Acum cateva zile mi-am amintit de el si am zis sa mai arunc o privire. Uitasem pentru ce producator auto era, asa ca am cautat Citroen, stiind ca Citroen au masinile (Citroen C4) cu acoperis panoramic de ceva vreme. Nu am reusit sa gasesc, pana la urma mi-am amintit ca numele afisului continea cuvantul “skydiver”. Am fost uimit cand am descoperit ca acel afis nu avea legatura cu Citroen, ci cu Skoda.

Printul de mai sus m-a dus prima data cu gandul la siguranta masinii si la cat de bine absorb scaunele socurile, nicidecum la un acoperis panoramic. Am continuat sa ma uit si la celelalte afise – seria incepe cu afisul “Human cannonball“-, sperand sa ma lamureasca ele.

Dureaza mult sa intelegi ce mesaj vor sa transmita print-urile, iar numele masinii nu iti ramane intiparit in minte din prima, trebuie sa revezi afisele. Merg pe ideea ca poate nu ma incadrez in publicul tinta, de-asta nu ma prind…

In timp ce ma uitam la afise, au aparut urmatoarele intrebari, poate la fel de “suprarealiste” ca afisele:

• Nu inteleg daca prezinta un avantaj sau un dezavantaj al masinii. Cat de rezistenta e masina?
• Ce cauta acele persoane acolo?! Daca au picat in masina, ar trebui sa fie cioburi pe undeva. Sau masina e atat de panoramica incat pica din acoperisul ei aceste personaje?
• Functioneaza ca un portal, teleportand omul-ghiulea, parasutistul, alpinistul si spalatorul de geamuri pe bancheta din spate a masinii?

Tweet

Am citit din nou din cartea “Copywriting” a lui Mark Shaw. Am inceput sa am un ritual pe care il execut din cand in cand. Iau cartea si citesc bucatele din ea pe care le intorc pe toate partile, le verific, incerc sa le demontez sau sa amplific puterea ideilor din spatele lor. Tot citind cartea asta, mi-am dat seama ca oamenii care ajung sa lucreze in publicitate au o obsesie pentru verbul “a crea”. Vor sa creeze. Vor sa isi lase amprenta asupra lumii. Poate suna un pic exagerat, dar nu este deloc asa.

Diane Ruggie, intervievata in aceasta carte spune ca a fost intotdeauna interesata de puterea cuvintelor si si-a dorit sa lucreze cu ele intr-un fel sau altul. Aceasta dorinta a aparut cand a descoperit ideea ca literele alfabetului pot fi aranjate in diferite feluri si face oamenii sa rada, planga, sa se roage sau sa injure. Cuvintele bine alese pot starni emotii. Daca stii cum sa intorci acest lucru in favoarea ta, vei fi foarte incantat de rezultate. Mutand acest lucru in lumea online, cat de eficiente mai sunt cuvintele? Mai sunt oamenii atinsi de cuvinte bine aranjate, de expresii care ar fi trezit de obicei amintiri sau i-ar fi facut sa priveasca increzatori spre viitor?

Atentia pe internet s-a micsorat foarte mult, iar textele de mari dimensiuni sunt “scanate” cu privirea dupa ceva interesant. Arunc vina pe ideea de multi-tasking online. Oamenii incearca sa faca mai multe lucruri in acelasi timp: citesc un blog, isi verifica emailul, scriu pe Twitter, se uita la poze pe Facebook, etc.  De aici cred ca s-au nascut si articolele sub forma de lista, astfel incat cititorul sa ia informatia care-l intereseaza cat mai rapid. Acesta este un mod superficial de a afla ceva nou sau pur si simplu citi ceva. In mintea unui utilizator va fi o invalmaseala de informatii datorita acestui stil de informare/scriere/orice-altceva. Cu greu isi va aminti de unde a aflat un lucru si daca acesta este corect.

As vrea sa vad care este directia in care se va merge in urmatorii ani. Cat de mult vor mai conta cuvintele; vor mai avea importanta pe care o aveau cu 10-20 de ani in urma?

Tweet

The worst decision you can make when choosing from this ocean of social services is to use a service just because “everyone’s on it” and it’s cool. If you are choosing a service, analyse the advantages it can offer you and then decide if it’s worth it.

These should be the main questions you should ask yourself when signing up:

• Why should I create an account on “New Social Network X“?
• What are the advantages of this service?
• How can it help me?
• How will it affect my online privacy?

I might sound a little bit paranoid, but you should have a look (at least a shallow one) through the terms and conditions of every service you sign up on. The reasons are pretty clear if you care about your privacy. Sometimes a service is “free” because you’re letting its owners to scoop through your stuff.

I’ve created a Twitter account in 2007, but I haven’t used it intensively until 2008. At first, I considered it a big waste of time (unfortunately, it still is but I’ve learned how to filter out what I dislike) and posted only a few tweets monthly. For example, I have an account on Facebook. I rarely use it because I don’t see how a Facebook account can help me, as a person, with anything. I have a few friends there, mainly persons that I met in real life, and some strangers who I will probably never meet. I admit the fact that I created a Facebook account just because everyone was there.

I also have an account on Last.fm. I love music, so the main reason for creating this account was to discover new artists and bands. It’s also great for finding out what concerts are taking place in my area, and I even met some persons with similar music tastes.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, you should always ask yourself if a service could help you on the long run (from points of view like meeting people, new job opportunities, entertainment, etc.) and take action accordingly.

The plugin gives you a few possibilities to embed tweets. The most easy to use is to take the complete URL of a tweet and paste it into your blog post. I added the following two tweets by using the complete URL and the id of the tweets.

Here are two embedded tweets from my timeline:

A tweet in Romanian:

And one in English:

I used [blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/danielvoicu/status/14483309763"] for the first tweet and for the second I used [blackbirdpie id="14439778971"].

When you use these commands, you will notice that the plugin creates custom fields. You can edit them afterwards. I didn’t edit the first tweet just to show you the plugin has a small issue when it comes to special characters, in this case some Romanian letters.

You can find the plugin here, and if you want to read more about it, visit the developer’s site.

So, here’s what I did:

I found my user and group id by typing “id” into a terminal, as I needed them later for adding them to fstab. Most of the tutorials or help manuals suggested using the name of the server from your local network. It didn’t work this way. So I had an idea: to use the IP instead of the server name. It came after seeing this forum thread, which I found after looking for the CIFS VFS: cifs_mount failed w/return code = -22 error on the web. I could see the most recent system errors by typing into a terminal

dmesg | tail

The next step was to modify /etc/fstab. I did it by using gedit as root, using sudo gedit /etc/fstab.

I added the following line to /etc/fstab:

//192.168.0.65/privatefolder /media/servfolder cifs username=xxxxx,password=yyyyyy,uid=1000,gid=1000 0 0

The final step was to type:

sudo mount -a

and I had the shares mounted permanently. I gave up on using another file for storing the credentials, as I am the only user of this computer and I don’t think I’m going to face any hacking threats soon.

So I asked for help through the almighty Google. I found this wiki page, this forum thread and this help page. The help page is the hardest to understand. It looks like it was written by geeks for geeks. It seems that the open source community hasn’t yet learned a valuable lesson: not everyone has your experience when it comes to configuring servers, writing bash scripts or whatever.

Short facts about writing on the web:

1. Twitter – None of your tweets will be remembered in a few days. On Twitter, everyone seems to have ADHD and a short attention span, including me.

2. Tumblr - Everyone’s busy to reblog others, you’ll probably receive a few “likes” for something you wrote but you’ll remain just another Tumblr user.

3. Your blog – This is probably the place where content lives a longer life, as you have more control over it than on Twitter and Tumblr.

4. Facebook – Uhm, why am I talking about Facebook? There’s no writing there!

Everything on the web is ephemeral. Use pen and paper for your most important things and use the web as a backup solution. Keep what you write on a service like Zoho, just in case you lose your notebook.

Here’s the presentation. I hope you’re going to find it useful:

2010. This year looks so Sci-Fi when you write it down. Just try it for a few times. Write 2010, 2010, 2010. Now, if you lived sometime around the 40s-50s or even the 60s, you would’ve imagined that in 2010 flying cars or those flying personal shuttles like the Jetsons had would exist.

So, what do we have now? We’re not making any real progresses. We’ve made only really small steps, steps that seem to show up mostly online. We’re living our lives connected, online, sharing everything. We *HAVE* to be connected. Just that and nothing else.

Exactly 100 years ago, in 1910, Edison demonstrated the first talking motion picture. You can have a look here. Chemotherapy was born in the same year. Wow, two major things at the beginning of a century. Interesting, isn’t it?

These are just two things that happened 100 years ago. We’re in 2010 and we get excited when Google launches Google Buzz or when Steve Jobs presents the iPad. We surely are on the wrong track. Let’s hope that this decade will bring its geniuses up front.

Unora le este foarte ușor să scrie despre absolut orice și chiar să pară că se pricep la lucrurile despre care vorbesc. Mie mi-este greu să vorbesc pe lângă subiect – și, uneori, să vorbesc despre ceva la care mă pricep -, ceea ce mă duce la o altă problemă: mi-e un pic greu să-mi expun părerile. Pot scrie foarte ușor când este vorba să inventez ceva, dar mă încurc când trebuie să vorbesc despre un subiect dat. Mi-e frică să nu scriu vreo tâmpenie. Cu alte cuvinte, mi-e frică de ridicol. In cel mai rău caz, stau și mă gândesc prea mult ca apoi să nu mai acționez în niciun fel.

Așa că vin și cer ajutorul persoanelor care scriu des – și bine – pe blogurile proprii: cum reușiți să lăsați temerile deoparte și să scrieți exact ce vreți, oricând vă doriți?