Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Category Archives: Armchair adventuring


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Five Indiana Jones Books

OK, so another anniversary approaches – 35 years of Indiana Jones.
I really, really can’t believe it, but it’s been 35 years since Raiders of the Lost Ark was released.

So, I need to write something about Indiana Jones – and I’m trying to put together a proper celebratory, fanboy-ish post.

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Meanwhile, I thought I’ll do one of those posts that my SEO guru says are big with the blog crowd and a guarantee to get Google happy1.
A nice little list of five Indiana Jones related books you might want to check out before – or after – you re-watch the classic 1981 movie.

And of course this is my list, your mileage might vary, and I’d be happy to discover more Indy-friendly titles, so please have your say in the comments section. Continue reading →


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The Legend of Tarzan (2016)

So, I went and saw The Legend of Tarzan, the latest entry in a long, long series of movies based – with varying degrees of respect for the original – on the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Mentioning Burroughs and his books straight away is, I think, important, because in the last few days I saw a few reviews that were obviously written by people that has no familiarity whatsoever with the Tarzan novels, and only a passing familiarity with other Tarzan movies.

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And here, the point becomes interesting: is it possible to consider The Legend of Tarzan separately from the huge body of works that came before, and most of all, can the two approaches – the movie as a stand-alone work and as the last element in along chain of works – lead to radically different perceptions of the movie?

Let’s see… Continue reading →


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Adventurers, for real

A while back I did a post called How to be an Adventurer.
It’s one of my usual rambling posts, but it also features a collection of articles about being an adventurer – what it takes, what you need, what’s great and what’s not of adventuring as a profession.

Now, this list of resources was pretty popular as soon as the piece was published, but then, as usual updating the blog caused it to slide down on the totem pole.

You can still find it through a Google search, and someone did.

I was contacted by the fine guys that manage the Abroadio website, because they too did a piece on adventuring – and found my list through Google.

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Well, their article is just great, and you will find it here.
And I had half a mind of adding it to the list of resources in that old post but then…
why not do a proper page on the subject?

So here we go – now there’s a page on Being an Adventurer.
You find it in the top right corner, in the pull-down menu.

And I plan on keeping it up to date – so please if you find an online resource about living the life of an adventurer in the modern day, please drop me a line.
Thank you!


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Smart software

yost-Noir-City-Magazine-CoverOne thing I hate, really, is when software tries to be smarter than me.
You know, spell-checkers double-guessing what I’m typing, GPS navigators knowing better than me where I want to go, and now, Gmail sorting my emails and deciding what I don’t want to read.

It was by accident this morning that I found out that Gmail had decided to file as spam all the communications to me from The Film Noir Foundation.
Now, about two years ago I had donated twenty bucks to the foundation – because I love noir, because it was the right thing to do, and all that.

Then, because of the already-mentioned chaotic months that followed, I completely forgot about it – also because I got no signal back from the Noir Foundation. Continue reading →