Somebody called...

...our office landline, which we never use.

I picked up:

Me: Yes?

Man with a funny accent: Do you speak Hebrew?

Me: ?! No...

Man with a funny accent: Is this Jewish restaurant?

Me: Yes, yes, of course, come by, we have excellent pork chops today.

On blogging

They say that if you have a blog, it should be updated freequently.

But they never say how often.

Say, earth rotates the sun quite frequently, but it's still once a year.

Ergo, updating your blog once a month should be more than enough, shouldn't it?

Important Observation Nr.2

Argentine has some smart Supreme Court judges.

"The state cannot establish morality," he said.

Important Observation Nr.1

Old kefir smells EXACTLY like old socks.

Country internet

So, internet has finally come to my country home. 21st century communication tool side by side with 19th century plumbing equipment: quite a contrast.

Today in the evening had a very interesting conversation with the lady, who lives in our house since 1940ties: her memory is amazing (she's 90 now). She remembers the exact date in 1930 when they were unloaded from the train in Murmansk region, were they were sent on forced labor. I recorded the conversation in my phone. I have to check if the quality is good enough, then i might put it up somewhere.

Workworkworkworkworkwork

As opposed to the rest of the country (or most of it), i'm working like crazy.

20/80 in logo design

I'm just about to start designing a new logo for our client and partner. I have a brief in my head, and i have couple of ideas already starting to spin in brain. And i realise that 80% of the time i'll spend not on designing the logo itself, but by making various applications for it, showing the usage, that will sell the logo to the client. 

Reasons for that are obvious, people needs arguments for this or that version (therefore different applications), and logo itself is usually just a piece of type and maybe a colored blob. But here's an idea. What if the whole design process can be seen in the blog? Like every sketch, every design i make, is there to see and to comment on? Would the end result be bulletproof from argumentation point of view or total piece of poo? Not sure what the client would think about it...

Idea #4: toothbrush

The reflection of my face in the mirror this morning left me wanting for somebody to cheer me up. Usually people do it with switching on TV, but i think i have a better idea. I'd like to make a toothbrush which has a small digital display. The display, once you pick up the brush, shows an inspirational quote by Paulo Coelho.

Imagine, you have a terrible hangover, wake up at 7am to go to office, and you're greeted by: 

“Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worse kind of suffering.”

Crafts

I read somewhere that practicing crafts brings fullfilment to one's life. Right now, just after i lacquered the wood planks for our shelf, i may agree to that (or maybe it's breathing in the lacquer fumes?).

Thinking further about it, if crafts bring fullfilment, Latvia should be one happy nation, judging by the number of DIY stores around. But instead, it's one of the most depressive in EU. Maybe we're doing something wrong?

Evolution marching on

At least theorethically. And i contributed to it. All that is a very twisted way of saying that i'm a daddy now. And little Dāvis is a jolly good fellow (or my brain makes me think that way).

Physical things still matter

I've just done putting 100 CDs into their little cardboard sleeves. This is the first batch of our first album with Gaujarts. I didn't mind having to do that myself, since it gave me a sense of accomplishement. More than any electronic MP3 release will ever do. Since there is something final about having the CD in hand. And i'm thinking if we continue to play together into our next possible future recording, i will still insist on having a physical release, even if all the world goes iTunes.

So much of our lives is digital today, but still, still... we do like to touch things.

Or will the sense of touch be the next to go the way of tail and claws?

Religion / Science

There's an excellent article from Jerry Coyne - American biologist - about the futile attemps to reconcile science and religion. Apart from it being spectacular show of logic and common sense, the greatest part is the discussion afterwards. Particulary Sam Harris (i would marry him if he was a chick) has a great piece of satire. 

Can a biologist harbor any educated doubts about the Virgin birth of Jesus? No—because human parthenogenesis has nothing whatsoever to do with biology. Can a physicist form an educated opinion about the likelihood of the Ascension? How could he? Bodily translocation into the sky does not require any interaction with the forces of nature. Can either a biologist or a physicist realistically doubt the coming Resurrection of the Dead? Many have tried—all have failed. (Please understand that any mention of "entropy" in this context is mere posturing.)

Music image problem

There was an article about annual latvian music award nominations in one internet portal. The event, which is held by Association of Music Producers, is getting controversial this year, since quite a few well known acts have not been nominated (due to the fact that to participate you have to submit your work). But that's not the issue.

I don't usually read comments in portals, but this time i did, since the topic interests me. I was surprised by amount of "commentators" who had very strict opinion about latvian music as whole. Basically, they wrote, everything is crap, latvians can't play or write, latvian musicians should better go and dig graves, latvian language is not good enough to be used for song lyrics.

Maybe they are a very loud minority, but anyway that is a marketing problem. People have bad opinion, for whatever reason, which means that they won't come to gigs, they won't purchase any records or won't generally look for new latvian music. This opinion must be turned upside town, since it doesn't allow for development. We do have some great bands, great songs, great performers, just that latvians have this tendency of judging their own more harshly, perhaps because the musician lives just around the corner, therefore he can't be good, since the "the latvian" himself can't play or sing or write (and this musician around the corner can't be better than him, can he?).

Bad news is that advetising campaign probably won't help, the change has to start with the musicians themselves. We have to be better promoters, better marketers, better musicians, be generally more active. Maybe then we can "pull" the audience up a level?

Latvian consonants

Inspired by another blogpost i read today in which the author tried to find Latvian words with as many vowels bunched together as possible (like "neieelpo", "neieiet", "neieausi") i started think about consonants the same way. So far, to my amazement, i have found 2 words with 5 consonants bunched together, but 7 consonants in total in a 8 letter word. They are: zvirgzds un švirksts (by the look of it they're more Polish than Latvian...)

Crappy flags

For some reason, my colleague Rene started to look for flags of Soviet Republics. He found a nice Wikipedia page which has all of them, and you know what? Almost all are simply terrible designs. Except Latvian, Lithuanian and maybe Azerbaijani, the rest looks like they have been drawn by a 8 year old niece of Communist Party secretary general.

MORE STONES!

Good to know that we're not the only morons in the Baltics. Lithanian Parlament gets its share of stones too. Estonians - catch up!

Average voter

Reading news about vandalism next to Parliament building in Riga this evening made me remember a phrase from Winston Churchill: "The best argument against democracy is five minute conversation with average voter."