The contest winner

Oooookay, the winner of last month's comment contest is:
Pascal.
He was just outstanding both in quality and quantity.
Though quantity is far less important, let me haste to add. :)

Pascal, you've won either artwork/photo by me, or $100. Email me your preference.

Kiss of the day from Perran

Today I had a leisurely lunch with my pal Laurie Jeffery, chatting about the usual, web sites, business, Macintoshes, girls, photography, music, art etc. He told me something I just had to blog, and I twisted his arm for some pictures.
His daughter Perran is a cute and bright young thing, who already at three knew more about animals and dinosaurs than I ever have or ever will, including theory and latin names. Precocious is the concept I'm grasping for.
Laurie is a freelance photographer and travels a lot. He showed me a little bag Perran had invented and made for him. It contains a little slip of paper for each day he will be gone. They are marked with the name of the days, and a lipstick kiss on each, so he will never go a day without a kiss.


(Photos by Laurie Jeffery.)

Work

Do you like work, or is it just a necessary evil? Let's get a few more perspectives in this post.

Can an individual really be set free from the outside? The life that people in the western world have now is paradise compared to a couple hundred years ago. And yet many people are still miserable.

I believe profound change can only come from within.

Questions

A blog is great for a resource. Here is a question:

Do you know a good and user-friendly alternative to Paypal?

It's because Paypal cancelled my account for having been used for selling "adult content". Here is an early story illustrating well what pisses me off about the way these things tend to happen with big companies: Burned by Beauty.
(This one is eight years old! I am pleased that not only does it still fit with the design template, it is also pretty well written, if I do say so myself. :)
The host was tabnet, but it has since been swallowed up many times by bigger sharks.

Google does not want to be Verbed

Google is protesting against being verbed, they are warning media organizations about using "google" as a general term for a web search. Quoth Google:
"We think it's important to make the distinction between using the word Google to describe using Google to search the internet, and using the word Google to describe searching the internet. It has some serious trademark issues."

LOL. That'll be really easy to sort out. I can just see the legal writ: "We believe, judging by the CNN anchor person's facial expression, that when he said "Googling", he was thinking about Alta Vista really. We can't allow this."

Of course their concern is legit though. Read more on TidBITS.

Vicky Jeffery

My friend Vicky Jeffery has a wonderful art blog.

Kitchen sink

I just realized that one of the reasons short video art has never gained traction, besides it being silly and pretentious, is that it wanted for a medium. Well now, with the web, it has one. So here is a work of fine art in short video (10MB). It is still silly and pretentious, but now you can get it easily.

But seriously, I kinda like it, and I think it is a grave pity that film and video are almost completely unexplored mediums once you look outside story telling.

Here is another, very unpretentiously called "Earth at the end of time"(25MB)

Socializing, really that important?

In a comment to the last post, Bram wrote:
"Socialising should probably mean more to me, but I'm turning into an anti-social *insert favourite swear word*"

This is something I've been thinking about lately. Because we are generally brought up to believe that socializing and "going out" are some very important things to do, and the more the better. But... I am doing less and less of both. This I might consider just a Phase, but... the same is true for many people I know, in fact many of the best people I know. And people who don't seem to be in any personal crisis at all or even doing great.

Of course using the Internet is a kind of socializing, or definitely it is communication, and very important communication. But maybe "getting out" is vastly overrated? Maybe what we do in our own universe, and spiritual developments, can be more important than going to town or hanging out with friends?

Values Drill

Margaret Lobenstine's Values Drill from the book The Renaissance Soul.
Pick five from these fifty which matter the most to you at this moment.
Use the terms as you understand them yourself.
If you feel any are missing, feel free to add them.
The drill is meant to help people with multiple interests to get a little more focus in their life.


Achievement

Affection

Appearance

Approval

Arts

Authority

Beauty

Career/Employment

Community

Creativity

Environment

Expertise

Fame

Family

Freedom (personal)

Freedom (political)

Generosity

Health (emotional)

Health (physical)

Home

Honesty

Integrity

Learning

Leisure

Love

Loyalty

Meaning

Money

Openness

Patriotism

Personal Growth

Pleasure

Popularity

Power

Privacy

Recognition

Relationships

Religion

Reputation

Respect

Risk Taking

Security

Social Acceptance

Socializing

Solitude

Spiritual Development

Status

Winning

Wisdom

Tempur

Just got my tempur bed.
It's wonderful. Not cheap, but how much is good sleep worth to you?

Update: First full night's sleep in it: man, this is the best firm-yet-soft thing I ever spent the night with!

Wanted...

In the late nineties a fan of Domai sent me some rubber toys. No, not that kind, they were for squeezing in your hand for therapeutic purposes. The where of hard rubber. One was a dark blue ball with small blunt spikes. One was a yellow ring, also with spikes. I lost them somehow during several moves. Does anybody know these products? (I think it was a very small company making them.)
I've seen softer balls, but what I liked about the one I had was that it was very hard, with short stubby spikes, which you could really squeeze into the palm to get a sort of deep massage. And it was maybe just 4 or 5 cm diameter.

Update: Thank you to Michael M who found it for me!

And by the way, my hands are fine, as is my general health. I just remember how good these things felt.

Pure Trim

Talking about excellent products:
Pure Trim
It's a protein shake with a difference. Really good nutrition. Tastes reasonably good. It stabilizes the blood sugar to handle sweets cravings. It keeps you full for hours on a couple hundred calories. And it contains some herbs in just the right mix to work as a natural mood lifter, like St John's Wort, only better and much faster.
Only problem is it only sold in the US and Canada, they can't even ship overseas due to regulations. So I have to have a friend buy it and ship it to me. Sadly this is not likely to change fast, since it is a huge deal to get permission to sell nutritional products in any modern country.