Baby, it’s cold outside!

In my hemisphere it is definitely cold. So what can we do about this?

Women
1. Light a candle (better: light your fireplace if you have one. I am secretly dreaming of this, since I have no fireplace)
2. Friday – Sunday: Open a bottle of red wine
Monday – Thursday: Make yourself a hot tea or chocolate (yumm)
3. Wrap yourself in warm blankets, pullovers.
4. Get a good read or film, that warms your heart
5. Take a hot shower, pamper yourself with spiced bubblebath
6. Pick up your phone, call your best friend/sister/mother and share your thoughts about the cold
7. Think about how cold it would be if you were actually outside
8. If you have a cold home and you feel like freezing despite point 1-7 try another place: go to the movies, to the little local museum (empty, but all people working there will be so glad to have you)
9. Make a surprise visit to your best friend/sister/mother

Men
1. Cut some wood for the fireplace. If you have no fireplace: help out in the house. It’s amazing how cleaning the bathroom or hovering under the bed makes you sweat.
2. Open a bottle of beer
3. Get long warm underwear
4. See a sportsgame in Tv
5. Call your mother/grandmother and tell them how much you enjoyed their home knitted sox when you were a boy. They will get the hint, don’t worry, they are women. You’ll get some new pairs!
6. Pick up the phone and call your best friend/brother/father and complain about the stupid boiler, that doesn’t work
7. Take the dog for a walk. When you come back your house will feel very warm!
8. Go to the pub. Better: a sport pub
9. Make a surprise visit to you mother/sister/aunt: women feel cold all year through, their homes will be hot and be sure you’ll find some hot drink ready to enjoy

Woman & Men:
10. Have warm thoughts! This will help you:

So. This is Christmas.

I needed to. If you think, christmas is not for you, just skip this post. No worries.
I am a Buddhist and Christmas is still a important day in my life. Like my birthday and Kosen-Rufu-Day, but importance changes based on what day is next.

In my office we come from 6 different countries, three continents and 4 different religions, and guess what, we all celebrate Christmas. So, some days ago I bought a fake tree (quite real, in fact), put on the radio (scroll down, there is the Christmas channel) and had a happy Christmas decoration session. Oh so satisfying.

Here some things you can do, to get the Christmas spirit:
See THE classic:



Make Christmas ornaments.

Bake cookies! Ask your mum or your grandmum a recipe. Best thing to do: give them to your friends, collegues. What a cheer!

Have a good Friday and a better weekend, Belle
p.s. Don’t forget: war is over. If you want it.

Fight Aids at home.

Or the Dengue Fever. Or unfold the human Proteome. How? It’s easy!
Go to the World Community Grid and download their Boinc Manager and this thing will download small portions of projects on your pc and work on it while you are surfing in internet (or working). Probably you will never notice because your pc has a high potential and you use it just to read your email or whatever else. Even my pc, which is quiet rusty and really working a lot has still some disk space I can dedicate to help out for a higher purpose.
The Community Grid helps teams of researches that need supercomputers. For example:

World Community Grid focused on a project key to advancing our knowledge of human disease. By identifying the proteins that make up the Human Proteome, scientists can build the understanding needed for novel and effective treatments for diseases like cancer, HIV/AIDS, SARS, and malaria.

To do so, it needed more than 26,645 years! Yes, years! But in reality they needed lesser than 2 years. Instead of keep thinking on superpc for 26000 years a lot of pcs thought only two years. Isn’t that great?
I am in the project for 3 weeks now and already accomplished several mini-projects, helping to fight aids, dengue fever and other things. Boy, it feels so good! You get this little sympatric window that shows you what your pc is doing and how far you got. It works even when you are offline or at lunch break (before I go to lunch break I put my preferences on 100% processor use – why shouldn’t my pc work while I am off?).



Think about it. Tomorrow is the World Aids Day and Christmas is coming. Get the good feeling of never saying “Yeah, but what can I do?” again!

Have a good Friday and a better weekend, Belle

When a princess dreams..

Every Girl dreams of a prince, that one day, will come on his white horse and marry us. Then you grow older and you learn that there are no princes and no white horses. We would never admit it but deep down our hearts this dream is locked inside. So, once you married the prince, where do you put the horse?



Isn’t that a practical solution? When the prince comes home with the shopping bags, he can just hand them over to you and you can store everything in your lovely kitchen.

More pictures here – attention!
Disturbing Image warning! :-) There is a solution for the modern princess (which favors princes with frog-green cars), too.

Have a good Friday and a better weekend, Belle

Everything you need to know about graphic design

Yes, how could we ignore something as important as Graphic Design, that is all about "gambling and free speech"? I love this line. As a graphic designer I tell you, that it is more true that you can ever imagine.



Now, really, never and then never use "Comic Sans" - it's a mistake not only "americans" do, but humans all over the world. If you want to be original try a Helvetica.

"You can say I love you in Helvetica. You can say it with Helvetica Extra Light if you want to be really fancy." (Veer)

You don't know Paul Rand? You think you screw? I passed five years in Design University and nobody ever told me about Paul Rand. So, I am a superscrew. But, hey, I love Internet: here is real, wonderful introdution to him in his own words.



Now go back to work and delete Comic Sans from your Computer. (If you are a Mac User: shame on you!)

Hopp Hopp

Do you remember a TV spot where zillions of colored balls bounce down the hills from san francisco? I do.. I remember that I was stunned and I wanted to see it again and again! (And I had to have the soundtrack!)
The Spot was for Sony, advertising their product TV Bravia and the balls were for real, yes they really bounced down the street.

Now there is a new spot which is genius and again I am stunned and want to see it again and again.



Are these rabbits real? Everybody knows how much work it is to make a plasticine animation.. but it is true! It’s amazing what 2.5 tons of play-doh, 40 animators, 3 weeks time and a goal in common can do!
Inspirational!
Have a good Friday and a better weekend, Belle

Palischal

There are things you do when you are young and you should quit them when you grow older: like wearing shorts or smoking, for example. Another thing is using the palestinese scarf. I had one, black-and-white and I wore it because of two reasons: everybody did and adults seemed to be contrary. This was when I went to school.
Growing older and going to designer college I changed that desert-designed piece of textile with other scarfs and growing more older I started to wonder what on earth drove me to wear it on peace demontrations - because palestine people are role models in the peace movement? Not so.
Why am I talking about this? We all know that germans are no fashion movers, even if they try hard. Berlin is a wonderful city, but it's not New York, so just grow up: stop ripping off their webdesign and you know, a palistinese scarf is not a fashion accessoir, even if you call it "egyptian".

Mehr auf Deutsch.