JabberWocky!

Halloween is finally here and each year on this night millions of children dress up in costume and take to the streets for a spooky dose of trick or treat fun.

The Children’s Safety Zone is a great site with Many Halloween Safety Tips for Trick-or-Treaters, Parents and Homeowners. Make sure you check it out Before taking/letting your children go/out Trick-or-Treating tonight!

Halloween Safety Tips

Halloween is an annual celebration, the word Halloween has its origins in the Catholic Church. It comes from All Hallows Eve which is the day/night before All Hollows Day or All Saints Day. It is a Catholic day of observance in honor of saints.

But, in the 5th century BC, in Celtic Ireland, summer officially ended on October 31. The holiday was called Samhain (sow-en), the Celtic New year.

One story says that, on that day, the disembodied spirits of all those who had died throughout the preceding year would come back in search of living bodies to possess for the next year. It was believed to be their only hope for the afterlife. The Celts believed all laws of space and time were suspended during this time, allowing the spirit world to intermingle with the living.

The people that were still alive did not want to be possessed so on the night of October 31 the villagers would extinguish the fires in their homes, to make them cold and undesirable. They would then dress up in all manner of ghoulish costumes and noisily paraded around the neighborhood, being as destructive as possible in order to frighten away spirits looking for bodies to possess.

The custom of Halloween was brought to America in the 1840’s by Irish immigrants fleeing their country’s potato famine. At that time, the favorite pranks in New England included tipping over outhouses and unhinging fence gates.

The custom of trick-or-treating is thought to have originated with a ninth-century European custom called souling. On November 2, All Souls Day, early Christians would walk from village to village begging for “soul cakes,” made out of square pieces of bread with currants. The more soul cakes the beggars would receive, the more prayers they would promise to say on behalf of the dead relatives of the donors. At the time, it was believed that the dead remained in limbo for a time after death, and that prayer, even by strangers, could expedite a soul’s passage to heaven.

And the history of the Jack-o-Lantern? Well it probably comes from Irish folklore. As the tale is told, there was a man named Jack, who was notorious as a drunkard and trickster and to make a long story short! He had tricked the devil so instead of allowing old Jack into Hell the devil gave him a single ember to light his way through the frigid darkness. The ember was placed inside a hollowed-out turnip to keep it glowing longer!

The Irish originally used turnips as their “Jack’s lanterns”. But when the immigrants came to America, they found that pumpkins were far more plentiful than turnips. So the Jack-O-Lantern in America was a hollowed-out pumpkin, lit with an ember!

Some cults have adopted Halloween as their favorite holiday, but the day did not grow out of evil practices but the rituals of Celts celebrating a new year, and out of Medieval prayer rituals of Europeans.

History and Customs of Halloween

Want to know more about Halloween and everything that goes with it? History.com also has a great site about the History of Halloween, Holiday Origins, Halloween Videos, Famous Haunts, Ghost Stories, Around the World and so much more.

And last but not least! What’s Halloween without a few Halloween Costume Pictures? In my opinion these are about the best that I have ever seen and I personally think they all should win a prize for “Best Costume”, goodness knows I’d give them a blue ribbon!

Great Halloween Costumes!

Well, that’s it for me this Very Scary and Spooky Halloween, I need to go and get dressed up in my costume, noisily parade around the ‘hood’ and be as destructive as possible so I can frighten away the spirits that are looking for bodies to possess!

I hope that all of you have a safe and great Halloween and don’t let the ghouls and goblins get ya…BOOOOOOOO!!!!! And assuming that they don’t, then I hope to see you all back again tomorrow for some more…

Well yesterday we started gearing up for Halloween with gargoyles and grotesques so why not find us some haunted houses, or what are Suppose to be haunted houses, today?

I’m not going to make fun of any of the paranormal today because last time I made fun of Friday the 13th my week-end and the entire next week was a total disaster so lets just say I’ve learned my lesson!

You know, since the beginning of time people have been swearing that there are ghosts and haunted houses, (or dwellings). And for as long as people have been swearing there are such things there have been just as many people swearing there are not.

A haunted house is defined as a building that is believed to be a center for supernatural occurrences or paranormal phenomena. And most haunted house stories lay claim to containing ghosts, poltergeists, and/or even malevolent entities.

Haunted locations are often regarded to contain the spirits of deceased beings who may have been former residents or were familiar with the property. Supernatural Activity inside homes is said to be mainly associated with violent or tragic events in the buildings past such as murder, accidental death, or suicide sometimes in the recent or ancient past. Amongst many cultures and religions it is believed that the essence of a being such as the ’soul’ continue to exist…
Wikipedia

So whether there truly are haunted houses or not you’ll have to be the judge of that, but here are some famous houses that lay claim to being haunted!

Booooo!

Haunted Houses?

Now if you happen to live in a house that you think is haunted and it is getting on your nerves but you are just too darn stubborn to move out yourself, then you may want to check out a Ghost Buster and see if they can’t help get “Your Little Friend” to move instead!

Who Ya Gonna Call? GHOST BUSTERS!

*Note* Tomorrow is Halloween and if you are preparing to get your child’s Halloween Costume made or bought today then make sure you run over here Before you proceed to get some very important Halloween costumes safety tips, so that your child can be as safe as possible this year.

Halloween Costume Safety

Th, Th, That’s all folks! Hope to see you back again tomorrow, Halloween, for some more scary…

Seeing that we are all gearing up for Halloween on Wednesday I thought a bit of Pre-Halloween Stuff might be in order to get us in the mood!!

BOOOOOOOO!!!

In cities across America, they stare at us with a leering gaze. Some have horns protruding from their heads; others are part animal, part human, with scowls on their faces. We are referring to grotesques: the scary figures carved into stone corbels, keystones, and friezes on building facades. In 12th century Europe, grotesques, as well as open-mouthed gargoyles—which directed rainwater away from buildings—became commonplace, especially on the outside of cathedrals. At the time, the church was trying to convert the largely pagan masses to Christianity. The figures, which were a stark contrast to the saintly sculptures that also decorated buildings, demonstrated to an illiterate congregation the difference between good and evil.

I am lucky enough to live where I see these types of things all of the time on buildings as I live in a very old city with many 12th century European buildings. I absolutely love them although I do have to admit I never fail to see the “evil” in them much more around this time of year!

Here is a little bit more of what I am talking about!

Grotesques and Gargoyles…Spooky, Sacry, Stone Spies

Halloween Safety Tips

Well I’m back yet again! It seems as though today is Announcement Day what with the Halloween Safety Tips and now this!

* In a bid to seize viewers from Google Inc’s YouTube, NBC and Fox have teamed up together to launch a test version advertising-supported online video site today called Hulu.com.

The site was developed by News Corp. and NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric Co., and offers free viewing of full-length films and TV episodes, supported by advertising.

It’s in it’s Beta stage obviously but what to hay, I signed up anyway for inclusion on their “Private Beta Invite List” and am awaiting my invitation “as soon as they are ready for me”! (I wonder if Anyone is Ever Truly Ready for Me)??

That’s all for me yet again today! Hope to see you back again tomorrow for more…

For a number of years I’ve watched a trend towards informality in my field. A trend towards a much less professional appearance in designers and other computer professionals. While there is nothing wrong with wearing jeans to work. At some point though, you need to draw a line. What’s professional, and what isn’t? Where do you draw the line? Jeans to work is OK, but pajamas and bunny slippers are bad?

You also have to take into account your clients. Everybody in your office knows how good you are at your job, but does the client? If their first impression of you is in bunny slippers, are they going to treat you like the professional you are? It’s not good enough that you think you are a professional. Your client needs to think you are a professional. You need to be the professional that your client wants to see.

There’s always room for personal style, especially with designers. We’re expected to be at least a little eccentric. That doesn’t necessarily mean casual though, and it definitely doesn’t mean sloppy. How a person dresses makes a statement about how much they respect them self, and their profession. If you don’t seem to respect yourself, or your profession, how’s a client supposed to?

What’s the alternative? The alternative is being a good designer who takes their job seriously, but loses clients, because the client doesn’t share this opinion.

You know I find myself having to write about this today as I have been thinking a lot about a very little girl that I met last Saturday.

I went to the outdoor Saturday market last week, which I go to every week to finish up my weekly shopping. It is an outdoor market where you can buy almost anything at a lower price than in the store.

Of course being outdoors, the weather is not always the greatest, I dare say it is hardly ever very good weather here in Holland, and many times you are walking around the wind, rain or even snow when it is winter but everyone, including me, doesn’t let that stop us from saving a Euro here and there!

We will go out and save our pennies and then have to turn around and spend them on medicine to help us get well from the colds that we catch!

I never said it was a smart way to save, I just said it was a way to save!

Anyway I regress! Where was I? Oh Yes! The little girl!

She was just about the cutest little thing that you’ve ever seen! She couldn’t have been much over 4 or 5 and she was a towhead with Shirley Temple curls, huge blue eyes, a little shuffled looking because she probably just got out of bed, it was very early in the morning after all, and she was crying her little heart out.

I felt so sorry for her when I felt this tiny little tug at my pants and looked down to see this sweet little thing crying so hard that I could barely understand her childish, broken by tears, Dutch.

At first I thought she might be looking for her momma or papa but that turned out to be not the problem.

Finally I realized that she was looking for her hond, (dog). She had gone out with him and he had gotten excited and ran away!

When I ask her to tell me about her hond so that I could help her look for him I soon realized he would not be hard to spot!

She had this to say about her hond, he:

• Had 3 legs
• Was blind in one eye
• Was missing his right ear
• Had a broken tail
• Was recently castrated
• And answered to the name of…LUCKY!!

Have you maybe seen her Lost Dog??

That’s it for me today and this week! But make sure that you check back here tomorrow when HDW is here posting his next in the series of Art and Design only here at…

OiNK, the world’s biggest online sources of pirated music, was shut down yesterday by British and Dutch police, they also arrested the Website’s 24-year-old suspected operator.

OiNK was an invitation-only Website, (users were invited to the site only if they could prove they had music to share), that specialized in distributing albums leaked before their official release by record companies according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, (IFPI).

OiNK was estimated to have 180,000+ members that paid “donations” to upload or download albums, many of them before their release, and in just a few hours the albums would be distributed through public forums and blogs across the Internet.

The IFPI claim that more than 60 albums were leaked on OiNK so far this year alone, making it the primary source worldwide for illegal pre-release music.

The 24-year-old IT, (Information Technology), worker was arrested at a house in Middlesbrough, England, followed a two-year investigation by Dutch and British police.

OiNK’s servers, were also shut down in Amsterdam by Dutch police

The head of the IFPI’s Internet Anti-Piracy Unit said:

“This was not a case of friends sharing music for pleasure. This was a worldwide network that got hold of music they did not own the rights to and posted it online.”

Recorded music sales have fallen by more than 1/3 internationally in the last six years.

There has already been an OiNK Memorial blog set up and considering OiNK was only shut down yesterday the Memorial site is really quite complete!

Here you can vote for which Never Forget LOGO you prefer, read posts and comments, see fan art, view a video of the Dramatic Re-enactment of the Raid and more, all posted by Bacon Phat

OiNK Memorial

Well, that’s all the news for me today! Hope to see you back again tomorrow for more…

Did you ever wonder why Mona Lisa did not have eyebrows…or eyelashes for that matter?

Pascal Cotte, an engineer and scientist, wondered so he decided to scan the painting with a 240-megapixel Multi-spectral Imaging Camera which he invented, and found that after peeling away centuries of varnish and other alterations, she did indeed originally have eyebrows. He was able to see exactly how she appeared to da Vinci and his contemporaries at the time she was painted.

With this scan, Cotte was able to uncover 25 secrets in total about the Mona Lisa. For instance her face appears slightly wider and the smile and eyes are different. “The smile is more accentuated,” Cotte said.

You can find out more about what this scan unveiled at:

Mona Lisa Secrets

That’s all for me today! Hope to see you back again tomorrow for some more…

At least they should be. Everyone who works in the design field should be critical of their own work. Not in a negative way, but honest, constructive criticism. I’m personally my own worst critic. I always see things that I can improve. I don’t let it take away from my successes, but I always try to see things that I could do better. As you will have noticed on my own site, I try to review the work of others to help refine my critical eye. By reviewing other designs, I improve my ability to break down my own work, and to improve it.

Take a look at your work. What do you like, what don’t you. Break it down into manageable pieces that can addressed separately. How’s the color work, the layout? Don’t just think in terms of your preferences, but in other ways too.

• Did the client like it?
• Did the audience like it?
• Did it work?
• Did it fit the context that it was used in?
• What would I improve?
• What should I keep for next time?

When a project is wildly successful you should still be able to see thing that you could improve upon. Even when a project is a spectacular failure (it happens) you should be able to see things you did right.  Make note of these things. They are what  will make you a better designer.

Look at the work of others, both the good and the bad. Look for the reason why. Why does it work, or why didn’t it? How would you do it differently?

Not every designer is a critic, but they should be. They should be their own worst critic, and their own biggest asset. They should be able to take an honest look at their own work, and use it to make themselves better.

Karl Rove, George W’s longtime political adviser, resigned as White House deputy chief of staff on Aug. 31, and returned to Texas, marking a turning point for the Bush presidency. Mr. Rove was a driving force and one of the White House’s most polarizing figures.

When George W. made the formal announcement, appearing grim-faced on the White House South Lawn with Mr. Rove at his side, he said: “Karl Rove is moving on down the road, we’ve been friends for a long time and we’re still going to be friends… I’ll be on the road behind you here in a bit”.

You could tell that George W. took it hard, loosing someone that you have been close to for so long has that effect on us.

Sometimes behind closed doors we have a chance to really express our feelings, and here’s your chance to see George W. as you’ve never seen him before, giving his tribute to Mr. Rove, their relationship and how it was:

Against All Odds

Well, that’s it for me today and this week! Check back tomorrow when HDW writes is next post in his series on Art and Design only here at…

Most of us deny any prejudices that we may have and in fact when we do deny prejudices many times we honestly believe we are telling the truth.

There has been a test developed by professors from Harvard, the University of Virginia and the University of Washington, that measures the two levels that all people operate within, the conscious and the unconscious. It measures the emotions and feelings under the surface.

The unconscious level can tell you more about a person’s true feelings, the part where things come out before we have a chance to think about what we are doing. First impressions and snap decisions fall into that category. That second level, is really important in how we think, feel and behave about things like prejudice and discrimination.

Implicit Association Test (IAT)

I hope that all of you have good results from your test and find that you are indeed not a racist or prejudice!

That’s all for me today! Hope to see you back again tomorrow for more…