansen op Amerie. Professioneel ben ik dan een paar maand 100% zelfstandig en ik neem het ervan. Ik zit een week in Portugal en de maand erna ga ik op tangostage met Vanessa. La dolce vita, quoi.
Continue reading ‘Claudia’s stokje’
Last year, Google took in about $2.7 billion through ads on other people’s sites, accounting for 44% of its ad revenues. Most of that money probably came through big sites, but a decent portion must have come from the little guys. When you add up all the under-$100 AdSense balances earned by the Scott Karps of the world, the total must be a pretty impressive number. That’s free working capital for Google, or it can invest the stash and make even more money. It’s a devilishly good idea.
roughtype.com via kingsley2.com and google.blognewschannel.com
Nicholas Carr then goes on clarifying that if you have more than $10 on your account, and you officially terminate your Adsense account, Google will send you the money anyway. In any case, there are thousands of Adsense accounts with sleeping money that cannot be touched until they break the $100 barrier.
BUSINESSMODEL?
Let’s see, thousands of small $ amounts that are blocked, that still represents tens (hundreds?) of thousands of dollars. Let’s see if we can come up with a business model to recover some of that money without breaking the Adsense Terms of Service.
Goal: fill the bucket, i.e. reach the $100 mark and then leave.
Continue reading ‘Adsense: The long tail of spare change’
I found some data on the first names parents gave their children in 2004 (data from statbel.fgov.be). It should come as no surprise that passe-partout names (used in both Dutch and French) dominate the first names hitparade.
Here are the top 10 per province for the girls:
Continue reading ‘Emma, Marie and Julie’
Some more details on the Barcamp event of May 20th:
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Barcamp Brussels is a free conference where all attendees must also contribute. Topics concern the influence of technology upon daily life. All attendees should list their names here. A (non-exhaustive) list of topics is constructed here.
SPEAKING
- speaking slots will be 30 minutes each. So a presentation should last between 20-25 minutes. We’ll probably start around 10h till 12h and again from 14h to 18h. (10 slots per room)
- speaking style can be: regular presentation (Powerpoint/Keynote style), demo (on-line or off-line), moderated discussion (topic is suggested and crowd can join in)
- everyone should do a presentation, help with someone else’s presentation, do a audio/video podcast of presentations or participate in some other way
- you do not have to be the world’s authority to speak about something. It can be an unusual hobby, an positive experience or just a crazy idea. If you don’t like to talk, do something with videos (”Computers in 20 years of Hollywood movies”), music (”Feminism in the MTV era”) or images (”Famous newspaper images you thought were real”).
TOPICS
- I suggest the following ‘tracks’: Geeky / CMS / Blogosphere / Photography / Audio / Video / Marketing track. You can already list the topic of your presentation(s) on the wiki page.
- Just at the risk of repeating myself: not all topics are technical. No one will validate your CSS when you come in, or ask you to explain Einstein’s relativity theory. If, however, you have no experience with email and have never heard of ‘Google’, this day might be of little interest to you.
- You will be able to indicate your presentation on a whiteboard when you arrive. If you want to have a good spot, come early.
- Topics I would like to see presented: making music with Ableton Live/Garageband – blind surfing: accessibility check-up encoding video for the iPod/PSP – original viral campaigns – statistics/history of Belgian blogosphere – Photoshop demo – theory and practice of the RAW image format – the 20 memes you should know about – psychology of the blogger – remake Cinebel/IMDB site with RubyOnRails in 15 minutes – podcast legislation in Belgium and Europe …
There’s plenty of interesting stuff we all know too little about. Join in, show us what stuff is going on in your mind and surprise us!
Published on
April 24, 2006 in
women.
Let’s introduce some blogs that are worth spending some time on, but non-technical and written by women.
The first blog is written by Ingrid Coppé, the director of the short film “Another Day“. She’s currently working in New-Zealand on some movies. She has a very sharp sense of humour and doesn’t take herself too seriously. And she’s Bieke’s best friend.
Here’s a record of a conversation she had on LAX airport, when picking up a ringing payphone.
- Hello?
- Hi, Is Andrew there?
- Euh, I don’t think so, I don’t know, there is probably one Andrew here, but I don’t know.
- Is this 818 564 784 (ok; the number might not be the number he said,.. so sue me, what am I, Rainman???)
- Euh, I don’t know. You called a payphone in the transit area of LAX. I am waiting for my plane to New Zealand.
- Oh, New Zealand? I lived in Queenstown for a while. Have you ever been to Queenstown?
- Yes, a few weeks ago on vacation.
- Isn’t it the most amazing place? I loved it.
- Yes, it is pretty wild. Quite expensive though, but lovely, I want to go back there.
- You definitely should, I would love to go back there too.
ANNOUNCEMENT THAT WE CAN GO BACK TO THE PLANE.
Silence.
- Listen, they just made an announcement. I have to go.
- Yeah, I heard.
- I hope you find Andrew.
- (laughs) Have fun in New Zealand
- I will, thanks.
And in a split second I think: Was that the man of my life that I just hung up on?
from ingridgoesnewzealand.blogspot.com
PS: the title of the post is a reference to “She good fighter” a monument of belgian lesbian fighting film history *chuckle*.
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