[meta] March 26, 2003 at 12:51:00 PM CET

Selbsterkenntnis ist der erste Schritt...

"Was mich an der heute üblichen Meinungsproduktion am meisten stört, ist ihre Besserwisserei. Manchmal gefallen mir meine eigenen Essays nicht mehr. In Zukunft werde ich eine andere Form, einen anderen Ton des Essays finden müssen."

Hans Magnus Enzensberger, nach der Biographie von Jörg Lau, S. 345

 
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[meta] February 24, 2003 at 8:23:00 PM CET

Top 40 Charts deutschsprachiger Weblogger

Nr.	Name	BackLinks	Thema
1	schockwellenreiter	107	Tech
2	sofa blogger	67	Kultur
3	close your eyes	52	Musik; EN
4	malorama	44	Kultur
5	ronsens	43	Kultur
6	generation next	38	Alltag
7	bloghaus	37	Meta
8	alo	33	Foto
	elephäntville		Alltag
	hirn&verbrannt		Politik
11	pepino	32	Tech
12	davekay	31	Alltag
	moving target		Alltag
14	monoklon	30	Alltag
	new joerg times		Alltag
16	dienstraum	29	Medien
	henso		Tech
18	kellerkind	28	Alltag
19	vowe dot net	27	Tech
20	camp catatonia	26	Politik
	passepartout		Medizin
22	wortlog	25	Alltag
23	andrea's weblog	24	Science; EN/DE
	argh!		Alltag
	e-log		Alltag
	kutter		Kultur
	leerlaufprozess		Alltag
28	ap-project	23	Alltag
	langreiter		Tech; EN/DE
	mosaikum		Alltag
31	anke gröner	22	Alltag
	eier erbsen schleim+zeug		Kultur
	hinterding		Tech
	rounders		Alltag
	supatyp		Alltag
36	frapp.antville	21	Kultur
	irene's notizen		Kultur
	irgendwas ist ja immer		Alltag
39	alles wird gut	20	Alltag
	a*log		Alltag
	fernsehratgeber		Alltag
	meine kleine stadt		Foto
	netbib		Bibliothek

Die Backlinkdaten stammen von Blogstreet blogback. Beim Thema war ich etwas faul. Wenn mir nix besseres einfiel, habe ich "Alltag" notiert.

 
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[meta] February 12, 2003 at 10:43:00 PM CET

Valentines Day - Valentinstag - Valentijn - San Valentino

is on February 14th. This year it falls on a Friday. According to tradition the man offers flowers to his beloved but poemas de amor will surely be accepted by her as well.

Michael Jackson was the biggest search query winner last week. It's a miracle that there are still people interested in this surgical phenomenon.

Never heard of Lana Clarkson. Is she cute? Did I miss something?. P.S. She was the woman who spent the last night of her life in the company of wall of sound producer Phil Spector.

The Cricket World Cup was won by a cricket team from the Commonwealth I guess. To be honest I don't have a clue really.

Courtney Love is such a charming widow. Looking at her today I can understand why Kurt shot himself.

The United Nations have their headquarters in New York. New York was the target of the airplane attacks of 9/11.

P.S. This was just a test post inspired by the top ten gaining queries in the week ending Feb. 11 on Google Zeitgeist

 
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[meta] January 27, 2003 at 11:09:00 PM CET

antville top 40 charts

6421 Schnell angucken! 5155 Ouml; 5035 Leaked DOOM 3 demo on the net? 4546 Getting a new, community funded server for antville.org 3184 Antville server fund 2346 Gefunden 2131 ich schieß den pc von meinem papa ab 1853 pressen sie das bild... 1768 Agent Provocateur 1669 Das wahre Chili con Carne 1414 serial killer 1376 Die coolste optische Täuschung ever 1340 der pc von meim papa geht wieder, teil II 1294 Neonode N1 1051 Die Zukunft wie die Generation halb so alt wie ich sie sieht. 1006 Redaktion zu verkaufen. 986 Muss eine Frau sich RASIEREN? 970 Was bedeutet das? 945 Vollzeitmaschine 943 Order Your Lowrider Bicycles Online! 919 Smack My Bitch Up 890 100th Window. 875 Schon mal darüber nachgedacht, 871 RDS-Autoradio mit MP3 844 Topless Girls Here 806 Loose Fur live mp3s 793 domo-kun 791 Der Deutsche Sonderweg (Charts) 754 Google zensiert 718 Steuersong 676 Warum gibt es keine guten Pornos? 662 witz, schlecht und dreckig 655 What do we mean when we say "mundtot"? 648 Röyksoop - Remind Me 643 Ästhetik-Terror im Swingerclub 641 Berlin ganz im Zeichen der Brezel 637 Froschfotzenleder 636 Gibt es das? 632 Sperma macht glücklich! 629 Selbstgespräch über Herrn Walser. Man siezt sich.

Falls ich jemanden vergessen habe, bitte melden!

P.S. Das ist alles Humbug. Die ersten 13 Stories von diesem Weblog hier sind alle vor der o.g. Nummer 1.

Der neue Topspot mit 53849 Seitenabrufen ist One for the ladies

 
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[meta] January 17, 2003 at 11:31:00 PM CET

Various

I wanted to make at least three posts tonight.

1. Amnesiac review
2. Something on Massive Attack's new album
3. A little post on St. Christopher who will play soon in Paris (a one man band I had totally forgotten about but which I love a lot).

Have you got any favourites here? Please tell me. This weblog is not supposed to be an exercise in monologue, you know.

 
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[meta] January 14, 2003 at 7:21:50 PM CET

Finding real neighbours with online presence

All you have to do is:

1. Find out the geographical coordinates of your place, e.g. via maporama.
2. Add a meta tag with the latitude and longitude, in my case (I rounded to the third digit after the comma not to give away my exact coordinates).
3. Ping the GeoURLServer (only once) to tell it that your page has been updated.
4. Add a link pointing to your neighbours. Here is mine:

The directory is still rather empty for Germany. There are only about hundred registered sites (including some doubles) within 192 miles of where I live.

 
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[meta] December 17, 2002 at 7:00:55 PM CET

Just after I was conceived

Winter 1963

Dear Dutch readers. What does eeuw mean?

I have absolutely no clue what my favourite album of my year of birth is. I thought it'd be The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (your choice) but that album just bores me to death. It's not going to be The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady neither. I never got into Mingus (except Joni Mitchell's album), his lush and powerful sound is not my cup of tea. I need some more time to find out what my fave is or if I haven't any. Sorry about that. Too tired to blog. This was just a test post to check if the email notification works.

P.S. Apparently the email notification does not work yet. Sorry about that. I'll try to get this working...

 
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[meta] November 28, 2002 at 1:09:43 PM CET

Internal stuff

Unfortunately the remember me feature for users with login has been changed by the Antville programmers due to a security leak. It only works with a static IP address now. The automatic login of dial-up modem connections like mine at home doesn't work anymore and I have to log in each time anew. The nice Antville people are looking into possible solutions for this though.

Thanks for the many subscriptions. I think there are 24 people who have subscribed now. Up till now the subscription makes sense for you if you are subscribed to several Antville weblogs as you then get a list of all weblogs you have subscribed to in order of last update. Maybe there will be an e-mail notification one day though. Another side effect of subscribing is that I can see who reads my blog and I will surely visit your site if you entered it in your profile.

I closed the poll for the favourite album of 1988. The winner didn't come as a surprise for me. It was The Pixies seminal Surfer Rosa followed closely by Leonard Cohen's great comeback album I'm Your Man. My choice didn't get any votes.

Thanks to Paul for the link to the latest poll which directed a sweeping 19 visitors here. Someone even voted already for my favourite. More on that tonight.

I changed the titles of the posts in the 40 years, 40 albums series so that Google should be more friendly to them in the future.

 
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[meta] November 4, 2002 at 10:57:23 PM CET

Unplugging

The lonely rider left the saloon. He had been the last guest anyway. There was only the barmaid left who stood behind the counter. He had met many people that night but for some reason now all their faces had become blurred images. Maybe it was the drinks. Maybe his tiredness. They had talked about this and that. Nothing important really. In the beginning he had tried to listen to what the others said but after a while their voices had turned into noises he couldn’t make sense of anymore. Whenever he had said something the others simply had ignored him and had carried on with their talk. And he couldn't blame them really. For he had said too many things he shouldn't have said to people he didn't know. Outside of the saloon they were strangers.

In the road a fresh wind from the North was blowing. It was a relief. Slowly his mind cleared up again. The barmaid stepped out of the door and started the conversation:

B: Hey man, you forgot something. LR: You know that’s what I am really good at. Forgetting things. What was it this time? B: Your notebook. I have seen you writing in it when you were sitting at the bar on your own a couple of hours ago. LR: Oh yes. You are right. But you know what. I think I wanted to forget it and apparently it worked. I didn’t forget it like I forget umbrellas in cafés when the rain has stopped. It was kind of intentional. If you want you can keep it. B: Are you sure? LR: Positive. B: Can I ask you something personal? LR: Go ahead. B: Where are you going at this time of the night? LR: I am going into the desert. B: You mean you will ride into the desert? LR: No. I don’t have a horse. I will walk into the desert. B: And what will you do there? LR: I will try to get back to the heart of things. There is a world outside the saloon, you know. B: Will you ever come back here? LR: I guess so. B: When will it be? LR: Count your heartbeats, girl. When you are at half a million you will see a man on the horizon. That man will be me. B: And if I get the counting wrong? LR: In that case we will never see each other again, I guess.

She counted till one hundred until his footsteps had died away. The lonely rider disappeared into the night, heading South.

 
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[meta] October 18, 2002 at 10:45:00 PM CEST

A name is a name is a name

Just a couple of words about the name of this blog.

In my late teenage years I read a book called Das wiedergefundene Licht (English title: And There Was Light) by Jacques Lusseyran. It is an autobiography by a blind. Jacques lost his sight in school by an accident. He writes about a world without light. Slowly he gets accustomed to the situation. During the Vichy regime when he is in a résistance group his job is to do the interviews with the new people who want to join the group. Without listening too much what the people say he chooses the trustful by the tone of their voice, by the way how they say what they say. And he never fails. He sees through them. He can distinguish the honest from the pretenders, the liars, the future traitors. As Lusseyran had lost his most important sense which is responsible for much more than half of our entire perception he concentrated on the other four and intensified them. This book told me something I knew already unconsciously but hadn't fully realized. That with deprivation you can gain much more than you can lose.

This blog is mainly about listening to music and my reaction to it and closing your eyes is a way to intensify the listening experience. Without visual detractions one is much more at the mercy of the music, there is a more direct contact with it. And it is easier to delve into the music, to hear details like instruments, voices and noises.

There is another less hopeful reason for the name. When looking at today's world I am often inclined to close my eyes not to see all the ugliness, degeneration and decline.

This may sound overly emotive and dramatic but I think there are still realms and retreats of beauty like e.g. in some music and I will try to find those and transform my perception of them into words whenever possible.

P.S. I started blogging on June 13th, 2001. Here are the first posts from my old blog sax & sunshine. I began close your eyes on October 7th, 2002.

 
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