seventh side

Dating

2010-11-11T23:33:00.001+02:00

Welcome to AdultFriendFinder

2010-11-11T19:26:00.001+02:00

November 11, 2010 at 6:26 AM

If you're horny you've found the right girl to take care of you. I'm the best, and hell yeah I can brag about it. You won't find anyone as sexy as me and I have a body that is pretty damn find too. Nice big natural boobs, shaved pussy, a tattoo or two, and even some piercings. When you come to my private room you get it all. A fun loving girl that promises to take care of you. I'm here to make you happy. Have a wild fantasy feel free to share it with me. You can't be shy now, I want to please you and I'll do whatever it takes to make you happy. I'm not a tease, I'm here to please.

Come and see more now!

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GabiLoveLace

November 11, 2010 at 6:25 AM

Hi there and welcome to my little naughty spot on the web. I would love for you to come and spend some time with me. Its the best seat in the house, where you can watch me do all kinds of naughty things. I love to preform on my cam and I'm fun to be around too. In fact you can ask me to do almost anything and if you're really nice chances are I won't turn you down. I'm here because I love sex and love masturbating in front of people. Hey, what can I say I'm a kinky girl and thats how I get off. I hope you make it in to see me, I promise you that you won't leave me unhappy

Come and see more now!

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69couple4you

November 10, 2010 at 6:16 AM

We're a fun couple that enjoys being on cam. Both of us are 20 years old and we both love oral sex. So now its even better because we do it on cam with you guys telling us what you want us to do. Of course we do other things as well, all you have to do is ask and your wish shall be granted. I pretty much like it all. If you wanna see me suck junk or take a cum shot.... oh and I do swallow. Well, if you don't ask us we won't know what you like. We like to get off but we get off getting you guys off to. We're a pretty horny couple so we're usually here quite a bit. Don't let someone get to us before you do!

Come and see more now!

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5StarDiana

November 10, 2010 at 6:15 AM

Diana is my name. I'm 22 years old with blond hair and green eyes. I've been on cams for about 6 months now and I love every minute I get to spend here. I guess you have to be an outgoing type of person to want to do this and I am. I love sex and having someone watching you while you masturbate is like such an experience, just makes me so excited. I love when a cam has a cam too and I get to see him and watch him play. Its all about getting each other off, and I guess I do pretty good at it since you guys keep coming back. So come on in and meet me and lets have some fun.

Come and see more now!

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Alesta40DD

November 9, 2010 at 6:27 AM

I bet you noticed my breasts first thing didn't you? Can't say that I blame you, who wouldn't notice a set of 40DD knockers like mine. They are all real too, not some plastic job. Come let me show them off to you. I wish you were here so you could slide your hard cock in between them. I'd love that. I better stop, I'm loosing control. I do love being on cams and showing off my stuff. My pussy is just as nice and of course I'm going to spread my legs wide and show you all of me. All nice and clean shaven. Then when we get all warmed up I'll pick out a toy, or you can for me and its play time for us. I'm not going to stop until we both pop!

Come and see more now!

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1stSin4U

November 9, 2010 at 6:26 AM

Hello you! Well, guess someone is horny eh? Me too. You could go join a pay site and watch some silly movies or you could come in my private room and watch me "LIVE"! Doesn't that sound much better? My cam is a good one and it gets very up close. I'm Cammie, and I'm 20 years old. I guess I'm pretty slutty because my friends say they would never do what I do. Fuck them, I love being on cams. I got something I want you guys to see and I think I'm worth showing off. So why not come on in and let me get out of these clothes and you can tell me just how and what makes you happy. Thats my goal you know, your happiness.

Come and see more now!

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Dating

2010-11-11T15:34:00.001+02:00

Untitled

2010-11-11T15:32:00.001+02:00

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2010-11-11T15:30:00.001+02:00

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2010-11-11T14:26:00.001+02:00

Swingers

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How I Killed a Guy: A True Story

2008-05-27T08:13:00.002+03:00

By Spike Gerard

Link Of The Day - Free Gifts Cards Now

The whole mess started on a regular workday—computer, phone, cubicle, all that. I had a new employee, “Tiff,” who I had to start training that morning. “Whoopee!” I thought sarcastically, leaning back my chair. Then she walked in.

About six-feet tall, great body, ok grill-piece–but her curves smoothed over any visible flaws. Like every girl in NYC who’s six-feet tall, she was an “aspiring model.”

Less than 15 minutes after I started training her, she pops a flash drive into my computer, with over 100 pictures of her in sexy lingerie, some spread shots. All amateur, but not bad to look at–and NFSW, any way you put it.

Two weeks went by, and we began to realize that this girl totally oversold herself on her resume, and fooled us on the interview. How she got away with it I don’t F’ing know–her common sense and intelligence just weren’t there.

One day, she gets caught on YouTube, so the boss snatches her Internet privileges. An hour later, she hands me a letter saying the “Big” boss was sexually harassing her, going into explicit detail of his lewd comments and her “inappropriately touched” upper thigh.

Not believing her bullsh*t, I took the letter to HR, who’s people immediately started an internal investigation.

Two days later, Tiff is in the cafeteria, yapping with other staff members about how she “staged the entire thing” with a guy that worked on the 69th floor of our office building, and that “this was the fifth firm we will have taken down” on bogus sexual harassment charges.

I missed the whole thing. But after my close friend, Harry, who was there for her idiotic bragging, explained the story to me, I got his witness account in writing, and handed it in to HR.

Being a prestigious financial firm in the Empire State Building, we hired private investigators to find some dirt on this girl, Tiff. If she was telling the truth, we would deal with it accordingly. If she was lying, she would be dealt with, too.

Not long into their investigation, the P.I.s spotted her exiting the building with a 30-something guy. They followed the two as they climbed in his black BMW, and drove away.

First, the lawyer took Tiff home. Then the P.I.s followed him back to his place. Once they had his address, they realized that he was an attorney, from a firm in our building, on the 69th floor.

After a little more digging, they revealed that this attorney was already under investigation for various car insurance rear-end scams–and filed three suits for sexual harassment, with Tiff as his client, and two cases that settled out of court.

As the HR people wrapped up their investigation, model-genius Tiff, who lied on her resume but told the truth about committing a felony, is called in for questioning.

With the pile of evidence against her on the table, she cracked—confessed everything, talked frantically of pressing charges against us for extortion, burst into tears and ran out of the office.

Next day, the giant clock in front of my desk read exactly 2:05 P.M., in bright red digital numbers; it was Friday the 13th.

Just then, someone from Tiff’s attorney’s firm came to our office, quietly handed us an envelope, and left—inside was a letter demanding our firm cough-up $10,000 so their firm wouldn’t “move forward with a sexual harassment lawsuit.”

Now, you have to understand that this is not how a lawyer would handle a legitimate sexual harassment case. Ordinarily, they’d just serve you a summons and see your ass in court. This was extortion, plain and simple.

I gave my bosses the letter, and by the time the clock read 2:13 P.M., our company’s P.I. had called the law firm that served us the letter, telling them of all the dirt they’d dug up on their firm’s employee. He urged them to file a suit against Tiff’s attorney, warning that the extortion charges that my company was about to file would crumble their already struggling law firm.

At 2:25 P.M., I happened to be down on the street, smoking a cigarette with a co-worker. Out of the blue, I hear “Splat,” followed by piercing, vivid screams of fear and nauseous anxiety.

Suddenly, I saw two girls running down the side of the street with blood and muscle tissue covering their faces. And I just walked around, asking myself what the hell was going on.

In the confusion, my buddy told me to turn around. I did, and there it was: A severed human leg on the concrete–no shoe, just a leg from the knee down, in a sock, with blood and human flesh liquefied on the surrounding sidewalk.

Tourists were screaming, and I saw a few women in tears. The police were holding back the crowd.

Needing to get back to work, I left them all to gawk at the gore, and walked back inside.

“Friday the 13th, all right,” I thought when the shock wore off, as I headed back to my desk, and then home for the weekend, a few hours later.

Monday morning, I Googled “Dude jumps off Empire State Building,” and found the article I was looking for, right off the bat. I clicked on the link. Immediately, a frigid chill ran up my spine: The Leg had belonged to Tiff’s Attorney.

According to the newspaper article, after the P.I. called with talk of extortion and disbarment, the guy just got up in the middle of a meeting, and jumped out the f*cking window.

“Sources say the attorney received a phone call in middle of a meeting Friday, hung up, opened an office window and jumped to his death, from the 69th floor,” read the article.

“Only the severed leg reached street level, with the rest of the body left splattered on the building platform on the 30th floor”

I sat at my desk, breathing heavy, not knowing what to do. All I could think was, “Wow, I killed that guy. If I hadn’t turned in that dumb b*tch’s letter, he might still be alive.” Needless to say, that was the last time I handed over anything to HR.

*Names have been changed or omitted to protect the innocent and respect the dead.

Editor’s Update: Ok, the cat’s out of the bag on this one, so I’ve updated some of the details to match the news articles posted, since having them not match now is just confusing. Good investigative work, by the way…Enjoy.

From coedmagazine.com

Juno Soundtrack 2008

2008-03-17T07:35:00.000+02:00

Juno Soundtrack 2008

Rick Ross - Trilla 2008

2008-03-17T07:24:00.000+02:00

Rick Ross - Trilla 2008

Tax Brain

2008-02-05T21:15:00.001+02:00

Get Money 2-Day at TaxBrain.com
Prepare and File Taxes Starting at $14.95
TaxBrain offers a 2-Day Refund Anticipation Loan Product that its competitors simply don’t have.
www.taxbrain.com

So What should you look for in an Online Tax Filing Service, and what benefit can they give you?

1. Choosing to file your tax returns online should make filing returns easier.
Look for a website that is extremely easy to navigate and to use. Research has shown that when filing tax returns online for the first time, tax payers like to use a site in clear plain-English to help them in the preparation of their tax returns. The more experienced tax filers like to use a site where comprehensive support can be obtained. This is obviously an important factor, as when filling in tax returns you never know when you are going to run into a problem. So look around and settle with a site that offers a combination of ease of use and support this is easy to access.

2. Using an online system should offer a comprehensive service.
You need to check that a full and comprehensive support system is in place. Whether you are an individual with particularly complicated tax affairs, or you need to complete a small business return, you have to be happy that the service you choose has full support. Look for the length of time the servie has filing returns online, and go with experience.

3. Should be able to provide a year round online tax solution.
Will you have use of tools to enable you to manage your taxes all year, as well as to prepare the tax return? You need to be able to stay in complete control of your individual or business tax profile all year and therefore need to look for an online tax system that will provide live customer services, as well as access to your previous year returns, financial services and various planning tools to assist you.

The best solution is to look for a system that will give you a personalized tax management page where you can store your tax profiles, manage your filings and make any payments that may be due.

4. Should Use Dedicated Tax Professionals.
Is tax guidance freely available? Is the Customer Support staffed by professionals that have experience as tax payers? Is the customer service unlimited? These are all important and you need to ensure that you can obtain immediate support from Tax professionals.

5. Most of all should be fast and accurate.
When choosing a service to place your business with, you will want to ensure they are fast and accurate. Look for a simple and short questionnaire, so that the clutter of the seemingly endless question based personal interviews can be a thing of the past. This after all is one of the main reasons for using an online tax filing system.

Do you get help in selecting the relevant input sheets? Will all your entries be validated? Is there anything in place to organise your paperwork?

Using an online system to file your tax returns can be a great help, and is not very expensive, so visit specialized sites such as TaxBrain Online, and see which one is best for you. The aim of using an online system to file your taxes is to save you hassle, time and worry so you need to be sure that the company you choose will do all of these things.

Please feel free to this this article on Online Tax Return Filing, but keep all links and this resource box intact.

For information about TaxBrain Online and the filing of your tax returns online, please visit http://taxbrainonlinereview.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jon_Richards

Get Money 2-Day at TaxBrain.com
Prepare and File Taxes Starting at $14.95
TaxBrain offers a 2-Day Refund Anticipation Loan Product that its competitors simply don’t have.
www.taxbrain.com

So You Want To Be A Mystery Shopper?

2008-01-26T12:36:00.000+02:00

These guys are actively hiring mystery shoppers (must be a US resident over 18). Perhaps 'hiring' is the wrong word, because you don't get paid anything. However, you are given a $500 card and you get to KEEP things that you buy on assignments. I am not sure if this is strictly online mystery shopping assignments that you do from your PC or if there are some offline assignments as well, but either way, it sounds good.

Mystery Shoppers Wanted. No Pay, But You Keep EVERYTHING You Buy With Our Money.

Scull From Lego

2008-01-23T19:18:00.000+02:00

One Rat Short

2008-01-17T00:24:00.000+02:00

Afroman - Because I Got High (Uncensored)

2008-01-15T01:25:00.001+02:00

50 Cent Candy shop

2008-01-15T01:23:00.000+02:00

Nickelback- Rockstar

2008-01-15T01:22:00.000+02:00

Plies feat. T-Pain - Shawty

2008-01-15T01:20:00.000+02:00

J.Holiday - Bed

2008-01-15T01:18:00.002+02:00

Grupo Montez de Durango - Adios Mi Amante

2008-01-15T01:18:00.001+02:00

Koji Kondo Plays Super Mario Bros. on Piano

2008-01-15T01:15:00.000+02:00

Henry Mancini Pink Panther

2008-01-15T01:12:00.000+02:00

Dj Khaled Feat T-Pain & Trick Daddy & Rick Ross & Plies

2008-01-15T01:10:00.000+02:00

Soulja Boy Tell 'Em

2008-01-15T01:09:00.000+02:00

Angelina Jolie: Lusty Spring

2007-12-25T08:26:00.001+02:00

via http://www.artnet.de/artwork/424772556/424658918/angelina-jolie-lusty-spring.html

Totaltoning

2007-07-30T22:18:00.000+03:00

http://www.totaltoning.com

"Internet Dream" Original Song by Tay Zonday

2007-07-30T20:43:00.000+03:00

Women In Art

2007-05-25T21:24:00.000+03:00

David Blaine Street Magic 2: The Sequel

2007-05-06T15:44:00.000+03:00

David Blaine Street Magic: YouTube Edition!

2007-05-06T15:43:00.000+03:00

Naturally7 - In the Air Tonight ( Video Concert )

2007-03-31T19:27:00.000+03:00

Hot Girl Takes a Bubble Bath

2007-03-31T18:05:00.000+03:00

Hot Girl Takes a Bubble Bath

Yep, she decides to take a bubble bath with her man. How romantic. www.upyourvideo.net
Hot Girl Takes a Bubble Bath

Yep, she decides to take a bubble bath with her man. How romantic. www.upyourvideo.net

VPHIM.COM - Nghe Thuat Quyen Ru Phan 1

2007-03-24T22:07:00.000+02:00

VPHIM.COM - Nghe Thuat Quyen Ru Phan 1
Phim duoc chieu tai http://VPHIM.COM

Phim duoc chieu tai http://VPHIM.COM

Spring Break Girl

2007-03-23T05:50:00.000+02:00

Spring Break Girl
Harraway Films

Watch these girls shake their ass in this funny music video about Spring Break. Ker'in Hayden and Dusty Roze rap this goofy duet. Directed by Josh Harraway. www.harraway.com

Mr Turner - Drunk Driver or Misunderstood?

2007-03-22T05:04:00.000+02:00

span style="font-size:+1;">Mr Turner - Drunk Driver or Misunderstood?

.. an apparently real tape of a sheriff's office questioning a drunk driver... good ol' Mr. Turner

Ninel y Dulce María

2007-03-21T04:24:00.000+02:00

Ninel y Dulce María

En el primer capítulo de Rebelde

Remembering linkin park

2007-03-19T21:18:00.001+02:00

Remembering linkin park
nel3r@

see all linkin park music videos all in one video

pussy cat doll's les ratés au playback http:choubidouwouah.skyblog.com

2007-03-18T20:26:00.000+02:00

pussy cat doll's les ratés au playback http:choubidouwouah.skyblog.com

2 min 5 sec - Feb 22, 2007

http:choubidouwouah.skyblog.com

TQDN18

2007-03-18T14:27:00.000+02:00

TQDN18
http://movies.ctnk.com
42 min 59 sec - Jun 14, 2006

Phim, TVB Series, Vietnamese Drama, Viet Nam Phim Bo, Vietnamese movie, Phim HK, Phim VN, Phim HQ, Phim giai tri, Ca Nhac, MTV, Phim Tap Find more information at http://movies.ctnk.com

Beatboxing flute inspector gadget remix

2007-03-03T23:08:00.000+02:00

Beatboxing Flute player Greg Pattillo inspector gadget with a twist like nothing you've heard (unless you've been wandering through washington square park and heard him there

Author: freedomworksfilms

Don't Stop

2007-03-03T12:29:00.000+02:00

The Walk and Don't Walk guys climb down from their stoplights and battle in the streets of Saudi Arabia. This is the Director's Cut of a viral for Snickers.

Khan Amore’s Illustration of the Divine Proportions Which Can Be Found in the Most Beautiful, Harmoniously-Proportioned Bodies:

2007-03-02T23:40:00.000+02:00

When Khan Amore set forth to write this commentary, he decided that no such article would be complete without an illustration of the plurality of divine proportions which are to be found in Nature’s greatest work of art: the body of a beautiful woman. Braced for many expected hardships, he set aside an entire week for the purpose of dissecting his composite image of history’s greatest woman (the first female mathematician), then distorting it to be in conformity with the divine proportions listed above, finally to reassemble the figure, and thus to see what a body based entirely upon the divine proportion would look like....

http://www.hypatia-lovers.com/geometry/Divine_Proportion.html
This concludes this Commentary on the Divine Proportion, by Khan Amore, author of HYPATIA.

Some Very Interesting Facts You Probably Don’t Know….

2007-02-23T17:23:00.000+02:00

If you yelled for 8 years,7 months and 6 days you would have
produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.

If you farted consistently for 6 years and 9 months, enough gas
is produced to create the energy of an atomic bomb.

The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the
body to squirt blood 30 feet.

A pig’s orgasm lasts 30 minutes.
(In my next life I want to be a pig..LOL)

A cockroach will live nine days without its head before it
starves to death.

Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour.
(Do not try this at home .. maybe at work)

The male praying mantis cannot copulate while its head is
attached to its body. The female initiates sex by ripping the
male’s head off.

The flea can jump 350 times its body length. It’s like a human
jumping the length of a football field.

The catfish has over 27,000 taste buds.

Some lions mate over 50 times a day.
(I still want to be a pig in my next life…)

Butterflies taste with their feet.

The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.

Right-handed people live, on average, nine years longer than
left-handed people do.

Elephants are the only animal that cannot jump.

A cat’s urine glows under a blacklight.

An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain.

Starfish have no brains.

Polar bears are left-handed.

Humans and dolphins are the only species that have sex for
pleasure.
(What about the pig?)

http://www.offbeatenough.com/2007/02/22/did-you-know-that/

bush beatbox

2007-02-18T22:34:00.001+02:00

Rare prehistoric shark appears off the coast of Japan

2007-02-13T20:57:00.000+02:00

This 1.6 metre long eel-like animal, identified as a deep sea frill shark, is usually 600 metres underwater according to Awashima Marine Park officials.

The sharks, while they usually turn up in deep sea trawler fishing nets, are rarely seen alive. Marine park officials believe a particular seasonal up current from the deep seas carried this one up to the surface.

This one was a female weighing up to 7.5 kilogrammes and unlike most other sharks has six gills and bizarre forked teeth.

[Visitor]: "Its got shark's skin,"

Shark skin in Japan was once commonly used by Japanese carpenters as sand paper.

[Visitor]: "Its weird,"

Very little is known of this rare deep sea shark, but it is believed to eat squid, fish and other sharks. Females are believed to have a one or two year pregnancy -- making it possibly the longest gestation period of any vertebrae.

Fossil records can be found of this shark up to 80 million years ago, and like another famous deep sea denizen, the Coelancanth, is called a "living fossil", according to the marine park.

[Mitsuru Sato, Awashima Marine park official]: "We've found fossils of these frill sharks buried in stratum (earth layers) 80 million years old so this is truly a living fossil,"

While the park official hoped to have kept this deep sea monster alive, but the shark was unable to survive outside its deep sea environment and died after soon after capture

What Goes in Your Mind While Typing E-Mail ? Record the Thoughts & Replay Them Later

2007-02-10T08:13:00.001+02:00

Fuzzmail is such a fun and innovative tool that works inside your browser.

When you are typing an email or a blog post, Fuzzmail records your writing style and can exactly replay that later. Every typing actions is captured including typo corrections, pauses and writeovers.

You friend gets to read the message replayed in the way that you typed it. That might give him an insight into what was going in your mind while composing that message. Very creative.

Fuzzmail.org | Sample e-mails | via Suresh Chandren
Digital Inspiration

Interesting Real Facts (Strange but True)

2007-02-06T07:32:00.001+02:00

1	Look at your zipper. See the initials YKK? It stands for Yoshida Kogyo Kabushibibaisha, the world's largest zipper manufacturer.
2	40 percent of McDonald's profits come from the sales of Happy Meals.
3	315 entries in Webster's 1996 Dictionary were misspelled.
4	On the average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily.
5	Chocolate kills dogs! True, chocolate affects a dog's heart and nervous system. A few ounces is enough to kill a small sized dog.
6	Ketchup was sold in the 1830's as a medicine.
7	Leonardo da Vinci could write with one hand and draw with the other at the same time.
8	Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of wood.
9	There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos.
10	Leonardo da Vinci invented scissors. Also, it took him 10 years to paint Mona Lisa's lips.
11	Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually had to slow a film down so you could see his moves. That's the opposite of the norm.
12	The original name for the butterfly was "flutterby"!
13	By raising your legs slowly and lying on your back, you can't sink in quicksand.
14	Mosquito repellents don't repel. They hide you. The spray blocks the mosquito's sensors so they don't know you're there.
15	Dentists recommend that a toothbrush be kept at least six feet away from a toilet to avoid airborne particles resulting from the flush.
16	The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley's gum.
17	Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than the entire Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.
18	Marilyn Monroe had six toes on one foot.
19	Adolf Hitler's mother seriously considered having an abortion but was talked out of it by her doctor.
20	The three most valuable brand names on earth: Marlboro, Coca-Cola, and Budweiser, in that order.
21	To escape the grip of a crocodile's jaws, prick your fingers into its eyeballs. It will let you go instantly.
22	The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.
23	The "pound" (#) key on your keyboard is called an octothorp.
24	The only domestic animal not mentioned in the Bible is the cat.
25	Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.
26	The average person's left hand does 56% of the typing.
27	Dreamt" is the only word in the English language that ends in "mt".
28	It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
29	In Chinese, the KFC slogan "finger lickin' good" comes out as "eat your fingers off".
30	A cockroach can live for 10 days without a head.
31	We shed 40 pounds of skin a lifetime.
32	Yo-Yos were once used as weapons in the Philippines.
33	Mexico City sinks abut 10 inches a year.
34	Brains are more active sleeping than watching TV.
35	Blue is the favorite color of 80 percent of Americans.
36	When a person shakes their head from side to side, he is saying "yes" in Sri Lanka.
37	There are more chickens than people in the world.
38	The thumbnail grows the slowest, and the middle nail grows the fastest.
39	There are more telephones than people in Washington, D.C.
40	The average four year-old child asks over four hundred questions a day.
41	The average person presses the snooze button on their alarm clock three Times each morning.
42	The three wealthiest families in the world have more assets than the Combined wealth of the forty-eight poorest nations.
43	The first owner of the Marlboro cigarette Company died of lung cancer.
44	Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.
45	The world's youngest parents were 8 and 9 and lived in China in 1910.
46	Our eyes remain the same size from birth onward, but our noses and ears Never stop growing.
47	You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching TV.
48	A person will die from total lack of sleep sooner than from starvation. Death will occur about 10 days without sleep, while starvation takes a Few weeks.
49	Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.
50	The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows.
51	When the moon is directly overhead, you weigh slightly less.
52	Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, never telephoned His wife or mother because they were both deaf.
53	A psychology student in New York rented out her spare room to a Carpenter in order to nag him constantly and study his reactions. After Weeks of needling, he snapped and beat her repeatedly with an axe Leaving her mentally retarded
54	"I am." is the shortest complete sentence in the English language
55	Colgate faced a big obstacle marketing toothpaste in Spanish speaking Countries because Colgate translates into the command "go hang Yourself."
56	Like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is different.
57	"Bookkeeper" is the only word in English language with three consecutive Double letters.
58	Right handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left handed People do.
59	The sentence "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" uses every Letter in the English language.
60	If the population of China walked past you in single line, the line Would never end because of the rate of reproduction
61	China has more English speakers than the United States.
62	Every human spent about half an hour as a single cell.
63	Each square inch of human skin consists of twenty feet of blood vessels.
64	An average person uses the bathroom 6 times per day.
65	Babies are born with 300 bones, but by adulthood we have only 206 in our Bodies.
66	Beards are the fastest growing hairs on the human body. If the average Man never trimmed his beard, it would grow to nearly 30 feet long in his Lifetime.
67	According to Genesis 1:20-22, the chicken came before the egg.
68	The longest place name still in use is: Taumatawhakatangihangaoauauotameteaturi- Pukakpikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu - a New Zealand hill.
69	If you leave Tokyo by plane at 7:00am, you will arrive in Honolulu at Approximately 4:30pm the previous day.
70	Scientists in Australia's Parkes Observatory thought they had positive Proof of alien life, when they began picking up radio-waves from space. However, after investigation, the radio emissions were traced to a Microwave in the building.
71	Wearing headphones for an hour increases the bacteria in your ear 700 times.
72	More than 40,000 parasites and 250 types of bacteria are exchanged during a French kiss.
73	Men can read smaller print than women, but women can hear better.
74	Coca-Cola was originally green.
75	The most common name in the world is Mohammed.
76	The name of all the continents ends with the same letter that they start with.
77	There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.
78	TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard.
79	Women blink nearly twice as much as men!!
80	You can't kill yourself by holding your breath.
81	It is impossible to lick your elbow.
82	People say "Bless you" when you sneeze because when you sneeze, your heart stops for a millisecond.
83	It is physically impossible for pigs to look up into the sky.
84	The "sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick" is said to be the toughest tongue twister in the English language.
85	If you sneeze too hard, you can fracture a rib. If you try to suppress a sneeze, you can rupture a blood vessel in your head or neck and die.
86	Each king in a deck of playing cards represents great king from history. Spades - King David, Clubs - Alexander the Great, Hearts - Charlemagne, Diamonds - Julius Caesar.
87	111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321
88	If a statue of a person in the park on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle.
89	If the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle.
90	If the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.
91	Question - This is the only food that doesn't spoil. What is this? Ans. - Honey
92	A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.
93	A snail can sleep for three years.
94	All polar bears are left handed.
95	American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in first-class.
96	Butterflies taste with their feet.
97	Elephants are the only animals that can't jump.
98	In the last 4000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.
99	On average, people fear spiders more than they do death.
100	Shakespeare invented the word 'assassination' and 'bump'.
101	Stewardesses is the longest word typed with only the left hand.
102	The ant always falls over on its right side when intoxicated.
103	The electric chair was invented by a dentist.
104	The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body to squirt blood 30 feet.
105	Rats multiply so quickly that in 18 months, two rats could have over million descendants.
106	The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.
107	Most lipstick contains fish scales.
108	And finally 99% of people who read this will try to lick their elbow.

Death and Taxes

2007-02-03T13:32:00.000+02:00

“Death and Taxes” is a representational graph of the federal discretionary budget. The amount of money that is spent at the discretion of your elected representatives in Congress. Basically, your federal income taxes.

The data is from the President’s annual budget proposal but it must pass both the House and Senate before it goes into effect.

While “Death and Taxes” contains an enormous amount of information, the purpose of the graph is to generate questions. The right questions. Your taxes are being spent in your name and mostly likely you are unaware exactly what they are used for. This “Death and Taxes” will hopefully answer that “what” question.

The next question that should be asked is “why”?

http://thebudgetgraph.com/poster/

When Your Favorite Website Doesn't Offer RSS Feeds

2007-02-03T12:10:00.001+02:00

by Amit Agarwal Your friend sends you a link to some website - after digging for few minutes, you seem to enjoy the contents and like to subscribe to the site's RSS feed in your newsreader.

But there's a small problem - the site owner is not providing RSS feeds for users to syndicate the content. What do you do in such a case ?

Simple - create the RSS feed yourself [no programming required]. Mukarram from Delhi wants something similar and is looking for a solution to convert these HTML only webpages to RSS feeds.

There are at least two good services that are absolutely free and can get the job done in few clicks. Here they are:

Feed43 (pronounced as "Feed For Free") is one such free service that can help you monitor any site for new content right from the comfort of your newsreader.

FeedYes - another popular Website to RSS feed service that even lets you tag the feeds. You type in the site URL and immediately get the RSS feed. There are options to finetune the results.

And yes, there are some other good advantages of these services as well like you can track Google search results or comments on blogs that don't offer separate comment feeds .
Digital Inspiration

2007-01-27T13:03:00.001+02:00

Sneak peek at Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Sneak peek at Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

3 min 50 sec - Nov 20, 2006

From HPANA.com

Oscar 2007

2007-01-23T18:52:00.001+02:00

Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2006 will be presented on Sunday, February 25, 2007, at the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center®.

Performance by an actor in a leading role
	Leonardo DiCaprio in "Blood Diamond" (Warner Bros.)
	Ryan Gosling in "Half Nelson" (THINKFilm)
	Peter O'Toole in "Venus" (Miramax, Filmfour and UK Council)
	Will Smith in "The Pursuit of Happyness" (Sony Pictures Releasing)
	Forest Whitaker in "The Last King of Scotland" (Fox Searchlight)

Performance by an actor in a supporting role
	Alan Arkin in "Little Miss Sunshine" (Fox Searchlight)
	Jackie Earle Haley in "Little Children" (New Line)
	Djimon Hounsou in "Blood Diamond" (Warner Bros.)
	Eddie Murphy in "Dreamgirls" (DreamWorks and Paramount)
	Mark Wahlberg in "The Departed" (Warner Bros.)

Performance by an actress in a leading role
	Penélope Cruz in "Volver" (Sony Pictures Classics)
	Judi Dench in "Notes on a Scandal" (Fox Searchlight)
	Helen Mirren in "The Queen" (Miramax, Pathé and Granada)
	Meryl Streep in "The Devil Wears Prada" (20th Century Fox)
	Kate Winslet in "Little Children" (New Line)

Performance by an actress in a supporting role
	Adriana Barraza in "Babel" (Paramount and Paramount Vantage)
	Cate Blanchett in "Notes on a Scandal" (Fox Searchlight)
	Abigail Breslin in "Little Miss Sunshine" (Fox Searchlight)
	Jennifer Hudson in "Dreamgirls" (DreamWorks and Paramount)
	Rinko Kikuchi in "Babel" (Paramount and Paramount Vantage)

Best animated feature film of the year
	"Cars" (Buena Vista) John Lasseter
	"Happy Feet" (Warner Bros.) George Miller
	"Monster House" (Sony Pictures Releasing) Gil Kenan

Achievement in art direction
	"Dreamgirls" (DreamWorks and Paramount) Art Direction: John Myhre Set Decoration: Nancy Haigh
	"The Good Shepherd" (Universal) Art Direction: Jeannine Oppewall Set Decoration: Gretchen Rau and Leslie E. Rollins
	"Pan's Labyrinth" (Picturehouse) Art Direction: Eugenio Caballero Set Decoration: Pilar Revuelta
	"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" (Buena Vista) Art Direction: Rick Heinrichs Set Decoration: Cheryl A. Carasik
	"The Prestige" (Buena Vista) Art Direction: Nathan Crowley Set Decoration: Julie Ochipinti

Achievement in cinematography
	"The Black Dahlia" (Universal) Vilmos Zsigmond
	"Children of Men" (Universal) Emmanuel Lubezki
	"The Illusionist" (Yari Film Group) Dick Pope
	"Pan's Labyrinth" (Picturehouse) Guillermo Navarro
	"The Prestige" (Buena Vista) Wally Pfister

Achievement in costume design
	"Curse of the Golden Flower" (Sony Pictures Classics) Yee Chung Man
	"The Devil Wears Prada" (20th Century Fox) Patricia Field
	"Dreamgirls" (DreamWorks and Paramount) Sharen Davis
	"Marie Antoinette" (Sony Pictures Releasing) Milena Canonero
	"The Queen" (Miramax, Pathé and Granada) Consolata Boyle

Achievement in directing
	"Babel" (Paramount and Paramount Vantage) Alejandro González Iñárritu
	"The Departed" (Warner Bros.) Martin Scorsese
	"Letters from Iwo Jima" (Warner Bros.) Clint Eastwood
	"The Queen" (Miramax, Pathé and Granada) Stephen Frears
	"United 93" (Universal and StudioCanal) Paul Greengrass

Best documentary feature
	"Deliver Us from Evil" (Lionsgate) A Disarming Films Production Amy Berg and Frank Donner
	"An Inconvenient Truth" (Paramount Classics and Participant Productions) A Lawrence Bender/Laurie David Production Davis Guggenheim
	"Iraq in Fragments" (Typecast Releasing) A Typecast Pictures/Daylight Factory Production James Longley and John Sinno
	"Jesus Camp" (Magnolia Pictures) A Loki Films Production Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady
	"My Country, My Country" (Zeitgeist Films) A Praxis Films Production Laura Poitras and Jocelyn Glatzer

Best documentary short subject
	"The Blood of Yingzhou District" A Thomas Lennon Films Production Ruby Yang and Thomas Lennon
	"Recycled Life" An Iwerks/Glad Production Leslie Iwerks and Mike Glad
	"Rehearsing a Dream" A Simon & Goodman Picture Company Production Karen Goodman and Kirk Simon
	"Two Hands" A Crazy Boat Pictures Production Nathaniel Kahn and Susan Rose Behr

Achievement in film editing
	"Babel" (Paramount and Paramount Vantage) Stephen Mirrione and Douglas Crise
	"Blood Diamond" (Warner Bros.) Steven Rosenblum
	"Children of Men" (Universal) Alex Rodríguez and Alfonso Cuarón
	"The Departed" (Warner Bros.) Thelma Schoonmaker
	"United 93" (Universal and StudioCanal) Clare Douglas, Christopher Rouse and Richard Pearson

Best foreign language film of the year
	"After the Wedding" A Zentropa Entertainments 16 Production Denmark
	"Days of Glory (Indigènes)" A Tessalit Production Algeria
	"The Lives of Others" A Wiedemann & Berg Production Germany
	"Pan's Labyrinth" A Tequila Gang/Esperanto Filmoj/Estudios Picasso Production Mexico
	"Water" A Hamilton-Mehta Production Canada

Achievement in makeup
	"Apocalypto" (Buena Vista) Aldo Signoretti and Vittorio Sodano
	"Click" (Sony Pictures Releasing) Kazuhiro Tsuji and Bill Corso
	"Pan's Labyrinth" (Picturehouse) David Marti and Montse Ribe

Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original score)
	"Babel" (Paramount and Paramount Vantage) Gustavo Santaolalla
	"The Good German" (Warner Bros.) Thomas Newman
	"Notes on a Scandal" (Fox Searchlight) Philip Glass
	"Pan's Labyrinth" (Picturehouse) Javier Navarrete
	"The Queen" (Miramax, Pathé and Granada) Alexandre Desplat

Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original song)
	"I Need to Wake Up" from "An Inconvenient Truth" (Paramount Classics and Participant Productions) Music and Lyric by Melissa Etheridge
	"Listen" from "Dreamgirls" (DreamWorks and Paramount) Music by Henry Krieger and Scott Cutler Lyric by Anne Preven
	"Love You I Do" from "Dreamgirls" (DreamWorks and Paramount) Music by Henry Krieger Lyric by Siedah Garrett
	"Our Town" from "Cars" (Buena Vista) Music and Lyric by Randy Newman
	"Patience" from "Dreamgirls" (DreamWorks and Paramount) Music by Henry Krieger Lyric by Willie Reale

Best motion picture of the year
	"Babel" (Paramount and Paramount Vantage) An Anonymous Content/Zeta Film/Central Films Production Alejandro González Iñárritu, Jon Kilik and Steve Golin, Producers
	"The Departed" (Warner Bros.) A Warner Bros. Pictures Production Nominees to be determined
	"Letters from Iwo Jima" (Warner Bros.) A DreamWorks Pictures/Warner Bros. Pictures Production Clint Eastwood, Steven Spielberg and Robert Lorenz, Producers
	"Little Miss Sunshine" (Fox Searchlight) A Big Beach/Bona Fide Production Nominees to be determined
	"The Queen" (Miramax, Pathé and Granada) A Granada Production Andy Harries, Christine Langan and Tracey Seaward, Producers

Best animated short film
	"The Danish Poet" (National Film Board of Canada) A Mikrofilm and National Film Board of Canada Production Torill Kove
	"Lifted" (Buena Vista) A Pixar Animation Studios Production Gary Rydstrom
	"The Little Matchgirl" (Buena Vista) A Walt Disney Pictures Production Roger Allers and Don Hahn
	"Maestro" (Szimplafilm) A Kedd Production Geza M. Toth
	"No Time for Nuts" (20th Century Fox) A Blue Sky Studios Production Chris Renaud and Michael Thurmeier

Best live action short film
	"Binta and the Great Idea (Binta Y La Gran Idea)" A Peliculas Pendelton and Tus Ojos Production Javier Fesser and Luis Manso
	"Éramos Pocos (One Too Many)" (Kimuak) An Altube Filmeak Production Borja Cobeaga
	"Helmer & Son" A Nordisk Film Production Soren Pilmark and Kim Magnusson
	"The Saviour" (Australian Film Television and Radio School) An Australian Film Television and Radio School Production Peter Templeman and Stuart Parkyn
	"West Bank Story" An Ari Sandel, Pascal Vaguelsy, Amy Kim, Ravi Malhotra and Ashley Jordan Production Ari Sandel

Achievement in sound editing
	"Apocalypto" (Buena Vista) Sean McCormack and Kami Asgar
	"Blood Diamond" (Warner Bros.) Lon Bender
	"Flags of Our Fathers" (DreamWorks and Warner Bros., Distributed by Paramount) Alan Robert Murray and Bub Asman
	"Letters from Iwo Jima" (Warner Bros.) Alan Robert Murray
	"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" (Buena Vista) Christopher Boyes and George Watters II

Achievement in sound mixing
	"Apocalypto" (Buena Vista) Kevin O'Connell, Greg P. Russell and Fernando Camara
	"Blood Diamond" (Warner Bros.) Andy Nelson, Anna Behlmer and Ivan Sharrock
	"Dreamgirls" (DreamWorks and Paramount) Michael Minkler, Bob Beemer and Willie Burton
	"Flags of Our Fathers" (DreamWorks and Warner Bros., Distributed by Paramount) John Reitz, Dave Campbell, Gregg Rudloff and Walt Martin
	"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" (Buena Vista) Paul Massey, Christopher Boyes and Lee Orloff

Achievement in visual effects
	"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" (Buena Vista) John Knoll, Hal Hickel, Charles Gibson and Allen Hall
	"Poseidon" (Warner Bros.) Boyd Shermis, Kim Libreri, Chaz Jarrett and John Frazier
	"Superman Returns" (Warner Bros.) Mark Stetson, Neil Corbould, Richard R. Hoover and Jon Thum

Adapted screenplay
	"Borat Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" (20th Century Fox) Screenplay by Sacha Baron Cohen & Anthony Hines & Peter Baynham & Dan Mazer Story by Sacha Baron Cohen & Peter Baynham & Anthony Hines & Todd Phillips
	"Children of Men" (Universal) Screenplay by Alfonso Cuarón & Timothy J. Sexton and David Arata and Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby
	"The Departed" (Warner Bros.) Screenplay by William Monahan
	"Little Children" (New Line) Screenplay by Todd Field & Tom Perrotta
	"Notes on a Scandal" (Fox Searchlight) Screenplay by Patrick Marber

Original screenplay
	"Babel" (Paramount and Paramount Vantage) Written by Guillermo Arriaga
	"Letters from Iwo Jima" (Warner Bros.) Screenplay by Iris Yamashita Story by Iris Yamashita & Paul Haggis
	"Little Miss Sunshine" (Fox Searchlight) Written by Michael Arndt
	"Pan's Labyrinth" (Picturehouse) Written by Guillermo del Toro
	"The Queen" (Miramax, Pathé and Granada) Written by Peter Morgan

Picasa Web Tag Cloud

2007-01-20T12:25:00.001+02:00

Picasa Web Albums, the online extension of Picasa, has recently added tags and search. Now you can see a tag cloud in the right sidebar of a public gallery (instead of increasing the font size for frequent tags like in Flickr, Google chose to show the number of photos that have a certain tag). This way, it's easier to explore someone's photos without going to each album.

The number of photos you can upload to an album has been increased from 300 to 500.

Томаш Томашевски

2007-01-17T22:49:00.001+02:00

Фотография Томаша Томашевски.

be creative

2007-01-17T20:43:00.001+02:00

How To Be Creative:

So you want to be more creative, in art, in business, whatever. Here are some tips that have worked for me over the years:

1. Ignore everybody.
2. The idea doesn't have to be big. It just has to change the world.
3. Put the hours in.
4. If your biz plan depends on you suddenly being "discovered" by some big shot, your plan will probably fail.
5. You are responsible for your own experience.
6. Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten.
7. Keep your day job.
8. Companies that squelch creativity can no longer compete with companies that champion creativity.
9. Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.
10. The more talented somebody is, the less they need the props.
11. Don't try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds altogether.
12. If you accept the pain, it cannot hurt you.
13. Never compare your inside with somebody else's outside.
14. Dying young is overrated.
15. The most important thing a creative person can learn professionally is where to draw the red line that separates what you are willing to do, and what you are not.
16. The world is changing.
17. Merit can be bought. Passion can't.
18. Avoid the Watercooler Gang.
19. Sing in your own voice.
20. The choice of media is irrelevant.
21. Selling out is harder than it looks.
22. Nobody cares. Do it for yourself.
23. Worrying about "Commercial vs. Artistic" is a complete waste of time.
24. Don�t worry about finding inspiration. It comes eventually.
25. You have to find your own schtick.
26. Write from the heart.
27. The best way to get approval is not to need it.
28. Power is never given. Power is taken.
29. Whatever choice you make, The Devil gets his due eventually.
30. The hardest part of being creative is getting used to it.
31. Remain frugal.

MORE:

1. Ignore everybody.

The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to give you. When I first started with the cartoon-on-back-of-bizcard format, people thought I was nuts. Why wasn't I trying to do something more easy for markets to digest i.e. cutey-pie greeting cards or whatever?

You don't know if your idea is any good the moment it's created. Neither does anyone else. The most you can hope for is a strong gut feeling that it is. And trusting your feelings is not as easy as the optimists say it is. There's a reason why feelings scare us.

And asking close friends never works quite as well as you hope, either. It's not that they deliberately want to be unhelpful. It's just they don't know your world one millionth as well as you know your world, no matter how hard they try, no matter how hard you try to explain.

Plus a big idea will change you. Your friends may love you, but they don't want you to change. If you change, then their dynamic with you also changes. They like things the way they are, that's how they love you- the way you are, not the way you may become.

Ergo, they have no incentive to see you change. And they will be resistant to anything that catalyzes it. That's human nature. And you would do the same, if the shoe was on the other foot.

With business colleagues it's even worse. They're used to dealing with you in a certain way. They're used to having a certain level of control over the relationship. And they want whatever makes them more prosperous. Sure, they might prefer it if you prosper as well, but that's not their top priority.

If your idea is so good that it changes your dynamic enough to where you need them less, or God forbid, THE MARKET needs them less, then they're going to resist your idea every chance they can.

Again, that's human nature.

GOOD IDEAS ALTER THE POWER BALANCE IN RELATIONSHIPS, THAT IS WHY GOOD IDEAS ARE ALWAYS INITIALLY RESISTED.

Good ideas come with a heavy burden. Which is why so few people have them. So few people can handle it.

2. The idea doesn't have to be big. It just has to change the world.

The two are not the same thing.

We all spend a lot of time being impressed by folk we've never met. Somebody featured in the media who's got a big company, a big product, a big movie, a big bestseller. Whatever.

And we spend even more time trying unsuccessfully to keep up with them. Trying to start up our own companies, our own products, our own film projects, books and whatnot.

I'm as guilty as anyone. I tried lots of different things over the years, trying desperately to pry my career out of the jaws of mediocrity. Some to do with business, some to do with art etc.

One evening, after one false start too many, I just gave up. Sitting at a bar, feeling a bit burned out by work and life in general, I just started drawing on the back of business cards for no reason. I didn't really need a reason. I just did it because it was there, because it amused me in a kind of random, arbitrary way.

Of course it was stupid. Of course it was uncommercial. Of course it wasn't going to go anywhere. Of course it was a complete and utter waste of time. But in retrospect, it was this built-in futility that gave it its edge. Because it was the exact opposite of all the "Big Plans" my peers and I were used to making. It was so liberating not to have to be thinking about all that, for a change.

It was so liberating to be doing something that didn't have to impress anybody, for a change.

It was so liberating to have something that belonged just to me and no one else, for a change.

It was so liberating to feel complete sovereignty, for a change. To feel complete freedom, for a change.

And of course, it was then, and only then, that the outside world started paying attention.

The sovereignty you have over your work will inspire far more people than the actual content ever will. How your own sovereignty inspires other people to find their own sovereignty, their own sense of freedom and possibility, will change the world far more than the the work's objective merits ever will.

Your idea doesn't have to be big. It just has to be yours alone. The more the idea is yours alone, the more freedom you have to do something really amazing.

The more amazing, the more people will click with your idea. The more people click with your idea, the more it will change the world.

That's what doodling on business cards taught me.

3. Put the hours in.

Doing anything worthwhile takes forever. 90% of what separates successful people and failed people is time, effort, and stamina.

I get asked a lot, "Your business card format is very simple. Aren't you worried about somebody ripping it off?"

Standard Answer: Only if they can draw more of them than me, better than me.

What gives the work its edge is the simple fact that I've spent years drawing them. I've drawn thousands. Tens of thousands of man hours.

So if somebody wants to rip my idea off, go ahead. If somebody wants to overtake me in the business card doodle wars, go ahead. You've got many long years in front of you. And unlike me, you won't be doing it for the joy of it. You'll be doing it for some self-loathing, ill-informed, lame-ass mercenary reason. So the years will be even longer and far, far more painful. Lucky you.

If somebody in your industry is more successful than you, it's probably because he works harder at it than you do. Sure, maybe he's more inherently talented, more adept at networking etc, but I don't consider that an excuse. Over time, that advantage counts for less and less. Which is why the world is full of highly talented, network-savvy, failed mediocrities.

So yeah, success means you've got a long road ahead of you, regardless. How do you best manage it?

Well, as I've written elsewhere, don't quit your day job. I didn't. I work every day at the office, same as any other regular schmoe. I have a long commute on the train, ergo that's when I do most of my drawing. When I was younger I drew mostly while sitting at a bar, but that got old.

The point is; an hour or two on the train is very managable for me. The fact I have a job means I don't feel pressured to do something market-friendly. Instead, I get to do whatever the hell I want. I get to do it for my own satisfaction. And I think that makes the work more powerful in the long run. It also makes it easier to carry on with it in a calm fashion, day-in-day out, and not go crazy in insane creative bursts brought on by money worries.

The day job, which I really like, gives me something productive and interesting to do among fellow adults. It gets me out of the house in the day time. If I were a professional cartoonist I'd just be chained to a drawing table at home all day, scribbling out a living in silence, interrupted only by freqent trips to the coffee shop. No, thank you.

Simply put, my method allows me to pace myself over the long haul, which is important.

Stamina is utterly important. And stamina is only possible if it's managed well. People think all they need to do is endure one crazy, intense, job-free creative burst and their dreams will come true. They are wrong, they are stupidly wrong.

Being good at anything is like figure skating- the definition of being good at it is being able to make it look easy. But it never is easy. Ever. That's what the stupidly wrong people coveniently forget.

If I was just starting out writing, say, a novel or a screenplay, or maybe starting up a new software company, I wouldn't try to quit my job in order to make this big, dramatic heroic-quest thing about it.

I would do something far simpler: I would find that extra hour or two in the day that belongs to nobody else but me, and I would make it productive. Put the hours in, do it for long enough and magical, life-transforming things happen eventually. Sure, that means less time watching TV, internet surfing, going out or whatever.

But who cares?

4. If your biz plan depends on you suddenly being "discovered" by some big shot, your plan will probably fail.
Nobody suddenly discovers anything. Things are made slowly and in pain.

I was offered a quite substantial publishing deal a year or two ago. Turned it down. The company sent me a contract. I looked it over. Hmmmm...

Called the company back. Asked for some clarifications on some points in the contract. Never heard back from them. The deal died.

This was a very respected company. You may have even heard of it.

They just assumed I must be just like all the other people they represent- hungry and desperate and willing to sign anything.

They wanted to own me, regardless of how good a job they did.

That's the thing about some big publishers. They want 110% from you, but they don't offer to do likewise in return. To them, the artist is just one more noodle in a big bowl of pasta.

Their business model is to basically throw the pasta against the wall, and see which one sticks. The ones that fall to the floor are just forgotten.

Publishers are just middlemen. That's all. If artists could remember that more often, they'd save themselves a lot of aggrevation.

Anyway, yeah, I can see gapingvoid being a 'product' one day. Books, T-shirts and whatnot. I think it could make a lot of money, if handled correctly. But I'm not afraid to walk away if I think the person offering it is full of hot air. I've already got my groove etc. Not to mention another career that's doing quite well, thank you.

I think "gapingvoid as product line" idea is pretty inevitable, down the road. Watch this space.

5. You are responsible for your own experience.

Nobody can tell you if what you're doing is good, meaningful or worthwhile. The more compelling the path, the more lonely it is.Every creative person is looking for "The Big Idea". You know, the one that is going to catapult them out from the murky depths of obscurity and on to the highest planes of incandescent ludicity.

The one that's all love-at-first-sight with the Zeitgeist.

The one that's going to get them invited to all the right parties, metaphorical or otherwise.

So naturally you ask yourself, if and when you finally come up with The Big Idea, after years of toil, struggle and doubt, how do you know whether or not it is "The One"?

Answer: You don't.

There's no glorious swelling of existential triumph.

That's not what happens.

All you get is this rather kvetchy voice inside you that seems to say, "This is totally stupid.This is utterly moronic. This is a complete waste of time. I'm going to do it anyway."

And you go do it anyway.

Second-rate ideas like glorious swellings far more. Keeps them alive longer.

6. Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten.
Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with books on algebra etc. Being suddenly hit years later with the creative bug is just a wee voice telling you, "I�d like my crayons back, please."

So you've got the itch to do something. Write a screenplay, start a painting, write a book, turn your recipe for fudge brownies into a proper business, whatever. You don't know where the itch came from, it's almost like it just arrived on your doorstep, uninvited. Until now you were quite happy holding down a real job, being a regular person...

Until now.

You don't know if you're any good or not, but you'd think you could be. And the idea terrifies you. The problem is, even if you are good, you know nothing about this kind of business. You don't know any publishers or agents or all these fancy-shmancy kind of folk. You have a friend who's got a cousin in California who's into this kind of stuff, but you haven't talked to your friend for over two years...

Besides, if you write a book, what if you can't find a publisher? If you write a screenplay, what if you can't find a producer? And what if the producer turns out to be a crook? You've always worked hard your whole life, you'll be damned if you'll put all that effort into something if there ain't no pot of gold at the end of this dumb-ass rainbow...

Heh. That's not your wee voice asking for the crayons back. That's your outer voice, your adult voice, your boring & tedious voice trying to find a way to get the wee crayon voice to shut the hell up.

Your wee voice doesn't want you to sell something. Your wee voice wants you to make something. There's a big difference. Your wee voice doesn't give a damn about publishers or Hollywood producers.

Go ahead and make something. Make something really special. Make something amazing that will really blow the mind of anybody who sees it.

If you try to make something just to fit your uninformed view of some hypothetical market, you will fail. If you make something special and powerful and honest and true, you will succeed.

The wee voice didn't show up because it decided you need more money or you need to hang out with movie stars. Your wee voice came back because your soul somehow depends on it. There's something you haven't said, something you haven't done, some light that needs to be switched on, and it needs to be taken care of. Now.

So you have to listen to the wee voice or it will die... taking a big chunk of you along with it.

They're only crayons. You didn't fear them in kindergarten, why fear them now?

7. Keep your day job.
I�m not just saying that for the usual reason i.e. because I think your idea will fail. I�m saying it because to suddenly quit one�s job in a big ol' creative drama-queen moment is always, always, always in direct conflict with what I call "The Sex & Cash Theory".

THE SEX & CASH THEORY: "The creative person basically has two kinds of jobs: One is the sexy, creative kind. Second is the kind that pays the bills. Sometimes the task in hand covers both bases, but not often. This tense duality will always play center stage. It will never be transcended."

A good example is Phil, a NY photographer friend of mine. He does really wild stuff for the indie magazines- it pays nothing, but it allows him to build his portfolio. Then he'll go off and shoot some catalogues for a while. Nothing too exciting, but it pays the bills.

Another example is somebody like Martin Amis. He writes "serious" novels, but he has to supplement his income by writing the occasional newspaper article for the London papers (novel royalties are bloody pathetic- even bestsellers like Amis aren't immune).

Or actors. One year Travolta will be in an ultra-hip flick like Pulp Fiction ("Sex"), the next he'll be in some dumb spy thriller ("Cash").

Or painters. You spend one month painting blue pictures because that's the color the celebrity collectors are buying this season ("Cash"), you spend the next month painting red pictures because secretly you despise the color blue and love the color red ("Sex").

Or geeks. You spend you weekdays writing code for a faceless corporation ("Cash"), then you spend your evening and weekends writing anarchic, weird computer games to amuse your techie friends with ("Sex").

It's balancing the need to make a good living while still maintaining one's creative sovereignty. My M.O. is gapingvoid ("Sex"), coupled with my day job ("Cash").

I'm thinking about the young writer who has to wait tables to pay the bills, in spite of her writing appearing in all the cool and hip magazines.... who dreams of one day of not having her life divided so harshly.

Well, over time the 'harshly' bit might go away, but not the 'divided'.

"This tense duality will always play center stage. It will never be transcended."

As soon as you accept this, I mean really accept this, for some reason your career starts moving ahead faster. I don't know why this happens. It's the people who refuse to cleave their lives this way- who just want to start Day One by quitting their current crappy day job and moving straight on over to best-selling author... Well, they never make it.

Anyway, it's called "The Sex & Cash Theory". Keep it under your pillow.

8. Companies that squelch creativity can no longer compete with companies that champion creativity.

Nor can you bully a subordinate into becoming a genius.

Since the modern, scientifically-conceived corporation was invented in the early half of the Twentieth Century, creativity has been sacrificed in favor of forwarding the interests of the "Team Player".

Fair enough. There was more money in doing it that way; that's why they did it.

There's only one problem. Team Players are not very good at creating value on their own. They are not autonomous; they need a team in order to exist.

So now corporations are awash with non-autonomous thinkers.

"I don't know. What do you think?"
"I don't know. What do you think?"
"I don't know. What do you think?"
"I don't know. What do you think?"
"I don't know. What do you think?"
"I don't know. What do you think?"

And so on.

Creating an economically viable entity where lack of original thought is handsomely rewarded creates a rich, fertile environment for parasites to breed. And that's exactly what's been happening. So now we have millions upon millions of human tapeworms thriving in the Western World, making love to their Powerpoint presentations, feasting on the creativity of others.

What happens to an ecology, when the parasite level reaches critical mass?

The ecology dies.

If you're creative, if you can think independantly, if you can articulate passion, if you can override the fear of being wrong, then your company needs you now more than it ever did. And now your company can no longer afford to pretend that isn't the case.

So dust off your horn and start tooting it. Exactly.

However if you're not paricularly creative, then you're in real trouble. And there's no buzzword or "new paradigm" that can help you. They may not have mentioned this in business school, but... people like watching dinosaurs die.

9. Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.
You may never reach the summit; for that you will be forgiven. But if you don't make at least one serious attempt to get above the snow-line, years later you will find yourself lying on your deathbed, and all you will feel is emptiness.

This metaphorical Mount Everest doesn't have to manifest itself as "Art". For some people, yes, it might be a novel or a painting. But Art is just one path up the mountain, one of many. With others the path may be something more prosaic. Making a million dollars, raising a family, owning the most Burger King franchises in the Tri-State area, building some crazy oversized model airplane, the list has no end.

Whatever. Let's talk about you now. Your mountain. Your private Mount Everest. Yes, that one. Exactly.

Let's say you never climb it. Do you have a problem witb that? Can you just say to yourself, "Never mind, I never really wanted it anyway" and take up stamp collecting instead?

Well, you could try. But I wouldn't believe you. I think it's not OK for you never to try to climb it. And I think you agree with me. Otherwise you wouldn't have read this far.

So it looks like you're going to have to climb the frickin' mountain. Deal with it.

My advice? You don't need my advice. You really don't. The biggest piece of advice I could give anyone would be this:

"Admit that your own private Mount Everest exists. That is half the battle."

And you've already done that. You really have. Otherwise, again, you wouldn't have read this far.

Rock on.

10. The more talented somebody is, the less they need the props.

Meeting a person who wrote a masterpiece on the back of a deli menu would not surprise me. Meeting a person who wrote a masterpiece with a silver Cartier fountain pen on an antique writing table in an airy SoHo loft would SERIOUSLY surprise me.

Abraham Lincoln wrote The Gettysberg Address on a piece of ordinary stationery that he had borrowed from the friend whose house he was staying at.

James Joyce wrote with a simple pencil and notebook. Somebody else did the typing, but only much later.

Van Gough rarely painted with more than six colors on his palette.

I draw on the back of wee biz cards. Whatever.

There's no correlation between creativity and equipment ownership. None. Zilch. Nada.

Actually, as the artist gets more into his thing, and as he gets more successful, his number of tools tends to go down. He knows what works for him. Expending mental energy on stuff wastes time. He's a man on a mission. He's got a deadline. He's got some rich client breathing down his neck. The last thing he wants is to spend 3 weeks learning how to use a router drill if he doesn't need to.

A fancy tool just gives the second-rater one more pillar to hide behind.

Which is why there are so many second-rate art directors with state-of-the-art Macinotsh computers.

Which is why there are so many hack writers with state-of-the-art laptops.

Which is why there are so many crappy photographers with state-of-the-art digital cameras.

Which is why there are so many unremarkable painters with expensive studios in trendy neighborhoods.

Hiding behind pillars, all of them.

Pillars do not help; they hinder. The more mighty the pillar, the more you end up relying on it psychologically, the more it gets in your way.

And this applies to business, as well.

Which is why there are so many failing businesses with fancy offices.

Which is why there's so many failing businessmen spending a fortune on fancy suits and expensive yacht club memberships.

Again, hiding behind pillars.

Successful people, artists and non-artists alike, are very good at spotting pillars. They're very good at doing without them. Even more importantly, once they've spotted a pillar, they're very good at quickly getting rid of it.

Good pillar management is one of the most valuable talents you can have on the planet. If you have it, I envy you. If you don't, I pity you.

Sure, nobody's perfect. We all have our pillars. We seem to need them. You are never going to live a pillar-free existence. Neither am I.

All we can do is keep asking the question, "Is this a pillar" about every aspect of our business, our craft, our reason for being alive etc and go from there. The more we ask, the better we get at spotting pillars, the more quickly the pillars vanish.

Ask. Keep asking. And then ask again. Stop asking and you're dead.

11. Don't try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds altogether.

Your plan for getting your work out there has to be as original as the actual work, perhaps even more so. The work has to create a totally new market. There's no point trying to do the same thing as 250,000 other young hopefuls, waiting for a miracle. All existing business models are wrong. Find a new one.

I've seen it so many times. Call him Ted. A young kid in the big city, just off the bus, wanting to be a famous something: artist, writer, musician, film director, whatever. He's full of fire, full of passion, full of ideas. And you meet Ted again five or ten years later, and he's still tending bar at the same restaurant. He's not a kid anymore. But he's still no closer to his dream.

His voice is still as defiant as ever, certainly, but there's an emptiness to his words that wasn't there before.

Yeah, well, Ted probably chose a very well-trodden path. Write novel, be discovered, publish bestseller, sell movie rights, retire rich in 5 years. Or whatever.

No worries that there's probably 3 million other novelists/actors/musicians/painters etc with the same plan. But of course, Ted's special. Of course his fortune will defy the odds eventually. Of course. That's what he keeps telling you, as he refills your glass.

Is your plan of a similar ilk? If it is, then I'd be concerned.

When I started the business card cartoons I was lucky; at the time I had a pretty well-paid corporate job in New York that I liked. The idea of quitting it in order to join the ranks of Bohemia didn't even occur to me. What, leave Manhattan for Brooklyn? Ha. Not bloody likely. I was just doing it to amuse myself in the evenings, to give me something to do at the bar while I waited for my date to show up or whatever.

There was no commerical incentive or larger agenda governing my actions. If I wanted to draw on the back of a business card instead of a "proper" medium, I could. If I wanted to use a four letter word, I could. If I wanted to ditch the standard figurative format and draw psychotic abstractions instead, I could. There was no flashy media or publishing executive to keep happy. And even better, there was no artist-lifestyle archetype to conform to.

It gave me a lot of freedom. That freedom paid off in spades later.

Question how much freedom your path affords you. Be utterly ruthless about it.

It's your freedom that will get you to where you want to go. Blind faith in an over-subscribed, vainglorious myth will only hinder you.

Is you plan unique? Is there nobody else doing it? Then I'd be excited. A little scared, maybe, but excited.

12. If you accept the pain, it cannot hurt you.
The pain of making the necessary sacrifices always hurts more than you think it's going to. I know. It sucks. That being said, doing something seriously creative is one of the most amazing experiences one can have, in this or any other lifetime. If you can pull it off, it's worth it. Even if you don't end up pulling it off, you'll learn many incredible, magical, valuable things. It's NOT doing it when you know you full well you HAD the opportunity- that hurts FAR more than any failure.

Frankly, I think you're better off doing something on the assumption that you will NOT be rewarded for it, that it will NOT receive the recognition it deserves, that it will NOT be worth the time and effort invested in it.

The obvious advantage to this angle is, of course, if anything good comes of it, then it's an added bonus.

The second, more subtle and profound advantage is: that by scuppering all hope of worldly and social betterment from the creative act, you are finally left with only one question to answer:

Do you make this damn thing exist or not?

And once you can answer that truthfully to yourself, the rest is easy.

13. Never compare your inside with somebody else's outside.

The more you practice your craft, the less you confuse worldly rewards with spiritual rewards, and vice versa. Even if your path never makes any money or furthers your career, that's still worth a TON.

When I was 16 or 17 in Edinburgh I vaguely knew this guy who owned a shop called "Cinders", on St. Stephen's Street. It specialized in restoring antique fireplaces.

Cinders' modus operandi was very simple. Buy original Georgian and Victorian chimneypieces from old, dilapidated houses for 10 cents on the dollar, give them a loving but expedient makeover in the workshop, sell them at vast profit to yuppies.

Back then I was insatiably curious about how people made a living (I still am). So one-day, while sitting on his stoop I chatted with the fireplace guy about it.

He told me about the finer points of his trade- the hunting through old houses, the craftsmanship, the customer relations, and of course the profit.

The fellow seemed quite proud of his job. From how he described it he seemed to like his trade and be making a decent living. Scotland was going through a bit of a recession at the time; unemployment was high, money was tight; I guess for an ageing hippie things could've been a lot worse.

Very few kids ever said, "Gosh, when I grow up I'm going to be a fireplace guy!" It's not the most obvious trade in the world. I asked him about how he fell into it.

"I used to be an antiques dealer," he said. "People who spend a lot of money on antiques also seem to spend a lot of money restoring their houses. So I sort of got the whiff of opportunity just by talking to people in my antiques shop. Also, there are too many antique dealers in Edinburgh crowding the market, so I was looking for an easier way to make a living."

Like the best jobs in the world, it just kindasorta happened.

"Well, some of the fireplaces are real beauties," I said. "It must be hard parting with them."

"No it isn't," he said (and this is the part I remember most). "I mean, I like them, but because they take up so much room- they're so big and bulky- I'm relieved to be rid of them once they're sold. I just want them out of the shop ASAP and the cash in my pocket. Selling them is easy for me. Unlike antiques. I always loved antiques, so I was always falling in love with the inventory, I always wanted to hang on to my best stuff. I'd always subconsciously price them too high in order to keep them from leaving the shop."

Being young and idealistic, I told him I thought that was quite sad. Why choose to sell a "mere product" (i.e. chimneypieces) when instead you could make your living selling something you really care about ( i.e. anitques)? Surely the latter would be a preferable way to work?

"The first rule of business," he said, chuckling at my na�vet�, "is never sell something you love. Otherwise, you may as well be selling your children."

15 years later I'm at a bar in New York. Some friend-of-a-friend is looking at my cartoons. He asks me if I publish. I tell him I don't. Tell him it's just a hobby. Tell him about my advertising job.

"Man, why the hell are you in advertising?" he says, pointing to my portfolio. "You should be doing this. Galleries and shit."

"Advertising's just chimneypieces," I say, speaking into my glass.

"What the fuck?"

"Never mind."

14. Dying young is overrated.

I've seen so many young people take the "Gotta do the drugs & booze thing to make me a better artist" route over the years. A choice that wasn't smart, original, effective, healthy, or ended happily.

It's a familiar story: a kid reads about Charlie Parker or Jimi Hendrix or Charles Bukowski and somehow decides that their poetic but flawed example somehow gives him permission and/or absolution to spend the next decade or two drowning in his own metaphorical vomit.

Of course, the older you get, the more casualties of this foolishness you meet. The more time has had to ravage their lives. The more pathetic they seem. And the less remarkable work they seem to have to show for it, for all their "amazing experiences" and "special insights".

The smarter and more talented the artist is, the less likely he will choose this route. Sure, he might screw around a wee bit while he's young and stupid, but he will move on quicker than most.

But the kid thinks it's all about talent; he thinks it's all about 'potential'. He underestimates how much time, discipline and stamina also play their part. Sure, like Bukowski et al, there are exceptions. But that is why we like their stories when we're young. Because they are exceptional stories. And every kid with a guitar or a pen or a paintbrush or an idea for a new business wants to be exceptional. Every kid underestimates his competition, and overestimates his chances. Every kid is a sucker for the idea that there's a way to make it without having to do the actual hard work.

So the bars of West Hollywood and New York are awash with people throwing their lives away in the desperate hope of finding a shortcut, any shortcut. And a lot of them aren't even young anymore; their B-plans having been washed away by Vodka & Tonics years ago.

Meanwhile their competition is at home, working their asses off.

15. The most important thing a creative person can learn professionally is where to draw the red line that separates what you are willing to do, and what you are not.

Art suffers the moment other people start paying for it. The more you need the money, the more people will tell you what to do. The less control you will have. The more bullshit you will have to swallow. The less joy it will bring. Know this and plan accordingly.

Recently I heard Chris Ware, currently one of the top 2 or 3 most critically acclaimed cartoonists on the planet, describe his profession as �unrewarding�.

When the guy at the top of the ladder you�re climbing describes the view from the top as �unrewarding�, be concerned. Heh.

I knew Chris back in college, at The University of Texas. Later, in the early 1990�s I knew him hanging around Wicker Park in Chicago, that famous arty neighbourhood, while he was getting his Masters from The School of The Art Institute, and I was working as a junior copywriter at Leo Burnett. We weren�t that close, but we had mutual friends. He�s a nice guy. Smart as hell.

So I�ve watched him over the years go from talented undergraduate to famous rockstar comic strip guy. Nice to see, certainly- it�s encouraging when people you know get deservedly famous. But also it was really helpful for me to see first-hand the realities of being a professional cartoonist, both good and bad. It�s nice to get a snapshot of reality.

His example really clarified a lot for me about 5-10 years ago when I got to the point where my cartoons got good enough to where I could actually consider doing it professionally. I looked at the market, saw the kind of life Chris and others like him had, saw the people in the business calling the shots, saw the kind of deluded planet most cartoon publishers were living on, and went �Naaaah.�

Thinking about it some more, I think one of the main reasons I stayed in advertising is simply because hearing �change that ad� pisses me off a lot less than �change that cartoon�. Though the compromises one has to make writing ads can often be tremendous, there�s only so much you have to take personally. It�s their product, it�s their money, so it�s easier to maintain healthy boundaries. With cartooning, I invariably found this impossible.

The most important thing a creative person can learn professionally is where to draw the red line that separates what you are willing to do, and what you are not. It is this red line that demarcates your sovereignty; that defines your own private creative domain. What shit you are willing to take, and what shit you�re not. What you are willing to relinquish control over, and what you aren�t. What price you are willing to pay, and what price you aren�t. Everybody is different; everybody has their own red line. Everybody has their own �Sex & Cash Theory�.

When I see somebody �suffering for their art�, it�s usually a case of them not knowing where that red line is, not knowing where the sovereignty lies.

Somehow he thought that sleazy producer wouldn�t make him butcher his film with pointless rewrites, but Alas! Somehow he thought that gallery owner would turn out to be a competent businessman, but Alas! Somehow he thought that publisher would promote his new novel properly, but Alas! Somehow he thought that Venture Capitalist would be less of an asshole about the start-up�s cash flow, but Alas! Somehow he thought that CEO would support his new marketing initiative, but Alas!

Knowing where to draw the red line is like knowing yourself, like knowing who your real friends are. Some are better at it than others. Life is unfair.

16. The world is changing.

Some people are hip to it, others are not. If you want to be able to afford groceries in 5 years, I'd recommend listening closely to the former and avoiding the latter. Just my two cents.

Your job is probably worth 50% what it was in real terms 10 years ago. And who knows? It may very well not exist in 5-10 years.

We all saw the traditional biz model in my industry, advertising, start going down the tubes 10 years or so ago. Our first reaction was "work harder".

It didn't work. People got shafted in their thousands. It's a cold world out there.

We thought being talented would save our asses. We thought working late and weekends would save our asses. Nope.

We thought the internet and all that Next Big Thing, new media and new technology stuff would save our asses. We thought it would fill in the holes in our ever more intellectually bankrupt solutions we were offering our clients. Nope.

Whatever. Regardless of how the world changes, regardless of what new technologies, business models and social architectures are coming down the pike, the one thing "The New Realities" cannot take away from you is trust.

The people you trust and vice versa, this is what will feed you and pay for your kids' college. Nothing else.

This is true if you're an artist, writer, doctor, techie, lawyer, banker, or bartender.

i.e. Stop worrying about technology. Start worrying about people who trust you.

In order to navigate The New Realities you have to be creative- not just within your particular profession, but in EVERYTHING. Your way of looking at the world will need to become ever more fertile and original. And this isn't just true for artists, writers, techies, Creative Directors and CEOs; this is true for EVERYBODY. Janitors, receptionists and bus drivers, too. The game has just been ratcheted up a notch.

The old ways are dead. And you need people around you who concur.

That means hanging out more with the creative people, the freaks, the real visionaries, than you're already doing. Thinking more about what their needs are, and responding accordingly. It doesn't matter what industry we're talking about- architecture, advertising, petrochemicals- they're around, they're easy enough to find if you make the effort, if you've got something worthwhile to offer in return. Avoid the dullards; avoid the folk who play it safe. They can't help you any more. Their stability model no longer offers that much stability. They are extinct, they are extinction.

17. Merit can be bought. Passion can't.

The only people who can change the world are people who want to. And not everybody does.

Human beings have this thing I call the "Pissed Off Gene". It's that bit of our psyche that makes us utterly dissatisfied with our lot, no matter how kindly fortune smiles upon us.

It's there for a reason. Back in our early caveman days being pissed off made us more likely to get off our butt, get out of the cave and into the tundra hunting wooly mammoth, so we'd have something to eat for supper. It's a survival mechanism. Damn useful then, damn useful now.

It's this same Pissed Off Gene that makes us want to create anything in the first place- drawings, violin sonatas, meat packing companies, websites. This same gene drove us to discover how to make a fire, the wheel, the bow and arrow, indoor plumbing, the personal computer, the list is endless.

Part of understanding the creative urge is understanding that it's primal. Wanting to change the world is not a noble calling, it's a primal calling.

We think we're "providing a superior integrated logistic system" or "helping America to really taste freshness". In fact we're just pissed off and want to get the hell out of the cave and kill the woolly mammoth.

Your business either lets you go hunt the woolly mammoth or it doesn't. Of course, like so many white-collar jobs these days, you might very well be offered a ton of money to sit in the corner-office cave and pretend that you're hunting. That is sad. What's even sadder is if you agree to take the money.

18. Avoid the Watercooler Gang.

They�re a well-meaning bunch, but they get in the way eventually.

Back when I worked for a large advertising agency as a young rookie, it used to just bother me how much the "Watercooler Gang" just kvetched all the time. The "Watercooler Gang" was my term for what was still allowed to exist in the industry back then. Packs of second-rate creatives, many years passed their sell-by date, being squeezed by the Creative Directors for every last ounce of juice they had, till it came time to firing them on the cheap. Taking too many trips to the watercooler and coming back drunk from lunch far too often. Working late nights and weekends on all the boring-but-profitable accounts. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze�

I remember some weeks where one could easily spend half an hour a day, listening to Ted complain.

Ted used to have a window office but now had a cube ever since that one disastrous meeting with Client X. He would come visit me in my cube at least once a day and start his thing. Complain, complain, complain... about whatever� how Josh-The-Golden-Boy was a shit writer and a complete phoney... or how they bought Little-Miss-Hot-Pant's ad instead of his, "even though mine was the best in the room and every bastard there knew it."

Like I said, whatever.

It was endless...Yak Yak Yak� Oi vey! Ted I love ya, you're a great guy but shut the hell up�

In retrospect it was Ted's example that taught me a very poignant lesson- back then I was still too young and na�ve to have learned it by that point- that your office could be awash with Clio's and One Show awards, yet your career could still be down the sink-hole.

Don't get me wrong- my career there was a complete disaster. This is not a case of one of the Alpha's mocking the Beta's. This is a Gamma mocking the Betas.

I'm having lunch with my associate, John, who's about the same age as me. Cheap and cheerful Thai food, just down the road from the agency.

"I gotta get out of this company," I say.

"I thought you liked your job," says John.

"I do," I say. "But the only reason they like having me around is because I'm still young and cheap. The minute I am no longer either� I'm dead meat."

"Like Ted," says John.

"Yeah� him and the rest of The Watercooler Gang."

"The Watercoolies," laughs John.

So we had a good chuckle about our poor, hapless elders. We weren't that sympathetic, frankly. Their lives might have been hell then, but they had already had their glory moments. They had won their awards, flown off to The Bahamas to shoot toilet paper ads with famous movie stars and all that. Unlike us young'uns. John and I had only been out of college a couple of years and had still yet to make our mark on the industry we had entered with about as much passion and hope as anybody alive.

We had sold a few newspaper ads now and then, some magazine spreads, but the TV stuff was still well beyond reach. So far the agency we had worked for had yet to allow us to shine. Was this our fault or theirs? Maybe a little bit of both, but back then it was all "their fault, dammit!" Of course, everything is "their fault, dammit" when you're 24.

I quit my job about a year later. John stayed on with the agency for whatever reason, then about 5 years ago got married, with his first kid following soon after. Suddenly with a family to support he couldn't afford to get fired. The Creative Director knew this and started to squeeze.

"You don't mind working this weekend, John, do you? Good. I knew you wouldn't. We all know how much the team relies on you to deliver at crunch time- that's why we value you so highly, John, wouldn't you say?"

Last time I saw John he was working at this horrible little agency for a fraction of his former salary. Turns out the big agency had tossed him out about a week after his kid's second birthday.

We're sitting there at the Thai restaurant again, having lunch for old time's sake. We're having a good time, talking about the usual artsy-fartsy stuff we always do. It's a great conversation, marred only by the fact that I can't get the word "watercooler" out of my goddamn head�

19. Sing in your own voice.
Piccasso was a terrible colorist. Turner couldn't paint human beings worth a damn. Saul Steinberg's formal drafting skills were appalling. TS Eliot had a full-time day job. Henry Miller was a wildly uneven writer. Bob Dylan can't sing or play guitar.

But that didn't stop them, right?

So I guess the next question is, "Why not?"

I have no idea. Why should it?

20. The choice of media is irrelevant.

Every media's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. Every form of media is a set of fundematal compromises, one is not "higher" than the other. A painting doesn't do much, it just sits there on a wall. That's the best and worst thing thing about it. Film combines sound, movent, photography, music, acting. That's the best and worst thing thing about it. Prose just uses words arranged in linear form to get its point across. That's the best and worst thing thing about it etc.

Back in college I was an English Major. I had no aspirations for teaching, writing or academe, it was just a subject I could get consistently high grades in. Plus I liked to read books and write papers, so it worked well enough for me.

Most of my friends were Liberal Arts Majors, but there the similarity ended. We never really went to class together. I dunno, we'd meet up in the evenings and weekends, but I never really socialized with people in my classes that much.

So it was always surprising to me to meet the Art Majors: fine arts, film, drama, architecture etc. They seemed to live in each other's pockets. They all seemed to work, eat and sleep together. Lots of bonding going on. Lots of collaboration. Lots of incestuousness. Lots of speeches about the sanctity of their craft.

Well, a cartoon only needs one person to make it. Same with a piece of writing. No Big Group Hug required. So all this sex-fuelled socialism was rather alien to me, even if parts of it seemed very appealing.

During my second year at college I started getting my cartoons published, and not just the school paper. Suddenly I found meeting girls easy. I was very happy about that, I can assure you, but life carried on pretty much the same.

I suppose my friends thought the cartooning gigs were neat or whatever, but it wasn't really anything that affected our friendship. It was just something I did on the side, the way other people restored old cars or or kept a darkroom for their camera.

My M.O. was and still is to just have a normal life, be a regular schmoe, with a terrific hobby on the side. It's not exactly rocket science.

This attitude seemed kinda alien to the Art Majors I met. Their chosen art form seemed more like a religion to them. It was serious. It was important. It was a big part of their identity, and it almost seemed to them that humanity's very existence totally depended on them being able to pursue their dream as a handsomely rewarded profession etc.

Don't get me wrong, I knew some Art Majors who were absolutely brilliant. One or two of them are famous now. And I can see if you've got a special talent, how the need to seriously pursue it becomes important.

But looking back, I also see a lot of screwy kids who married themselves to their medium of choice for the wrong reasons. Not because they had anything particularly unique of visionary to say, but because it was cool. Because it was sexy. Because it was hip. Because it gave them something to talk about at parties. Because it was easier than thinking about getting a real job after graduation.

I'm in two minds about this. One part of me thinks it's good for kids to mess around with insanely high ambitions, and maybe one or two of them will make it, maybe one or two will survive the cull. That's what's being young is all about, and I think it's wonderful.

The other side of me wants to tell these kids to beware of choosing difficult art forms for the wrong reasons. You can wing it while you're young, but it's not till your youth is over that The Devil starts seeking out his due. And that's never pretty. I've seen it happen more than once to some very dear, sweet people, and it's really heartbreaking to watch.

21. Selling out is harder than it looks.

Diluting your product to make it more "commercial" will just make people like it less.Many years ago, barely out of college, I started schlepping around the ad agencies, looking for my first job.

One fine day a Creative Director kindly agreed for me to come show him my portfolio. Hooray!

So I came to his office and showed him my work. My work was bloody awful. All of it.

Imagine the worst, cheesiest "I used to wash with Sudso but now I wash with Lemon-Fresh Rinso Extreme" vapid housewife crap. Only far worse than that.

The CD was a nice guy. You could tell he didn't think much of my work, though he was far too polite to blurt it out. Finally he quietly confessed that it wasn't doing much for him.

"Well, the target market are middle class houswives," I rambled. "They're quite conservative, so I thought I'd better tone it down..."

"You can tone it down once you've gotten the job and once the client comes after your ass with a red hot poker and tells you to tone it down," he laughed. "Till then, show me the toned-up version."

This story doesn't just happen in advertising. It happens everywhere.

22. Nobody cares. Do it for yourself.

Everybody is too busy with their own lives to give a damn about your book, painting, screenplay etc, especially if you haven't sold it yet. And the ones that aren't, you don't want in your life anyway.

Making a big deal over your creative schtick is the kiss of death. That's all I have to say on the subject.

23. Worrying about "Commercial vs. Artistic" is a complete waste of time.

You can argue about "the shameful state of American Letters" till the cows come home. They were kvetching about it in 1950, they'll be kvetching about it in 2050.

It's a path well-trodden, and not a place where one is going to come up with many new, earth-shattering insights.

But a lot of people like to dwell on it because it keeps them from having to ever journey into unknown territory. It's safe. It allows you to have strong emotions and opinions without witout any real risk to yourself. Without you having to do any of the actual hard work involved in the making and selling of something you believe in.

To me, it's not about whether Tom Clancy sells truckloads of books or a Nobel Prize Winner sells didly-squat. Those are just ciphers, a distraction. To me, it's about what YOU are going to do with the short time you have left on this earth. Different criteria altogether.

Frankly, how a person nurtures and develeps his or her own "creative sovereignty", with or without the help of the world at large, is in my opinion a much more interesting subject.

24. Don�t worry about finding inspiration. It comes eventually.

Inspiration precedes the desire to create, not the other way around.

One of the reasons I got into drawing cartoons on the back of business cards was I could carry them around with me. Living downtown, you spend a lot of time walking around the place. I wanted an art form that was perfect for that.

So if I was walking down the street and I suddenly got hit with the itch to draw something, I could just nip over to the nearest park bench or coffee shop, pull out a blank card from my bag and get busy doing my thing. Seamless. Effortless. No fuss. I like it.

Before, when I was doing larger works, every time I got an idea while walking down the street I�d have to quit what I was doing and schlep back to my studio while the inspiration was still buzzing around in my head. Nine times out of ten the inspired moment would have past by the time I got back, rendering the whole exercise futile. Sure, I�d get drawing anyway, but it always seemed I was drawing a memory, not something happening at that very moment.

If you�re arranging your life in such a way that you need to make a lot of fuss between feeling the itch and getting to work, you�re putting the cart before the horse. You�re probably creating a lot of counterproductive �Me, The Artist, I must create, I must leave something to posterity� melodrama. Not interesting for you or for anyone else.

You have to find a way of working that makes it dead easy to take full advantage of your inspired moments. They never hit at a convenient time, nor do they last long.

Conversely, neither should you fret too much about �writer�s block�, �artist�s block� or whatever. If you�re looking at a blank piece of paper and nothing comes to you, then go do something else. Writer�s block is just a symptom of feeling like you have nothing to say, combined with the rather weird idea that you SHOULD feel the need to say something.

Why? If you have something to say, then say it. If not, enjoy the silence while it lasts. The noise will return soon enough. I the meantime, you�re better off going out into the big, wide world, having some adventures and refilling your well. Trying to create when you don�t feel like it is like making conversation for the sake of making conversation. It�s not really connecting, it�s just droning on like an old, drunken barfly.

More thoughts on "How To Be Creative":

25. You have to find your own schtick.

A Picasso always looks like Piccasso painted it. Hemingway always sounds like Hemingway. A Beethoven Symphony always sounds like a Beethoven's Syynphony. Part of being a Master is learning how to sing in nobody else's voice but your own.

Every artist is looking for their big, definitive "Ah-Ha!" moment, whether they're a Master or not.

That moment where they finally find their true voice, once and for all.

For me, it was when I discovered drawing on the back of business cards.

Other, more famous and notable examples would be Jackson Pollack discovering splatter paint. Or Robert Ryman discovering all-white canvases. Andy Warhol discovering silkscreen. Hunter S Thompsonn discovering Gonzo Journalism. Duchamp discovering the Found Object. Jasper Johns discovering the American Flag. Hemingway discovering brevity. James Joyce discovering stream-of-conciousness prose.

Was it luck? Perhaps a little bit.

But it wasn't the format that made the art great. It was the fact that somehow while playing around with something new, suddenly they found themselves able to put their entire selves into it.

Only then did it become their 'schtick', their true voice etc.

That's what people responded to. The humanity, not the form. The voice, not the form.

Put your whole self into it, and you will find your true voice. Hold back and you won't. It's that simple.

26. Write from the heart.
There is no silver bullet. There is only the love God gave you.

As a professional writer, I am interested in how conversation scales.

How communication scales, x to the power of n etc etc.

Ideally, if you�re in the communication business, you want to say the same thing, the same way to an audience of millions that you would to an audience of one. Imagine the power you�d have if you could pull it off.

But sadly, it doesn�t work that way.

You can�t love a crowd the same way you can love a person.

And a crowd can�t love you the way a single person can love you.

Intimacy doesn�t scale. Not really. Intimacy is a one-on-one phenomenon.

It's not a big deal. Whether you�re writing to an audience of one, five, a thousand, a million, ten million, there�s really only one way to really connect. One way that actually works:

Write from the heart.

There is no silver bullet. There is only the love God gave you.

27. The best way to get approval is not to need it.
This is equally true in art and business. And love. And sex. And just about everything else worth having.

About 15 years ago I was hanging out in the offices of Punch, the famous London humor magazine. I was just a kid at the time, for some reason the cartoon editor (who was a famous cartoonist in his own right) was tolerating having me around that day.

I was asking him questions about the biz. He was answering them as best he could while he sorted through a large stack of mail.

"Take a look at this, Sunshine," he said, handing a piece of paper over to me.

I gave it a look. Some cartoonist whose name I recognised had written him a rather sad and desperate letter, begging to be published.

"Another whiney letter from another whiney cartoonist who used to be famous 20 years ago," he said, rolling his eyeballs. "I get at least fifty of them a week from other whiney formerly-famous cartoonists."

He paused. Then he smiled an wicked grin.

"How not to get published," he said. "Write me a frickin' letter like that one."

28. Power is never given. Power is taken.
People who are "ready" give off a different vibe than people who aren't. Animals can smell fear; maybe that's it.

The minute you become ready is the the minute you stop dreaming. Suddenly it's no longer about "becoming". Suddenly it's about "doing".

You don't get the dream job because you walk into the editor's office for the first time and go, "Hi, I would really love to be a sports writer one day, please."

You get the job because you walk into the editor's office and go, "Hi, I'm the best frickin' sports writer on the planet." And somehow the editor can tell you aren't lying, either.

You didn't go in there, asking the editor to give you power. You went in there and politely informed the editor that you already have the power. That's what being "ready" means. That's what "taking power" means.

Not needing anything from another person in order to be the best in the world.

29. Whatever choice you make, The Devil gets his due eventually.
Selling out to Hollywood comes with a price. So does not selling out. Either way, you pay in full, and yes, it invariably hurts like hell.

People are fond of spouting out the old clich� about how Van Gogh never sold a painting in his lifetime. Somehow his example serves to justify to us, decades later, that there is somehow merit in utter failure.

Perhaps, but the man did commit suicide. The market for his work took off big-time shortly after his death. Had he decided to stick around another few decades he most likely would�ve entered old age quite prosperous. And sadly for failures everywhere, the clich� would have lost a lot of its power.

The fact is, the old clich�s work for us in abstract terms, but they never work out in real life quite the same way. Life is messy; clich�s are clean and tidy.

Of course, there is no one �true way�. Whether you follow the example of fame-and-glamor Warhol or poor-and-miserable Van Gogh doesn�t matter in absolute terms. Either extreme may raise you to the highest heights or utterly destroy you. I don�t know the answer, nor does anybody else. Nobody but you and God knows why you were put on this Earth, and even then�

So when a young person asks me whether it�s better to sell out or stick to one�s guns, I never know what to answer. Warhol sold out shamelessly after 1968 (the year he was wounded by the gunshot of a would-be assassin) and did OK by it. I know some great artists who stuck to their guns, and all it did was make them seem more and more pathetic.

Anyone can be an idealist. Anyone can be a cynic. The hard part lies somewhere in the middle i.e. being human.

30. The hardest part of being creative is getting used to it.If you have the creative urge, it isn't going to go away. But sometimes it takes a while before you accept the fact.

Back in 1989, I was in West London, house-sitting a family member's lovely little flat over the summer. In the flat above lived the film director, Tim Burton who was in town for a couple of months, while he was filming "Batman, The Movie".

We got to know each other on-and-off quite well that year. We weren't that close or anything, but we saw each other around a lot. He was a pretty good neighbor, I tried to be the same.

At the time I was in my last year of college, studying to go into advertising as a copywriter. One night he and his then wife came over for dinner.

Somewhere along the line the subject of my careeer choice came up. Back then I was a bit apprehensive about doing the "creative" thing for a living... in my family people always had "real" jobs in corporations and banks etc, and the idea of breaking with tradition made me pretty nervous.

"Well," said Tim, "if you have the creative bug, it isn't ever going to go away. I'd just get used to the idea of dealing with it."

It was damn good advice. It still is.

31. Remain Frugal. The less you can live on, the more chance your idea will succeed. This is true even after you�ve �made it�.

In 1997, I landed the dream job. High-paid advertising copywriter. Big office. Big apartment in New York. Glamorous parties and glamorous backdrop. All feeding the urban sophisticate narrative etc. All good.

The trouble was, even though I was being paid very well, I was still broke by the end of the month. Life is New York was expensive, and I was determined to experience it fully. I sure as hell wasn�t saving anything.

Like they say, education is expensive. And I ended up paying top dollar.

Because of course, one day the recession hit, the job dried up and I nearly found myself on the street. Had I lived a bit more modestly I would have been able to weather the storm better.

There are a lot of people out there who, like me back in New York, make a lot of money, but spend it just as quickly. The older you get, the less you envy them. Sure, they get to go to the fancy restaurants five days a week, but they pay heavily for the privelege. They can't afford to tell their bosses to go take a hike. They can't afford to not panic, when business slows down for a month or two.

Part of being creative is learning how to protect your freedom. That includes freedom from avarice.

Music machine

2006-12-23T11:56:00.000+02:00

Imagine the Tenth Dimension

2006-12-12T19:54:00.002+02:00

In string theory, physicists tell us that the subatomic particles that make up our universe are created within ten spatial dimensions (plus an additional dimension of time) by the vibrations of exquisitely small "super- strings". The average person has barely gotten used to the idea of there being four dimensions: how can we possibly imagine the tenthdimension.com

Dudeists of the World Unite

2006-12-12T19:54:00.001+02:00

Come join the slowest-growing religion in the world - Dudeism. An ancient philosophy that preaches non-preachiness, practices as little as possible, and above all, uh...lost my train of thought there. Anyway, if you'd like to find peace on earth and goodwill, man, we'll help you get started. Right after a little nap.http://www.dudeism.com/

Michael Essien Scorcher

2006-12-12T19:52:00.001+02:00

Sleeper Cell: A New Cell Awakens

2006-12-10T22:22:00.000+02:00

Embeddable Slideshow for Picasa Web Albums

2006-12-04T21:30:00.001+02:00

If you use Picasa Web Albums and want to make your albums more visible, a good idea would be to include a small slideshow into your site. Unfortunately, Google didn't have time for that, so someone created a small JavaScript code that uses the yet unofficial JSON feeds. You just have to enter the RSS feed of a public album.

Although it's called Picasa Web Albums Widget Creator for Blogger in Beta (that's a really long name), it can be included anywhere. If you want to add it in your Blogger Beta blog as a widget, you just have to click on a button.

Google Operating System

30 Essential Pieces Of Free (and Open) Software for Windows

2006-12-03T20:49:00.001+02:00

1. Firefox
http://www.getfirefox.com/
Replaces Internet Explorer
If you haven't switched to Firefox for your web browsing needs, do it now. It stops annoying popups and it has tons of amazing plugins that can make surfing the web even better. I could evangelize all day about Firefox, but one thing's for sure: the first thing I do on any new Windows machine is run Internet Explorer just long enough to download Firefox.

2. Thunderbird
http://www.mozilla.org/thunderbird/
Replaces Microsoft Outlook or Eudora
Thunderbird is an email client that has five big things going for it: it's free, it's full featured, it's lightweight and runs quick, it has an unparalleled spam filter, and it protects you from those ridiculous phishing attacks by clearly indicating which emails send you to a bogus website. If you're not already using a web-based email solution, Thunderbird should be your client.

3. Sunbird
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird/
Replaces Microsoft Outlook's calendaring functions
Might as well get the Mozilla trifecta out of the way by mentioning Sunbird, which is the Mozilla Foundation's calendaring program. It's extremely easy to use (I figured out everything I needed in a minute or two) and easy to share your calendar with others. I consider a calendaring tool to be essential if you're using a laptop, and this is no different.

4. Abiword
http://www.abisource.com/
Replaces Microsoft Word
Want a good word processor but find Microsoft Word too expensive? AbiWord is my favorite replacement for Word. It's lightweight (meaning it runs quickly) and includes pretty much every feature that I use regularly in a word processor, plus it can save files in formats that you can exchange with Word and WordPerfect users, plus open any of their files, too.

5. OpenOffice
http://www.openoffice.org/
Replaces Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint
If you want to replace the rest of the Office suite, your best bet is OpenOffice. It includes very nice replacements for Excel and PowerPoint (and workable replacements for Access and other Office elements). In fact, I actually prefer their Excel and PowerPoint replacements to the real thing.

6. ClamWin
http://www.clamwin.com/
Replaces Norton AntiVirus or McAfee
ClamWin is a slick anti-virus software that's quite easy to manage and is unobtrusive while keep your system free of viruses. That's pretty much all I want from a package, so why pay money for McAfee to keep bugging me all the time?

7. Gaim
http://gaim.sourceforge.net/
Replaces AIM, Windows Messenger, etc.
This is a very clean instant messaging program that allows you to be on AOL Instant Messenger, Windows (MSN) Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger simultaneously with one program. There are other free packages that do this, but Gaim is stable and clean and simple.

8. BitTorrent
http://www.bittorrent.com/
Original but essential
From their website, "BitTorrent is a peer-assisted, digital content delivery platform that provides the fastest, most efficient means of distributing, discovering, and consuming large, high-quality files on the Web. Our mission is simple: to deliver the content that entertains and informs the digital world." In other words, BitTorrent allows you to download large media files and also use your bandwidth to help others download these files. Search for media files you want and download 'em.

9. GIMPShop
http://www.gimpshop.net/
Replaces Adobe Photoshop
This is a version of the GNU Image Manipulation Program that does a pretty solid job of imitating Adobe Photoshop - a regular user of Photoshop (like me) can adapt to it quite quickly. It's very richly featured and runs quite well - in fact, I see no reason to ever go back, even if Photoshop were free.

10. Gnucleus
http://www.gnucleus.com/Gnucleus/
Replaces LimeWire, BearShare, etc.
Sure, LimeWire and BearShare are free, but why not just get the same basic software without all of the spyware? Gnucleus is pretty much identical to those software packages - but without all that extra junk that slows down your computer.

11. VLC Media Player
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
Replaces Windows Media Player, Quicktime, RealPlayer, etc.
If you get tired of having tons of media players on your computer, get this package that runs pretty much every media type you'll run across without breaking a sweat.

12. Juice
http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/
Unique but essential
Juice lets you effortlessly subscribe to podcasts, organize them, and listen to them at your convenience. In conjunction with PodNova, I find it easier to use Juice to organize podcasts than using iTunes itself.

13. Audacity
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Unique but essential (for some)
If you're interested in recording your own podcast (or just want to make your own voice recordings for whatever reason), Audacity and a microphone are pretty much all you need to get the job done. I'm not much for podcasting (let's just say I don't have a radio voice), but I use Audacity for other voice recording purposes.

14. RSSOwl
http://www.rssowl.org/
Unique but essential
RSSOwl is one of many open source RSS readers. In other words, it enables you to use one program to keep track of the content of a lot of different blogs; if you read a lot of blogs, it's the only way to keep tabs on all of them without devoting hours jumping from site to site. If you have a laptop, it's preferable to using sites like Bloglines, but if you're on a desktop, a web-based feed manager might be better.

15. Filezilla
http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/
Replaces WinFTP
Many people occasionally have a need to FTP files to other computers; if you ever have the need to transfer files in such a fashion, FileZilla will do the job slickly and quickly.

16. Keynote
http://www.tranglos.com/free/keynote.html
Unique but essential
Keynote is basically designed specifically for the task of taking notes on a laptop. If you ever find yourself in a meeting or a presentation with your laptop open and want to jot down notes and organize them just a bit, Keynote is unquestionably the program for you. It's not good at quality word processing, but that's not the point. In my professional work, I find myself using Keynote almost as often as any other utility.

17. MusikCube
http://www.musikcube.com/
Replaces iTunes
If you're not already committed to downloaded music from the iTunes Music Store, then MusikCube is the best choice available for a music organizer and player. It organizes your mp3s, makes it really easy and really fast to find them, and allows you to make some incredibly clever smart playlists.

18. Handbrake
http://handbrake.m0k.org/
Unique but essential
Handbrake enables you to stick a DVD in your DVD drive and have the contents of that film stored to your hard drive in a form that can be read by pretty much any media player. I often use it to put a few movies on my laptop for travel purposes, so I don't have to worry about keeping track of DVDs while on the road.

19. X-Chat 2
http://www.silverex.org/
Replaces mIRC
X-Chat is a free IRC client. For those unfamiliar with IRC, it's a place for technical people (and, as my wife loves to point out, nerds) to meet and discuss topics in an open environment. I often find it very useful when piecing through difficult technical issues.

20. KeePass
http://keepass.sourceforge.net/
Unique but essential
KeePass is a program that securely stores and manages the abundance of passwords we all use on a daily basis. I have literally hundreds of usernames and passwords spread out all over the place; KeePass keeps them all for me and keeps them safe.

21. TrueCrypt
http://www.truecrypt.org/
Unique but essential
TrueCrypt enables you to convert a memory stick into a strongly encrypted data storage device, meaning that you can store personal data on it without worrying about losing it and having personal information get out and about. I use it to keep some of my most personal data off of my laptop and strongly secured, just in case.

22. PDFCreator
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
Replaces Adobe Acrobat
PDFCreator creates a virtual printer on your computer that, if you print a document to it from any program, creates a PDF of that document that can be read on any computer with Acrobat Reader on it. After installing PDFCreator, all you have to do is print like normal and out comes a PDF!

23. Freemind
http://freemind.sourceforge.net/
Unique but Essential
Freemind is a "mind mapping" software program. In essence, it enables you to brainstorm and link together ideas quickly, creating "maps" of concepts similar to what you might do on a whiteboard. I find it incredibly useful when putting together ideas for new posts or planning small projects or assembling the backbone of a writing project.

24. NASA Worldwind
http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/
Replaces Google Earth
WorldWind is very similar to Google Earth in that it allows you to browse the globe. While it isn't strong for creating maps (but why not just use Google Maps for that?), it is utterly incredible for viewing three-dimensional landscapes of any place on earth.

25. Notepad2
http://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html
Replaces Notepad
Notepad2 is a replacement for the traditional Windows Notepad that just adds a few sweet little features: multiple documents; line, word, and character counts; and some highlighting of tags. In fact, I'm using Notepad2 as I draft this post (after using Freemind to organize it).

26. HealthMonitor
http://healthmonitor.zucchetti.com/
Unique but useful
HealthMonitor enables you to keep an eye on the health of your computer. It identifies slowdowns and other system issues quickly and lets you know (for example, it gives a popup if your system memory gets to a certain percentage of fullness, or if your hard drive has only 10 GB free). This can keep you out of trouble and also give you clues to problems your machine might be having.

27. Workrave
http://www.workrave.org/
Unique but useful
Sometimes late into a writing session, my wrists get sore from too much repetitive movement. Workrave basically jumps in before this happens and locks down the computer for a while, preventing me from working too much and causing repetitive stress injury. Since I've started using it, it hasn't significantly hurt my productivity at all and my wrists are thanking me!

28. GanttPV
http://www.pureviolet.net/ganttpv/
Replaces Microsoft Project
If you do any project management (or have a need to dip your toes in the water), GanttPV does a brilliant job of managing the task quickly, easily, and freely. If you need to move to MS Project later, you can export from GanttPV to Project, but once you start digging into GanttPV, you'll likely have no reason to use Project.

29. GnuCash
http://www.gnucash.org/
Replaces Microsoft Money or Quicken
GnuCash is a slimmed-down version of the bloated Microsoft Money and Quicken packages, but it contains all of the features I want for managing my money. The interfaces are incredibly simple - it functions much like a checkbook ledger on your computer - but there's a lot of meat hidden throughout the software.

30. True Combat: Elite
http://www.truecombatelite.net/
Replaces Quake IV, Halo, etc.
After all this downloading, you're going to need to blow off a little steam, and I've yet to find a more enjoyable free game than this one. It's basically a third person combat game, but the graphics are spectacular and the game is quite engrossing.

Firefox password stealing

2006-12-03T19:48:00.001+02:00

Firefox, if allowed, can store usernames and passwords. If you visit a login page again, the password is then entered automatically. Due to a lack of checking, a second, evil page on the same server could steal those saved passwords.

Demo

Enter a fictional username and password in the dialog boxes below, submit and allow Firefox to save them. Do not enter real passwords.

Now open this "evil" page. It will read your username and password and transfer it to our German site heise.de. If a page on www.heise.de opens and displays your username and password, you are vulnerable. If they are not shown, the demo did not work. The output of the evil page could be hidden of course.

This demo requires JavaScript, the vulnerability can be exploited without Javascript though.

Remedy:
The developers are working on a fix. Don't save passwords in Firefox until an update is available.

Download Youtube Videos As iTunes MOV or MP3 Files Directly

2006-12-02T11:29:00.001+02:00

While there are tons of tricks that let you download flash videos from Youtube or Google videos in either FLV or AVI format, Vixy.net is a new player in this game with a difference.

With Vixy, you can download Youtube videos directly as a Quicktime video or a audio-only file (MP3 format). Vixy will effectively extract the audio portion from the Youtube video for you.

When you submit an url, this service will download and convert the video format. Then you can download the converted file.

And like Keepvid, you still have the option to download in the standard Windows AVI format with the DivX codec or the MP4 format for the video iPod

Apart from Youtube Videos, Vixy can help you covert any FLV file to AVI/MOV/MP4/MP3 format online.

FLV Online Converter

Digital Inspiration

Gmail maps addresses, adds dates to calendar

2006-12-01T20:13:00.001+02:00

Reader Geoffroy wrote to tell us about a new function he noticed in Gmail:

If the e-mail contains a date or an address, the option to add it to Google Calendar or to see where it happens on Google Maps is displayed in the right section, just above the advertising.

That Google...always sneaking in new and clever features. Just one more reason to make Gmail your one-and-only.

The Most Famous Photographs

Determine how good or evil a web site is

The Death Of Adsense?

Yahoo SEO Techniques

40 FACTS ABOUT SLEEP

2006-11-30T20:03:00.001+02:00

The record for the longest period without sleep is 18 days, 21 hours, 40 minutes during a rocking chair marathon. The record holder reported hallucinations, paranoia, blurred vision, slurred speech and memory and concentration lapses.

- It's impossible to tell if someone is really awake without close medical supervision. People can take cat naps with their eyes open without even being aware of it.

- Anything less than five minutes to fall asleep at night means you're sleep deprived. The ideal is between 10 and 15 minutes, meaning you're still tired enough to sleep deeply, but not so exhausted you feel sleepy by day.

- A new baby typically results in 400-750 hours lost sleep for parents in the first year

- One of the best predictors of insomnia later in life is the development of bad habits from having sleep disturbed by young children.

- The continuous brain recordings that led to the discovery of REM (rapid eye-movement) sleep were not done until 1953, partly because the scientists involved were concerned about wasting paper.

- REM sleep occurs in bursts totalling about 2 hours a night, usually beginning about 90 minutes after falling asleep.

- Dreams, once thought to occur only during REM sleep, also occur (but to a lesser extent) in non-REM sleep phases. It's possible there may not be a single moment of our sleep when we are actually dreamless.

- REM dreams are characterised by bizarre plots, but non-REM dreams are repetitive and thought-like, with little imagery - obsessively returning to a suspicion you left your mobile phone somewhere, for example.

- Certain types of eye movements during REM sleep correspond to specific movements in dreams, suggesting at least part of the dreaming process is analagous to watching a film

- No-one knows for sure if other species dream but some do have sleep cycles similar to humans.

- Elephants sleep standing up during non-REM sleep, but lie down for REM sleep.

- Some scientists believe we dream to fix experiences in long-term memory, that is, we dream about things worth remembering. Others reckon we dream about things worth forgetting - to eliminate overlapping memories that would otherwise clog up our brains.

- Dreams may not serve any purpose at all but be merely a meaningless byproduct of two evolutionary adaptations - sleep and consciousness.

- REM sleep may help developing brains mature. Premature babies have 75 per cent REM sleep, 10 per cent more than full-term bubs. Similarly, a newborn kitten puppy rat or hampster experiences only REM sleep, while a newborn guinea pig (which is much more developed at birth) has almost no REM sleep at all.

- Scientists have not been able to explain a 1998 study showing a bright light shone on the backs of human knees can reset the brain's sleep-wake clock.

- British Ministry of Defence researchers have been able to reset soldiers' body clocks so they can go without sleep for up to 36 hrs. Tiny optical fibres embedded in special spectacles project a ring of bright white light (with a spectrum identical to a sunrise) around the edge of soldiers' retinas, fooling them into thinking they have just woken up. The system was first used on US pilots during the bombing of Kosovo.

- Seventeen hours of sustained wakefulness leads to a decrease in performance equivalent to a blood alcohol-level of 0.05%.

- The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska, the Challenger space shuttle disaster and the Chernobyl nuclear accident have all been attributed to human errors in which sleep-deprivation played a role.

- The NRMA estimates fatigue is involved in one in 6 fatal road accidents.

- Exposure to noise at night can suppress immune function even if the sleeper doesn't wake. Unfamiliar noise, and noise during the first and last two hours of sleep, has the greatest disruptive effect on the sleep cycle.

- The "natural alarm clock" which enables some people to wake up more or less when they want to is caused by a burst of the stress hormone adrenocorticotropin. Researchers say this reflects an unconscious anticipation of the stress of waking up.

- Some sleeping tablets, such as barbiturates suppress REM sleep, which can be harmful over a long period.

- In insomnia following bereavement, sleeping pills can disrupt grieving.

- Tiny luminous rays from a digital alarm clock can be enough to disrupt the sleep cycle even if you do not fully wake. The light turns off a "neural switch" in the brain, causing levels of a key sleep chemical to decline within minutes.

- To drop off we must cool off; body temperature and the brain's sleep-wake cycle are closely linked. That's why hot summer nights can cause a restless sleep. The blood flow mechanism that transfers core body heat to the skin works best between 18 and 30 degrees. But later in life, the comfort zone shrinks to between 23 and 25 degrees - one reason why older people have more sleep disorders.

- A night on the grog will help you get to sleep but it will be a light slumber and you won't dream much.

- After five nights of partial sleep deprivation, three drinks will have the same effect on your body as six would when you've slept enough.

- Humans sleep on average around three hours less than other primates like chimps, rhesus monkeys, squirrel monkeys and baboons, all of whom sleep for 10 hours.

- Ducks at risk of attack by predators are able to balance the need for sleep and survival, keeping one half of the brain awake while the other slips into sleep mode.

- Ten per cent of snorers have sleep apnoea, a disorder which causes sufferers to stop breathing up to 300 times a night and significantly increases the risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke.

- Snoring occurs only in non-REM sleep

- Teenagers need as much sleep as small children (about 10 hrs) while those over 65 need the least of all (about six hours). For the average adult aged 25-55, eight hours is considered optimal

- Some studies suggest women need up to an hour's extra sleep a night compared to men, and not getting it may be one reason women are much more susceptible to depression than men.

- Feeling tired can feel normal after a short time. Those deliberately deprived of sleep for research initially noticed greatly the effects on their alertness, mood and physical performance, but the awareness dropped off after the first few days.

- Diaries from the pre-electric-light-globe Victorian era show adults slept nine to 10 hours a night with periods of rest changing with the seasons in line with sunrise and sunsets.

- Most of what we know about sleep we've learned in the past 25 years.

- As a group, 18 to 24 year-olds deprived of sleep suffer more from impaired performance than older adults.

- Experts say one of the most alluring sleep distractions is the 24-hour accessibility of the internet.

- The extra-hour of sleep received when clocks are put back at the start of daylight in Canada has been found to coincide with a fall in the number of road accidents.

Major Update in Google Spreadsheets

2006-11-29T18:58:00.001+02:00

Google Spreadsheets continues to be surprising and miles ahead of the other half of the package, Google Docs. This is probably the biggest update since the product has been launched.

Now you can publish a spreadsheets in every imaginable format (HTML, PDF, XLS, ODS, CSV) or as a feed. What's great is that the file is automatically updated, so you'll be almost certain that someone gets the latest version. You can also publish all the sheets or only some of them. But the coolest thing you can do is to embed a spreadsheet into your blog or site.

Google Spreadsheets shows you all the revisions of a spreadsheets, so it's easy to go back to an earlier version. And there are two new functions that use information from the web:

* GoogleFinance("symbol", "attribute") that returns information about a stock. GoogleFinance("GOOG", "price") returns the current price for GOOG.

* GoogleLookup("entity", "attribute") that returns answers to simple questions like: population of Italy, Jay Leno's date of birth, that usually appear at the top of search results in Google.com. GoogleLookup("Italy", "population") will return the population of Italy.

Don't forget to place an equal in front of the function name.

Determine how good or evil a web site is

2006-11-26T14:53:00.000+02:00

The Gematriculator is a service that uses the infallible methods of Gematria developed by Mr. Ivan Panin to determine how good or evil a web site or a text passage is.

Basically, Gematria is searching for different patterns through the text, such as the amount of words beginning with a vowel. If the amount of these matches is divisible by a certain number, such as 7 (which is said to be God's number), there is an incontestable argument that the Spirit of God is ever present in the text. Another important aspect in gematria are the numerical values of letters: A=1, B=2 ... I=9, J=10, K=20 and so on. The Gematriculator uses Finnish alphabet, in which Y is a vowel.
homokaasu.org/gematriculator
Experts consider the mathematical patterns in the text of the Holy Bible as God's watermark of authenticity. Thus, the Gematriculator provides only results that are absolutely correct.

Shark vs Seal

2006-11-26T14:44:00.000+02:00

Google’s Minus 30 penalty

2006-11-26T11:52:00.001+02:00

What is -30 penelty Filter ?
There is a talk about a new filter from google which is popularly known as " -30 filter " basically it is an penalty filter which is responsible for lowering down of pagerank and even de-indexing of pages.

What happens when a site is filtered out for -30 penalty ?
The interesting thing is that the penalty is not a ban, but a bump down of 30 spots in serp So it's nearly impossible to tell if you dropped because of a penalty, or due to some other reason.
Lot of people that ranked #1 now rank #31 and not only for their target keyword phrase, but also for their branded domainname.

Why Does Google apply this -30 Filter ?
When a site is found to be using some spamming techniques for improving ranking then Google may apply this filter for preventing spam.
If a site is connected in any of the following case then it is likely to be get penalized
*) If you try to get inbound links by spamming guestbooks and blogs then Google might apply the filter to your web site.

*) Using JavaScript redirects : JavaScript redirections might be misinterpreted as a spamming attempt and hence your site may get -30 penalty.

What after Google penalized you by -30 filter ?
The -30 filter seems to be an automated filter. If you remove the spam factors from your site then you'll probably get your rankings back after some time. You can also send a reinclusion request to Google.

The Museum of Modern Betas

2006-11-23T19:27:00.001+02:00

The MoMB is a site dedicated to listing webbased applications on a beta trip.

Link: MoMB

Can you crash your PS3?

2006-11-22T19:17:00.000+02:00

Some people buy it, another people...

GOOG, More Than $500

2006-11-22T07:54:00.001+02:00

CNN Money reports that for the first time, Google stock jumped above $500. "Google is up more than 20 percent this year, far outperforming fellow Internet giants Yahoo!, eBay and Amazon.com, whose shares have all slumped in 2006. Google went public in one of the most widely awaited IPOs in recent memory in August 2004 at $85 a share."

We could say that, financially, Google had a good year.

From:Google Operating System

The Most Famous Photographs

2006-11-19T22:17:00.001+02:00

From:The Most Famous Photographs

iPhone concepting

2006-11-18T21:10:00.000+02:00

This is an Apple iPhone concept blog created by an Apple fan Okan Vardarova. All of these concepts are being sent by other Apple fans.

From Iphone concepting blog

What is your dream?

2006-11-18T10:16:00.001+02:00

Nice site for visualization of your dreams. For example, for "happiness" i got picture like this.

See more at Dreamlines

Ice age 3 - Scratty discovers time machine

2006-11-11T17:43:00.000+02:00

Cheat Sheet Round-Up: Ajax, CSS, LaTeX, Ruby…

2006-10-30T23:50:00.000+02:00

"Whether you’ve forgotten the name of a function or the property of a cascading style sheet - handy cheat sheets deliver the information you are looking for - immediately. Most cheat sheets are available as .pdf or .png-files, so you can print them and use them every day for whatever projects you’re currently working on. We present an extensive overview of useful cheat sheets we’ve found in the Web" on Cheat Sheet Round-Up: Ajax, CSS, LaTeX, Ruby…

Nanotechnology Art Gallery

2006-10-29T12:29:00.000+02:00

Nano flower boucket, cups, trees and rings. All images are 3-dimensional Si composite nanostructures, taken with a scanning electron microscope, by Ghim Wei Ho. Images color modified using the color balance function in Adobe Photoshop. Courtesy of and © Copyright Ghim Wei Ho and Prof Mark Wellan
Nanotechnology Now

Сartoons Drawn On The Back Of Business Cards

2006-10-29T12:21:00.000+02:00

Trafficable sites and blogs

2006-10-23T23:13:00.000+03:00

http://lifehacker.com/ http://dumblittleman.blogspot.com/ http://www.thestreet.com/ http://www.workhappy.net/ http://growabrain.typepad.com/ http://www.netvibes.com/ http://attu.blogspot.com/ http://damienkatz.net/ http://newmarksdoor.typepad.com/ http://clubforgrowth.org/ http://scienceofgettingrich.net/ http://webkew.blogspot.com/ http://9rules.com/ http://www.linkswarm.com/ http://www.listible.com/ http://blog.dealnews.com/ http://b3ta.com/ http://beer.com/ http://fullduplex.org/ http://ifelse.co.uk/ http://thoughtsalive.com/ http://bmyers.com/ http://dealbreaker.com/

alpha

2006-10-16T20:50:00.000+03:00

a perfect end

firefly

portishead

2006-10-15T21:39:00.000+03:00

roads
wandering star
it could be sweet

groove armada

2006-10-15T21:31:00.000+03:00

edge hill

massive attack

2006-10-15T21:24:00.000+03:00

better things
karmacoma
protection

stereo mc's

2006-10-15T19:03:00.000+03:00

two horse town

media box

2006-10-15T18:44:00.001+03:00

to my english readers

2006-10-15T18:19:00.000+03:00

For a long time I had a desire to create the own site. I searched various ways, means for realization of this desire. And recently, owing to new service given by Google company, this dream was carried out. I try to place on these pages the qualitative content, being reflection of my individuality, my interests, remembered and the exciting moments of my life. With a course of time, the site will vary, be supplemented with the maintenance, new means and opportunities. The way will be distant and delightful.

Enjoy!)

noah

2006-10-15T17:09:00.000+03:00

2006-10-15T16:32:00.001+03:00

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