rote

One activity to try at home (preferably without witnesses) is to repeat one’s name until becomes meaningless. I can remember a schoolmate doing this as a little kid and I couldn’t identify the point for her perspective when the repetition became a transcendent thing, numb and unthinking like a trance, but for me it was when “Rosie” intoned turned into “Zero.”
It can be an interesting experience, to lose oneself—akin to trying to reconcile an optical illusion, and I think just as interesting are venues, formats and presentation that somehow always either require rehearsal or become invisible altogether.  There’s the traveling mat of one’s commute or household inventories that fade into the background, not looked at any longer (though one might notice their alteration or absence quicker than one would expect), but with the former, there are processes, no matter how dull or stale and imprinted to memory that don’t become obedient reflexes, something done in one’s sleep. Job searching, no matter how automated and centralized it is made, cherry-picking from a database rather than patrolling a beat or rustling the classifieds, seems to be one of those things.

Even something important and demanding is prone to distraction, and possibly because there is such a wide and raw focus with the unknown and expectations, makes the process, the search even more of a vehicle for the stickier burrs that refuse to stay in the background and are obnoxious cheerleaders that make it easier to miss other steps and details.One gets around the glitches and limitations soon enough, but still the slightest things refuse to flag.  There was one phrase that ran through every vacancy announcement that I took a second, considered look at, describing the city where the job was located, as the Nice of the North.  That repeating characterization drove me really to distraction.  I suppose because it was a constant amid a lot of variables.  While I think that is an apt and creative comparison and I do not consider myself a sophisticate, I do have to wonder at this effort to impart this bare fact to prospective employees.  I wondered if the targeted audience would think of the city in Southern France rather than struggling to understand the moniker, something like calling New Orleans the Big Easy.  I am glad that I have secured a position in the Nice of the North, though, so I will not need to face these daily diversions and am wishing everyone else the same luck, success and escape as well.

brica-braca or the long now

Photographer David Johnson, via the astounding Colossal, the blog of Art and Visual Ingenuity, had a chance to experiment with new techniques and captured some blooming, long-exposure images of fireworks, during the International Firework Show held in Ottawa in early August.

Lax and taut by turns with the focus, he managed to capture the stages of bursting unseen, like some colourful and exotic fruit gone explosively ripe.

tv tray or serialization

As a little kid, I can remember being very engrossed, as I think a lot of kids were, at the breakfast table with the ingredient lists and nutritional information on the back and sides of cereal boxes.

 Letting my coffee cool a bit this morning, I wondered if people, especially kids, indulge in this sort of distraction. I bet parents would regard this innocent distraction more welcome than the chamber music of texting or the private dinner-theatre of web-browsing. I’m guilty too, not always able to pull myself away from the screen (it’s funny how so much of our time is spent staring at quadrilaterals—cereal boxes too—but without even seeing the rectangular frame. I do continue to pour over food labels but the message has changed a little: the names of the additives don’t seem quite like a sea-monkey kingdom potion (although not everything need be a sinister let-down and there’s some magic yet to be found in preparation and the recipe but there are more hacks and fillers rather than kitchen-witchery) and thinking about the provenance, packaging and the poly-lingual labeling is more interesting. I suppose, in the end, there’s not too much difference in how one chooses to take one’s morning briefing.

rheingold

Mostly just to see something that we had not had the chance to see before and take out the camper in fair weather but partly also to check out the environs further afield of my future workplace, H and I took a weekend trip through the Rheingau. The region was outstandingly beautiful, opening into a vast landscape of vineyards climbing trellising upwards from the manicured banks of the Rhein, gently sloping and peopled heavily with palaces and cloisters and villages reminiscent of the French countryside.
Not to disparage the fine cities that sprawl to form a megalopolis from Frankfurt to Wiesbaden to Köln and beyond, but we had not experienced anything else in the area. Surely, we are saving a lot to explore for later but did visit some of the defining destinations points that came in quick succession as soon as we left the city-limits.
One attraction that we found was the Niederwald Monument, personifying Germania and built to occasion the unification of imperial Germany after the Franco-Prussian wars, windswept at the summit of the Rheinish terroir, and among a collection of Empire colossal monuments commissioned and built all in a shared spirit, like the gallery of greatness at Walhalla, the Monument to the Battle of the Nations (Das Völkerschlachtdenkmal bei Leipzig), or the Barbarossa Monument (der Kaiser-Wilhelm-Denkmal) in Kyffhäuser meant to intimate that the then new emperors were the legal successors to the Holy and Roman Empire of the Germans. I suppose that I am taken with this chauvinism precisely because I’ve been raised with my own for a long time now. Since I came to Germany, I have lived in a few places but none outside of Bavaria—or even Franconia.
Not that I regard people in Hessian or anywhere else as more or less German or anything, there is a certain attitude and dialect that one becomes accustomed to and can learn not to see. There are some aspects and trappings of common heritage and identity that can make what’s familiar or excused or unapologetic rather heavy-handed when just a little less familiar when seen in others. I guess I have a little trepidation but I’m sure it’s my imagination magnifying things. In any case, I am glad that we were able to visit the countryside first as tourists.

a mass of incandescent gas

Via the ever excellent Boing Boing, National Geographic reports on the singular roundness of the Sun. It is in fact on average the most perfectly spherical object known to man. The globes of the planets and satellites of course strive to this same figure but due to the tugging of other objects and their own rotation and compositions have settled mostly for a slightly oolong shape.

The article does not directly rate other, distant stars but seems to suggest that an astral body of a different class and age would not maintain a circular form. Scientists believe being able to better measure the tiny, hair’s breadth imperfections could better anticipate solar-induced weather conditions on Earth, like eruptions that disrupt communication or even the cycle of ice-ages. I wonder if astronomers have the ability to see if a far away star’s silhouette is round or distorted. Could that be a better indicator of a brood of planets—or specifically those that could harbour familiar biology, than watching for other types of perturbations? Does the reciprocal tug of a constellation of planets produce this perfect shape? Were the outline of a star proved to be a positive indicator of earth-like worlds, it would be a bit like the progression of the ancient astronomers from Ptolemy to Copernicus to Kepler, which saw the centre of the universe move from the Earth, to the Sun, to a point somewhere in between, the heavens not orbiting around the centre of the Sun but rather some fulcrum that was the sum negotiation of everything pulling against everything else.

distinguishing signs of vehicles in international traffic

For the old Lady, the T-3 Transporter, we never made good on designs to decorate her with those luggage-label bumper-stickers of places we’ve traveled to with her. And with Silver Lady, the California T-5, we were wavering on the idea.

Touring around Norway and seeing the moose icon on campers and motor-homes (på norsk, Bobil), we tried to find a small, discrete version for ourselves, but we were unsuccessful. There isn’t so much real-estate along the roof on this one. Instead, we thought we could do something subtle to frame the rear window, maybe, with little symbols, where some families display their children’s names in Germany or advertise the fact that they graduated in 2009 (Abi— for Abitur or Schulabschluss), of the places we’ve been.

One often sees an image of the German North Frisian island of Sylt or Usedom in the Baltic (pictured), which look for all things like a peeled banana or graceful yoga pose and a marauding shark, respectively, until one is told what they are. How’s that for a Rorschach test? It would be relatively easy to print out transparencies and stickers be creative with how one represents his travel destinations.

In somewhat related news, the German Minister of Transportation announced his support to permit municipalities within a county (Gemeinde unter einer Landkreis) to break from tradition and issue their own license plates (Kraftfahrzeugkennzeichen), not with the prefix of the surrounding county but personalized for their locality with whatever letter combination, not already claimed, they see fit. For instance, the village of Markt Unteroberbergburgmühlebach-an-der-Strasse would be no longer under the tyranny of parent East Allgäu county with its non-specific OAL affix but could try UOB or NBG, etc. Police officials, on the other hand, warned of absolute chaos and if politicians want to appeal to local patriotism, they’d be better off with bumper stickers. 

blacklisted or clutter-free: a cautionary tale

I did not notice that the four year anniversary for PfRC came and went without ceremony on my part but it did not pass without acknowledgement and observation. I received a message from the advertising platform notifying me that my account had been suspended over suspect or fraudulent click-activity. This was an unfortunate condemnation and I was more than a bit taken aback. I agree with the characterisation of wanting to maintain integrity all around for the advertising environment, and understand their inability to provide more details, since disclosure about how clicks are policed would give real fraudsters a work-around.

A few errant but curious clicks on my part to billboards on my own site (generally for products and services that I found interesting or ironic, and I would naturally be presented with ads tailored to my taste) or family and friends throwing some support and a known case of one irresistibly mocking political campaign that choose to establish residence on my site that was tagged daily—out of righteous vengeance, begrudging the party a few pennies—or even legitimate case of illegitimate redirecting of traffic—studying statistics and the internet chains of causality (which is another interesting aspect our blogging, aside from the fun of sharing and learning something in the process—knowing what drives traffic and who visits, as well as what ads are posted and how well they can match up to ones content)—since quite a few shady detour-services do stop by, I see, could be the source of this non-compliance with stated policy but of course I can’t know for sure. Maybe I had racked up just one too many penalties or tabs were kept from the beginning, however, I don’t think it was all ballot-stuffing. Like I said, I understand the importance of integrity and legitimacy, and I think that it is a losing proposition all around, should a publisher’s account go dark—not over the revenue, but over the opportunities lost to marketers and perhaps lost chances to enrich the place called the internet. It’s not like a struggling and bankrupt postal service loving junk-mail since it gives them something to deliver. The search engine achieved and maintains dominance and real utility for its complex search algorithms and I’m sure works the publicity programme with the same expertise. The service does offer an appeals process, which I completed—trying to be contrite and honest, but ultimately they notified me that my request for reinstatement was disapproved. It’s not so nice to be permanently punished, but as I said, the important factor for me is the sharing and discovery (while surely that’s cold comfort for those who earn a significant income from it) and of course will continue to blog, though it does feel at the moment a little diminished without that little extra element. I’ve been more preachy than usual and no one asked for an essay on why I am being punished but if I am to be made an example of, I wanted to stress to others the importance of keeping things wholly above-board and in as far as possibly policing one’s blog for violations.