Eva Van Wassenhove

Blogging means writing something down for people to read. My question is whether that is the best way to get yourself out there. I suppose if you are a good writer and / or have a reading  audience for what you want to say, that is a valid option. I ask myself this question, because I would love to have a way to express my love of film to the world. Is writing a review enough. Is it exciting enough for me? And frankly, does anyone care? I have been asking myself this over and over again this summer and have come to the following conclusion. To me what attracts me the most is variation. So maybe that's what I should do if I desperately want to tell my story to the world. I will give my idea a try in October and see how far I can get with this. For now, I will do what I like best. If ever people get interested, I am open for feedback, conversation and change.

 

Now what's the plan?

• I will buy myself a subscription plan for a year in the local cinema in Brussels.
• I'll go watch a movie 3 times a week and write or do a video about it.
• I'll see where I get from there.

 

Anyone reading this will say, "that's been done a million times". Sure, and I don't claim I can do it different or better. But at least I'll be having lots of fun! :-)

People like to get their voice out there. We always have and we always will. With the internet, it has become a lot easier to get our voices out there. But with all the noise, it's getting a lot harder to be heard. I gives a sattisfying feeling when someone responds what you are saying, but that is not always possible. There is one huge upside with the internet age and that is that even a baby can get him or herself heard in no time. The question is if this is really better then in the olden days where the only possible means to get yourself heard is by getting outside and spreading the word by just saying it.

It's not the easiest thing in the world to just stand on a bench and start preaching your ideas. People might see you, but unless you are saying something interesting, no one is going to listen.

 

So I guess, like I am doing now, writing down my thought and publishing it with the slight hope that maybe one individual will read it, is good enough for me. After all, I am not spending countless hours advertising my blog. It is something that is not my thing. I don't like to puch things onto people.

 

So here it is, if it makes any sense. I am generalising, but seeing the evolution online, people definatly want to get out there. And some will go to lengths to be heard. Others, like me, just temp their luck and hope for a lucky day that they once be heard.

Jij eenzame zwerver

Verscholen tussen de takken

Om dan een vogel te pakken

I know I always write serious posts, but this is my way of getting it out of my mind.

The thought of the world being completely wonderful and sad at the same time came to me when I thought of the truly amazing moments I have had with my friends. As ever amazing as it was, it's now a memory and it will never come back the same way. I am thankful, but maybe I feel sad because I never cherished them enough. Life passes me by like a rollercoaster and I can't seem to get the pace. This can be extremely frustrating. Still, I firmly believe that the balance will still come. Maybe only at the brink of life and death, but at least I will realise then in a very real way how truly wonderful life is.

Another sad story I discovered about the social media and sharing industry online. Hello, a messaging and instant photo sharing tool, which I really loved by the way, will end it's service in a couple of days. I hadn't seen it earlier because I hadn't used it in a while. It's sad to see such a good product go. It was a really fast way of sharing your photo's in an IM like platform. Here's the message you can also find on Hello.com:

 

All good things come to an end. So it is with sadness that we say goodbye to Hello.

 

Hello will be shut down on June 11th. We've extended this date to make sure we have enough time to communicate this as well as we can to our users.

 

We originally embarked on a mission to make photo sharing easier and more fun with Hello. We plan to keep carrying that torch in new projects to come.

 

We hope that you continue to enjoy the other sharing products Google offers including Picasa, Picasa Web Albums and Google Talk.

 

Keep on sharing!

- The Hello Team

This one I WILL greatly miss

 

"If man where but constant, he were perfect" - William Shakespeare (the two gentleman of Verona)

Today, Ringo sent out an email that they decided a few days prior to end the ringo service. The announcement can also be read on the website ringo.com when you click "upload":

Dear Ringo member,
After much consideration we have decided to end the Ringo service.
As of June 30, 2008 the Ringo service is ending and you will no longer have access to your Ringo account.
Thank you for being part of the Ringo community.
The Ringo Team

(Along with some other info to save your videos and photos)

This is the first social networking site of which I am a member, to shut down, but this was bound to happen, although not to Ringo per se. There are way too many social networking websites out there that look too much alike. It appears Ringo failed to set itself apart. I guess the guys from Ringo just wanted to cut their losses and move on.

Ringo itself is part of Tickle Inc., a San Fransisco based web company. Tickle.com is a very popular quiz site

They will be dearly missed... Or not so much. Not by me anyway

Last night, I watched the Eurovision Songcontest. It was the first part of the second finales and I tuned in when the 16th of 19 was singing their song. I was like, OK he's singing. It wasn't the worst singing I had ever heard and I probably wouldn't be able to sing better. But guess what? I'm never going to enter Eurosong because I know I'm not that good of a singer.

During the song of the next candidate and having watched on teletext for the people I had missed, I got bored and switched channel. There was a real contest going on over there, more specifically the Queen Elisabeth song contest for classical singing. I'm usually not that much into classical singing, but at least they sang in tune.

After seeing and listening to a few of the candidates there, I switched back to Eurosong, curious of how it went and how far they had progressed. The last group was singing so I decided to keep watching. It wasn't bad, not remarkable either. But I would dare to give three stars: she looked good, she didn't sing out of tune, the dancing wasn't too extravagant, which for me is a real knock off.

After she finished, the kick-off was given for people to call in their votes. I watched the one minute clips of the performance of each artist, so to have at least an impression of what had been interesting. It wasn't bad, but their was nothing remotely good either, song-wise. It was more like a circus. Extravagant clothes, with a lot of emphasis on the act. The musicians we had sent had also dressed up for the occasion. They didn't stand out, nor with their not so every day song (my mother: what do you expect? It's Eurosong. It's all rubbish), nor with their act. The singer was pretty nervous, which made her singing performance, at least of what I had seen from the clip, rather average for a song contest. For this circus however, she did rather well, but so did a lot of other artist, if off course, you actually drop the 'song' part.

When I met one of the musician from our group (Ishtar), I told him that the song they entered with was fun, but that I preferred his other songs. He told me, "well yes off course. We sent in two songs, one of which I liked more than "O ulisi", but it's a circus, and look at where we are now. It's definitely been good for us". I agreed and promised to buy their latest CD.

Would I recommend watching Eurosong, or rather Eurocircus? I guess, once a year. It's a way to sit around the television with the family and look at the different groups doing their thing. It's always fun to judge the singing, the clothes, the act etcetera. Though I don't regret not having our group in the finales. It will spare me a night of hearing of what has become a worse version of pop idol.