Michael Jantze, comic strip artist of The NORM, coming to Asheville
Month: August 2010
Ever since I heard Arvo Pärt’s ‘Cantique,’ I can’t escape it’s sublime power to transport me to another place outside this present time. The music moves at pace that contrasts with these modern… read more »
A couple of years ago, I read David Allen’s Getting Things Done. One of the results of reading the book and applying the GTD system is zero inbox. For I long time I thought zero inbox was a myth…. read more »
Michael Jantze, comic strip artist of The NORM, coming to Asheville
Southeast Chapter of the National Cartoonists Society usually meets on the first Tuesday of every month. On Saturday, September 11, 2010 the Southeast Chapter of the National Cartoonists Society present a “Shop Talk” at the Skyland/South Buncombe Library (260 Overlook Road, Asheville, NC). The program will run from 10 am until 4 pm.
More details to be provided later.
When was the last time you heard music you couldn’t quit?
Ever since I heard Arvo Pärt’s ‘Cantique,’ I can’t escape it’s sublime power to transport me to another place outside this present time. The music moves at pace that contrasts with these modern times of mobile devices, social media sites, and emails. At the same time, ‘Cantique’ provides space for the listener to stretch and explore the expanse of the music. The music, like a pendulum, crashes into me, changes my perspective and then leaves me with a desire to walk differently. Does that make sense?
Link: Listen to Cantique’ in its entirety at NPR: http://ping.fm/T9xqU
Reblogged for glottals! X!
This is wonderful.
Do you have a GTD success story?
A couple of years ago, I read David Allen’s Getting Things Done. One of the results of reading the book and applying the GTD system is zero inbox. For I long time I thought zero inbox was a myth. But now, when I leave from the office every night, there are no emails, zero, in my business email account. Before applying the GTD system, I hated looking at my inbox because there were thousands of emails that all seemed to be screaming, read me! Now, I read, reply, archive (for referencing later) or delete emails efficiently. What’s your GTD story?
Link: GTD
More than one in five people listen to commercial radio each week according to a study conducted by ADM and Edison Research. Nearly four in five listen to audio podcasts each week. And that’s… read more »
As for me, all I know is that I know nothing. – Socrates
Is commercial radio extinct?
More than one in five people listen to commercial radio each week according to a study conducted by ADM and Edison Research. Nearly four in five listen to audio podcasts each week. And that’s why I enjoy producing audio podcasts! Audio podcasts provide targeted content listeners enjoy. Commercial radio is designed to hit the largest demographic listenership with the lowest common denominator of content.
One of the questions in the study goes like this, each week, do you listen/watch:
- audio podcasts
- cable tv
- network tv
- video podcasts
- public radio
- internet radio
- magazines/newspapers
- commercial radio
How do you rank as a listener/viewer?
Quote
As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.
– Socrates
Susan Carpenter Sims, guest contributor
I’m a research junkie and a word nerd. When I was in graduate school, I spent a year researching one of the earliest Old English poems, “The Dream of the Rood.” The project began as a lexical analysis for a linguistics class, and what I…
This map gives you a brief overview of the different areas of German dialects. There are quite a few very distinctive ones that I would like to talk more about in following posts. Just a couple general facts:
German is a pluricentric language, meaning it’s a language with several valid standard versions both in written and spoken form (just like English). The 4 German standards are: German (north), German (south), Austrian German and Swiss German. Now, please don’t be worried – there’s a “pure” and standardized pronunciation that is used on television, radio etc. 🙂
Some dialects I would like to introduce you to are: Friesisch, Fränkisch, Bayrisch, Sächsisch, Schwäbisch and more. Stay tuned!
Gentium is a free/open license font recommended to me by Nick, who’s something of a font connoisseur. It’s beautiful, particularly when printed out (vs. read onscreen), and it’s the same size as Times New Roman so it’s easy to make the switch.
Victor Gaultney designed Gentium for his Masters of Arts in Typeface Design at the University of Reading. His full explanation (pdf) of the design is thorough and intriguing. He used slightly different base shapes for the lowercase c, e, g, o and q, for example, because our eyes tend to read just the tops of letters, so it’s helpful for them to be distinctive. What’s particularly cool about Gentium is that it supports all the letters and diacritics of the “extended Latin” alphabet (proofs (pdf)), so minority language groups previously stuck using Arial Unicode now have an attractive, free font that can actually be used in print.
Oh my god, yes. This is gorgeous. Particularly useful for Vietnamese, for me. Look at all those diacritics!
(Source: http://scripts.sil.org/Gentium)
I’ve decided to help you more with pronunciation by posting more audio. Hopefully this will help you a bit 🙂
In the past, I’ve written some posts called “Survival phrases” where I’m basically teaching you random, more or less important phrases. So now you actually get to hear the phrases and not only read them 😉
Please read along while listening 🙂 SURVIVAL PHRASES 1
That vacation I had been planning to take in May, I finally took in August. So, 2300 miles later, here’s ten things I learned or observed on the road. 10. Sirius satellite radio. Channels of… read more »
Ten things about traveling
That vacation I had been planning to take in May, I finally took in August. So, 2300 miles later, here’s ten things I learned or observed on the road.
10. Sirius satellite radio. Channels of interested included Outlaw Country and The Coffeehouse. But other than that, I think I’d prefer my own music collection… if only the CD player worked.
9. Upper Peninsula Michigan is a gorgeous, moderate climate to visit in mid to late August. Highs in the 70s. Leave the window open and enjoy the evening lows in the 50s.
8. Indiana, I can’t leave you fast enough. Your rest stop areas are deplorable, unsanitary and unsafe. Your fueling stations are even worse. I don’t think there’s a gear in the automobile that gets me out of Indiana fast enough.
7. Miscalculated the miles per gallon ratio. Next fuel stop in 250 miles.
6. Every bite of Danish Kringle pastry is worth the 813 miles of travel. Now if I can lose the 20 pounds I gained.
5. Illy coffee really is that good. Especially brewed from a stovetop espresso maker.
4. Starbucks has free wi-fi. So does McDonald’s, truck stops and occasionally Perkins.
3. Those four books I placed in my bag and planned to read… didn’t get read. I guess it has something to do with don’t read and drive at the same time.
2. Sometimes visiting a hometown is simply finding that spot on the radio that is as much home as the house you grew up in. So when did my hometown radio station start running strip club radio ads? It’s like coming home to a brothel.
1. Oh, yeah, and that old house I used to call home… it’s now a parking lot.
There was a brief, shiny moment sometime in the early 90s when Barnes & Nobles and Borders were opening on every corner, and at the same time the bubbling dot-coms were luring editorial talent away from print and into digital publishing. Those two factors converged to make life as a Publisher or Acquisitions editor pretty lush for a few years — salaries in the industry went up by over 30% and the enormous competition to sign talent to fill the shelves of all those miles of shelves in those new stores (and that mysterious new thing called Amazon.com too) made way for expense accounts and advance budgets that were unprecedented. That crazy growth, however, was totally unsustainable. Once the dot-com bubble burst, and new stores were no longer coming online, we were left with no new growth, a significant erosion of independent bookstores, consumer trained to expect cheap prices on books, and a overabundance of new “B-level” titles.
High times in publishing! « ConfessionsOfAnITGirl.com (via fluffynotes)
A village split in two
There’s a place where the railroad splits a village in two and still tries to remain whole.
“Acht, neun, zehn” (Eight, nine, ten) is a graphic novel by a young, talented German comic artist called Arne Bellstorf. It was his diploma thesis and he also won an award for it. The story is about this kid Christoph. He doesn’t really get along with his mom, has to repeat his last schoolyear and is kinda lonely. It’s a really nice story and I love the drawings. If you’re into graphic novels, check it out. In German of course 😉
sitzenbleiben (irreg.) = (to) repeat a schoolyear
der Comic (-s) = comic
der Zeichner (“) = graphic artist (-s) / drawer (-s)
Coffeehouse Junkie 
