Sound and Sonnets [en]

Thanks to Romain who brought a sound card with him when he came over this week-end, I am now enjoying the auditory dimension of the web. I’ve also managed to get Flash to work with my browser, so you can expect multimedia linkage in the future.

Drop in at When Love Speaks and enjoy the promotional video (under “Downloads”). I’m really tempted, I have to say. And it’s not just for Alan Rickman’s track.

Romain also brought with him a digital camera — but I’ll tell you about that later.

Cats and Blogs [en]

I’ve been wanting to mention this project for some time, but never got around to doing it. If you have a cat and a blog, open wide your ears:

The Cat Bloggers Project presents photographs of cats and their blogging humans. You’ll find Bagha’s page out there, of course.

Girl Stuff [en]

Did I tell you about my Golder Rule #1 for putting on nail polish? I’m not sure anymore. It goes like this:

1. Don’t start putting nail polish on when you have just 20 minutes left before going out.

This morning, I have discovered Golden Rule #2:

2. Don’t put nail polish on in the morning before you’ve had anything to eat.

Now let me go and have my breakfast.

Google Bombing [en]

A very interesting article about Google bombing. Needless to say, I don’t encourage abuse of a (reasonably) good system.

On the other hand, were is the line between use and abuse? What is ethical, what is not? The gray zone is always the most interesting.

[link via Emmanuelle]

Orthographe [en]

Me voici ce soir d’humeur pour un petit coup de gueule orthographique. Ceux qui me connaissent le savent: je tiens à  l’orthographe. Ne me sortez donc pas vos beaux discours sur son inutilité, je leur suis totalement imperméable.

Les fautes de frappe ou d’orthographe, ça accroche l’oeil et ça gêne la lecture. La mienne, en tout cas. Ça rend aussi difficile le travail des traducteurs automatiques, qui ne sont pas aussi flexibles que nous. Bref. Je milite pour un peu d’orthographe et de syntaxe dans nos productions virtuelles.

Aujourd’hui, nous allons nous arrêter sur une petite faute toute bête, toute minuscule, mais qui se répand comme la peste sur nos écrans:

Quand on intercale, pour raisons d’euphonie, un petit “t” entre le verbe et le sujet inversés, on l’emballe bien chaudement entre deux tirets.

C’est donc quel temps fera-t-il? et non pas quel temps fera t’il? ou même fera-t’il. Merci d’en prendre note!

La vie ayant ses lois implacables, je sais qu’une faute de frappe, d’orthographe ou de syntaxe m’aura certainement échappé dans cette entrée. Si ça se trouve, dans cette note même. Je vous prie de ne pas m’en tenir rigueur, et de m’en aviser!

English Culture Shock [en]

I don’t often get culture shocks in England. I did get one this time, though.

At the end of a live performance like a concert or a play in Switzerland, the audience applauds the artists until their hands ache too much to continue. The quality of the show usually determines how keen everybody will be to continue clapping despite the pain.

Curtain call follows curtain call until the audience wears out.

So, after the excellent performance that Danielle and I had travelled down to London to see, I was prepared to keep on clapping my hands until my skin went on strike.

I remained in mid-clap with my mouth wide open when after the second curtain call, everybody went silent and started getting out of their seats. They all knew that the artists had left for good.

It took me a couple of minutes to come back to my senses, close my mouth, put my hands on my lap and pick up my jacket. Obviously, two curtain calls was the rule in the country of dreary winter days.

Couleurs [en]

Karl change de look! Surprise, j’ai cru que mon navigateur s’était trompé de site.

J’aime beaucoup! C’est chaud et accueillant. Et en plus, les pages archivées gardent l’ancien look. Ça fait longtemps que je pense que les weblogs devraient faire ça. Le look ça fait partie de l’époque, non?

Trip News [en]

By popular request (Anita) here are a few random notes for my English readers about these last weeks.

First of all, exams. They went ok. Results coming on Thursday should not give me any nasty surprises. It’s worth to note that I not only performed satisfactorily, but also almost had a nice time taking them.

Then, the trip. As always, I really enjoyed being in Birmingham and seeing my “adopted” family. The highlight of my stay was the trip to London, going to see Alan Rickman in Private Lives. The play will be showing in Broadway between April and September – if you have a chance to go there, it’s a must see.

Last topic: my dissertation. Let’s say a rough title is Martial Arts as a Spiritual Practice in the Western World. I’m busy hunting for the relevant literature – if you know of anything interesting, feel free to mail me. I’ve put up some stuff in the bookmarks.

Bienvenue! [en]

Un grand bonjour à  tous les visiteurs qui arrivent ici via l’article de Télérama. J’espère que l’endroit vous plaira!

Prenez le temps de faire le tour du site, en particulier la section Ecriture, qui comporte beaucoup de textes en français, et (surtout si l’anglais ne vous rebute pas trop) la section Inde.

Ce site comporte également une page d’accueil en français.

Et finalement, n’oubliez pas de m’envoyer un petit mot pour vous présenter!