Broadway, New York City
The Death of snowstone?
Trying desperately to keep in tune with the hip kids these days, I'm abandoning this blog at least for now to explore the wild world of vlogging by posting one-minute videos in the YouTube channel 'JustAMinuteOYourTime'. The companion weblog is http://jamoyt.blogspot.com.
Check it out, it's where the action is.
Happy 2007!
Snowstone wishes a happy 2007 to all of its visitors, both the new and the old.
And recommends drinking lots of nonalcoholic liquids to counter the alcoholic ones from the night before.
Dang, missed it!
This week, snowstone got its 50,000th unique visitor (of course, you guys are all unique). I would like to take this opportunity to thank... I promised myself I wouldn't cry... sorry. To thank the director of this weblog, cronopio... cronopio, of course, for writing the amazing material... and cronopio, who was in charge of art direction, But of course, this whole project could not have been realized without cronopio, who financed and continues to finance this weblog out of his own pocket, no ads, no sponsors.
Soaking up the sun
As I have moved some 2000 km southeast from my previous position, updating snowstone is hard. And besides, there is a wedding to be attended and a sun to be basked in. After the weekend, snowstone will resume.
Moving Type
If you read this, you're probably a blogger yourself. And if you read this, you possibly use Blogger yourself. If so, stop it (using Blogger, not blogging).
Nearly four years ago, I traded in cumbersome, unwieldy Blogger for versatile, elegant Movable Type. All it needed was a mySQL database.
MT has not given me any problems since, and yesterday, I upgraded to version 3.2 without a cinch (*knocks on wood*).
I rarely endorse anything, but for free software with extensive documentation that works out of the box and never fails me, I make an exception.
Kudos to you, Six Apart.
Dialogue between my conscience and me
"Hey cro, what's the deal?"
"Zzzz.. wha?"
"It's been more than a month, ya dipshit!"
"I'll change my underwear tomorrow, I promise!"
"Not that, you idiot! snowstone! Where are your posts?!"
"Oh, that thing. Yeah, I dunno."
"You don't know."
"Well, I've been kinda busy, you know..."
"Busy. Is that an excuse? Do I need to throw your own Book at you?"
"Get off my case, alright?"
"You make me sick."
"OK, OK, I'll post something. Sheesh."
"And make it interesting. Don't even think of posting about how you never post anymore."
"Would I do that to you?"
"GET CRACKIN'!"
Nominate me for a Bloggy!
Dear visitor,
For four years now, snowstone has informed, provoked, entertained and confused its visitors. It talked about movies, politics, books, comics, and puzzles. It presented unusual ideas, short stories and poetry. Most of all, it always strived to bring you fresh, homegrown content, without ads, and asked for nothing in return.
Isn't it about time you gave something back?
Please, if you will, visit the 2006 Bloggies Web site and submit snowstone as a nominee in the category "Best-kept-secret weblog". Then tell all your friends to do the same. The deadline is Tuesday, January 10th, 2006.
Thank you,
cronopio
2005: the year in snowstone
Well, that's it for me for 2005. I'll be spending New Year's abroad, and I have few intentions of posting to snowstone from there. For your convenience, I've made a list of the bets posts (IMHO) of the past year. Here's the top 10, in no particular order:
- Why Greenpeace ain't getting one dime from me
- Alarmism at dangerous heights
- Fame and Fortune
- Two Katrina stories
- T-101 Project Meeting Minutes
- Movie Tough Guy quotes put in an innocent context
- Do you want fries with that, my Master?
- First Knight (movie review)
- Why there are no famous painters called Johnson
- Hamlet, the Weblog (post links to the now finished site)
IMDb Top 250 month Roundup
Well, that's it with the IMDb Top 250 movies for now. Most of the month of November 2005 here at snowstone consisted of movie reviews, and although I will still be hunting down Top 250 movies and posting reviews, things will calm down.
After a month of intense movie-watching, I can honestly say that trying to see all 250 movies left me with mixed feelings. It's obvious that the taste of IMDb reviewers does not correspond with the general public's (for example, Titanic, the best grossing movie of all time by a wide margin, does not even feature anywhere in the Top 250). On the other hand, the list only partially overlaps with the top-100s of revered movie critics such as Roger Ebert or Pauline Kael (the latter infamously trashed Star Wars, which went on to become the then most popular movie of all time and now ranks high in the IMDb list).
So where's my taste in all this? Well, it varies. Non-US movies are dramatically underrepresented, especially Italian and French ones. Animation and other fare primarily aimed at underage audiences rank disproportionately high, by which I don't mean to say that they're bad movies, just that they don't leave a lasting impression. That said, it's not a coincidence that I'd already seen some 60% of the list before I started, and that more than one of them was a pleasant surprise.
I will continue filling the list, check the little counter on the left of the snowstone homepage to see how I'm doing.
(FIN)
Bite me!
For all you hungry RSS users, snowstone now proudly offers a fully functional RSS feed! Actually, there was an RSS feed all along, but I just didn't notice it. If you don't know what RSS is, read this.
Wild Horses Did
The snowstone weblog has been dormant for some eight months now. During that period, many was the time I felt a strong inclination to resume it. In fact, the time was very many. You, my loyal readers, flooded my snowstone mailbox and clicked just about any comment hyperlink you could get your hands on, all to convince me to blog again.
You promised me the most bizarre rewards for restarting, ranging from ridiculously long private parts to intimate intercourse with livestock. But all your pleas fell on deaf ears (they're my grandma's, and she's 91).
But then, one day, I received an e-mail from a little girl in Mexico that touched my heart. She told me that if I didn't forward that e-mail to everyone I knew, she would die of the rare disease that was ailing her and, more importantly, so would I.
So, to kill two birds with one snowstone, I decided to revive this weblog. Yes, your index fingers, worn down to a stub from pressing Refresh all these months, can take a well-deserved break, because I'm back.
Oh yes, about the little girl. Her e-mail address is
Viagra.Herbal@gay-bestiality-poker.biz
So send little Viagra an e-mail, and be sure to tell her that cronopio sent you.
Final curtain
Because my creativity is better spent elsewhere, this weblog is discontinued from now on.
The Non-Natives Are Restless
Over at Morgaine LeFaye's, Morgaine explains why she blogs in English. Like her, I also blog in another language than my own. There's a
number of reasons for this.
- Marketing. Let's face it, English is spoken by billions, so blogging in English will get you more hits.
- Culture. My postings are generally about stuff that everybody should be able to relate to, whatever their background. English is, for better or worse,
the lingua franca of the global villager. - Skill. I feel comfortable enough about my command of the language to express myself in it and be understood (I speak it on a daily basis).
- Affection. Having learned, spoken, read and written it intensively, I've fallen in love with the language, including its outrageously large vocabulary, its hybrid nature (I once saw it described as 'a slut of a language') and its wildly inconsistent spelling.
Minor change
'Say, cronopio, I noticed your monthly archives are gone.'
'Yeah, User, I changed the template.'
'Why?'
'Because no-one searches time-based archives. Imagine a visitor going, "There was this one hilarious posting… I remember! It was in… early September 2002!" Unless you have a newsblog or current events blog, time is irrelevant. Every blogger should ditch their time-based archives and use category-based archives instead.'
'Hey listen! I have a blog, and I post about whatever pops into my head! I don't respect your so-called "categories" straitjacket, fascist pig.'
'OK. You want a blog like congealed spaghetti? Fine with me. But don't impose some imaginary structure onto it by using time-based archives. Just make sure that Search button does its job and we can part like friends.'
'And what about the calendar thingy at top left? That's time-based, innit? Ha! Talk your way out of that one!'
'No problem, young grasshopper. The calendar interface (or, as I prefer to call it, the "Jewish Mother" component) is there for me, the author. It reminds me of the infrequency of my postings and pushes me to post more.'
'I see. Thank you for this enlightening piece of info, cro.'
'No problem, User.'
Testing, testing...
This posting is to inform those most loyal readers of the fact that for the second time, I have made my return. Due to this site bursting out of its account size and my moving to a new hosting provider as a result, and due to a lengthy holiday in a remote nation where blogging is prohibited by law (ahem), this site has been a mere empty shell for way too long.
But all that's gonna change, readers. Soon.