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A photo linked to my (Thomas') Comment on Picture Post no. 12:



Here's something interesting (at 31 January 2016).  The graph at the top represents the readership of one of my blogs (one month).  The graph at the bottom represents the readership of Pi (one month).  My blog is about ministry.  Pi is about philosophy.  My blog is in South Africa (so to speak).  Pi is in England (so to speak).  This is not a once off.  Trends the world over follow one another like this, and goodness knows why.



This brief video is taken "on the plateau", where leopards and armadillos still roam. This is where I was in my absence -- it is the home of my parents-in-law.  Thomas.

27 comments:

Docmartin said...

My comment is the fish is amazing

docmartincohen said...

A warm welcome to all our authors and contributors! This is a young and evolving blog - please feel free to help shape it.

My own idea, forwotitsworth, is that posts should be worked on here, invite feedback just as you like, and then front-paged for a month. In other words, we're not about the endless churn of the net, but about (like Pi version 1) providing a shared space for the careful cultivation of ideas.

With posts at a rate of one per month, the emphasis is obviously on quality not quantity. That said, as and when traffic builds, we would likely raise the rate. But again, the idea would be like Pi v1, that pages are there in easy reach for general reading too.

ps

Do please create your own author page too! And 'don't hesitate' to email me or Perig to help with this, or your posts or just navigating the new site.

docmartincohen said...

er... having just said that (off top of head stuff) - I can see that what is more interactive is a more fluid arrangement - with posts being maybe weekly? Anyway, things to try out and collectively decide.

Perig Gouanvic said...

This seems like a proper way to proceed.

I think that there should be a place for users to store ideas and work unrelated to the "hot topic" of the month/week, for future "hot topics".

Perig Gouanvic said...

Templates

I've created a page to speak about the design of the site. It is a page, but it doesn't appear in the navigation bar. Oh, and I removed the promotional blogger bar, at the top of the page.

To format posts like I'm doing, you may use an online editor like this one. But it's not... the perfect solution (the "p" tag is not allowed... anyways, not ideal!).

Perig Gouanvic said...

But this place could very well be a separate blog.

Thomas O. Scarborough said...

Hmm ...

http://myfirstbigtestblog.blogspot.com/

Perig Gouanvic said...

Yep : myfirstbigtestblog: Noticeboard

Youngjin Kang said...

Wow... I love this new design. The use of soft beige tones really comforts my eyes, and the live chat room at the bottom of the page looks like it is going to help raise short conversations easily :)

Perig Gouanvic said...

Super! I'm particularly happy that you like the chat module! I'll keep it open, then. :-)

docmartincohen said...

The draft post on google-god could be very interesting. Would it be possible to unpick the issues in the links at the end more?

Perig Gouanvic said...

Yes, I have a few ideas (connectors, missing links) that I want to address first, but you are very welcome to choose what's most useful from these links. Let's make it a multiauthor article if you wish.

Thomas O. Scarborough said...

Thinking on the "Labels" feature at the bottom of posts, would we want to use the "Cloud" feature, which would display a cloud of labels (one can do a list, if desired) in the left column. Then the question would be whether there ought to be a system to labels: one could limit labels to items listed in the "Featured" menu, or one could limit them to terms which appear in article titles. The alternative might be quite a chaos? The trend in academic publishing is literal titles, not that it's a welcome one. That is, titles seek to reflect content ("Wuthering Heights" or "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" would not make the cut) ...

Perig Gouanvic said...

Perhaps we should talk about that in our Pi-Editors-room? I think ... oh wow, I created a page regarding labels : Pi-Editors-room: Categories, labels. I'll take this opportunity to point out that there are many articles on this site where we can comment without getting lost.

I have searched word cloud plugins for our site, that could nicely display our favorite labels in a dedicated page. I'm not sure we are all on the same page about putting lables right in the sidebar, which means everywhere, I think I'd prefer to have this on a dedicated page.

I had set up a sidebar Labels section named "Themes" but don't know or remember what happened to it.

Thomas O. Scarborough said...

Mea culpa. I took out the Themes -- since they're easy to put back in -- because the way that posts were being labelled, it was looking scrappy and confusing I thought. It might be helpful to have a simple guideline regarding Themes: perhaps use only menu items as one's post's theme, or only terms which appear in one's article's title. I also thought of a separate page for themes, but couldn't figure out how to do it.

Perig Gouanvic said...

ok, let's bring that to the editor's room

Tessa den Uyl said...

A message for Youngjin.

Dear Youngjin,

I wanted to tell you that the character of your drawings truly 'touches' me and I like the way you deal with a subject. I like the modesty, especially in a world where everything has to be directly consumed (often that is the problem with too much humour, it burns itself in the moment).

So the responsibility of man is in man himself and not in the concatenation of things, and your drawings, also seen the subject matter, kind of help to show this (and I thank you for that).

However, imho, the character is an illustration for the text (that often happens and vice versa) and maybe I would like to see her more independent (in regard to her illustrating the story).
You put a lot of 'stuff' into your drawings, dealing with complicated subjects; maybe what I'm trying to communicate is that SHE is part of all that 'stuff', she's telling the story being in the story, not only exposing information. (How, if not, a storyteller can involve his audience? Benjamin wrote interesting things about storytelling). The hart of the story is always in what's not told.

This very personal point of view I wanted to share with you. When we combine written language and visual image, the 'law' for each element completely changes to become something like a 'third coined' potential....

I thank you for sharing your drawings and look forward to others to come,

My best,
Tessa

Youngjin Kang said...

Dear Tessa,

I'm so glad you liked it :)

It is especially pleasurable to receive an advice from a graphic artist (I looked at your recent article and am interested in your experiments with multimedia).

Yes, I do agree that the main character isn't playing the role of a narrator well. Oftentimes she is used as a mere decoration, and I insert her in about 7 out of 8 frames simply to fill the space.

As you have mentioned, it seems that I better separate her a bit from the scenes that are narrated. Maybe I might solve this problem by occasionally drawing frames that are dedicated to her speech to the audience only.

Thank you for telling me your thoughts. Feedback is one of the most valuable things that an author can have, and I'm looking to more of discussions like this soon!

By the way, I like how you illustrated philosophical concepts in a such concise, poetic manner. One further improvement that might be made is to add schematic visual aids that help the viewer clarify his thoughts.For example, when mentioning the word "image", you might insert a "symbol" of an image (such as a camera, a canvas, a sheet of paper, etc) rather than just one of its actual occurrences.

Sincerely,

Youngjin Kang

Perig Gouanvic said...

I have finished the first version of my Google-God article, which you members can find in the Pages section, on the Dashboard: "Open for discussion: "How Google and the NSA are creating a Jealous God" .

Tessa den Uyl said...

Dear Youngjin,

Thank you for your message ( I only came back to the notice board today... )

I think we have to grow into what we do, and there's never a solution; there's only your solution.
In my drawings for example, I never take the graphic solution for I want to keep text and image somehow of a similar importance. This is a personal choice.

You have to go for your own way, try to evolve your language, grow into it more and more.

I don't really look for explaining; I focus more on expressing something that can be interpreted in more ways (in the text and the image), then it's up to the spectator what to do with it in his/her own imagination. To help, in my case, refers to helping someone to get to his own world, which is not part of a literal interpretation, neither in the drawings nor in the message it might reflect.

Best,
Tessa


docmartincohen said...

Re. Thomas' video... Isn't this just adding to the bandwidth problem? I tactrully the video is not needed - your point is made in the text - as till frame would do. I suppose it's for fun ;-)

Our dearly beloved Foucault Pendulum is the real villain, but can we bear to part? I don't think so. However, one optino would be to make the pendulm into a still image, and make that image 'clickable, so the same page then loads in only with the moving image.

docmartincohen said...

BTW, can this page show newest comments first? If not, I think we should not post new material at the top.

Thomas O. Scarborough said...

I shelved the video. Just a little self-pity it was ... (For those who missed it, it showed PI downloading in Southern Africa).

Youngjin Kang said...

I liked the video :)
A quite interesting internet speed......

Perig Gouanvic said...

And now, Harvard: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/apr/24/harvard-university-journal-publishers-prices

docmartincohen said...

We don't use this page much - but now it shows up in the 'Comments' list - mabye we will start to. It's number 2 in the popularity list - just behind Thomas' unbeatable non-Picture Post!

docmartincohen said...

I'm not sure the similarity is anything more than visual - how the eye tends to see patterns in things? Have you really correlated the daes and numbers precisely - so the peak for one REALLY is the day for the other and so on?

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