"I didn’t know I was this geeky until I discovered the online world through my office’s 2400 baud modem back in ’93." NB. New posts appear at
NB. New posts appear at the bottom of 14/5.
“De ramp die zich heeft voltrokken in Enschede is van onnoemlijke omvang, wij als webloggers willen onze steun betuigen aan alle betrokkenen in dit gebied.”
Our thoughts are with the people of Enschede where, on Saturday afternoon, a fireworks factory exploded, devastating the city. 14 are dead, hundreds are injured. Dutch loggers Lydia and Erik suffered minor injuries, but their house was spared, just outside the disaster area. CNN reports. Full coverage from Yahoo. Photos from the area, audio, and video footage.
Asbestos scare after fireworks blaze.
More pictures @ BBC on line.
The Dutch Prime Minister, Wim Kok and Queen Beatrix visit the disaster scene.Loggerhead and Fallen Angel Geewee’s house is in the second ring around the disaster area. He’s ok, but has not been allowed to return to his house yet. We wish him and all around him strength.
Today around half past 3 my uncles R. and C. came and rescued me from behind the computer. It’s 26 to 27 degrees, so they were very welcome. Work can wait. So we had a few drinks at a cafe on Oosterpark and then drove down to IJmuiden harbour to have dinner at ‘Henk Schoorl’, fish exporters and restaurant owners… had sushi, oysters, sea wolf and a nice bottle of Sancerre. That’s what family’s for :-)
Swallowing Tacks asks: So how about it, people? Which logs do you read daily? Which logs do you enjoy the most? For ten minutes, forget completely about butt-sharking and hotlists and inter-blog-linky-love and who might find you as a referrer in his or her stats and share you personal favourites. Tell us what/whom you enjoy. Tell us why.
Here’s my totally un-original list of favourites. Skip if you like.
All I have to do is look at my link bar on MSIE. Blogger, Barbelith, Zeldman, Powazek, Log.nu, Metafilter, Haughey.
I started reading Barbelith because it was a relief to find a ‘British’ voice in the ocean of mainly Yankee blogs. But I wouldn’t have stuck with him if it hadn’t been more than just being British. Being personal, insightful, and perhaps being queer too. I don’t know, I’m vaguely interested in gender issues, always have been. Then of course came the famous redesign, the colours and realising that for the first time, ‘web design’ had made me feel ‘happy’… drawing emotions I normally experience listening to music, or being with someone special.
Zeldman I’ve been reading daily for the last… oh, I don’t know, three or four years or more – is that even possible? I read him because he’s probably one of the best writers on the web today, witty and with pleasant bouts of sarcasm and rare personal moments. Plus he has some of the best links for web designers. I’ll keep reading him, regardless of ‘weblogs’, ‘journals’, ‘zines’ and hypes and fads and all that razamatazz. Because it’s THE Zeldman, don’t ya know.
Powazek… it seems an ‘obvious’ choice. But it isn’t. I’d seen his personal site a few times, was in awe of his design skills both at the fray and on powazek.com. He didn’t seem like someone I’d be into, the dreadlock picture on one of the incarnation of his site was a bit scary! But then he worked in Amsterdam last year, and we met up and hung out, ended up meeting up in London, then travelled to Ireland together. So now the blog is a way to keep in touch.
Log.nu… well, it’s my project, I participate, and I love reading my friends’ stuff.
Metafilter’s the greatest collection of heads and it’s taken over my visits to glassdog.org, I like its mixture of irreverance and importance. These days it may be suffering a bit from it’s popularity, but it’s still a great read.
Haughey.com… I’ve known Matt by name for a long time, through design mailing lists mostly, and I used to read his film review site. Then he helped me out with hosting some Real Audio stuff, late last year – which I thought was really amazing. I love what he does with Metafilter, and I’m a big fan of his web design.
Kottke.org is not on my link bar but I wouldn’t forget going there anyway. I’ve been following Jason’s sites, 0sil8 and later Kottke.org for as long as I’ve followed Zeldman’s. Jason’s log is completely original, no link slutting, no copycatting. That makes it a delight to read.
There’s a number of blogs in the dropdown menu near the bottom of this page. I probably don’t read them daily, I probably read them whenever I see them turn up in the Blogger ‘fresh’ list. Come to think of it, that means I probably do read them daily or very often at least.
Apart from that, I try to click on ‘new’ blog names in the fresh list as often as possible.
I read a lot of blog.
And I’ve just realised that basically I’ve been following the same people and same sites for EVER. It’s just that now I read many more besides them.
The Danes won. Good song. And one of the few competitors to sing IN TUNE. Standards were even lower than usual this year, though Swedish television put on a good show.
GOOD FOR THEM! I don’t know, but if the guy had learnt to curb his libido, he’d have been the best thing that ever happened to America. From a totally uninformed European point of view, of course. I’m with Kitschbitch on the gun issue. Which reminds me of a story a friend who’d done an exchange programme told me. He lived with a family in Alabama for a year and of course everybody had guns. So my friend got into this discussion with the head of the family, about gun control, and the guy couldn’t believe that in Holland, in fact in all of Europe, it’s mainly illegal to own a gun (thank heavens). He said: ‘But, but… how’reye gunna pertick yersilf?’ Anyway, we thought that was funny. As was the ‘Hot damn, shot mahsilf an armerdiller’ story.
Oooh, pb redesigned. I LOVE that blue picture at the bottom. ‘s Something I was trying to do for my currently in progress redesign of gavinfriday.com but which has strangely turned into something approaching fekkin’ Tommy Hilfiger.
Oh, and I just wanted to say Blogger is driving me fucking nuts thanks to the MSIE cookie thing. The good people at Pyra have turned off their cookie/remember me thing, which I’m appreciative of, but it means Blogger doesn’t remember me for more than 5 minutes. Everytime I type something that takes a bit longer, I get the bloody ‘you’re not allowed to edit this item’ message, or that stupid ‘OCBD whatever fucking drivers’ error. It’s twistin’ my mellon, maaahn.
