Wheels of Words

Baraka: an extraordinary trip around the world

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Today I want to talk about a film which I have seen recently and which has touched me deeply. I am talking about BARAKA by Ron Fricke, which was released in 1992. Baraka is a non-verbal film, so totally dialogue-free. Additionally, it doesn't have any actors, a plot, or a script. The focus is on the images and the music.

Filmed in 24 countries around the world (eg. Argentina, Brazil, China, Egypt, France, India, Iran, Israel, Japan, Kenya, Nepal, Tanzania, Thailand, Turkey USA and many more) the images show some of the most stunning, but also most disturbing parts of nature and human life: On the one hand, we can admire natural landscapes, volcanoes, water falls, scintillating stars or indigenous people dancing. You can basically indulge in the beauty life has to offer. On the other hand, we see rapid urban life, images of poverty and are witnesses of destruction of nature. The visual power of each and every image is absolutely amazing as well as the detail in every shot.

Having read quite a number of reviews, I know that Baraka is not a film for everyone. While many viewers found the film an exceptional, humbling experience or even a spiritual journey and meditation, some were criticising the lack of dialogue, some found it boring, and for others the images were pretty disturbing at times, which is definitely true. They are thought-provoking images, but at the same time they make us think and talk about the topics they depict, which is a good thing.

Regardless of the many different views, the film was a great experience for me and I hope I can interest others to watch it, too.

If you want to find out more about the film, here's a link to the website:

http://www.spiritofbaraka.com/

An interview with director Ron Fricke can be found on the following page. Fricke, for example, explains why he chose not to include words in his film or what he sought to convey with Baraka:

http://purecinema-celluloid.webs.com/ronfricke.htm

If you have any thoughts about the film that you want to share please feel free to do so!

All the best,

Judith

PS. This image is taken from http://www.spiritofbaraka.com/
© Copyright 2001 - 2011 SpiritOfBaraka.com

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

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2011 is slowly coming to an end and we would like to take this opportunity to wish our blog readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! We know that some of you might not celebrate Christmas, but we want to wish you a wonderful time, too, because we just cannot let this time of year go unnoticed ;)

Appropriate to the occasion Judith included a small clip, taken from the British sitcom “Yes Minister”, one of her favourite British shows. The section shows Sir Humphrey Appleby wishing his MP Jim Hacker Merry Christmas in his very own way. Here's the transcript, hopefully faultless. Judith gave it her best shot ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vShJa6GobFQ

“I wonder if I might crave your momentary indulgence in order to discharge a by no means disagreeable obligation which has, over the years, become more or less established practice within government circles as we approach the terminal period of the year - calendar, of course, not financial - in fact not to put too fine a point on it, Week Fifty-One and submit to you, with all appropriate deference, for your consideration at a convenient juncture, a sincere and sanguine expectation - indeed confidence - indeed one might go so far as to say hope that the aforementioned period may be, at the end of the day, when all relevant factors have been taken into consideration, susceptible to being deemed to be such as to merit a final verdict of having been by no means unsatisfactory in its overall outcome and, in the final analysis, to give grounds for being judged on mature reflection to have been conducive to generating a degree of gratification which will be seen in retrospect to have been significantly higher than the general average.”

We wish you a wonderful Christmas season and a Happy New Year

Judith and Vivienne

Dresden – Baroque of the 20th Century

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Last Friday I caught my first night train bound for Dresden. After 8 ½ hours in a cell-like waggon cabin and very little sleep, my family and I arrived bleary-eyed at the Dresden Main Station. Catching a tram, we rather quickly located our hotel, dumped our luggage, indulged in a cup of black milk coffee and were ready to start exploring just as the lazy winter sun peaked over the horizon. Perfect light to take pictures! As we strolled along the Elbe River, we admired the baroque skyline of Dresden in the first rays of daylight.

The beautiful baroque-style buildings were cast into breath-taking relief as the glass dome of the Academy for Visual Arts and the impressive Frauenkirche reached into the sky. However, not all buildings are actually as old as their architecture suggests. A bombing by the Allied Forces in March 1945 destroyed great parts of Dresden, killing 35.000 people in a matter of hours. For days the city was on fire, firestorms of up to 1000°C razing through the streets. Rebuilding efforts after the war were slow as people were undecided on whether to restore the former baroque character of the city or to replace the ruins with modern buildings. Thankfully, the preservation committee won out and the baroque monuments were rebuilt or renovated.

Consequently, Dresden boasts such architectural jewels as the Augustus Bridge, the Frauenkirche, the Taschenbergpalais, the Semper Opera House and the Residenzschloss. Each of these buildings holds its own unique history reminding visitors of Dresden’s glory times under Friedrich August I (1694-1733), Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, instead of the horrors of World War II. Nevertheless the fire of 1945 will never be forgotten.

Of the sights we visited on the first day, I liked best the “Canaletto”-View which is a panorama point letting visitor’s see baroque Dresden through the same lense as Bernardo “Canaletto” Belotto when he painted his famous view of Dresden in 1765. However, simply strolling through the Altstadt of Dresden feels like a journey back into the 18^th century with little indication of the fact that one is actually strolling through a restored 20^th century baroque city quarter.

Right Way to Write?!?

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I don’t believe that there is one right way on how you should approach writing. Like your choice in reading material, your style in writing will depend on personal preferences, habits and interests. As an artistic skill, writing is a form of personal expression which cannot be defined by a clear set of rules. However, when you are looking to present your work to an audience there are a few general points you might want to consider:

Correct spelling as a mark of quality

With the advent of computers correct spelling has become hardly a chore as spell-checking programs take on the bulk of your work here. If you prefer to write in a program without a spell-checking function, it is a simple matter of minutes to copy and paste your text into another program to get it checked. Correct spelling is a mark of quality which can be assessed by a glance and may decide your reader whether to peruse your text further or not.

Who am I addressing?

Your audience will guide you in your choice of text style and register. If you want to write an article, you will probably choose a more structured text style and a more sophisticated register compared to a blog entry for example. In case of publishing, the age of your target readers will also be reflected in the rating placed on your written texts. Certain topics are inappropriate for certain audiences.

Proofreading

What would you say is the ideal number of times for proofreading a text? I would say at least two, ideally four times. Why? Because normally you can only concentrate on one or two aspects of your text while reading it again. During my first run, I usually check for spelling and grammar. Round Number two, I use to correct personal spelling kinks – like there vs. their, pursue vs. peruse,… The third time around, I keep an eye on vocabulary and repetitions and during the fourth round I look for coherence and form.

Care for these three aspects shows a certain degree of seriousness when it comes to producing written material. Although in certain modern lyrical endeavours exceptions even exist for correct spelling, most texts profit from a spell-check. Ultimately, your readers will decide whether they wish to consume your material or not and if you are writing merely for your own pleasure then you are free as a bird.

Ready to get started? What’s your next piece of writing going to be?

-Vivienne

Creating Word Clouds

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After Vivienne has presented two awesome internet platforms in her previous posts, it is now my turn to show you another website where you can unleash your creativity and explore the vastness of fonts, sizes, colours and much more to pimp up your PowerPoint presentations. But be aware – only try it if you have time, and I do mean a lot of time, because once you get started you'll get addicted, at least I did.

The website I'm talking about is wordle.net, which is a tool for creating 'word clouds'. As an example, I have produced a Science Fiction (I couldn't resist...) word cloud so that you have an idea what it could look like. But this is just one out of a million options! Because these word clouds can take any shape or size, it just depends on how you like it and how much you 'play' with the program.

That's how you do it:

There is a really great FAQ section on the website so if you want to find our more read the FAQ section or better still – give it a go and explore! I will just summarize the most important steps to create a simple word cloud:

Step 1: The first step is to click on 'Create' to get started; the links appears once you open the website.

Step 2: If you’ve clicked 'Create', you'll find a text area with the heading 'Paste in a bunch of text'. You can write anything you want into this box, but there are some rules you should consider before clicking the ‘Go’ button: The size of a word is proportional to the number of times the word appears in the input text. In other words, if I type in

Hallo Hallo Hallo Hallo Hallo Vivienne Judith

Hallo will be the biggest word and Vivenne and Judith compared to Hallo pretty small. The arrangement of the words can be random, so if I type in a sentence like “Today is wonderful day”, the words will definitely not appear in that precise order and most likely the words will not be horizontal! However, if you do want to keep some words together, as I did with Science Fiction, Star Wars or Star Trek, just put the character ~ between the words that you want to go together. A little hint: the more words you enter, the better it will be.

Step 3: Once you click 'Go', the fun begins. A random image will appear with your words, it's always a surprise what will happen, because the words can have any colour and font, the arrangement of the words can be horizontal, vertical or any which way, and also the background can have any colour. If you click the button 'Randomize', the image will change immediately. If you do it for the first time, I advise you to keep on clicking 'Randomize' just to get an idea of how many different possibilities there are and maybe there's something you like. Or you can start editing the picture as you see fit. You can for example choose a font you prefer or mix and match the colours that should appear as well as how the word cloud should be arranged (vertical, horizontal etc). As I already pointed out, there are an enormous number of possibilities. I have included only two more examples of Science Fiction, but there are no limits to creativity!

Note that while Worlde is a great tool and you can do a lot with it, it also has its limitations. For example once the word cloud is created you cannot edit it any more, you would have to create a new word cloud! But it is possible to remove single words by right-clicking on them and using the resulting pop-up menu. However, be aware that these actions will re-layout the whole wordle! (without the selected word of course). So to be on the safe side, the best thing to do is to save your worlde as fast as possible. Which brings me to my next point…

Step 4: Unfortunately, you cannot save the wordle applet as a jpg. But what you can do is to take a screenshot. I hope everybody knows how to do that. (if not, the following page provided in the FAQ section explains it: http://take-a-screenshot.org/) Then you can copy the image into your word-document. By the way, I prefer open office, where one can easily convert an inserted picture into a jpg. And don't forget to press the button 'Open in window' before you take the screenshot because then the image will be bigger! And you can always print your worlde immediately, which comes in quite handy.

I hope this wasn't too confusing, but the best formula always is: learning by doing :)

So have fun creating your first word cloud,
Judith

Picture This!

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I tend to seldom leave well enough alone when it comes to pictures shot for posters or flyers. I usually like to either crop, polarize or animate them. Since working with a graphics program normally entails defining the layout measurements and work area before you can get started, I like to take a short-cut via another useful, internet platform: www.lunapic.com.

The lunapic photo editor is an easy and straight-forward option for turning your pictures into animated gifs, collages and simple posters or to spice up your personal profiles.

After uploading the photo you would like to work on you are automatically redirected to the editing area of the online platform. With the tool bar on the left-hand side, you can easily crop and magnify your picture or even add a gradient. If you would like to add an effect or animation you simply choose one from the drop-down menus in the top bar. If you are new to designing and unfamiliar with some of the options offered, I would suggest taking a look at the effects gallery which can be accessed via lunapic.com à 200+ Great Effects link (http://files.lunapic.com/account/top-effects.php).

A feature I really like is the Facebook pic. It redesigns your picture to fit your personal profile or page. You simply upload a photo and select the Facebook pic effect.

All you have to do after adding the effect is save the picture(s) to your desktop before uploading them on facebook. Lunapic gives you easy instructions to follow.

Some other cool features:

You can also layer two effects on each other, like I did in this picture!

So, what’s your next picture project going to be? I hope you have fun picturing the possibilities!

-Vivienne

Johannes Kepler and the History of Science Fiction

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As an ardent Science Fiction fan, I enjoy watching great SF films as well as reading thrilling SF stories. Among my favourite films and books are Star Wars (Ep. IV-VI), The Matrix (Part 1) or Tron (the 1982 film), The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, Frank Herbert's Dune and Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke. There are certainly more books and films on my list of favourites and I am constantly finding new things to read and watch to satisfy my inquiring mind (simultaneously I have to find a new bookshelf to store all my stuff).

Today I want to introduce you to a short but fascinating text which is – unjustly – often overlooked and little read today, although I think it is one of the key texts in the history of SF: Somnium by German astronomer and mathematician, Johannes Kepler (1571-1630).

Kepler started writing his first draft of Somnium when he was a student enrolled at Tübigen University working on his dissertation. Kepler was interested in answering the following question: "How would the phenomena occurring in the heavens appear to an observer stationed on the moon?" In other words, Kepler was sure that an observer on the moon would find the planet's movements as clearly visible as the moon's activity is to the earth's inhabitants, therefore a person on the moon would be able to see the Earth moving. For Kepler's contemporaries, that was some highly revolutionary stuff! People still believed in the geocentric model, meaning they believed the Earth was the centre of the universe. With Copernicanism, however, the Earth ceased to be the center, a thought that was certainly not accepted by everyone.

Somnium was not published until four years after Kepler's death by his son Ludwig. The relatively short text centers around the story of Duracotus, the protagonist, whose life has similarities to Kepler's, his mother and their journey to the moon. This legendary text is accompanied by more than 200 footnotes which had been added by Kepler himself, providing detailed explanations of theories by Galileo, Tyho Brahe and himself. Some of the notes explain how gravity works, others illustrate what the lunar geography looks like and how its inhabitants would be. Overall, Somnium combines autobiographical and scientific facts with a legend. As Carl Sagan so wonderfully puts it, Kepler was the first who combined a bold imagination with precise measurements in his work to step out into the cosmos. In Somnium Duracotus uses his mother's spells to leave the Earth to travel to the moon, but what he really believed was that one day mankind would be able to launch into space. And that's what SF is about: speculations of a future world.

If you want to find out more about Somnium, I highly recommend watching this short video where Carl Sagan talks about Kepler's life and his work:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0k5LiDihh00

Here is a link to an article on Somnium by Gale E. Christianson:
http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/8/christianson8art.htm

If you are interested in the history of SF in general, I can recommend reading The History of Science Ficion by Adams Roberts.

And if you want to read the “real” text of Somnium, which I hope you do, there is a very good and pretty new edition available which also includes detailed background information:
Rosen, Edward (ed.). Kepler's somnium : the dream, or posthumous work on lunar astronomy. Mineola, NY : Dover Publ. 2003.

I hope I have sparked your interest in Kepler's Somnium! Please feel free to comment, I am curious to know what you think about Somnium and if you have any other great SF books to recommend. Thanks!

May the force be with you!
Judith

PS. This image is taken from nasaimages.org, a great site which offers public access to NASA's images, videos and audio collections.
NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org

I'm very font of...

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Usually when I sit down to create a digital design I already have a pretty clear idea in mind. The thing that is most important for me whether I’m designing an icon or a blog template is coherence. I like it when the template reflects a certain character. That’s also why I am at times obsessed with details like which font I choose. Consequently, I tend to be disappointed with the limited choice of script styles in Windows!

Since I’m neither a design genie nor do I have a lot of time, I usually look for quick solutions. For my latest venture, a blog header, I wanted a font with cursive elements with roughened edges which were likened to an uneven ink script. So I ventured forth into the universe of the Internet to get my dream font. Thank god for the bookmarking function, because my list on design pages quickly yielded a pretty nifty page I had stumbled upon on one of my longer online odysseys: www.1001freefonts.com.

I could practically hear a digital Ali chanting ‘Open Sesame!’ clicked on the link and started to browse through the different fonts on display. After a few minutes of digging, I found the following jewels.

Some fonts which didn’t necessarily fit my idea were just too cool. I had to try them out. I loved playing with the custom preview to see what my slogan would look like before downloading the font.

Custom Preview: 'Open Sesame!'

In the end, I settled for Bleeding Cowboys for my current project, but I already have five other ideas cartwheeling through my mind. Nevertheless, at least my nit-picking font imps have been appeased for now…and that’s a fact I am very font of!

If you know of any other handy font sites, have a design imp problem of a different nature or you would simply like to let us know your opinion – leave a comment!

- Vivienne

In the beginning…

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…there were words which had to be put together by two quirky mid-twenties who ventured into the fantastic world of blog writing. Since we are new to this, we decided to do our first blog entry together and realised that beyond laughter we were just lost for words. What a predicament!

Anyway, we figured our best shot at getting this blog off to a good start is by shortly introducing our categories and giving a bit of background information.

The Wheel of Trivia will serve as a black board for general announcements and a platform for initial orientation.

The Wheel of Design will feature posts on photography - Judith’s passion -, graphic design, open source software and art and crafts work – Vivienne’s hobby.

The Wheel of Travel will probably hold the most comprehensive collection of our travelling experiences as well as discoveries on our excursions closer to home. We will try to find the extraordinary in the ordinary, be it on foreign shores or just around the next street corner.

In the Wheel of Literature you will definitely find thrilling book reviews on a great variety of different genres, such as non-fiction, science fiction, fantasy, drama, magazines and many more. As you will soon find out our definition of book reviews comes with its own twist. But we will leave that for you to discover!

Through our posts in the category Wheel of Writing, we will share our personal opinions and experiences concerning the topic of writing and publishing. Especially, Vivienne will report on her trials and triumphs as she tries to publish her first book.

Since this is only our first post, not all categories are opened yet and new categories might join these first few as our interests and blogging zeal branches out even further. We will publish our first few category posts in the next week and look forward to our first comments. We hope that you will enjoy our contributions to the blogosphere, share your own opinions and spread the word that there’s a new blog in town!

Stay tuned!

Judith and Vivienne

Photography rocks!

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Judith has a great passion for photography. Where I have an inborn antennae for every last crumbling castle, she has a great eye for colour and light composition. I love the vibrancy of her pictures which will now be showcased in our blog slideshow. As the seasons turn, you will be presented with the best picks from Judith's amazing photography archive. We would love to hear your opinion on our first selection!

Template - A Labyrinth of Code

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After hitting some dead ends, we managed to wind our way through the template jungle. Fighting our way through a myriad of coded sign posts, we arrived at our own personalised blog template. The wisdom we picked up on the way will come in handy one day - hopefully! Otherwise we will find ourselves in another labyrinth...but we have never been the ones to shun adventures ; )

- Vivienne and Judith