social media | these things i have found

It’s been more than a year since I last posted and then abandoned the wordpress suburbs for the new and wild jungles of tumblr. While the safari was fun, tumblr (for me at least) is not suitable for long form text. You can see a semi-successful attempt here at the travel blog. Which in reality is a photo travel blog or more specifically a food photo travel blog. In the course of my recent travels, one of the many things I have learned is that the wifi connection is never as good as you hope and uploading photos or posting long text is a time suck. And so with my handy little tumblr app, it was easier to take and post photos all on my iphone with little commentary. Looking back at the France trip and now the South East Asia trip I almost prefer the simplicity of a single photo and caption. For me the minimalism evokes greater sensory recall. Pour moi ca marche.

But now I have come back to wordpress. I actually lost the blog; I forgot the name and hadn’t bookmarked the login. In finding it again I’ve reread old posts and have decided they weren’t all that bad. It’s strange that I’m in a completely different place than that girl of a year ago but I still have this need to collect my internet findings. I attempted to do that at tumblr but all it is a smattering of images on a page. Here the minimalism doesn’t work for me and I feel that this presentation of my curation requires more context. And so I’m thinking of reviving the blog. Yes, this one. I suppose tumblr can act as a sort of farm team. ps. I’ve changed the name from wtfalia to the more classic sounding Arts & Crafts & Internet.

So what’s new in alia world? Well lots but for now I only give you one. I am crazy obsessed with this song. It is the theoretical love child of Peter Gabriel and Fleetwood Mac if that child was born in Belgium and grew up in Australia. I am also into guest artist Kimbra’s new album Vows. Specifically; Settle Down and Cameo Lover (check out those music videos too! Artsy!).

Also (ha! I lied. I give you two!) since I’ve found my library card I’ve been reading comics again. I will probably write a post about The Fountain on its own because I think it has some interesting aspects about storytelling and filmmaking. For now please enjoy Friends With Boys by Faith Erin Hicks (creator of Demonology 101, a nice cross between Buffy and Harry Potter and one of the first webcomics I ever read) and the current run of three panel comics that Warren Ellis is running on his blog. Also: Annie Wu.

I totally lied! It has been more than twenty days. Blogging promise fail. Tomorrow is the first day of my post-grad internships and last week was moving the majority of my life from London back to Toronto. I’m living out of boxes in my own home. It’s odd. Anyway more exciting things to come in the future. I started writing a big post but life got in the way. It will definitely be published after this post and is all about travel. Fun, yes?

Also, in the past week I’ve been to the dentist, doctors, optometrist and chiropractor. I have to get all my check ups before I’m no longer covered on my parent’s life insurance. Note to self: find job with benefits. At the optometrist I’ve learned that I have ‘steep’ eyeballs. This means specialized contacts. Hurray for me! My brother thinks I should just get laser eyes (lasik) but I kind of like my glasses. It may be more expensive but I like sometimes wearing glasses and sometimes wearing contacts. In the end I may not have a choice. We’ll see…

Eddy was announced a few days ago. It captures twitter data and publishes it possibly by data visuals. This could be interesting. Related: the Library of Congress will now archive tweets. Tweets are seemingly becoming more permanent or at least less fleeting.

Leonard Nimoy does photography.