Over at Teekay’s

I just bought a Canon Pixma MP110 and am happy with it so far. What I’m *not* happy with is the ridiculous software installation progress on 10.4: at some point, no less than three installation applications are running; they put stupid aliases all over my desktop, which I hate; and they require you to restart your computer without indicating this at the beginning of the installation routine. Dude, what a crap piece of software!

Technorati Tags: Apple

When that happens, I play games. Here’s the latest — it’s a web classic, of course, but always fun: a map of countries I’ve visited.

create your own visited country map
or check our Costa Rica travel guide

Merlin at 43 Folders talks about tools and how they relate to the art of getting things done. Tell me about it: tweaking iTeXMac was way more fun than tweaking my dissertation prospectus, and screwing around with Tiger also meant screwing around with some deadlines. He hits the nail on its head when he says,

there’s a big difference between buying new running shoes and actually hitting the road every morning.

Be that as it may, if you’re into tools and getting things done, head over to 43 Folders and check out the discussion unfolding on the running shoes post.

Technorati Tags: Apple

[Warning: this is just a teaser — for the whole thing, head over to East Ethnia, where I’m currently on duty.]

The USG has noticed that there’s a need for vision and leadership in Europe, or more specifically, that there’s some developments in the Balkans that will require those two qualities, which are in notoriously short supply in Europe.

Unfortunately, the USG routinely forgets that visions and leadership need to be implemented and realized, something at which the boring Europeans tend to be better.

But in the Balkans, the Europeans have been implementing and realizing piecemeal steps whose direction remains unclear. Nowhere is this more tangible than in Kosovo, a seemingly intractable problem the USG now woke up to.

[Check here for continuation.]

Technorati Tags: Balkania

That fine journalistic outfit from Bijeljina, SRNA, reports on the proclamation of the Republic of Titoslavia in the Sarajevo suburb of Rakovica — the geographical center of the former Yugoslavia, explored by Zoran Solomun in his excellent Tagebuch eines Jugo-Nostalgikers: Im Zentrum Ex-Jugoslawiens, shown on Arte in 2003 — planned for 25 May, Tito’s birthday. SRNA reports that Titoslavia is

located on 3,5 hectares of land in a private park owned by Blaško Gabrić, decorated with 133 trees originating from all over the world. Work is currently underway on the construction of a pool that will symbolize the Adriatic Sea.

The main motor behind the initiative is one Jezdimir Milosevic of the Sarajevo NGO Peaceful Action of Humanists. But SRNA didn’t just write a fluff piece — no, they went out and did their research, and they even interviewed someone who should have something interesting to say on the topic, Tito’s eldest grandson, Joška. He told SRNA that things that were unimaginable during his granddad’s rule could be seen in the Belgrade of today — things such as the Albanian or Kosovo flag, “just because someone from Albania or Kosovo is visiting.”

Shocking times indeed.

Technorati Tags: Balkania

Some breaking news just in, courtesy of AP:

Saudis Rank Lowest in Women’s Rights Issues
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: May 22, 2005

Well, in all fairness, it’s a Sunday night. Gotta have some pity on headline writers and editors on this day, eh? Particularly when one has just returned from a five-day vacation that feels like two weeks, but in a good way.

Newsweek on Sunday retracted (see here, here, and here) , or kind of retracted, a story about interrogation practices at Guantanamo bay that had sparked violent clashes in several Muslim countries, notably Pakistan and Afghanistan. At least 16 people were reported killed in the unrest. Newsweek now says the original source was no longer “confident” he actually saw reported in a Pentagon document what he told the magazine’s reporters — that a Holy Quran had been flushed down the toilet to soften up the detainees.

Oops, sorry, next time we’ll try to confirm what our sources tell us. Really sorry ’bout that.

Scary thing is, though, that the initial report — even if false — sounded entirely credible. And of course there will be those who will tell you that Newsweek was forced by the U.S. government to retract, or is owned by Jews, or is a big nasty U.S. corporation that had no choice but to retract. [Update, as of early afternoon: this has already happened on a mailing list I’m on. Ah, if only I were as good at predicting the stockmarket!] But even these nutcases (which seem to make up around 85 percent of the world’s population) shouldn’t detract from the fact that it’s scandalous such a report would ring credible — which it did! And for that, the administration has nobody to blame but itself.

The BBC has gone live with a beta of its Backstage service. It allows web developers and bloggers to use content feeds for their sites — or, as the website says, to “build what you want using BBC content.”

Is this a revolution or just so much hype? Are there any truly innovative models out there what to do with the incredible wealth of the BBC’s programming? I guess we’ll have to wait a bit to see how this develops, but I do have a feeling this could be rather important.

Check out some prototypes here.

David Greenberg guestblogs at DanielDrezner.com and discovers blogging isn’t as easy as he thought it’d be. Now he’s sharing what he learned with his old-media audience, in a 1072-word story in today’s Times.

“…blogging is no longer for amateurs or the faint of heart,” he tells us. “Blogging — if it’s done well — has evolved into an all-consuming art” that “requires as much talent as sculpting a magazine feature or a taut op-ed piece.”

So what’s the secret to a good blog?

As I checked other sites for ideas, I now realized that I didn’t need only new information. I needed a gimmick — a motif or a running joke that would keep the blog rolling all week. All of a sudden, I was reading other blogs, not for what they had to say, but for how they said it.

He was forced to embark on his little journey of discovery after sending his host’s traffic numbers plummeting. What did he learn from reading all those blogs?

The best bloggers develop hobbyhorses, shticks and catchphrases that they put into wider circulation.

If you think that this is what makes a blog interesting and keeps its writers and readers engaged, perhaps the conclusion Greenberg drew from his one-week stint at DanielDrezner.com is indeed inevitable:

I’m not cut out for blogging.

Speaking of guestblogging, I’ll be away for a few days and upon my return will start doing precisely that over at EastEthnia. Posting on this blog will be somewhat lighter, but head over to Gordy’s blog to follow my hobbyhorses, shticks and catchphrases.

The Independent, not one of my favorite papers at the best of times, has a story on the filming of Match Point. (Actually, it’s the Independent on Sunday, but never mind.)I don’t know what they asked their sources — probably something stupid about “how do you feel about the picture we get from London in this flick” — but they all gave pretty inane answers (emphases mine):

Geoff Andrew, programmer for the National Film Theatre in London, said [Match Point] could have been better. “It’s not one of those sloppy pieces like Curse of the Jade Scorpion or Hollywood Ending which were one-joke films. At least it makes dramatic sense and it’s well acted for the most part. But it’s a rather peculiar take on London life. There’s an awful lot of picture postcard stuff. It didn’t really feel very meaty.”

Jonathan Romney, film critic for The Independent on Sunday, said Allen had told the same story, more or less, before. “The story of the man who has the perfect life and has to commit murder was done much better in [Allen’s 1989 film] Crimes and Misdemeanours,” he said.

“I thought this was rather contrived and flat and old-fashioned. I just get the impression that Allen wasn’t really taking advice from the right people about the kind of cultural details that people will spot in Britain.”

But Nick James, editor of Sight and Sound magazine, said it could well be the film to persuade Americans to take another look at Allen’s work. “It will work well in the States because it gives a very tourist eye’s view of Britain.”

Guys, relax. It’s a movie. Fiction. A story. It’s not even about you, or the Brits in general, or London, or class, or the kind of cultural details only smart Brits will spot in the most cultured city on earth.

Technorati Tags: Woodyallen

The New York Sun likes Woody Allen’s latest, Match Point, too:

Conventional to the core, “Match Point” is nevertheless a constant surprise: From the BBC logo that precedes the film, to the absence of regular Allen crew members in the credit sequence, to the shocking display of actual characters, a decent narrative, and smart writing, this isn’t the kind of Woody Allen picture we’ve become accustomed to in the last decade. Setting the film in London forced Mr. Allen to imagine something other than twenty-something versions of himself strolling the West Village while name-dropping Chekhov and Strindberg.

Nothing wrong with conventional, is there? (Full article only available to subscribers, teaser to all.)

Technorati Tags: Woodyallen

My favorite newspaper carried a story today from Sarajevo about “the difficulty to remain a cultural metropolis in peacetime” — certainly a promising subhead, given the temptation reporters habitually succumb to of portraying the city as a heroic survivor that’s definitely on the up and where so much is happening.

To me, it always looked much more like the Chetniks on the hills had succeeded in their mission to destroy Sarajevo.

The piece says that Sarajevo’s cultural life — the arts, literature, etc. — hasn’t reached the level of the pre-war years and perhaps not even that of the wartime period. It reports a burgeoning multimedia scene as the main hope for a revival of the city’s previous glory.

So far so good.

But a third of the article is given over to a home-made socio-economic analysis whose relevance for the topic is rather dubious. The author bemoans the fact that those lucky enough to have a job — salespersons, security guards — are subject to exploitation of the worst kind: long working hours, no job safety, low wages. He then says, “even though the concept of a Western-type leisure society hasn’t arrived here yet, the theaters, cinemas and concert halls are full and the many culture festivals extremely popular.”

The rest is mostly a dissertation into whether Ibro Spahic is a cool dude or just a waste of space. Too local to be of any interest to anyone outside Sarajevo, frankly.

And then (I was waiting for it) the mainstay of Sarajevo orthodoxy about this past decade: some guy saying it’s all the fault of the newcomers — you know, country folk who don’t know of the ways of a civilized city.

Gimme a break. Grow up.

Technorati Tags: Balkania

The FAZ likes Woody Allen’s latest and calls it an “unexpected masterpiece.” In a dispatch from Cannes, where Match Point is shown out of competition, Andreas Kilb writes,

Everything that was smug and random in his recent movies has disappeared. ‘Match Point’ doesn’t have a gram of fat, no far-fetched jokes, no unnecessary dialogue.

I always thought unnecessary dialogue was the hallmark of Allen’s movies? (And I’m saying this is someone who’s seen most of them, and liked even the bad ones.)

In case nobody noticed, Emir Kusturica, chair of this year’s jury at Cannes, is not, uh, universally loved or admired, even though his films may be. That was the message of a rather long and not very interesting piece in last weekend’s New York Times Magazine, which prompted an interesting discussion over at East Ethnia.

Today, the Paris edition of the Times runs the same story; it may have been cut from 3,300 to 1,500 words but remains singularly unenlightening.

The discussion seems to divide interested parties into two: those who believe that one can enjoy his movies without taking note of Kusturica’s (rather bizarre) political statements (asked why he never spoke out against Milosevic, his stock answer is, “nobody’s perfect.” Imagine Albert Speer saying that…), in other words, that his movies and his politics — as regrettable as the latter may be — inhabit a different moral universe; then there are those who believe that Kusturica’s dubious politics are right there, in his movies, especially Underground.

In any case, this seems a good pretext to again watch some his films — always a pleasure, though one that also leaves me baffled.

Technorati Tags: Balkania

Reuters reported yesterday,

Fugitive Bosnian war criminal misses mother’s funeral

(First posted on Justwatch.)

So Radovan doesn’t show up for his mum’s funeral, which is being watched by dozens of spooks, and it’s somehow a big deal? Just shows how pathetic have been the “attempts” of the international peacekeepers in Bosnia to nab him.

From an article in today’s Times (free registration required):

“We [Americans] look at the future as an opportunity,” said Jeffrey Gedmin, an American conservative who is director of the Aspen Institute branch in Germany. “They [Europeans] look at it as a risk.”

This from today’s Times (free registration required):

U.S. to Spend Billions More to Alter Security Systems
WASHINGTON, May 7 - After spending more than $4.5 billion on screening devices to monitor the nation’s ports, borders, airports, mail and air, the federal government is moving to replace or alter much of the antiterrorism equipment, concluding that it is ineffective, unreliable or too expensive to operate.

Many of the monitoring tools - intended to detect guns, explosives, and nuclear and biological weapons - were bought during the blitz in security spending after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

In its effort to create a virtual shield around America, the Department of Homeland Security now plans to spend billions of dollars more. Although some changes are being made because of technology that has emerged in the last couple of years, many of them are planned because devices currently in use have done little to improve the nation’s security, according to a review of agency documents and interviews with federal officials and outside experts.

Or, as the brilliant Sploid summarizes:

$4.5B Worth of Anti-Terror Crap

In the course of “developing” my e-mail strategy I did a quick and dirty information flow audit — we’re just talking stuff in zeroes and ones here, of course — stuff that “flows” through my little PowerBook or that sits there as “stock.”

I mentioned it was dirty, right? This is more of a support to my thinking than a clean, clear, and consistent conceptualization of anything. But it’s a pretty neat summary of what I do on my Mac — in fact, I could also assign average time values (e.g., hrs/day) to each application I use and each activity I undertake.

Anyway, here’s the result (produced in MyMind) — you’ll need to click on the picture below in order to actually read the little tags:

I’ve known for some time that I needed a better e-mail strategy.

Ever since my inbox count hit 10,000, to be precise.

That was last year, and I’ve gotten it down to 7,513 as of right now (before my “check all” schedule will kick in in about a minute and a half). Reason to be proud!

Let me explain my strategy up to date.

I keep everything in my inbox that needs action or review on my part. I know that once I file it into a subfolder (“ICTY/ICC/HR,” or “Serbia/SCG/Kosovo” — and don’t flame me over the spelling of the latter!) the message will be out of sight and out of mind, and other than turning up in a search I’m doing won’t ever come to my attention again.

At the same time I’m a busy person, so I defer a lot “for later.”

Not good.

So what I’m doing right now is importing a whole bunch of old mailboxes from Entourage (my primary e-mail client) to Mail.app (never used until now). I will use Entourage for ongoing work — reading and replying to e-mails — and Mail.app for archiving and retrieval.

Why is this better?

Because (a) my inbox gets leaner — fewer messages, fewer subfolders, which should also result in better responsiveness; (b) my archive is in a place where it can’t get corrupted by excessive ongoing operations; (c) I can establish a backup strategy that will make sure that both my bulky archive and my lean inbox are adequately safe (since backing up a 1.9 GB file like my present inbox is not something you do every day, even though I try); (d) I have different applications assigned to different activities, which makes it somehow conceptually cleaner. I also like Mail’s interface much better than Entourage’s, despite the fact that nobody else seems to like the new Tiger look, and Entourage, while generally a great mailing app, is crap slow when it searches for anything.

Am I crazy or does this make sense?

Sorry, fixed it. I’d forgotten that Growl, in addition to registering Entourage (my e-mail app), also needs a little Apple Script to be enabled from within Entourage. If all this doesn’t mean anything to you, please check out Growl and try it out. It’s one of those apps that you need to use in order to see its beauty and understand its utility.