I’ve been reading about documentary makers and it’s interesting. Today I read about several of them, took notes, and explored the ideas that they demonstrate. The one that has confused me is Kossanovksy and his ideas of Dogma. I’m wondering how you do a documentary without having interviews or cutaways. Does he mean that we should not use them gratuitously or in some other manner? I need to do more search on this particular aspect.
Once more I’ve watched Control Room, the documentary about al Jazeera. I found it interesting.
At the moment I’m listening to a lot of podcasts. Probably 5-10 a day on average. I go through one collection of podcasts and once that one is finished I move onto another. As a result of this, the culture of those I am listening to is sinking through.
Yesterday I listened to four or five of NBC’s meet the press and I found them interesting. I wasn’t always paying attention to what they were saying but it did make a change. I recently listened to the whole of the Net@night series and the previous series on the RSS feed as well. As a result, I’ve learned quite a bit about new technology. It’s been fun. It’s about web 2.0 and how everything is “innovative” although ten years ago people were doing the same it was called differently. It’s all O’reilly’s(sp?) fault.
Today I listened to something quite interesting. It’s the Mac break weekly recorded in Dolby headphone surround or some similar tech. It’s interesting because it does paint an auditory landscape. Leo Laporte was in front whilst the girls on that podcast, Justine and Kendra were to the right, and the guests, whilst two others were to the left.
Walking to the shops with that sound was a little disorienting at first but I grew used to it and it’s more fun. I want to hear more podcasts recorded with that technology.
I am going through a phase of cultural assimilation. I watch and listen to all these podcasts that are coming from the US and as a result, I’m starting to absorb the culture. I’m telling myself that I should move to SFO where municipal wifi is a reality rather than a dream. We’ll see what I do once university is finished and I have the rest of my life in front of me.
We may find that the work experience module teaches me to think more creatively about getting a job. If it does then it’s truly worth writing up tomorrow when I get up.
I’m rambling so I’ll leave you to wait for the next post.
Before waking up I found myself catching a plane to an airport before catching a small private plane to somewhere in the mountains where I went skiing. I was going home but for some reason I was late.
I was telling myself that I had to get back to one place to get my luggage before going home before realising that I didn’t. I decided to rush for the plane, dropped by my room, and threw a cursive look before running back to the small private plane, asking whether I was on the first flight before the plane took off.
For some reason, it had to taxi along some mountain roads and almost hit some bowling balls on the tarmac. Quite a confusing dream to have had.
I usually have strange dreams as summer starts trying to get in through the curtains. It’ss the fourth or fifth day of sunshine in sunny London.
Another day of sitting in the sun whilst waiting for night to fall to continue working on the dissertation.
Last night I spent at least an hour going through some of my notes. Highlighting relevant bits and thinking about how to structure the introduction. Now it’s another 15 days of such effort or more.
The deadline is still over a month away but it’s better to do as much as possible now to relax afterward… or at least not panic.
Checking through my pockets this morning I found that £30 are still there in cash. That’s quite surprising when you take into account that last night’s mission was to drink the bar dry. Obviously I did not contribute to this as greatly as was initially anticipated.
It was another night of relative madness. It was a night that involved getting to the bar around four or five in the afternoon and chatting to many people and listening to many others. It was a night where people trickled in until it closed at 3 am. During this time sambuca shots were drunk, people partied and others argued.
The fire was the final part of the night. At this point, I was in bed for the second time that morning sleeping my way into today. They got the police to come to the fire and one person was even taken by car around the building and released. This was simply to scare everyone into behaving themselves. It was probably amusing to see all the conspiratorial drunks spreading rumours and insults at this point.
The wake-up call was quite original today, a fire alarm. The last halls fire alarm I will ever hear and I can honestly say it’s not going to be missed in any way shape or form.
To all those whom I partied with over the past three years, it’s been both a pleasure and an honour. See you around.
It’s fun to watch documentaries when you know that they spent at least two to three years in the making. I like the documentary because it’s an opera rather than a documentary. There is a minimum of comment and a maximum of shots. There are some sequences where you see things happening in front of the camera and it switches to a second camera. That’s because for sequences like the penguins jumping out of the water they filmed it with one film camera and one pole.
Doesn’t that make you wish you were studying a media BA. where part of your studies is television. Every field of studies has it’s advantages.
One person I know is studying James Bond films, another is doing Disney cartoons. I’m doing underwater documentaries between France and England. Another is doing something related to social elements and zombies. One is doing special effects
It’s a broad range and that should make it more interesting to those that have to read through all this content.
Marie Kondo’s rule that you should only keep thirty books, that you should only keep those that you personally want to read or enjoy is a silly rule because it encourages people to limit their scope and perspective on the world.
Childhood
One memory of my childhood is being surrounded by books and being able to look through hundreds of books, whether at home, in libraries or even mail order catalogues. As a child I loved the opportunities that books represented. One of my favourite shops in London is Waterstone’s near Piccadilly Circus. I loved browsing the current affairs sections, the documentary film section and others. I often wanted to buy entire sections but I had to limit myself to what I thought I would read.
I bought books and only read a few chapters. Books are not like bread or shoes. They don’t have a best before date and they don’t have to be used every day.
Learning opportunities
A home or house benefits from having a wide selection of books because life is not linear. We want to learn about multiple topics at once. One day we want to read about the Vietnam war and the next day we want to read about climbing the Eiger. On the third day we want to read about the history of The Written World.
Such a book charts the history of writing from oral traditions of storytelling to cuneiforms, the library of Alexandria, the role of literature in the forming of national identities and cultures but also about what an important role the development of paper had.
When you needed to breed sheep to make parchment the process would take months or even years. With the development of paper the process was cheaper. It took time for paper to be cheap enough for use with printing processes. It took several iterations before they had developed the right type of paper to work with Guthenburg’s press.
It would take several more centuries, and the industrial revolution to get writing from an elite skill to one that most people would learn. With increased literacy the diversity of topics covered by newspapers and books could increase as fast as people could print.
Spatial awareness
One of the great things about physical libraries is that they train your mind to think spatially. If you have hundreds of books spread across several rooms on multiple floors you need a good memory to remember which book is where. Your subconscious takes note of where things are constantly. If you have 30 books, your brain would never develop that skill.
Having more than 30 books doesn’t mean that you will even read the physical book. I have seen books when visiting friends and I’ve bought the e-book version rather than the physical one.
The idea of limiting yourself to 30 books bothers me because it’s a limitation on the diversity and creative directions that a person can take. To limit yourself to 30 books means that you can have a maximum of thirty topics. That’s one book a day for a medium month. That’s one book a year if you’re 30 years old. That’s a tragic way of looking at things.
I can remember reading 191 books, am currently reading 60 and want to read 196 books. That’s 447 books in total and several weeks worth of reading if I read non-stop. That’s excluding the reading of newspapers, magazines, comic books, blogs, reports and other forms of content.
I started to go through and catalogue physical books that were in my bedroom. This information is no longer correct. This provides intellectual flexibility. This does not constitute clutter.
Virtual Library
Despite my love for physical books I buy virtual ones these days. I have 144 kindle books, 273 Audible books and 95 Kobo books. In theory I could take Marie Kondo’s idea of having 30 physical books down to 0 physical books and have 30 Kobo or Kindle devices instead. I could also have two or three mp3 players with my entire audible collection. That would take much less space.
Conclusion
In the 21st century the need for physical books is gone. With a mobile phone you can read from multiple libraries at a time. With a single Kobo, Kindle or other e-book reader you can gain access to hundreds of books. The drawback is that you are not moving in space. By having a physical library of books across several rooms you need to get up and move. You need to develop your spatial awareness and you train your memory to remember where things are in the physical world. By limiting yourself to 30 books you are limiting the diversity of topics that you can spontaneously read about. I believe that to have a wide diversity of books promotes intellectual well being.
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