A Notebook of Sorts
@0.
This online journal was started as I began preparations for a CDH talk called When Blogs Were Blogs. I wanted to do a couple of things: first, to honour wood_s_lot: the fitful tracing of a portal, an early blog that was important to me as I explored the web way back when, and secondly, to try and understand why some of that early excitement is often declared missing these days.
But I also thought I might get a better feeling for those times if I created a “hand-made” digital journal by typing directly into an html document. So now, after each editing session, I copy the code and add it to my domain endmatter.ca (currently a WordPress site) by opening a page and pasting it into an html block.
If you are interested in looking at that very minimal html (without the clutter of a WP wrapper) click the HTML (above) then right click and choose “view source.” I’ve include some comments there, to expand the odd thought. Depending on your browser, you might have to activate “line-wrap” to prevent overly long lines of text.
The pared-down format is based on Soren Bjornstad’s Random Thoughts which he started in 2009 when still in high school. He was an important resource when I was working out the details of a previous talk about “digital commonplaces.”
https://randomthoughts.sorenbjornstad.com/
I thought I’d start with a tiny blogroll to set the scene.
@1. Short Blogroll
https://web.ncf.ca/ek867/wood_s_lot.html
https://projects.kwon.nyc/internet-is-fun/
https://www.dirtyfeed.org/2024/01/click-around-find-out/
https://indieweb.org/
March 1, 2024
@2. Thinking about how to set up the journal. Met F. and T. at Hound’s Tooth for some drinks. T. was showing us his Insta SQ1 that prints pictures. And we were talking about, and admiring, his latest art intervention. I was pestering them with questions about whether they still had any fun clicking around the internet. Met G. He seemed interested in the debate – had been living in Mexico for the past 20 years but was now back in Toronto.
@3. Brought Portuguese chicken home for supper.
March 2, 2024
@4. Started the morning off with smoked salmon on bagels with cream cheese. Finally decided (after lots of waffling) that “Bagel Time” bagels are better than the ones from “Bagel House.”
@5. More formatting, cleaning up the journal template. Appreciate how Soren’s Random Thoughts uses a simple anchor id to allow referencing any entry. He doesn’t bother with a tagging system (look at his Zetellkasten for that!) and figures that browser searches will work well enough for his purposes. It’s public facing but still a very personal site. In fact, before publishing, he removes certain posts that are earmarked as “private” – causing gaps in the numbering.
@6. Slightly Longer Blogroll
view
https://www.kickscondor.com
http://www.nathalielawhead.com/candybox/
https://everest-pipkin.com/
https://media.cordite.org.au/soft-corrupter/
https://robinrendle.com/notes/i-am-a-poem-i-am-not-software/
https://www.fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/where-have-all-the-websites-gone/
https://kwon.nyc
https://kayserifserif.place
https://jeffhuang.com/designed_to_last/
https://taichi.pink/2019-12-16_wind-poem/
https://www.are.na
https://elliott.computer
https://special.fish
https://maggieappleton.com/garden-history
https://fraidyc.at/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnRCZK3KjUY
https://100r.co/site/home.html
@7. Out for a walk. Musing on the IdieWeb principles. There are 10 but (in a nod to Spinal Tap) they’ve added an 11th – which may be the most important one!
@8. Beautiful cloud paintings at Roberts Gallery by David Marshak.
March 3, 2024
@9. Such unseasonably mild weather – out for a walk.
@10. Small cafe. Everyone jammed in. Few people on their devices – mostly lots of loud conversation!
March 4, 2024
@11. Got my blogroll links (mostly) sorted. And a list of what I’ve been reading:
Gary Barwin, Imagining Imagining – Essays on Language, Identity and Infinity (2023)
Tim Carpenter, To Photograph is to Learn How to Die – an essay with digressions (2022)
Lorraine Daston, Against Nature (2019)
Brian Dillon, Affinities – On Art and Fascination (2023)
William Feaver, The Lives of Lucian Freud – The Restless Years 1922-1968 (2019)
Sasha Frere-Jones, Earlier (2023)
Markus Gabriel, The Power of Art (2020)
Robert van Gulik, The Chinese Gold Murders (1959)
David McDevitt, Octavia Gone (2019)
Jalal Toufic What Was I Thinking? (2017)
@12. So much beautiful sunshine…
@13. Going out for a bit to watch the sun go down before supper – Elicoidali with onions and sweet peppers and sausages (with fennel – my favourite!), side of left-over Greek salad. I think there’s a couple of Sapporos in the fridge.
March 5, 2024
@14. Neocities https://neocities.org/ has picked up where Geocities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoCities left off.
@15. One thing that got lost in the translation to Geocities was the “Neighbourhood” where you’d situate your website. So – Athens for “teaching, education, reading, writing, and philosophy,” Soho for “art and writing,” Tokyo for “Far East-related topics, including anime,” and Vienna for “ballet, classical music, and opera.”
March 6, 2024
@16. In keeping this journal, and perhaps because of the awkwardness of organizing everything in html, I am overly aware of the tension between public and private content as well as the necessary abbreviations of thoughts and experiences.
@17. Harry Mathews’ amazing novel The Journalist (1994) takes this “problem” and pushes it to the extreme. Initially meant to be a therapeutic exercise, his journal writing takes over to such an extent that he lives less and less outside it.
@18. I remember standing on the rooftop of the Beverly Tavern and discovering (to our mutual delight!) that I shared a passion for Mathews with the American book artist Susan Mills.
March 7, 2024
@19. Just finished watching 2 seasons of the anime Chūka Ichiban! – True Cooking Master Boy (1997) and could see how all the “food ecstasy” tropes were being worked out back then for later shows like Shokugeki no Soma: Food Wars! (2015).
@20.
The theme for the anime was a real earworm! I just couldn’t stop humming it…
@21. I know I’m not supposed to use “iframes” – ah well. Until it finally breaks…
March 8, 2024
@22. A couple of weeks ago I offered to cook ramen for C. if he could find and play for me the movie Tampopo (1985) which I hadn’t seen in years and was suddenly craving.
@23. We started out by carving chopsticks! During Covid I had purchased a kit (more a design project) from Japan but hadn’t got round to using it. https://www.spoon-tamago.com/hamidashimono-chopsticks/ Unfortunately the project no longer exists.
@24. Late last year C. got the Criterion Collect as a gift and we celebrated by watching Wim Wenders’ The American Friend (1977) which is about (among other things) “a cowboy in Hamburg.” You could say that Tampopo is (in part) about “a cowboy in Tokyo.”
@25. Turns out that Wenders just completed a movie (up for an Oscar!) called Perfect Days staring Koji Yakusho who was also in Tampopo.
March 9, 2024
@26. I don’t read mysteries as much as I used to. Mostly I’m chewing through Fantasy or Sci-Fi trilogies.
@27. An exception – all the “Maigret” stories which I happily re-read. In the late 70s BBC Radio did some very creative adaptations of the novels (available on archive.org).
BBC Radio 4 1976. Maigret: Maurice Denham, Simenon: Michael Gough
@28. Yikes – more iframes!
March 10, 2024
@29. When I had Covid, and was too fatigued to sit up and my eyes didn’t like moving images, I was saved by BBC Radio’s Paul Temple Mysteries (something started back in the 30s). Wonderfully silly with plenty of cigarettes and cocktails…
@30. Cleaning out the fridge. Wound up making parsnip curry with Thai green curry paste and coconut milk. Not too bad!
@31. Being more than a bystander and facilitator at the CDH Drop-Ins really began when I started doing the TINY TOOLS TOUR. I love Everest Pipkin’s idea of a directory with “a focus on artful tools and toys that are as fun to use as they are functional. The goal of this list is to enable making entirely outside of closed production ecosystems or walled software gardens.”
@32. The “tours” covered (so far): Nathalie Lawhead’s Electric Zine Maker; “Building Digital Commonplaces” (focusing on Jeremy Ruston’s TiddlyWiki);”Making Music” (with a close look at Orca created by “Hundred Rabbits”); and “Decker” (John Earnest’s contemporary take on Hypercard.)
March 11, 2024
@33. I love it when things fold back on themselves. I noticed that on Everest Pipkin’s website there was a link to a “Webring,” not something I was familar with but realize now functions a little like a Blogroll but in a more deliberate way. Turns out Pipkin’s Webring link is hosted by Devine (of Hundred Rabbits)!
@34. Here’s another one: The Low Tech Webring Directory. From the site: “It’s not fun to be on the internet anymore, at least not like it used to be, in the sense that these days, you open a website, you get a cookie warning, then you get some privacy thing that you have to click away, then you get the newsletter, then you get the ads in your face, and then by the time you get to the content, you have already lost your interest.”
@35. With all this digging around, as I prepared for the discussion tomorrow, I realized that “Hundred Rabbits” and “Pino” (the name of their boat) both come from the anime Ergo Proxy (2006) which, of course, I’ve started to binge watch…
@36. After a couple of colder days, seems the mild weather is returning.
March 12, 2024
@37. A little distracted – made myself an espresso, then forgot about it…
@38. Have decided that this is something of an E/N site (Everything/Nothing.) For a sympathetic view of E/N. For an unsympathetic view of E/N.
@39. If reflections about wood_s_lot started this journal then maybe this poem – “Soft Corrupter” by Everest Pipkin (orginially published in Cordite Magazine 2021) – best portrays it.
@40. Quick read through. Start opening those tabs!
@41. A Blogroll of Suggestions from the Audience
view
https://nobodyhere.nl/justme/me.here
I love this random selection of thoughts that can be navigated in a range of serendipitous ways! -Jason Boyd
https://www.tiktok.com/@tpobuda
I made this to embarrass my daughter (although she’s happy I care about environmental and social justice issues). – Tanya Pobuda
https://mkirschenbaum.wordpress.com
A marvellous set of entries that follow the creation of scholarly work. And fun too! – François Lachance
https://www.themorgan.org/rembrandt
Morgan Library – 500 etchings from Rembrandt — Visit one a day! – François Lachance
Submit your own HERE
March 13, 2024
@42. While searching fruitlessly for an “easter egg” that had been hinted at by François Lachance, hidden somewhere on wood_s_lot, I did stumble upon an article by him (in beautiful hand-coded html!) called Blogcraft and Sprezzatura.
@43. He takes the suggestiveness of spezzatura’s “rehearsed spontaneity” and distills it to a very t-shirt worthy “Parse and parse again,” – “A graceful parser is like a generous reader adding to their appreciation of what counts and what does not count a sensitivity to when the counting counts.”
@44. Sitting outside – the warmth of the sun…
March 14, 2024
@45. I am also thinking that the notion of “blogcraft” is equally suggestive. Searching “sprezzatura” on Wikipedia will lead you to shibui which features in The Unknown Craftsman by Yanugi Sōetsu (Japanese version 1925, posthumous English version 1972).
@46. Chasing Sōetsu down the rabbit hole produces mingei> arts+crafts> Ruskin/Morris whereupon I get lost in endless thoughts about making… Penguin has published a collection of his essays called The Beauty of Everyday Things. Read a review here.
@47. Rain.
March 15, 2024
@48. François’ article was repurposed from a piece written by Kari Kraus on a collective website called “Wordherders” which can be found on The Wayback Machine (circa 2003). I love the welcome message on their landing page! “The stark contrast of black ink on white paper occasionally lead some to believe that words are static, passive animals, frozen in the lines of their imprinting. This is a misconception. Words are mobile creatures. They come in a variety of forms – angry sputtering, sighed eloquence, sharp wit. Their crisp outlines belie their intricate, puzzling interiors. Words are reports, tidings, news, information. Rumors, promises, undertakings. Utterances, inscriptions. Maxims and proverbs. They prefer the fine line of inference, confusion, and misconception, all given with a steady gaze. They pay as little attention to the intentions of meaning as they do to the wagging discipline of taxonomy. Welcome to Wordherders, where we recognize lines as a creation, a simple attempt to herd words into some semblance of memory and perspective. There are plenty of words to herd, so please feel free to feed the comments.”
@49. Ran Part One of my Decker Worshop today! Two people online, two people in-person. I think everyone had fun! C. said that she wished she had access to something like this when she was younger. She thought I might be interested in a Portuguese Conference that focuses on DIY cultures – KISMIF (Make it Simple, Make it Fast).
@50. Tonight – had salmon (baked), broccoli (steamed), and corn (boiled from frozen). It’s a combination that always suggests itself to me when I think about salmon. And its simplicty reminds me of Margaret Visser’s Much Depends on Dinner (1989).
March 16, 2024
@51. Keep returning to François’ little article. Looking around for something on “accidentals and substantives” found a reference on Jack Lynch’s (Rutgers) “Glossary of Literary and Rhetorical Terms” site (with a note – last updated 1999) under “Variants.”
March 17, 2024
@52. In another of Kari Kraus’s articles (Oct 2006) she talks about an upcoming course she’s teaching called “Rip, Mix, and Burn: Social Creativity Online.” Here is her preamble: “When the British Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge published his opium-induced fragment “Kubla Khan” in 1816, he prefaced it with a short note complaining that the poem remained unfinished because he had been interrupted by a visitor while composing it, a mysterious “person from Porlock.” Ever since then the word “Porlock” has been used to signify the intrusion of the outside world into the creative process, and the romantic conception of the artist as a brooding, solitary figure who spurns the distractions of society remains with us today. Increasingly, however, the person from Porlock has become not an obstacle to creativity, but a precondition of it.”
@53. I hadn’t heard of “person from Porlock” but I love how it has been pepurposed! Here’s an article by Robert Fulford (showing again my fascination with hand-coded pages) on said person.
March 18, 2024
@54. The creators of The Wayback Machine (1999) displayed such incredible foresight! So many treasures that otherwise would be lost. Particularly love how the name comes from “The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends” (1959) somethinng I watched with delight as a youngster! On the Wayback’s 20th anniversary (from the public launch in 2001) they created a provocative “though-piece” about 25 years into the future called The Wayforward Machine.
@55. Intense work on The Y90s Launch website most of the day. Really trying to kickstart this thing!
@56. Have enjoyed working with html colours in the white range – all part of my concept to use the tones of paper on the website, and ultimately the poster. I’ve also been working with the bookmarks I generated for the Library (Holly) and am using them on the website. Their narrow shape has given the pages their particular column format.
March 19, 2024
@57. Bouillabaisse tonight. (with plenty of Pernod!)
@58. Working on the Launch site has brought back a lot of memories since it looks back on the project right from the start. One that stood out was recollecting Tom Phillips’ work, especially Humument – something Lorraine and I used as inspiration in a group assignment for a course she was teaching – we had just met! And then again when we shared our Elements of Ruskin with Jerome McGann and he said it reminded him of Humument. And finally, when we were all working on A Riot of Type, how crucial Phillips’ The Nature of Ornament was for the making of that book. And really, the manifesto’s influence continues…
March 20, 2024
@59. Came across an interesting site as I was chasing down Webrings – Yesterweb (2021-2023) which is a curious “archived” site that has posted a very thorough manifesto/history/raison d’être of the site’s founding and eventual closing. It functioned as a community space that featured a webring and e-zine. But it seems that their evolving goals for what they wanted the site to be, and general burn-out caused the managers of the project to end it. For a differing opinion of the demise.
@60. Yesterweb has taken down the Webring but I found a copy on the Wayback Machine. They write there – “Remember when the internet felt exciting and mysterious?”
March 21, 2024
@61. Went to the launch of the Wilde ’82 site tonight. J. was very moved when recounting some of the mentors that had been so important to him and were no longer alive. Two people from the original conference were in the audience.
@62. I had a hand in getting the website set up so it was nice to finally see the results!
@63. At the event I had a chance to see the new 4th floor Library space (part of Archives and Special Collections) and imagine what the Y90s Launch might look like.
@64. To our surprise they’d installed (temporarily) the Children’s Literature Archive in the new glassed-in stacks space. That really brought back memories of our first joint project with the Library.
March 22, 2024
@65. Decker Workshop Part Two today. I think this was a great test to see how I might run the Workshop during an intensive – maybe this summer.
@66. Snowstorm!
@67. None of the librarians there last night had ever heard of the OMEKA site that was built to catalogue the CLA or the WordPress site with student exhibitions. I tweaked a couple of things on the student site but realized that it has many broken links and would take some work to get it up and running again. Same with the OMEKA site.
March 23, 2024
@68. Spotted a couple of Judge Dee novels on the shelf and not having read them in years I thought it might be fun to give them a try again.
@69. Turns out it’s a great time to be a Dee fan. Netflix has just started releasing installments of the Dee stories called “Judge Dee’s Mystery”. There are 32 in total. And there are the big blockbusters (on Youtube) under the title Detective Dee. These films take full advantage of CGI and add plenty of martial arts choreography!
@70. Tonight – Penne with red sauce (tomato and cream).
March 24, 2024
@71. More Dee – for less martial arts, and the more leisurely pace of reading, I’ve been downloading epubs of the Dee stories from Faded Page a site maintained by Distributed Proofreaders of Canada (started 2007).
@72. I should write to John Earnest (Decker) and let him know about the Workshop as well as our attempts to pitch it as a great tool to explore e-zines, interactive fiction, and games in the classroom. In the workshop I emphasized how easy it is to share pages and resources so that students could work together on projects.
@73. Finished off the evening by watching a few Dee episodes on Netflix and eating chicken tacos (roasted chicken, roasted corn and bean salsa, cheese, fresh coriander, and picante avocado sauce).
@74. After several nights of pretty ragged sleep, hoping to improve things by getting to bed early…
March 25, 2024
@75. Bought a couple of books last week. One on Roy Kiyooka (BMV) and a collection of early poetry by David Wah (She Said Boom!)
@76. Been gradually adding to my collection of “Canadiana…” Earlier I had picked up several volumes of bp Nichol’s Martyrology and Earl Birney’s What’s so big about GREEN? (1973). Finding some of this stuff at Big Guy’s Coffee on the Lakeshore – over in his Turner Page annex.
March 26, 2024
@77.
Saw on my Instagram today a beautiful piece (broadside/leaflet) on smallpress_bookshelf’s feed – DRY SPELL by Nelson Ball, with a print by his wife Barbara Caruso. Published by her Seripress (1973). Here’s the poem:
DRY SPELL
storm
clouds
roll
past
tease
these
rattling
aspens.
@78. The aspen is often called a “quaking or trembling aspen.” And Caruso’s accompanying image could be said to “tremble.” So beautiful.
@79.
I have loved Ball’s poetry since I picked up a secondhand copy of his With Issa: Poems 1964-1971 published by ECW in 1991. Here’s a little documentary made up of photos taken at their home in Paris Ontario –
March 27, 2024
@80. Back in the studio for a bit to get the ball rolling on this year’s Griffins. Picked up a bomboloni on route – such memories of my time in Florence!
@81. My niece L. recommended the anime “Delicious in Dungeon,” another of those food oriented ones (which she knows I like). In this one, the little group of adventurers figure out how to eat the monsters they are battling. Very “nose to tail.”
March 28, 2024
@82. Found a site today that I’m planning on spending some time with – poet Christopher Patton’s The Art of Compost.
March 29, 2024
@83. Leafing through my David Wah collection today I came across a fascicle called “Earth” published by “The Institute of Further Studies” (Wah was an editor). It was one of 29 fascicles published between 1970 and 2002 working through a “text/diagram” of Charles Olsen’s called “A Curriculum of the Soul.” Read a short piece about the project by Joanne Kyger.
March 30, 2024
@84. My copy of Borderblur Poetics: Intermedia and Avant-Gardism in Canada, 1963-1988 by Eric Schmaltz arrived today!
@85. Easter dinner party tonight. Served “La Tur” and “Castelmagno” cheeses from Piedmont. Erdinger Dunkel beer in tall glasses and Irish stew with mashed potatoes. Clearly all over the place with this one! (also found some chestnut flower honey from Croatia…) M. made white chocolate cheesecake for dessert.
March 31, 2024
@86. Decided to buy the tenth anniversary issue of “Touch the Donkey” a small poetry journal. For more see Rob Mclennan over at Above/Ground Press (on Blogger for thirty years!)
@87. Not sure how I found it but landed on “from a secret location: poetry, little mags, small presses and transient documents from the mimeo era and beyond”. It’s a web version of an exhibition and book. The About page has a b/w photo of a view through a window (with text) by Alan Ginsberg.
@88.
I’d seen that photo, along with many other images and documents, in a video by Alec Soth called “Rambling Talk about John Cage.” Soth made this video at the beginning of Covid (as we all shifted to online) and I loved it for many reasons: its “show and tell” quality (which I picked up and used in my book design classes); its enthusiastic, unscripted flow; and its turn to Cage (he calls him a “tonic” – something we were all looking for pre-vaccine). In those early days I had pulled out my copy of Silence without knowing why.