if i only knew...

Giving a photo the magazine cover treatment

This is an oldie, one of those links that you get from 5 of your friends forwarded to you randomly every year, but it's worth saving for later. So here it is: Greg's Digital Portfolio - how real humans are transformed into flawless magazine cover beauties using Photoshop, and other such projects explained.

3 minutes silence

Today is a national holiday in Hungary, so the streets were earily quiet anyway, but the country joined the European continent's three minutes silence at noon to remember the victims of the Madrid terrorist attacks.

I was watching the TV when they announced the break and showed pictures from the attacks with no music or commentary. I channel surfed to see what the others were doing and ALL our channels joined in the remembrance. CNN and BBC were showing images from across Europe, people standing in silence. It was very moving.

After sept 11th, after the intitial shock, i came away with a greater fear of terrorism and feeling less secure anywhere in the world. I felt a bit more unfomfortable flying to North America this summer (my first trip after Sept 11th) than I did before, but I took great comfort in being a European citizen, and felt that Europe does provide a safe haven for us, because we are not direct aggressors in the eyes of terrorists.

Then, last week's Madrid bombings shattered that view completely. Of course, without the mindless aggressive politics of the US, Europe would have never achieved this kind of an enemy status in the eyes of Al Quaeda or whoever the terrorists are, but let's just skip that for now. The main point is that we lost that innocent European era forever. Yes, we had IRA, ETA and the other Euroterror, but those should not even be mentioned on the same page as you-know-who. It's a sad week for all of us, Europeans.

The Master Foodie has a blog

Jamie Oliver has a blog now. :) He used to have this ongoing diary on his old site as well, but it was not the classical blog format, i didn't like reading the long entries. Now it's a blog complete with photos and it looks like the entries are more brief but frequent. Yay!
(And i am not even a hardcore Jamie fan, mind you... :) )

Another color scheme picker - the best so far

Being a color junkie, I have been posting color scheme tools ever since i began this blog, but today i found the coolest one ever: Color scheme. You pick one color and it gives you several pallettes: contrasty, analogic and monochromatic.

Welcome news for a conscious consumer ^2

Holy crap. What's going on? Today i heard not one but two welcome news reports, both on CNN, that actually give me hope that mankind is finally beginning to come to its senses.

First, this morning CNN had a report about Fair Trade Fortnight, a UK event starting this week to promote fair trade products and the head of the FT foundation mentioned some pretty interesting facts, e.g. that in some product categories fair trade now account for as much as 25% of all sales. (Plus, here in Austria there is a billboard campaign on the way claiming that some 80% of bananas sold here are fair trade.) Impressive, to say the least.

Then, i saw the news that McDonald's is phasing out Supersized fries and drinks.

Maybe the world is not going down just yet?

Same-sex SF marriages

On February 12, San Francisco started performing same-sex marriages in City Hall and Derek went and took wonderful pictures of the newly weds. Really great photos to look at, all the pure joy and happiness. I hope my country will get there in my lifetime. I wouldn't bet on it, but i sure hope things improve for same-sex couples here, there is a long long way to go.

He also wrote a story about it on San Francisco Diary: Derek M. Powazek: Weddings on the Brain.

Knitting is the new yoga

B&N strarted selling Suss Knit Kits in their bookstores this week, and in the press release announcing the launch, they mention this: "Sales of books on knitting are soaring at Barnes & Noble, up 60 percent over last year." So if you needed quantitative proof that knitting is the new yoga, there you have it.

While cheking out the website for the kits, i came across the "client list" of the kits' designer, Suss Cousins: "Among her students and clients are Julia Roberts, Julianne Moore, Angela Bassett, Bill Cosby, Courtney Vance, Magic Johnson, Dustin Hoffman, Rhea Perlman, Lawrence Fishburne, Roseann Barr, Benjamin Bratt, Whoopi Goldberg, Heavy D, Steven Webber, Jada Pinket Smith, David Alan Grier, Kelly Preston, Robin Williams, Dermot Mulroney, Catherine Keener, Terrence Trent D'Arby and Elizabeth Shue."

I was kind of blown away. Julia Roberts' knitting hobby has been documented by just about every women's mag on the planet. Julianne, Angela, Whoopi, not bid surprises. But Bill Cosby, Magic Johnson, Dustin Hoffman, Lawrence Fishburne, and Robin Williams? I just can't produce the mental image of them sitting down to knit away on multicolored yarn to produce a fuzzy scarf. :)

I missed the day...

Interesting cultural trivia:
"Rules of courtship are quite different these days (and much less strict), but long ago women who were hoping to marry had to wait for their beaus to propose. They were not "allowed" to pop the question themselves, except on one day: on a leap year (February 29th) -- also known as Sadie Hawkins Day -- which occurs every four years."

I can't believe i missed the day this year. Why haven't i read this two days earlier? ;)