Archive for October, 2007
Happy Halloween
The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crispéd and sere —
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year.- Ulalume: A Ballad by Edgar Allan Poe
From our hearts, skulls and crossbones, we hope you have safe fun tonight.
While we’re in the spook of things (and I hope it’s not too late), check out Photojojo’s Ghoulish Guide to Scary Snaps and Instructables’ user-submitted gallery of Halloween DIY projects.
Have a blast trick or treatin’!
Helping turn war into peace
In Canada, like most Western countries, police are trained in the art of note-taking, knowing that every word they write could be used in a court case. Here, police notebooks are professional-looking, compact pads with helpful reminders about the rights and cautions given to an accused person.
Robert Fox, one of two Halifax Regional Police officers attached to the United Nations mission in war-torn Sudan, discovers that in the Sudanese village of Yei, even finding children’s notebooks and pencils is a task.
During one course, Fox insisted on providing the trainees with notebooks. He got the budget from the mission and bought two children’s notepads and pencils for each of his students.
Then he set to work explaining the importance of writing down the statements of witnesses, accused persons and victims of crime.
Read the full story at The Halifax Daily News
Rhodia 3×4
It’s a classic beautiful Rhodia notebook from France, but in a very small size, like a notebook for a rabbit. After scanning this, I really see just how amazing the Rhodia logo is. Makes you want to jump on a plane for a trip to the Swiss Alps.
The smallest Rhodia classic staplebound comes in 3 x 4.5 inches (7.5 x 12 cm). Card covers are coated and waterproof. Inside is 48 pages of 80g extra white paper, acid free, pH neutral with smooth finish.
24-hour Comics Day
And it’s over. The 24 hour comic challenge is the worldwide festival of comics creation. The challenge is to completely create a 24 page comics story in 24 straight hours. A “24 hour comic” is any comics story you make while facing the challenge, even if you take more than 24 consecutively-awake hours to make the comic or if you end after 24 hours with a story that’s shorter than 24 pages. From Albuquerque to Edmonton to London, the blog tracks hourly updates of hundreds of cartoonists from around the world.
LINK to the official site
The 24 CD blog
They have a book
What should I read next?
Enter a book you like and the site will analyse our database of real readers’ favourite books (over 32,000 and growing) to suggest what you could read next.
Image: Pawel Roslek @ rosolek.net
1000 Journals: The Documentary
1000 Journals is a film about people whose lives are touched by 1000 traveling journals. These blank journals were released into the world in the summer of 2000, by Someguy, a San Francisco based artist. Some people found a journal, or got it from a friend or stranger. Some signed up on the web and received it in the mail. Some wrote in them, others doodled, pasted in photographs, or added artworks. Some kept them. Some passed them on. There are no rules, and no one really monitors these journals and their movements. And yet, they are connecting tens of thousands of people worldwide, provoking and inspiring them.
In September 2003, one of the 1000, number 526, returned to Someguy, filled. What happened to the other 999? This film tells their stories. 1000 Journals shares the experience of their worldwide journeys, and chronicles the self-governed collaboration of thousands of random people who have added to this global “message in a bottle”.
LINK to the film site
LINK to the 1000 Journals Project
Screening Dates for the World Premiere:
Sunday, November 4th, at 9:15 PM
Monday, November 5th, at 3:15 PM
Flickr Friday
Inspired by Le Blog Exuberance and café con leche.
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Visit the Rhodia Drive Flickr group
Othello notebooks
For an upcoming Shakespeare conference in Venice, Italy this week, I made little notebooks for each of the speakers. I tore out pages from one of my Yale Shakespeare books and pasted them on tiny notebooks covered in marbled paper. Skeletal leaves provide some natural history. On the back, I tore out quotations from an old copy of Freud’s Moses and Monotheism.
Each book is a little different, but together, the two dozen volumes represent the breadth of Shakespeare’s play. Next time I’ll go for handkerchiefs.
Flickr Friday
A space to write and work
A native Californian now living in Paris with her Franco-Canadian-American husband and dog makes home above a cafe by a Parisian street. How cool is that?
I try to make my workspace as pleasant as possible. There’s my beloved old iBook, of course. A dictionary. A cup of tea or coffee. An iPod for listening while I work. A chinese paper box, a past birthday gift from my best friend in California, because I find I always have to jot down random notes when I’m working. And also, a Waterman pen, which I splurged on after my first paycheck of my new job. After years of Bics, writing with a very smooth and good quality instrument just felt like such a deserved luxury. Je le vaux bien.
When I plan lessons, the space changes a bit. Out goes the laptop, in come the grammar books, pens, pencils, highlighters and old-fashioned pad of Rhodia paper. And of course, the cup of tea or espresso.
