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About writing (3)

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Sometimes, when I start writing a comment on a book or a movie, I have no idea what I will be writing. It just comes along, one idea bringing the next and the whole comment is slowly taking form. Sometime, I have a pretty clear idea of what I want to say and I have to make a plan, a structure, detailing the basic elements of each idea or concept I want to cover in order not to loose the tread of my thoughts (which happens sometime if I wait too long before putting it down on paper or on the computer).

I don’t have a good memory, I usually don’t remember much about a book I’ve just read or a movie I’ve just watched after a little while. When I want to remember, I just read what I’ve written about it. In fact, that’s one of the reason I write.

Sometime, when I don’t know what to say about a book or a movie, I just sleep over it and it usually helps a lot. But I must not wait too long to write after that. If not I might just end up with some sketchy notes and not much substance…

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About writing (2)

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Strangely, the more touched I am by a book or a movie, the more difficult it is to write about it. It seems easier to write about something I didn’t like so much… Maybe I am so overwhelmed that I just can’t organize the zillion things that I want to say. Or maybe I am just afraid to mess up something that I really like. I don’t know. I just find this strange…

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About writing

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I realized recently that the best way to gather my thoughts in order to write a comment on a movie or a book (or any text) is to go take a poop or a shower right after viewing or reading. That’s when my mind gets freed from the daily drone and works better. It is also the case when I write early in the morning, when my mind is fresh from its nightly clean up and simulation.

They say that, in order to improve your writing, you must write at least a thousand words per day. I just can’t do that because, with my hellish job, I come back home at night completely exhausted and my mind is functioning just enough to eat, crash on the couch and watch TV… However, I have noticed that if I write regularly, the writing come easier to me and the result is generally more satisfying. I just have to keep going… I’ll do that thousand-word-a-day thing on the week-ends or, more likely, when I am retired (now in about only three-thousand-two-hundred-and-five days !!!)…

(Note: this blog entry is 194 words, so that means 806 words to go for today !)

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In liberfacies

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Against Facebook

I am really getting fed up with Facebook. It is an exceedingly time-consuming activity (chronophagios) that really gives little rewards — I means besides watching cat videos and stalking (um, I means, keeping in contact with) friends. More and more it has become the kingdom of fake news, as people constantly pass their expressed opinions as news (or as news-worthy).

Not only Facebook is doing very little to prevent foreign agencies to try to influence our minds through fake posting or advertising but, at the same time, they block legitimate ads from museums around the world because it is deemed offensive or subversive ! Incredible! How comes a bunch a geeks who know so little about the world become arbiters of morality and political decency ? They’re such a great influence over our minds (and our children’s minds) and yet, there is no one to oversee their policies? Inacceptable!

Of course, I would not be so inflamed by their ignominious policies if I would not have been touched personally by it. I am busy and I don’t have time to post on my blog, on Facebook, on Tweeter, on Instagram, etc. So I concentrate on what’s the most important to me (the medium that I can control the most) — my blog — and I just automatically repeat each (or most) post on the other social media to increase diffusion of my art and thoughts. However, a recent change in policies brought by Facebook is blocking this automatic reposting! What? They let the Russian pass through but they block my book reviews and cats’ pictures?! That’s unconscionable !

That I learned recently from a WordPress email:

“Starting August 1, 2018, third-party tools can no longer share posts automatically to Facebook Profiles. This includes Publicize, the WordPress.com tool that connects your site to major social media platforms (like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook).”

They explain that if my content is linked to a Facebook Profile (a personal account), then Publicize will no longer be able to share my posts to Facebook, but it will still work if it’s a Facebook Page (public profiles allowing “artists, public figures, businesses, brands, organizations and nonprofits connect with their fans or customers”) that is connected to my site. I have only two options if I still want my Facebook followers to see my posts : create a link manually or convert my Facebook Profile to a Page ! They continue:

While Facebook says it is introducing this change to improve their platform and prevent the misuse of personal profiles, we believe that eliminating cross-posting from WordPress is another step back in Facebook’s support of the open web, especially since it affects people’s ability to interact with their network (unless they’re willing to pay for visibility) We know that this might cause a disruption in the way you and your Facebook followers interact, and if you’d like to share your concerns with Facebook, we urge you to head to their Help Community to speak out.

Damn you Facebook! Improving your platform? You means improving your profits by making changes that would favour the commercial use of your application! What about the users, the people who made your product famous (and create its value) ? Oh, yes, that’s true: since we know that WE are your product it is getting more difficult to fleece us, so you reorient your business model!

So, if you were wondering why I am posting very little on Facebook lately, well, that’s the reason. Now, I will probably share my posts manually for a while (for the most important entries) and maybe consider to eventually create a Page, but I am also quite seriously considering withdrawing completely from Facebook…

What do you think about that? (please comment)

And don’t hesitate to let Facebook know what I think of their stupid policies!

(note: the title is in latin)

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Interviews

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I recently stumbled on a couple of interviews I did in 2003-2004 when I was editor-in-chief for a magazine dedicated to Japanese popular culture (mostly anime and manga). It is strange to reminisce about this period of my life but I thought it would be amusing to share them with you here.

The first interview was done online with a couple of high-school students for a school assignment. It was done in French but I also translated it in English :

The second one was done with Fred Patten for an article in Comics Buyer’s Guide :

 

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My works

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I am at that time in my life when you start asking yourself “okay, what have I accomplished?” Then you realize you haven’t done much.

So, to encourage myself, I started building a bibliography of my works. When you have a little idea of what you’ve done (even if it’s not much), you can better plan what’s left to do (and try not to write the same article twice, like a recently did!).

Recently, I have also created an index of the reviews I wrote for this blog to make it easier to navigate for the readers. Hopefully, it will facilitate searching for a subject or a title.

Here they are:

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Index of book reviews

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Warning!

This blog was hit by a couple of catastrophes in 2017 that broke many image links and introduced malicious lines of code that have now been neutralized but are still  disfiguring many older entries of the blog.

Please bear with us while we are undergoing the  long process of repairing the blog! The most important part of this blog is still there — the words to read and the ideas to share — but the aesthetic of the presentation has unfortunately suffered.

Thank you for your understanding and support!

— clodjee   

This is an index of all the book reviews of this blog. They are listed in alphabetical order of the titles, followed by the date the review was written and the type of book. The list is updated regularly.

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Index of movies & TV series reviews

/ Clodjee / 2 Comments

Warning!

This blog was hit by a couple of catastrophes in 2017 that broke many image links and introduced malicious lines of code that have now been neutralized but are still  disfiguring many older entries of the blog.

Please bear with us while we are undergoing the  long process of repairing the blog! The most important part of this blog is still there — the words to read and the ideas to share — but the aesthetic of the presentation has unfortunately suffered.

Thank you for your understanding and support!

— clodjee   

This is an index of all the movie & TV series reviews of this blog. They are listed in alphabetical order of the titles, followed by the date the review was written and the category / tag of the review. It is updated regularly.

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The Controversial Art of Reviewing

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Last September I wrote an essay on the “Subtile art of writing a review/commentary” (in French, but it is also available in a machine-translated English version). It is an essay I wanted to write for a long time, explaining how I was approaching the writing of a book or movie review — which I did for twenty years for a magazine. The funny thing is that I discovered a few weeks ago that I had already written that article in 2009 (in English) and forgot about it! I was checking out some old hard drives looking for something and stumble upon this article that I had written for a special issue (PAX #3) of the magazine I was working for, but we stop publication before it was released. It is based on the guidelines I wrote for our staff writers. My views on how to write a review have not change much since then. I thought it would be interesting to share it with the readers of this blog.

Reviewing a media product (wether it is a book, a manga, an anime series or a live-action movie) might seems an easy task, but in reality it is far from being simple. In fact, we are all doing it when we express an opinion to friends, but it is usually done in an emotional and very imprecise manner: “it was so bad, man” or “it was really cool.” In opposition, a professional reviewer—someone who does it for a living—must do his/her best to remain objective, precise and rigorous.

I admit that, if I always try to be an objective and precise reviewer, I am rarely rigorous. I am lazy and tend to keep my reviews short, introducing the subject and expressing my opinion in the most elementary manner. Today everybody is a critic as they can easily post what they think of this or that on their blog , but what makes the appraisal of a professional reviewer more interesting and valuable is experience. I’ve spent about two decades watching videos or films and reading books related to the subjects I review. I have therefore developped a methodology to assess the subject, an understanding of its workings and a set of criteria that—I hope—better equip me to examine and judge a particular media product.

In this article I have attempted to explain how I approach the writing of a review, what I think a review should be and what aspects of a medium I take in consideration when writing a review. I wanted to talked about this for a long time as I think it can offer interesting insights to both our readers and would-be reviewers.

First, there is two types of reviews: the basic or elementary review (the one I tend to favour) and the exhaustive review.

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2017 in books

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Readings2017chartThis year I have met my objective of reading twenty-five books (thanks to Goodreads Reading Challenge for keeping track). Unfortunately, of this number four were periodicals, I lost interest and stopped reading for four more and the rest (seventeen) was all mangas or comics! If I check my Goodreads stats, I’ve done better before. Therefore, one of my greatest wishes for 2018 will be to READ MORE! I’ll do my best and try to double down by pledging to read at least fifty books for 2018!

My best readings for 2017 were:

The other books I read and commented were:

I have many more books on my to-read pile (including some great novels) but I just have to find (or make) the time to read them! In the meantimes, I suggest to you the list of the Best Book Review Blogs of 2017 according to Reedsy and another list of book reviews blogs from WordPress. Hopefully, mine will figure in some of those lists one day (and maybe I could start receiving tons of review copies like in the good old days!). What about YOUR readings ?

Blog transfer almost complete

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wordpress-logo-notext-rgbThe transfer of my blog clodjee.com hosted by internic.ca to an hosting by wordpress.com is almost completed. I’ve cancelled the hosting package on internic.ca, setup the DNS for wordpress and registered the main domain name to be mapped by wordpress. The domain is still managed on internic.ca but I’ll transfer it later this year when it is about to expire. All the changes should be effective within about twenty-four hours. So, soon any address requests to clodjee.com should be redirected here! The only thing left to do will be to repair any media or text links that has been broken by the change (and to finish repairing all the damage done by the hack a few months ago…). After that, I am free to concentrate on producing content and, from there, the sky is the limit!

I have literally hundreds and hundreds of ideas for new contents and articles for this blog. So, please keep coming back to see what new pictures or articles or reviews I have posted. I’ll try to update the blog several times per week (ideally it should be daily but that would not be realistic for me right now). See you in the blogosphere!

Do not adjust your set

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Do_Not_Ajust_your_set-DSCF0842This blog is still under construction!

However, I am getting pretty satisfied (for now) with the look. All that remains to do is changing the old links to pages of the previous blog or to images still hosted on the previous blog. When that is done, I’ll be able to kill the old blog and redirect the domain here (and thus regaining better traffic, because lately it has been abysmal!). Just bear with me a little more: the end is close!

In the meantime, let me know what you think.

Most (young) people won’t know what this picture is. It reminds me of my youth, when the television wasn’t transmitting inanities 24/7…

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Blog update

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wordpress-logo-notext-rgbThe set up of this blog is progressing. I have finalized the choice and adjustments for the theme (Hemingway Rewritten). Now, I just have to change the reference and picture links still pointing to the old blog and everything will be completed.

From now on, I will be blogging mostly here and will post on the old blog only links forwarding the readers to the new localisation.

In the meantime, bear with me and let me know what you think of the new blog!

 

Blog move in progress

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Yes, another move. After moving from clodjee.blogspot.ca, we are now transitioning from clodjee.com (a WordPress blog hosted on internic.ca) to clodjee-blog.com (or clodjeeblog.wordpress.com, hosted on wordpress.com). The move was prompted by security problem that compromised the blog and wordpress.com seems to offer better options and security.

wordpress-logo-notext-rgbAlthough it is not that simple: since I cannot keep the same theme, the transfer will require lots of adjustments that make it feel like starting an entirely new blog. So, for now, I will keep both clodjee.com and clodjee-blog.com running concurrently (which will require double posting for a while), but when I’ll be satisfied with this new blog I’ll close the old one and forward the domain here.

Please, bear with me in the meantime !

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design2-1

Blog of my blood

/ Clodjee / 2 Comments

Last week, I discovered that my blog (which I cherish greatly because it has been essential to sustain my soul and my sanity) had been hacked and that malicious code was injected in everyone of my 1500+ posts. It was causing a redirect that crippled the blog, preventing anyone to access it. According to my web host, it was caused by vulnerabilities in the previous version WordPress and, since it was not their fault, they didn’t help much beside offering a few suggestions.

I have removed the malicious script in the last hundred or so posts in order to make the blog functional enough to continue working on it. So, if you click on a link that redirect you to a weird place (or a blank page) you’ll know why.

I’ll try to find an automated way to removed the remaining malicious code or (more likely) I’ll find some time to do it manually. For now, I’ve installed Wordfence to improve security but, obviously, the current hosting doesn’t have much security (and doesn’t care). Therefore I will eventually move the hosting to a better place (the best candidate seems to be wordpress.com, which offers more features and a better price).

To be continued…

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L’art subtil du commentaire-critique

/ Clodjee / 3 Comments

On me demande souvent quels sont les critères que j’utilise quand j’écris des critiques (reviews) de livres ou de films. En fait, j’utilise les même critères que j’ai développé au cours des années alors que j’écrivais des critiques d’abord pour Samizdat (un fanzine de science-fiction et fantastique québécois, 1987-1994) et, par la suite, pour Protoculture Addicts (un magazine sur la culture, le dessin animé et la bande-dessinée japonaise, 1987-2008). J’ai été rédacteur-en-chef pour ce dernier pendant plus d’une vingtaine d’années et ce sont ces même critères auxquels je demandais à mes collaborateurs d’adhérer. Je vais donc profiter de la présente occasion pour vous expliquer un peu comment je procède. Et je suggère à quiconque qui désire écrire des critiques de suivre ces quelques lignes directrices.

J’aimerais d’abord définir la critique comme étant un simple commentaire et non pas une critique analytique. Cette dernière cherche à étudier, en profondeur, les moindres aspects d’une oeuvre: les motivations des personnages, les choix narratifs, le message de l’auteur, etc. Une simple critique, quant à elle, n’est qu’un commentaire qui se veut ni objectif, ni constructif, ni négatif : c’est juste une opinion, un ressenti, que l’on exprime. On aime ou on aime pas, et on tente d’expliquer pourquoi, en décortiquant brièvement les impressions que l’oeuvre nous a laissé.

Je préfère d’ailleurs parler de “commentaire” et non de “critique” car ce dernier terme fait plus pompeux et peut aisément être confondu avec son cousin analytique. Un commentaire donne une impression plus modeste. On ne cherche pas a donner de leçon mais simplement à dire ce qu’on en pense. Dans le cas d’un livre, on pourrait parler de commentaire de lecture mais comme on peut commenter aussi des documents audio-visuels (des BD ou des manga, des films (vu au cinéma, en Dvd, ou Blu-ray), ou même de la musique (concert, CD)) je préfère m’en tenir simplement à “commentaire.” Bien sûr, l’approche sera un peu différente selon le type d’ouvrage  que l’on commente (livre, cinéma, musique).

Une autre question que j’entend parfois c’est “pourquoi se donner la peine de faire un commentaire” alors que l’on pourrait bien se contenter d’apprécier une oeuvre pour ce qu’elle est sans trop se poser de question. Je dois avouer que pour moi c’est plus une déformation professionnelle. J’ai écrit tellement de commentaires pour les publications pour lesquelles je travaillais que maintenant je ne peux pas m’empêcher d’analyser et de penser à ce que je ressens au fur et à mesure que je progresse dans le livre que je lis ou dans le film que je visionne. Et tant qu’à avoir des idées ou des opinions, pourquoi ne pas les partager? Car la raison fondamentale d’un commentaire c’est cela: partager ses coups de coeur (ou de foudre!), son amour (ou parfois son aversion) pour une oeuvre, ou simplement donner son opinion. Parfois, aussi, il s’agit de vouloir aider les autres à comprendre et à mieux apprécier une oeuvre ou, tout au moins, à partager la façon dont nous percevons une oeuvre (à travers le prisme de nos expériences personnelles, de notre savoir, de notre vécu). Si nous sommes passionné par un sujet, il est tout naturel de vouloir partager cette passion. Le lecteur (du commentaire) en fera bien ce qu’il veut…

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References

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I am putting under the Category “References” all the posts that are more articles then quick blurb on my principal subjects of interest (like anime & manga, literature, etc.). This will includes my own Bibliography, the Essential anime- & manga-related bibliography that I have compiled over the years, and my (still incomplete) article on the various genres and sub-genres of literature.

Of course, those articles would probably fit better as “pages” rather than “posts”, but since they were created as posts (and I couldn’t find a way to convert them) I decided to keep them that way. Future articles will probably be formated as pages.

Also, since this is a crucial part of this blog, this category will have its own set of sub-menu.

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Back after a brief glitch

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For most of the week I have been unable to access my own blog!

At first I thought that it was a problem with the web hosting, but — as soon as I had time, today — I checked with them and everything was fine on their side. After performing a few tests (whatismyip.com, www.isitdownrightnow.com, downforeveryoneorjustme.com or trying to log through a proxy like megaproxy.com) and trying to log with other browsers (like Firefox or Explorer instead of Safari — without success) or through my iPhone or my sister wifi (it worked in both case) I finally realized that it was Bell’s internet that was blocking me (Dog, I hate Bell: their TV service is so beautiful but everything internet or wifi is so shitty!). My website itself was not blocked. It was my access to the website that was somewhat cut. I tried a few things and finally tried to simply reset Bell’s marvelously buggy Home Hub 3000 internet router. It worked!

Sorry for this brief interruption. We can now resume our regular programming: I can continue to update and adjust my blog.

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Blog update

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My new beginning on WordPress is now completed. From now on this will be my only blog (but the Blogger version will continue to exist without any future update).

I have imported here all the posts of the previous blog. Now I only have to tweak each post (adjust the formatting,  correct the categories & tags) and add the proper image links (which were previously screwed by Dropbox)… for all the 1300+ posts! Continue to bear with me because this will take a while…

I just hope that all my followers will continue to read me here. I promise that once the reformatting issue is solved I’ll write more and produce an improved and better blog!

A new beginning

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I am in the process of switching my blog from Blogger to WordPress. This will happen in three phases:

Learning :  during that phase not much will happen here and I will continue to blog mostly on blogger (http://clodjee.blogspot.ca). I’ll post here only to experiment with WordPress settings and features in order to learn how it works.

Transfer : while I slowly transfer the whole blog to this new site I will probably continue to blog on both sites.

Finalized : when the transfer phase is completed I will blog only on this new site.

I have no idea how long each phase will take. Please bear with me for the duration of this process.

Thank you!

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Screwed by Dropbox

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You are wondering why there are no longer pictures in this blog?

Simple: most pictures were hosted on Dropbox and “As of March 15, 2017 the Public folder in your Dropbox account has been converted into a standard folder. By default this folder is private to your account. (…) If you’re a Basic user, and you created a website that directly displays HTML content from your Dropbox account, it will no longer render in the browser.”

Of course, for a while, it would continue to work if your are Dropbox Pro or Plus users (at minimum $129 per year). It is tantamount to legal ransomware!

I thought that re-doing a share link individually for each picture (for all my 1345 posts !) could solve the problem but a quick test was a failure. I don’t have much time to dedicate to this right now (having spent the last week and half working hard to prepare for my mother’s funerals, which is later today). I’ll try to contact Dropbox later, but for now it will remain that way.

I’ll try to figure out an alternative solution as soon as possible. Anyway, I was thinking of switching to a WordPress blog with a web hosting professional company that will also locally host the files. That would solve the problem but will also take time to implement. We’ll see.

I apologize profoundly for the actual state of my blog. But keep reading, it’s the words that count.

Update: another quick test (at the suggestion of this guy) made me realize that I can host images with Blogger itself, although I don’t know the limitation in space or bandwidth. I’ll probably just do that for the most important or recent posts while I prepare for a more permanent solution.

Update 2: Of course, I can also use Flickr to temporarily host the images. At least, there, the limit is known (1 Tb of which I am currently using only 0.4%). I might use a little of both methods, but no matter what it will be time-consuming and a hassle. Argh! I hate Dropbox for dropping this on me at a time like this!

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Lonely Bloggers

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University of Calgary professor Michael Keren’s book Blogosphere: The New Political Arena says that bloggers are lonely and isolated people. He also adds that bloggers see themselves as rebels against the mundane society, but since their writings receive limited exposure on the internet, he compares them to Don Quixote.

His comments generated lots of reaction. I guess I agree with him on some points. Many personal bloggers are lonely people, and they throw their daily life-capsule in the internet like someone would throw a bottle in the sea. I consider myself in that category. I work at home, my little safe haven, and I barely see anyone beside my wife. I feel lonely, but I know that my weblog’s comments won’t be read by many. It’s like writing a journal and leaving it in plain view, in hope that someone will dare to read it.

However, many blogs go beyond a personal purpose: companies’ blogs serve as information hub, some organization set up blogs to gather volunteer or raise funds, many do political commentary. Also, some blogs can become very popular and be read by lots of people… Keren’s comment definitely doesn’t apply to those.

Source: The Gazette, Montreal, 1/31/07 A1-2. See also here and there.