I bought a computer system for 100 euros, so we now have high-speed Internet at home. There is however, one catch: we have a download limit of 250MB per month. That's like downloading 50 MP3s, something easily accomplished in under 30 minutes.
We are surfing under constraint, with images and flash disabled. All downloads are precious, although I splurged by installing the latest critical updates for Windows, along with some anti-virus and spyware tools. Shannon also called home using SkypeOut, (an ace service indeed).
Back in my BSS days (early 90s) I was lucky to download 200MB a year, and my hard-drive could only store 140MBs. How quickly things change. Then, I could download at a rate of 1MB/hour, and I only used the Internet as a gateway to dialouts for calling foreign BBSs. Today, the Internet serves as my external memory, and my personal research assistant; it is my link to the noosphere, a source for inspiration and wonder, and a satisfying waste of time.
For example, the other day I wanted some information on typography:
- The non-typographer's guide to practical typeface selection
- Five simple steps to better typography: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
- Thinking In Type
- 300 free fonts for designers
Beautiful.
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Tomorrow is Koninginnedag, the 'orange' festival honouring Her Majesty, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands. It is also the one day where 'free trade' is allowed amongst the citizens of Holland, and the entire city becomes a rummage sale. There will be DJs and bands blasting tunes around town, (legal) drinking on the street, and crowds that could make even a Londoner feel claustrophobic. Or so I am told.
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My work with ()}{{})( inspired the latest post on structured thought, my prose and poetry blog.
...for leaving the Scissor Sisters on my HD.
My favorite letter in the Dutch alphabet is 'ij', pronounced "eye". This letter -yes, two characters can be a single letter- puzzled me when I first arrived in Amsterdam. Locals would laugh when I pronounced mijn (English translation: my) with a 'j' sound in the middle.
Then one afternoon, I saw the word bedrijf (company) written in cursive.
Try this yourself: Grab a pen/paper and write the word "bedrijf" in cursive. What does the 'ij' remind you of?
'ij' in cursive = ÿ (A y with a diaeresis.)
The Dutch alphabet doesn't contain a 'y'. I find it fascinating that they would represent the 'y' sound with this cursive pseudo-y.
Check the Wikipedia entry on the Dutch Y.
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Side note: I bought a computer, and hope to be Net enable in a week or so.
After two months with InFocus, I have sent 1024 work related emails.
p.s. I just bought 2 tickets for Garbage.
My father's favourite poet, Robert Creeley, has passed away.
The words are a beautiful music.
The words bounce like in water.
Water music,
loud in the clearing
off the boats,
birds, leaves.
They look for a place
to sit and eat--
no meaning,
no point.
-Robert Creeley
A collection of Creeley links from wood s lot.
I'm given to write poems. I cannot anticipate their occasion. I have used all the intelligence that I can muster to follow the possibilities that the poem "under hand," as Olson would say, is declaring, but I cannot anticipate the necessary conclusions of the activity, nor can I judge in any sense, in moments of writing, the significance of that writing more than to recognize that it is being permitted to continue. I'm trying to say that, in writing, at least as I have experienced it, one is in the activity, and that fact itself is what I feel so deeply the significance of anything that we call poetry.
- From, "I am given to write poems," a lecture delivered in Berlin, 1967 [source]
