Archive for February, 2005
Slovenians or Slovenes?
On The Glory of Carniola there is a really interesting debate going on concerning the two terms addressing people from Slovenia. Come and check, if your find yourself confused every time you try to refer to this Alpine tribe, known for keeping bees throughout their history.
(I am glad we have a debate on Slovenians and Slovenes, not on Slovaks and Slovenes;) Thanks, Michael. I recommend reading Carniola to anyone who wants to know more about Slovenia - from a NY guy, who moved to Slovenia for reasons such as …. read it here!)
By | February 28, 2005 | Topics: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Pew / Internet Qualitative Research
I was just surfing the Pew / Internet Project website to see what’s new and in the bottom of the site, left corner (wait, I have to check hands, cos I tend to mix up) I find the Your Input call for bloggers.
Are you a blogger?
Tell us why you created your blog, how often you post new material,
and what kind of impact your blog has had.
And tell us how to get to your blog.
Click here to answer.
They put quite some effort into blog-related research lately. I am looking forward to seeing the result of this one.
Bed torture
I am still confined to bed, it’s been more than a week now and I can’t take it anymore. Yesterday I tried to get out for a short while but my body immediately signalised it was not ready yet. So ok, I said, I give it another two days and then I am back to life;).
So, as it is, my life is very interesting these days. All I do is lie, eat and read blogs. I have read all the blogs I like criss-cross over and over again already, now I am waiting like a starved wolf for any new entries to pop up.
My ‘victim’ blogs at the moment are:
Lisa’s on the face - a blog, written in a way, that makes a reader feel every single word. Lisa is an incredible writer, whether her entries are on her personal life or just on life in general. She lives in Tel Aviv for the fifth year now and among all the great posts she wrote, there is an awesome series on How Lisa Came To Israel? along with all the ups and downs of bringing Middle East back to peace.
Allison’s An Unsealed Room - also an Israeli blog (actually I found this one first and then the snow ball effect happened). When reading Allison, I always imagine her as one of my senior colleagues at my uni, critical commentator of current affairs in Israel (I magine her as a great Foucauldian critical discourse analyst;)), and a very loving family woman.
Chayyei Sarah - yet another Israeli blog. Sarah is a master of provoking hot debates and discussions within the blogsphare. She’s the expert of throwing a bone (as we would say in Slovenian, but probably doesn’t make much sense in English). With the right amount of sarcasm, she manages to make her readers laugh but also to sit back and do some serious thinking. She’s all fun and I often end up laughing out loud.
A perfect marriage - recently discovered and figure out for your self, why I spend a considerable amount of time reading it. It’s a great blog on love of two middle-aged people and it’s a proof that love doesn’t neccessarily die after being together for 27 years.
All other blogs on my blogroll I don’t molest, but I visit them within reasonable frequencies.
Well, not that I’d be so bored, I have a to-do list waiting for me, really a long one, but I can’t start cracking just yet. Tho I could easily read some readings for my PhD or at least be thinking in this direction. Boooo! I want to get back to normal. The weather (despite constant light snowing) is nice for running and I can’t go. Or at least to take some nice walks! I lack my daily activities. Good that I have a laptop cos with a desk computer I’d be disconnected from internet as well. Which probably wouldn’t be so bad. Oh no, I think it would be quite useful. And even tho I have a laptop in my bed, I can’t work on those conference proposals that I need to, or work on my last RIS report. Cos it’s very uncomfortable having books, article and stuff around on the bed. It’s only suitable for the laptop. Excuses, excuses! Oh well, I will stop whining and go check my blogs again;))
By Nana | February 26, 2005 | Topics: Blogging, Research | No Comments »
Slovenia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Slovakia … Hum? Slovenkia!
So, president Bush is meeting president Putin today, in Slovakia, Bratislava, which happens to be right where Slovenian city Koper is. Cool, so let me see if I got this right:
My name is Bojana and I come from Slovakia. Yes. So, this is my country, come and visit Sloven … ups, Slovakia. According to some USA Today sources, Slovakia is where I live. I must not forget that. Slovakia, Slovakia … good girl …. now make sure you won’t mix it up with Slovenia!
My country Slovakia (please, do click on a map to see what I mean)
Well, enough of sarcasm, I guess .. I better deal with it, it happens all the time. I am so happy my high school geography teacher gave us all that hard time with as he called them ’silent maps”, which were actually empty maps of various parts of the world and we had to fill them in with the names of the countries, cities, rivers, mountains … yoohoo, at least am geographically-literate.
By | February 23, 2005 | Topics: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Skiing Day …
for fellow friends from my uni, but not for me. Tho am not too sad about it, I got quite used to this warm bedsphere, and with my mum around for the last two days, I really can’t complain. All she does is cooking and asking what else I would like to eat … and I am so full I can’t even think of food anymore.
By | February 23, 2005 | Topics: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Beware Of Spimmers!
spim n. Unsolicited commercial messages sent via an instant messaging system. Also: spIM.
spimming pp.
spimmer n.
antispim adj.
Whatever form of communication we use, it always makes a good opportunity for marketers to start exploiting it. So it is that spam has come to instant messaging-yielding IM spam, or spim. It’s been around a few years, but only in the past few months has it reached the threshold of disruption.
Officials at America Online, which runs the popular Instant Messenger service, and Microsoft, which runs MSN Messenger, say they’ve seen an increase in the amount of IM spam. Messaging and collaboration research firm Ferris Research estimates that the quantity of such solicitations doubled from 2002 to 2003. The volume of so-called spim is set triple in 2004, according to a new report from the Radicati Group, a technology market research firm from California.
IM software allows users to swap text messages and files in real time from a computer or cell phone, with Microsoft, Yahoo or AOL programs being the most popular. Spim is more insidious than spam because messages pop up automatically when a user is logged in, making them harder to ignore. However, users of IM programs commonly use a “buddy list” of invited friends to limit who can send messages to them. The buddy lists can be switched off, but their widespread use makes it more difficult for spimmers to message a stranger’s computer. Faced with these challenges, spimmers have developed new tools. Some resemble common virus writing techniques, such as devising a malicious piece of code that exploits vulnerabilities in IM programs. Spimmers bury the code in a link or file and send it to an IM user. If the user activates the code, the spimmer can then message people on the user’s buddy list by borrowing their identity. Although spimmers must initially find users whose “buddy list” setting is switched off, getting that user to then click on a link or download a file is often easier than it is via email.
As posted at Pew Internet and America Life Project’s PIP comments series by Lee Rainie, in the The Advent Of Spim , 30% of American adult instant messaging users (which makes some 17 million adults) have gotten spim. Their latest nationwide telephone pool (taken between January 13 and February 9) show that younger internet users (who are more likely to use IM) are the most likely internet users to get spim.
In the USA, the first arrest over spim already took place. A 18-years old boy was arrested for sending 1.5 million messages, advertising pornography and mortgages. Quite scary, huh?
So, now we’ll have to worry about how not to get spimmed or what? Considering that I tend to use IM every day, I am getting quite nervous here, only thinking about the possibility of dealing with it.
Leave us alone, you intrusive sellers, marketers, advertisers, and who ever may fall into this category!
By Nana | February 22, 2005 | Topics: Tech | No Comments »
Doing Well …
To those of you, who had written me a warm email, with nice wishes - I am doing extremely fine, the only thing that indeed bothers me is that I am confined to bed till the end of the week. But with my laptop in my lap (just occasionally) and the book I am reading at the moment (Immanuel Wallerstein at al: Open the Social Sciences) I will get thru it. The point is that when I am lying in bed, I feel like am lying here for nothing and want to get up. But as soon as I get up for more than 10 minutes, I know I should get back to bed or else ill be whining that I am in pain;))
So, from bed prospective it’s quite fun;)))
By | February 21, 2005 | Topics: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Searching ….
Last week, me and Raphaela spent quite some time on a search for a decent sleeping mask. We somehow decided would have been fun to have one. So, we thought it would have been a piece of cake to find a nice one in London. I remembered I had seen really a nice one at Brighton’s Boots in September, so I had a pretty clear picture of what I was after.
Searching day one: nothing. We check almost every single Boots in central London, but so far so nothing.
Day two: Even less!
Day three: Nothing, but in one Boots, they ensured us we would get it at the bigger Boots, like the one at Piccadilly Circus. Ok, we said. Despite all the tiredness from a book-shopping:), we walked all the way from UCL to Piccadilly circus and indeed, there was a nice big Boots. Raphaela suggested we should have asked someone but I didn’t want to be disappointed too quickly so we decided to do a search: me one floor, and Raph the other. Hmmmm, no sleeping masks so far. So we decided to ask finally. The salesman:” I am sorry, but we ran out of sleeping masks at the moment”. Blimey!! Still nothing. Then on Regent Street, we entered some kind of beauty shop, just because we wanted to ask the hundred times repeated question:” Do you maybe have some sleeping masks?”
Salesperson: ” Yes, we do!”
Raphaela and Bojana, with most surprised expression on their faces:” Do you really?”
Salesperson, being quite surprised at us being so surprised: ” Sure! Would you like to try them on?”
Well, those sleeping masks were red and black, suitable for erotic games rather than for just nice sleep, which me and Raph had in mind:))
So we left the store, happier than before. At least we got to find one.
Then we promised we’d look up for it at the airports. I did found one, but really ugly boring one.
Hm, today, just by accident and googled it and find some really nice ones. But still no sings of sleeping masks that Carry & Co wear them in SATC. So, if anyone have an idea of where to find a nice decent cotton made sleeping mask, please help!
By | February 13, 2005 | Topics: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Tirol Girl
This lovely Tirol girl is no one else but my Spanish friend Rafael (from Bilbao), who loves to ‘monkey around’ as he puts is. I met him two years ago at Essex summer school in Social Science Data Analysis. We were class mates at Ethnographic course. We soon started to chat and became good friends for the time being in England and also afterwards.
By | February 13, 2005 | Topics: Uncategorized | No Comments »
National Holiday Today
Today, it is a national holiday day in Slovenia. It’s so called Preseren Day. As I already wrote about him, he was Slovenian greatest poet, born in 1800 and died 49 years later, on Thursday, February the 8th. I find it rather bizarre to have a national holiday on the anniversary of his death, would make much more sense to have it on the day of his birthday, which would be on December the 3rd. But since there are some speculations present among Slovenian genealogists about the exact date of his birth (family-tree shows the December 2nd), perhaps it was rather easier to choose the day of his death.
Franz Kurz von Goldenstein, 1850, oil on canvas
A Toast (which is also Slovenian national anthem)
The vintage, friends, is over,
And here sweet wine makes, once again,
Sad eyes and hearts recover,
Puts fire in every vein,
Drowns dull care
Everywhere
And summons hope out of despair.
To whom with acclamation
And song shall we our first toast give?
God save our land and nation
And all Slovenes where’er they live,
Who own the same
Blood and name,
And who one glorious Mother claim.
Let thunder out of heaven
Strike down and smite our wanton foe!
Now, as it once had thriven,
May our dear realm in freedom grow.
Let fall the last
Chains of the past
Which bind us still and hold us fast!
Let peace, glad conciliation,
Come back to us throughout the land!
Towards their destination
Let Slavs henceforth go hand-in-hand!
Thus again
Will honour reign
To justice pledged in our domain.
To you, our pride past measure,
Our girls! Your beauty, charm and grace!
here surely is no treasure
To equal maidens of such race.
Sons you’ll bear,
Who will dare
Defy our foe no matter where.
Our hope now, our to-morrow -
Our youth - we toast and toast with joy.
No poisonous blight or sorrow
Your love of homeland shall destroy.
With us indeed
You’re called to heed
Its summons in this hour of need.
God’s blessing on all nations,
Who long and work for that bright day,
When o’er earth’s habitations
No war, no strife shall hold its sway;
Who long to see
That all men free
No more shall foes, but neighbours be.
At last to our reunion -
To us the toast! Let it resound,
Since in this gay communion
By thoughts of brotherhood we’re bound.
May joyful cheer
Ne’er disappear
From all good hearts now gathered here.
By | February 8, 2005 | Topics: Uncategorized | No Comments »