Auteur : Martine

Who’s been playing with my Mini-Wheat again?

Confession of a crop circle trickster (via siliconvalley.com).

« Getting into the field without leaving traces is a lot easier than is usually claimed. In dry weather, and if you step carefully, you can leave no footprints or tracks at all. There are other, even stealthier ways of getting into the crop. One group of circle makers uses two tall bar stools, jumping from one to another. »

More on Salon

Shift published an article last June about Salon.com, claiming that its decline is due in part to the disappearance of serious investigative reporting. I know this was an important part of the site, but this is not what kept me going to Salon. My « relationship » with this site was of a much more personal nature. The editors just seemed to read my mind. Where else can I find articles like these (all published recently):

1) Keen on Keener
I really enjoy Catherine Keener as an actress. I loved her in Walking and Talking, where she played a girl who can’t get a boyfriend (a great rental, by the way). But she really surprised me with her role as the strong and selfish Maxine in Being John Malkovich. Finally someone understood how sexy this woman is! She was also great in the recent Lovely & Amazing, as an unhappy housewife/artist who has a funny, short lived crush with a 17 year old guy from the one-hour photo store.

Salon just published a short piece on Keener, who never seems to get the press she deserves. It’s an opinion piece. You don’t learn much from reading it, you might not agree with the author’s opinion on the actress but still, you feel like you just had a conversation with a witty, smart friend you like to argue with.

2) I wanna hold your hand
I was shocked when I read this sexy article about the beauty of men’s hands because I’ve been meaning to write/film something about the same subject for a couple of years now. This author beat me to it (and probably a lot more women before her), but it was such a nice surprise and a good read that I couldn’t be disappointed. And I’ll still write on the subject of men’s hands later…

3) Sexy specs
I’ve already mentioned this article about women who wear glasses in this blog, and the search string « geek girls wearing glasses » is still what brings the most new visitors to my site. There seems to be a lot of people out there having a fetish about women who wear glasses and even though the Salon author Charles Taylor wrote a personal story on the subject, he somehow hit a collective nerve.

I guess that should be enough for me to renew my subscription to Salon, but I think all of these articles where available to the general public, and not only to members. Sometimes I wonder if the editors truly know what is good about their site. Maybe Web readers are too much of a diverse bunch to be truly analyzed and understood.

Strangely, these three articles were published in the sex section. Does it reveal something about me or something about the editors of Salon?

After weeks of feeling jealous of my neighbor, I finally decided to move to a new part of town. But once I got into my new place and realized that my home office would have to share the same space as my living room/dining room, I had to face the truth. My 17″ Dell monitor was still doing a great job, but its huge beige casing clashed with my new chartreuse walls and uncluttered digs. What’s a gadget loving girl to do? Get new tools/toys, of course. I was very tempted by the impressive 18″ flat monitors, but I remembered how much I have been spending on my move so far so I settled for this 15″ LCD model from NEC. It’s so cute, light and small, I could fit 5 of them on my desk! I’m sorry cher monsieur Karl, but small IS beautiful (yeah, just like my wallet now).

So I now have a good 17″ Dell monitor for sale, and I will let it go for not very much at all. Interested? Make me an offer at the e-mail address shown on the right.