Tag Archive for 'Meta'

Stephan Packard DID NOT invite you to join Google+

Published by admin on 22/01/2012 in English and German. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

…so for some reason, some of my friends and colleagues have received ‘invitations’ from ‘me’ to join Google+. The mails don’t look like spam, but rather as if they do come from the Google+ system. But I didn’t send out any invitations on purpose, and at least one of the recipients shouldn’t even be known to my Google+ account at all, unless Google is using my android address book to get at contacts. However, many other friends did *not* receive these mails.

So: If you have received such an ‘invitation’, I’d like to:

(1) apologize for spamming you, albeit inadvertently;

(2) if you’d be so kind, ask you to drop me a line if you did get such a mail, which might help me to figure out what is going on.

Incidentally, yes I am aware of the irony of this happening to someone studying the control of communication in newest media. Oh dear.

 

 

What happened to Virtuality Week?

Published by packard on 01/03/2011 in English. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Mid-February, I started a ‘virtuality week’, promising small pieces of a research project on virtuality every day. I started off well enough and continued through the second and third post, promised to continue on Saturday, and never did. So what happened?

Well, the short answer is you don’t really want to know, because it’s all tedious stuff about workflow coupled with a slight dysfunction in the interface I use for scheduling blog posts. Either way, I apologize, and I will be posting the two missing parts during the remainder of this week.

Now, instead of dwelling on what went wrong, let’s recap by considering what I would be doing if I declared virtuality week to be not broken but virtual, i.e. a virtual week that spans the first half of the real week beginning Feb 14th, and continuing during the second half of this week. I think this immediately creates an intelligible idea in our heads, right? But what is that idea about, and why would we accept the word ‘virtual’ to describe it, even as a rough metaphor?

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Some Blogging Sentiments from 2010

Published by packard on 09/01/2011 in English. 2 Comments Tags: , .

So aside from the numbers, what has this blog felt like during its first year? »»»»

Some Signifying Media Stats for 2010

Published by packard on 02/01/2011 in English. 1 Comment Tags: , .

After outlining plans for the future, I guess it’s also a good idea to have at least a short look back at the first year of Signifying Media. In a way, this site was not only intended to provide a venue for thoughts and discussions about semiotics and media studies, but also to find out more about blogs by making one of them happen to me. So what has happened? I’ve decided to have a look at some numbers first, and then follow that up with a more subjective and introspective account later on.

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Plans for 2011: Sentimentalism, Textual Control and Virtuality

Published by packard on 01/01/2011 in English. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Happy new year, everyone! :)

This blog has been around for one year now. I have sometimes enjoyed writing it, sometimes felt harassed by an imagined obligation to feed it, and sometimes I have all but forgotten about it altogether. Some of the things I was planning when I started it 365 days ago worked out well, others fizzled out, and still others never happened. In short, it’s a blog.

So since life is what happens while we are making other plans, here are some of those plans for 2011 and beyond. »»»»

Busses Only Stop Once: Freiburg!

Published by packard on 14/12/2010 in English. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

Busse halten nur einmalThe sign is very clear: “Busse halten nur einmal.” Busses will only stop once.

The bus stop at Lassbergstraße in Freiburg, where this photograph was taken, doesn’t really offer busses a good opportunity to stop several times. Although it is a terminus, it doesn’t boast a lot of room, and it is unlikely that anyone would take the spot where the bus ends for anything other than the beginning of its next tour. So I take it that that is not what the sign is trying to tell me. Rather, its message is directed at a more reflective level: Do not, it tells us, expect busses to stop over and over again for your benefit. You are but mortal. Busses will only stop once. »»»»

In Flux

Published by admin on 05/09/2010 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: .

This site is currently undergoing some renovation. It might be unavailable, illegible or plain strange right now. If that makes you queasy, please come back tomorrow. Thank you. Update: We’re back.

Munich. Summer. Bochum.

Published by packard on 05/07/2010 in English. 0 Comments Tags: .

This blog is entering its summer pause today. That is not a promise that I won’t post at all, but updates are going to be rare at least. Over this summer, I will be packing up my stuff in Munich and moving to the German department at Bochum University for autumn. Once there and returned to a new routine, I plan to take up blogging again. Meanwhile, thank you for reading and do have a nice summer.

ComFor Launches New Website

Published by packard on 17/05/2010 in English. 0 Comments Tags: , .

The German Gesellschaft für Comicforschung — Society for Comics Studies or ComFor — launched its new website this weekend. »»»»

*cough*

Published by packard on 22/02/2010 in English. 1 Comment Tags: .

Having spent most of the last few days in bed coughing my lungs out, I’m postponing the next post by a week. Meanwhile, here is something beautiful, something thoughtful (found via Francois Bry’s blog), something promising and something that is something. If you, too, know of something, please post it in the comments.