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Since dedicating myself to this blog again, I’m constantly playing around with it, adding features, changing the looks and working on new ideas. Reading Marcel’s thoughts on WordPress and Tumblr made all kinds of question pop up in my head: Why am I still sticking with my blog system? Out of habit? Because it’s still the best? And what do I really want from it?

At some point, using someone else’s system for content management became inevitable and after some fooling around with Greymatter ages ago (those were the days!) I went for WordPress and never looked back. It provided the engine which I used for my purposes and I added the looks. Coming from a scene where construction kit websites were frowned upon and owning a top level domain made you part of the cool kids , this was quite a big change of paradigm. It’s still somewhere in the back of my head. To this day I’m having a hard time imagining giving away the independence of having more or less full control over my website. Having someone else host and maintain it and solely provide me with a login and template access? It just isn’t the real thing.

I’m going to ignore Blogspot and WordPress.com here, they only provided blogs for everyone, but the rise of platforms like Tumblr is slowly changing the perception of blogging and connecting online. It’s easier to follow websites you want to read – you only need an account and new posts will show up on your dashboard. It’s easier to share and reply, no comments, no via’s, no trackbacks, just one click. It’s easier to publish – you select the type of content, from image to quote or simple text post and upload it. And by publishing all content in one place, your blog becomes a mood board, a mix of micro and macro, of everything that’s you and the perfect representation of yourself online. Actually, this is all we ever wanted. We were just lacking the possibilities back then.

This has been one of many ideas I had in mind when I created this theme a while ago. My main aim was to keep the layout as simple as possible, yet leave an option to at least distinguish between three different types of posts: regular text or image posts, quotes and status updates. In times of Twitter and Facebook the status update feature might seem redundant, but I like covering everything with my blog and being able to read it as one coherent piece later. I guess it’s that “mood board” aspect that has been fascinating me for a while now.

For now, I am going to stick with what I have, knowing that I am not dependent on any system and that there’s no need to give anything away if I don’t want to. I don’t use WordPress because I can’t build a website, I use it to help me manage one and it’s doing a great job. External platforms are not only adding new possibilities, they also take away a lot of effort we used to put into our websites. We develop new technologies and amputate ourselves at the same time (hello McLuhan!) – a blessing and a curse, if you will.

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Oh the luxury problems we have these days. The internet is so huge we can’t grasp it and everyday we’re flooded with inspiration that inspires us to do what? Well, nothing most of the time. Still we hold on to it, collect it, share it until we get to a point where it all becomes too much. I tidied up my computer the other day and what I found there was insane: countless folders with images and text files, inspirations and loads of snippets, bookmarks and everything else I saved because I thought I’d be able to use it later. Of course I didn’t, it just kept piling up and I forgot about it. It’s too much, it’s just too much.

So I started using Evernote, a “virtual memory”, mainly because I love shiny, free apps for my Mac, but also to keep track of all the things I save and collect. All “inspiration” goes straight on Tumblr – photos, quotes, texts and music. Real content goes on this blog, I sometimes use Twitter for random blurbs and if it’s personal or location-based, I put it on Facebook. And if I ever get beyond my apprentice status on Quote.fm I will probably use that for reading recommendations. Wow.

I sometimes feel like simply deleting all of my profiles, stop reading blogs that re-post images & other things and, I don’t know, only read books instead. Escape the overload of inspiration that only clutters our lives instead of actually inspiring us to do things. On the other hand, even if we don’t actually do more, it makes us feel good. It makes us feel better about ourselves and less alone. I guess it’s become such a big part of my online life that I just keep going and ignore the ridiculous fact that in addition to the complex system of sharing things online I now need to come up with another complex system to organise what, how and where I share. So I will give in to my nagging fear of clutter which – according to my friends – has already turned my room into the perfect replication of a mental ward and will either make me go ascetic or insane one day. But I don’t care and I don’t complain. I just need a fucking break.

Well, inspired by all the webdesign talk I decided to give my blog a makeover. It turned out a lot more complex because I just had too much fun playing around with new styles and features, I forgot how much fun it was to make a website, especially my own, and how much of a nerd I really am. In the end I recycled the logo from a very old design of mine from a couple of years ago (the layout was titled “I’ve broken mum’s heart” referring to a newspaper article I used), got rid of all the unnecessary clutter and added a few new – hopefully not too gimmicky – features. I really want to update this blog more frequently (once again, I know) and reading all my old posts from the past year made me realise how much I actually enjoy this.

I’ve never taken part in this before and it’s actually meant to be for German blogs but whatever, here are some recommendations from me as well.

❏ Anneke Koster – Anneke lives in Amsterdam and is not only a friend of mine but also an extremely talented illustrator. She finally has a blog now where she exhibits her work. ❏ Antichristopher – Christopher Landin is one of my favourite photographers at the moment and although I’m not really a photography expert but his photos create a really special atmosphere which I like a lot. ❏ Exceedingly Good Keex – Keex from The Big Pink & Comanechi seems pretty cute and blogs about life on tour, food & music. ❏ Truants – Immy, Janna & a bunch of other cool people write about pounding techno music & other things. ❏ You Are Remarkable – My regular boost of positive energy. let’s wake up & take on the world & at night we can dream ourselves whole. ❏ Other blogs worth mentioning: Sandra Juto, Wolves & Bucks, Frl. Zucker & Polaroid Diary Berlin.

As a little Christmas treat Franzi and me re-launched THE HEADHOOPS today! We have a new layout, tidied the website up a bit, there are new features, new articles and there’s a lot of stuff to come.

Check it out & let us know what you think. Merry Christmas everyone!

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Some things that came to my mind during my time offline. Still have no proper internet at home and the wireless connection I nicked from the neighbourhood got switched off. But I will be back online in a couple of days or so, thanks to O2.

Sometimes I just want to quit. We are addicted to communication. We read blogs, numerous amounts of ramblings on Twitter, we’re always up-to-date what our friends are doing, we know what everyone else is up to, shallow as it may be, and we feel like we’re part of something. In fact we barely talk to anyone. But we’re never alone. We call it communication, we talk, post, like, share, we collect photos, pictures, snippets and quotes, we want to be better than everyone else, we want to be popular. Irrelevant numbers and feedback from irrelevant people make our self-confidence burst, we are someone. We read so much, scan the pages, we don’t have time. We feel good, though, because there’s always someone who listens to us.

Sometimes I just want to quit. I want to delete all my profiles, delete my Twitter account, clean out my feedreader, delete all those useless bookmarks and shut down my websites. Sometimes I feel like nothing of this truly matters, it’s all coming to a dead end somewhere and somehow and giving it up seems the only way to emerge from this self-inflicted isolation. We’re all isolated – only that we’re isolated together. We try to make the best of it, and let’s face it, it’s a fucking lot of fun.

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I got interviewed for the communication science online magazine of my university. You can read it here.

“It’s scary how the way people see you online can be completely different to the person you really are.” – “Why is that so?” Good question. “I guess it’s because we tend to only publish things that we find worth sharing. Which are usually the positive ones. At least that’s what I do.” – “But doesn’t that mean it’s completely superficial?” Silence.

I hesitated for a second, dipping a cookie in my coffee. It felt awkward being the interviewed person this time instead of the interviewer. Daria was an amazing interviewer, although she claimed despite being an aspiring journalist that this was her first interview ever. My answers were nowhere near as good as the question and my mouth got dry from trying to sound like a more or less eloquent communication science student. The medium is the message. * It’s pretty simple.

* Marshall McLuhan now is what Sigmund Freud used to be in my last years of school. A scientist you sneer at until you awkwardly admit that his theory is one of the most accurate things you’ve heard so far.

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After years of using feedreader clients, e-mail programmes, several gadgets for pretty much everything, checking tons of websites on a daily base and being annoyed by webmailers when checking my e-mails from other computers, I decided to switch everything to Google. I still need to figure out if it was a wise move, if it was worth leaving them all my data, well, basically all my online life just like that.

However, it’s not that bad: I’m only using Google Reader (already switched to it a while ago and I love being able to check my feeds from everywhere now, even on my phone), Google Mail (set up as a client for all my addresses) and got myself a nice iGoogle homepage (with Social Networks, news, weather, TV programme and stuff) today. It’s simple, time saving, practically accessible from everywhere and I probably sound like a complete internet retard proclaiming this only now.

But it kinda fits to my recent personality, tidy, ditching everything and just generally being convinced increasing your freedom means decreasing your possessions. I want to get rid of all the unnecessary bits and pieces, be independent from my computer (by making myself dependent on Google, oh well) and combine it all (Josie: “You’re not actually minimalistic cos you don’t want as little as possible. You’re puristic – you want all in one!”). Oh well, that’s me.

I’m this month’s guest blogger for the lifestyle magazine Stylish Kids in Riot! I’m pretty thrilled about it, from now on your can read my articles and random ramblings over there, I hope I’ll do a good job.

You can read my introduction interview here.

I come across so much inspiring stuff everyday and it never feels right to post it here. After all it’s a blog and not just a collection of photos and quotes. People often ask me why I blog, why I even bother publishing things online, why I spend time on doing this. It’s a tough one.

First of all, I like the idea of publishing myself, publishing things myself, just being able to put things in a place for others to read or watch. The internet is huge and has a lot of potential, there’s inspiration out there as well as utter rubbish and noone of us will ever be able to fully comprehend and absorb the giant wilderness that is the online and offline world.

We need to filter it, split it into small bite-sized pieces, make it digestible.

We all act as a filter somehow and we’re looking for others who are doing the same. People who see the world the way we do. Have a completely different view on it. Do inspiring things. Encourage. Live. And share it with others. I guess that’s why I’m doing all this.

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Oh, I created a Tumblr today, by the way. I guess it will be updated frequently from now on since I feel like it’s exactly what I’ve been missing for the past few months.

“The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.”

(Albert Einstein)

A few months ago I installed this Firefox addon called “MeeTimer”. It logs how much time you spend on which websites and is trying to help you to stop procrastinating. Most of the time I forget about it, though, and I just remembered that it was still running. So I decided to face the truth.

1. Bombay clocks, 2. Digital Clock, 3. Sanduhr

I spend a daily average of 2h 35m surfing the internet. To be fair, everyone needs the internet nowadays, I use it to read the news, watch stuff, look things up, study, work, communicate… and it’s just a daily average anyway.

5m of that are spent on searching on Google, I’m online on this site for 21m and on TheHeadhoops for 11m which is alright considering I write all blog posts online in my browser. Moreover I spend 24m on Twitter, 14m on MySpace, 19m on Facebook, 9m on Livejournal, 6m on Last.fm, 5m on StudiVZ, 5m on Flickr and 3m on YouTube.

No big surprise but… wow. There are certainly explainations for everything, I love playing silly Facebook games for instance, read a lot of Livejournal communities, sometimes spend ages writing an article and then don’t check my website for days. Still, it makes you think alot about your daily habits.

Oh, and before you call me a nerd: try it yourself, have MeeTimer running for a couple of months and then check the statistics. I mean, no offence but the fact that you’re reading this blog right now already says a lot about you, haha.

If you, like me for instance, have no clue what to do with your life, David Horvitz provides lots of lovely ideas that he mails out via his mailing list and posts on Tumblr.

For all of 2009 I will send out small texts of simple instructional ideas through the mailing list below. I will also post screenshots of them on this tumblr page. These will not be done everyday, only when i feel like it and have access to the internet. But the attempt will be to do them everyday. You can also receive these in the postal mail.

There’s a lot more here – absolutely inspiring. I also love his philosophy:

DO SOMETHING EVERYDAY, REGARDLESS. NOTHING WILL HAPPEN UNLESS YOU FIRST INITIATE A PROCESS OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. THIS STARTS WITH AN ACTION. REAWAKEN THE POSSIBILITY OF POSSIBILITY. REAWAKEN IT WITH PLAY.

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It’s probably the most pretentious thing in the whole world to register your own name as a domain name but… I just did  it.  I thought I needed some portfolio kinda thing, with some info about me on it, a simple layout and some fancy effects, nothing special…

I present the outcome of it, INESMONTANI.COM.

(I don’t think anyone will ever have problems trying to google me  now. It’s actually kinda creepy, I sometimes have people in my referrer statistics who googled my name – even in quotation marks – and I don’t think there are many people in Germany with my name – as far as I’m concerned I’m the only one.)

Today I moved my blog to a new server. I should have done that a lot earlier but I was always too lazy to update to one of the new hosting packages (my old one from back in 2004 only had 50MB web space). Now I have 2GB (which is still not a lot for today’s standards) and I still need to figure out what to do with it.

I also started a new project, got back to designing some random stuff and re-discovered my love for Helvetica. Well, it’s become more of a slight obsession.

“It’s air, you know. It’s just there. There’s no choice. You have to breathe, so you have to use Helvetica.”

“You can say, ‘I love you,’ in Helvetica. And you can say it with Helvetica Extra Light if you want to be really fancy. Or you can say it with the Extra Bold if it’s really intensive and passionate, you know, and it might work.”