A Krauted Memorial Day

WTF? You're not an American, what does it mean to you man.

Well as a native German and EU citizen it actually means a lot to me. Each memorial day we reflect on those who gave their blood so we can be free.

Watch the video here and pause a moment to think about those policemen and women, the firefighters, the national guard and the soldiers, all of our man and women in uniform that put their lives in so we can be safe each and every day.

No Church / State separation in the US?

Now this should give anyone the creeps that cares about democracy.

I just read this on my daily dose of Wonkette: Pagan Prohibited. Somehow they're not too into religions that pre-date their fancy christian thingy by centuries. Well they tried to kill all pagans once (the christians, not the US by itself). So apparently a war and violence religion like Christianity or the Muslim system is accepted while peace preserving and expressive non-violence religions like Wicca are banned? Get real!

Wait, this reminds me of something. One god to rule them all. One god to find them, Ten rules to ring them all and in the darkness bind them.

Seems like we're really getting close to this scenario.

Some Eyeliners for you?

Just learned about this really cool band from Micheal Butler's Rock and Roll Geek show today.

With no further ado, here is the link and let me say, being fostered by the legendary Joan Jett sure has benefits. The Eyeliners fine and pure rock! Beware the site, they use Flash to play their music right when the page is loading. I really hate that, the site could also use something here and there, but nevertheless their music rawks!

New Music in my box

I guess that I'll reserve the top-right corner for stunning looks now. But really that Joss Stone has something, not just visually but her voice, wow. Would you believe from that sound she isn't even of legal age yet? And does it matter?

For the other totally awesome new addition to iTunes that I've been ranting about, Sarah McLachlan's iTunes Originals Album there's no official banner in my preferred banner size yet but I really want to share this with you as I think it is totally awesome, not suitable for work as it will suck you in when you listen to it as a whole and the songs are so dreamlike, gosh she's great. I found that some of the back-stories to Sarah's songs make them even more depressing. Aren't the most painful feelings the most lasting?

Nikka Costa ad broken

Yes I know the Nikka Costa as only links to the iTunes storefront. Apple informed me that this is perfectly normal and that I should not use this link as it links to an outdated action they recently had.

I'll leave it on till I'll get the new one that links to a totally awesome iTunes Originals album that only seems to be available in the US. freaking bummer!

Geek or Techie?

Today I got an interesting question that I'd like to share.

Let's just put the inquiring party as Q for now as I can't say much about it yet. It happened on iChat.

• Q: Would you describe yourself rather as a techie or a geek?
• FJ: What's the difference?
• Q: A techie being a person that has a fetish for new technologies and is always after the latest gadgets…
• FJ: Thought that was a gadgeteer.
• Q: Let me finish?
• FJ: Could be, go on.
• Q: A techie being someone who is in love or obsessed with technology and a geek being someone that knows how to operate it.
• FJ: Your're fast, are you copying these lines from another application?
• Q: …
• FJ: Well actually I like to know what I'm doing with an application or a device that I'm operating, since that is why I bought this thing for. To use it. You don't buy a pencil to look at it.
• Q: True. So you're a geek then?
• FJ: In my conscious hours.
• Q: Err ok, so that's a yes then?
• FJ: I think so. Yes, you could say I'm a geek then. Since that term is loosing its negative cling that it had for many years I think I can live with being called a geek.

I'll cut this here before it gets too boring and I give away too much fortunate enough they can't sue me since I didn't sign anything yet. Guess I'll need to sign off the final article if or when it goes online or to print since I have no idea what they'll do with it. Pin it on the blackboard of the ladies room, who knows.

Introducing... The Ads!

You might have already noticed the little changes that I made to the layout. Ads! What the heck does he need ads for? Well every now and then I like to put on some links to songs that I really like and share the love. The iTunes Music Store lets me do just that. Pick what I like and get nice looking banners along with it as well as a small percentage of the sale if you buy the song that I link to. Pretty cool isn't it?

And it really is stuff that I like, no one messes with my editorial integrity here. I say what I think and you comment on it (if you'd just get used to comment on the blog instead of writing me e-mails about it) no "here are 10 bucks say J-Lo is awesome" nah she won't fit in here (hehe). By the way, one of the banners was not provided by iTunes, can you tell which one?

So let's get right down to the first 3 recommendations that I have this week and i hope I can have some every week, but honestly it's just based on what I listen to right now every time.

Right away I should be fair and say that I don't totally dig the the music of Nikka Costa currently, but I found that image quite captivating. Great photography I must say. But the Morcheeba album is quite nice, especially the first song Wonders Never Cease with an intro that sorta feels like a warm summer rain and that sliky voice of their new singer, ah gosh that gave me goose-bumps the first time I heard it. And yes do we need to mention the Lascivious Biddies? My favorite band of the moment. I had a little badge on for the last wee before I did the big banner here.

Oh hey! Amanda Monaco from the Biddies also published a book recently at National Guitar Workshop's which you should check out if you're into learning how to become a divine jazz guitarist. Congrats Amanda!

On the Edge of Reason...

You might have kinda guessed that i live in Europe by my last post and yes I'm still happy for Greece even though it was not my favorite contest entry which would have been the Swiss or the Russian entry if not the norwegian entry from Wig Wam which was some hard rock thing that's not like metal but somewhat like an updated version of KISS.

Anyway... now on to something completely different

I just read the newspaper today and was shocked to see how the German government treats people that they should care most about. The unemployed. I've been unemployed myself when the agency I worked for decided that they don't need a design department and moved on to just selling weighted addresses.

What Germany did is treating not only the unemployed like shit, but also taking their lives from them in certain ways. They have this thing called Hartz 4, their cardinal rule of inquisition to wipe the place clean from uneasy beings. It allows to swipe folks that live on the doll out of their homes and bring them together in concentration camps (yes I know what term I'm using here, read on) or low life flats if you're lucky, even take your animals from you and kill them legitimately.

Hopefully I'll be able to leave this country for good before they declare war on Poland.

Dobre Vechir Kyiv!

I must say I was quite impressed with the Kyiv Eurovision song contest 2005 show (period).

They re-invented their whole broadcast system to be able to put out this massive act. As it seems the whole gig was done in HD. Which is the cheaper way to do TV if you think about it. It only gets expensive when you need to change an old broadcast system to a new one, it's not just an upgrade, it's a different technology. And the Ukrainians mastered it!

I made some snaps of the show and post it to this item later on. Edit: snaps are posted below.

As I'm writing this the show is still running and I have my fingers crossed for Russia and Switzerland. The German entry was quite disappointing since I have seen Gracia doing better.

So it's final… Congratulations Greece!

Biddy Tunes!

Finally our friends the Lascivious Biddies are in iTunes!

Congrats Amanda, Lee Ann, Deidre and Saskia!

So what are you waiting for head on to iTunes and get the album!

...concerning workbits

Some of you probably know that I spent the better part of my last 10 years to do website designs every now and then before really getting to like it like 2 years ago, hence the title of this blog. Making the transition from a print designer to a screen oriented, particularly interface specialized designer was reasonably easy for me since I studied interfaces before I had my first own computer an Atari 800 XL.

Now that I learned how to apply everything I learned during all those years about usability to designing websites, by using web standards and accessibility guidelines to the max, it seems that when you work for a client all that goes out the window.

Especially in cases where every Joe, Jack and Harry's say has more value than that of one that does this for a living. You get stuff like, let's not do THIS because I've been told it looks funny. I'd totally be fine with a "let's not do this, because it doesn't work under this and that aspects" but what can you expect from a chap that's not even capable of doing a standards compliant site. Exactly.

I might sound a bit pissed today in every sense of the word and yes I admit it, I am. But that was a project that was pretty dear to me when I started out doing it, now not so much. Not because of this one Super Joe occurrence, there has been a lot of lack-luster shit going on, like setting up a custom application for them that they ended up ignoring and all that stuff. I won't name names here since I still like those people on a personal level, but business wise it's just a pain and I'm not sure if I want my name associated with the end product of this. But let's wait see what happens, maybe I can even post a link to that site from here when it is done.

Yours spitefully... the web dumbass