Eindelijk online, De Reactor, platform voor literaire kritiek: http://www.dereactor.org/. (Of ik zie het nu pas).

This is my history with Macintosh computers:
– Mac SE 30, 2nd hand, already heavily used when I bought it in 1991. Still works.
– Powerbook 100, 2n hand, heavily used when I bought it in 1994 (?), worked fine, until it got troubles with the power and the battery. Loved it.
– PowerMac 4400, ugly thing, but worked fine and still worked fine when I turned it on 2 years ago.
– Powerbook G3, by far my favorite computer, the first white one. Best for typing. Bought new. Many issues: new motherboard (twice?), broken harddisk, issues with the screen. Got tired of the issues and bought a new G4. Turned it on more than 2 years ago after taking the Airport-card out. Has been on ever since and used it a while for playing mp3s and ripping dvds. But I do not really dare to touch it.
– Powerbook G4 12”, bought new. Issues within 3 months (harddisk failure? motherboard, I don’t remember), worked fine after that. It fell (strap of my bag snapped while I was running), and hasn’t been working since then.
– Macbook 13”, black. Bought new. No issues until wednesday. I hate the glossy screen.

I have enough of these exercises in detachment (or whatever).

Another laptop-harddisk malfunction and 2 weeks of work probably lost.

Hours and hours of interview transcriptions, everything I’d been working on last week (just in one instance I’d been so clever to e-mail the finished draft to myself. In all the other cases I’d thougt to back-up, later this week).

Down with a cold now and I simply do not know where to find the time to make up for this.

PS It’s the second time that this happens while editing a book for Sonic Acts.

Ah, and next week friday 16th, I will interview Han van der Vegt about his performance of De Paladijnen, at Perdu, Amsterdam: http://www.perdu.nl/agenda.cfm.

Start copypaste:

De Paladijnen
Han van der Vegt en Sasker Scheerder
interview: Arie Altena

Aanvang: 20.30
Zaal open: 20.00

Na een niet nader omschreven Apocalyps, waarvan sporen in het landschap overal getuigen, is de mensheid onderverdeeld in twee groepen: de berijders van zogenaamde monsters, de erfgenamen van de huidige terreinwagens, die met nanotechniek volledig zelfvoorzienend zijn geworden, en schimmen, mensen die in de open lucht leven en zich langzamerhand aanpassen aan de nieuwe leefomstandigheden.

In Han van der Vegts epische sciencefictiongedicht De Paladijnen – geschreven in dactylische hexameters, de aloude heroïsche versvoet – volgen we de bemanning van een van de monsters. Ze verheerlijken een verleden waaraan ze geen herinnering hebben en een traditie die zelfs mondeling nauwelijks wordt overgedragen. Die traditie vertoont opmerkelijke parallellen met de graallegende. Zo zijn de oorspronkelijke bestuurders van de monsters (hun levens zijn inmiddels stilgelegd) paladijnen van een doodzieke koning. Zo zijn de monsters op zoek naar een graal. Hun navigatiesysteem, dat waarschijnlijk nog van voor de Apocalyps dateert, wijst hen zo goed en zo kwaad als dat gaat de weg.

Samen met geluidskunstenaar Sasker Scheerder heeft Han van der Vegt een voorstelling gemaakt in beeld, geluid en voordracht, waarin dit middeleeuwse sciencefictionepos tot leven komt. Samen brengen ze De Paladijnen vanavond integraal. Na de voorstelling schuiven Van Der Vegt en Scheerder aan bij Arie Altena voor een gesprek.

End copypaste.

Brief history of social media, yes, and starting with the phone phreaks. Sure one could go before that? Conference calls? Chatboxes on landlines? As this is an American history Minitel isn’t mentioned either. I can think of a few things more even. Yet, good as an overview: http://socialmediarockstar.com/history-of-social-media.

Btw: I’m blogging live at the Print / Pixel conference at the Piet Zwart, in Rotterdam: http://blog.wdka.nl/communication-in-a-digital-age/.

Polis is this, documentary about poet Charles Olson is available on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch&c.. Haven’t seen it yet, will soon. (Via http://transversalinflections.wordpress.com/).

My last 4 “tweets”:

ariealt going thru my rss-feeds, seeing i havent looked at most of them since november 16th (2008), excepting those of friends &c. less than 5 seconds ago from web

ariealt the website that’s not updated since january 2006! less than 5 seconds ago from web

ariealt first a second big coffee. hmm twitter-spam. have to finish listing my publications of 2008, then update the website less than 5 seconds ago from web

ariealt home (after a’dam-r’dam-enschede-almelo-r’dam-a’dam for an evening on digital poetry in enschede), dishes done, back to work or cycling? 8 minutes ago from web

Yeah, I know, plugins do exist to stream twitter-updates straight to wordpress. I won’t use it, I guess

Working hard to finish a 1000-words reaction on Literair overleven, Dirk van Weeldens plea for ‘aanvallende literatuur’: http://www.augustus.nl/. (Literally ‘offensive literature, but that has a strange connotation that the Dutch ‘aanvallende literatuur’ doesn’t have — what is meant is a progressive, playful, enthousiastic literature, a literature that freely and happily takes up the challenges of this world).

I thought I’d already missed the deadline. So I’m happy it was not too late. As usual my text was still 2500 words long at 21.30. With pain in my heart I just deleted 2 paragraphs in which I mentioned Open API’s and open standards. Down to 1275.

There is so much to say about this little book by cyclist, writer, publisher and OULIPO-member Paul Fournel, that I do not know where to begin. It is perfect. It captures what riding the bike is about, in just a few works, a few sentences he describes the essential.

Why, you ask, gather all these data about rides, how far and how fast, measured by computers and GPS-devices, when you need just a few well chosen words that condense the reality of it. (Ezra Pound: ‘Dichten’ is condensare).

I recognize almost everything in Fournel’s ‘need for the bike’. Which, I guess, is a way to say I am a cyclist like him. (Only I think he’s way faster, more competitive, I never did any sports prior to buying a racing bike when I was 30, I am a late-comer).

Just a few quotes — in English (the translation is by Allan Stoekl, the book is published by the University of Nebraska Press):

“Bike speed requires you to be selective about what you see, you reconstruct what you sense, In that way you get to the essential. Your gaze brushes over the title of a book or a cover, a newspaper catches your eye, you glimpse a potential gift in a window, a new bread in a bakery. That’s the proper speed of my gaze. It’s a writer’s speed, a speed that filters and does a preliminary selection.” (p. 44/45)

“As soon as I knew how to ride I grasped the idea of a greater world. When I left tot do a circuit, everything inside the circuit was ‘home’.” (p. 63)

“Road maps for me are dream machines. I like to read them as if they’re adventure stories. When I drive my car I use them to find the shortest route, to find the long roads where cities join, roads that don’t go through the country. As a bike rider I use them for everything else. If I know an area, every centimeter on the map is a landscape laid out for me. If I don’t know it yet, every centimeter is an imagined landscape that I will explore.” (p. 79)

For me maps are dream machines too. And there is the reason why I still use maps, and do not have a GPS device — though I am fascinated by how these technologies change one’s relation toward space, landscape and dreaming. I find it impossible to dream while staring at Google maps and Google Earth.

Should I write an essay on that?

(Btw: thanks to Alex Myers for bringing this book to my attention)

Paul Fournel is here: http://www.paulfournel.com/.