Random

I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts over the past few days. i had to catch up with all those I haden’t taken the time to listen to over the last few months. It’s amusing. in “96 I began working on my website, in 2007 I uploaded it and since then I’ve been following everything that’s happened. I’ve seen as some new things became old and old things became new again with time. How many people remember Geocities, Angelfire and other projects? I remember them. I remember when I started trying to get people to contribute to my website because I didn’t have time to produce the content. It didn’t work. That was web 2.0 several years before the time. I remember 6 degrees.com, a website that attempted to do something which is becoming more standard as new social networking websites come of age. Look at myspace, look at youtube and Flickr. Each one concentrates on your interest, whether music, video, or video. Everything the youth enjoy. Rupert Murdoch is attempting to join the fun. It bothers me that people are putting so much content on myspace without attempting to put that content onto their own domain names and websites. Why should I create content only to have a billionaire make a little extra money when the content is mine. The challenge for me is to find how to create content, host it myself, and then make money through other people showing interest. Over time it should improve. A site I like at the moment is Facebook because of how much information is available. The user interface is good, the add ons are interesting. If I create a post in a blog on my own website it’ll automatically be synchronized with Facebook for people to come to and read. It’s also where people I haven’t seen for over a decade re-appear and I can see how things have evolved since last time. We’ve grown up.

Thermal inversions are a great part of life in valleys. Whilst you’re living down in the glacial trough you’re waking up every morning to the knowledge that you won’t see the sun for the next few days… until the wind shifts. If you’ve got the time during daylight hours though you have the option of going up to the mountains. It’s at this point that you can enjoy the sun. As you walk in the Jura at the moment you’ll find that there are long plaques of ice and they’re slippy whilst in direct sunlight. In the shade traction from normal shoes is possible and walking is not that complicated. There are different types of ice, that which is transparent, where you see the leaves and other objects, that which is white, from too much oxygen and then the mixture where it’s a little of both. Many families were walking today, some were struggling and others treated the landscape like a giant playground. Some people spoke French, others, German, Italian, Spannish and more. It was international. Sometimes when I walk there are hardly any sounds and it’s good, a break from London and student life.

It’s over, Christmas is disappearing into a pile of ashes as the last pieces of wood are combusted into nothing more than ashes. tomorrow those ashes will be fertilizing the garden. It’s been a quiet Christmas day, nothing extraordinary to write about

It’s the night before Christmas day and it’s been relaxed. With the thermal inversion it’s easy to get above the clouds, simply get in a car and go to the mountains and you’ll get a nice view of the sunshine. We went to the vallée de Joux and that’s where you find many of the watch factories. This includes Audemars Piguet amongst others. Tomorrow’s Christmas day, then 6 days till the new year.

I went snowboarding at it was great fun. At some moments the snow was great fun so it felt really good. I love the feeling of snowboarding at a fast rate down ski slopes and keeping up with skiers who don’t mind waiting too much. All the snow canons were active because there’s a lack of natural precipitation. Some resorts are worried about what to do but as long as it’s cool then fake snow can be created to make a base on which for skiers to have fun. It’s tomorrow the resorts open properly, when all the tourists arrive. On the way home on the radio I heard there was a traffic jam on the way to lausanne due to a christmas tree being on the road and I burst out laughing. only in Switzerland would you hear such a traffic jam warning.

It’s winter, I can tell. There are icicles hanging from the metal parts and the wooden covers are on fountains to prevent them from freezing entirely. Add to this my birthday yesterday and the winter tires today and there’s no mistaking this time of year. I worked on my dissertation yesterday, seeing how familiar I am with certain elements of the documentary genre. I watched a few open university documentaries about the university and there’s one that makes me want to go back to Sienna to see the building in more detail. I’ll wait till the summer.

Emanuele - Nov 3, 2006

Hi everyone, Hi Richard. I am actually the friend Richard was talking about in his previous message, the one who had the honour to shake the hand of the great actor Daniel Craig. My name’s Emanuele, nice to meet you all. Tonight was a great evening, we had lots of fun, especially watching and taking pictures of many celebrities walking on the red carpet. We even managed to take for us two of the posters which are usually put on the reel during any movie premiere. That was smply great!

I went to Leicester Square tonight and I saw many celebrities for the opening of Casino Royal, the new bond film. Among those present were the scissor sisters, Girls aloud, Richard Branson, Mohammed Al Fayed, Paris Hilton, Sting, Elton John, Eva Green, The songwriter, Miss MoneyPenny, Dame who plays M and a few other celebs. It was good fun in central London. I have uploaded some pictures. One of the images is of a friend shaking hands with Daniel Grey Casino World Premiere

I have just installed skype on my mobile phone and have yet to test it. it’s wifi enabled phone which means that anywhere there’s a hotspot I should be able to make phone calls via skype. it’s going to be fun to chat with people without paying for the connection.

I’ve been to a few vernissage but they don’t usually include videos, computer games and flash animations. I saw a vernissage on six floors which included all of these things.  The idea is interesting, how to include the various media and make something practical. It’s a shame most of the people weren’t there to present their ideas though.