Make your album cover meme

In a mini epiphany, I realised that I don't need to be tagged to participate in a meme... (Doh!) After all, it's supposed to self-propagate! I read about this cool meme in Neil's blog.

Instructions to create your album cover:
1. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article title on the page is the name of your band.
2. www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.
3. www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4. Use your graphics program of choice to throw them together, and post the result in www.flickr.com/groups/albumdesigns/

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dvorscak/2272702185/

Here's mine!



"The other one snores" a hit album by the talented but unknown (and inexistant) 70's psychedelic rock band Steall Waterfall!!

Chinese Portrait Meme

I'm just getting up to date with reading my blogs and just read Iain's post replying to the 4x4 meme, and then went to revisit Chris Garrett's post on the topic. I really like memes, and since I haven't been tagged for any, I thought I'd take Chris on the idea and start my own! I hope people like the idea!

My blog's Chinese Portrait:

If my blog was an animal, it would be...
A fox. I like the classic ideas around foxes being curious and clever tricksters. I envision something closer Fantastic Mr Fox (one of my favourite books as a kid!) rather than the ones that hang around my neighbourhood's backyards - though I won't exclude them.

If my blog was a colour, it would be...
Red. The colour of revolution and raspberry ice cream! Or it could also be white, because vanilla ice cream is my favourite flavour.

If my blog was a natural phenomenon, it would be...
A shooting star. They can be hard to spot or be all over the night sky and they're gone in a second, but they hold a lot of meaning ("Quick, make a wish!") and leave most of us with a feeling of wonder and happiness.

If my blog was a mythological being, it would be...
Vor, from the Norse mythology: Goddess of curiosity and finding things out. (found that here). I like the idea of my blog being a collection of curiosities and finding things out is what I generally do before writing in it...

If my blog was a famous person, it would be...
Leonardo da Vinci. All right, it's a bit grandiose, but he's the archetypal Renaissance Man. Interested in everything, applied himself to a multitude of things and excelled in almost if not all of them. Excellence isn't there for this blog yet, but the first thing is to strive towards it and Leonardo did.

If my blog was a type of food, it would be...
The pack lunch your mom prepared when you were a kid. It's generally light and what's inside is always a surprise - though not always an agreeable one, but in the end you can reason it's been made with love and care.
____________________________________________________________________

Well, I think the rules are pretty self explanatory, copy the questions onto a post and answer... I guess you can put more questions if you feel inspired, but let's keep it at these 6. And then tag whoever you'd like to see the answers of, let's say at least two!

I'll tag quite a lot of people to start it off:

I'm tagging Chris Garrett, because that's where I got the idea of starting a meme.

I'll tag George - because he's my boss, and I might as well tag John, soon he'll also be my boss!

I'll tag Faris, Neil, Asi, Priyanka and Michelle - because I met them at the BeerSphere last year before Christmas, had a good time talking with them, and like their blogs.

I'll tag Amelia and Nick - because they took the time to meet with me when I was looking for work and gave me good feedback - and I also like their blogs.

I'll tag Ruby - because she recently left a comment on my blog ;o)

I'll tag Will - because he hasn't written a post in a while and maybe this will inspire him a bit.

All right that's all folks! Let's see if it propagates!

French Penguin

It's apparently a bit old, but I hadn't seen this ad and loved it, it appealed to my French side ;o)

Geeky news

A friend of mine just showed me this pretty cool little freeware called Compendium. I've just installed it and started playing around with it, it's really cool!

In the words of the creators: "Compendium is a software tool providing a flexible visual interface for managing the connections between information and ideas."

You can do things like this:



My friend is using it a lot for work, but he's also using it to map out information for the Vampire the Requiem campaign we're playing these days (a role playing game - not computer games, pen and paper type - I like it because we play with lots of twisted political intrigues). Work wise for me, I can see it being interesting to map out research information and marketing campaign ideas...

And to round off this post of completely geeky news, I've seen and held the new MacBook Air - it looks cool! But I think I'd rather wait for the next generation... Well anyway, I can't afford one right now, so it's a moot point.

Where the sun don't shine ... but still light comes out of it!

This new Greenpeace ad has been brought to my attention today, probably one of the weirdest I've seen... All in all strange, even more that I watched it without the sound the first time and missed the punch line - but a bit funny as well. What do you think?

The Great Football Giveaway

This is an amazingly inspiring project and a very moving video. The idea is simple: "No kid should be denied the chance to kick a ball about. It ’s one of life’s most simple pleasures." The project is to give away 3000 footballs to kids in Africa, it costs £10 - I just gave them two balls, go and give one out!

read more | digg story



I read about it first from Neil's blog.

Goodies

I've just received the first Matter Box, it's all very exciting! It's like Christmas here! I think it's a great idea and judging by the reaction of my nearby colleagues, there will be a lot more matter boxes going to iris next time round. Someone has already snatched up the Nintendo Wii wristband; the Sony Bravia Play-Doh will go to my Friend Alex who has some kind of addiction to plasticine and who's coming over for dinner this evening; there's the SonyEricsson Music Monster that we did at iris last year; and a few other things I have yet to go through...

Feeding myself

Geeky news for a change: I'm just trying out Netvibes and it's absolutely awesome so far! A friend had told me last month that it was a better aggregator than Google Reader, and he was right.
There are loads more possibilities and it also links to all the major sites used these days (email, FB, Flickr, Twitter, Del.icio.us, etc), I'm going to subscribe to plenty more blog feeds now - I'll never be able to follow everything, but now I'll have a easy visual way of checking out what interests me or not!

Have a break

I'm trying this new look on my blog for a little while, we'll see how it works out. I haven't had too much time to read blogs yet this week, so it might be all over the place already, but check check out the site for the latest Kit Kat campaign in France, it's really cool!!

Kit Kat: La Quête du Break Ultime (The Kit Kat Quest for the Ultimate Break)

The intro 3D animation is pretty good, but what I find amazing is definitely the prize! The principle is for users to upload a video of what "the ultimate break" would be and then visitors can vote for their favourite one. A great incentive and I think a good online use of the brand's image (well in France at least; it stayed "Have a break. Have a Kit Kat" ever since the pandas in 1989).

And let's have the pandas, I loved this ad as a kid:

Messy

I was just checking out Michelle's blog and the her latest post is about groups of people apparently fascinated with messy desks. I guess I get fascinated with people in general and their strange interests in particular (mine included!). This is my desk at home, so maybe It'll only appeal to a minority amongst messy desk aficionados, though even then I never would have thought anyone would be interested in ever seeing it on the internet. But I also love being surprised and thought I'd join in the fun:



Ah marvels of technology! A mere 40 minutes later (I'm still learning how to use a MacBook, hadn't opened iPhoto yet...) and voila! The relatively uninteresting desk I see everyday is now available online for all to admire!

I got a bit excited and thought there might be an interest in my messy table... And all right, I admit I dressed one thing up for the picture, can you guess what?



This is becoming like a complete anthropology class! Studying the Willem (Willemus Curiosos) in his natural habitat... If anyone has the courage and time for more fun online activities, I'd be interested in finding out what kind amazing piece of wisdom one could gather from the scattered items on these pictures...