mandarine

I write long posts. When I want to make a difficult point, I often need to walk the reader down a long path. Sometimes, the proof could be written with fewer words, but it would be inedible dehydrated logic. Naked skeletons of ideas are more appealing if I can put some flesh around them.

Yet long posts take a long time to read, and this can deter readers. I resent this, but I am myself the perfect example: I seldom have more than half an hour before me when I want to keep up with blogs I like, and I systematically put aside posts I think will take me too much time to read. [more]

I knew fidelity would pay. My hosting service has finally fixed the hosting server (so it seems) (until next time). [more]

When I was young, I used to read in only one place: my bed — occasionally the public library.
And I used to read only one book at a time. Single-task reading seemed the only reasonable practice.

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Try to imagine Jane Austen, Friedrich Nietzsche, or Victor Hugo starting a new work: perhaps they would choose a special handwriting style, they would order a special paper format, they would bind it with the best leather and thread. Then they’d start writing, [more]

After this third blogging mensiversary, I believe I have steadied my posting pace, patterns and policy. I may as well make it an official feature of the mandarine blog, so that you know what to expect. And now that I know that you know what to expect, it will be a strong motivation for me to keep up.

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A new technology is slowly but surely gnawing at the marketshare of e-books. P-books, now distributed by many traditional publishing companies (under a license from inventor Goodmount Inc., Streetburg, AL), openly aim at seducing and bringing e-book readers over to the other side, with an outrageous number of claims in terms of technological superiority and innovation. I have taken some time to actually compare [more]

I apologize to all readers for the possible random ‘500 internal server error’ messages and sluggish behaviour of my hosting service (free.fr). It seems to happen mostly between 7 and 9 pm french time (peak traffic for the hosting service ?). As service quality tends to fluctuate between the various batches of investment, I will give free.fr two to three months’ second-chance. [more]

I recently stumbled upon a nice post by the Literate Kitten who had just finished reading Proust’s ‘Swann’s Way’ (in French: ‘Du Côté de Chez Swann’):

I learned that I can take on a challenging read, even when working at a challenging job. I learned that a few pages each evening, regularly read, do miraculously add up. I learned that I bring a certain element of unique reading to a great book. And, perhaps most importantly, I learned I could again be excited, down to tips of my marrowed-bones and quiver of my soul, about words.

Update: and another great post by Dorothy:

I’ve been reading in small chunks of about 10 pages or so, and read about 50 pages a week. For me, that’s the perfect way to read it; regularly enough to keep the story and ideas fresh in my mind, but at a slow enough pace to absorb it and to keep from feeling bogged down. This is most definitely not a book to rush.

Golden honey and warm milk

I had meant to start reading Proust’s books ever since I was fifteen. [more]

Brothers and sisters, I know it’s summertime and that some of us have been indulging in guilty light movie-watching. Some like myself probably went as low as to set their hearts on ‘Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Man’s Chest’. Allow me to suggest a painless way to redemption: [more]

Although a faithful participant to Lorelle’s blogging challenge, I was contemplating skipping the latest challenge, because I am really not that brilliant at tampering with Wordpress.

Your Blogging Challenge this week is to write a WordPress Tip. It doesn’t have to be complicated, and it doesn’t have to be programming-code-from-hell technical, but it could if you are into such things.

And again, I finally realised that although they were slightly off-topic, I probably had original working habits that I might share. So, let us share.

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