Happy Halloween :-)

Leaving for a party in about 30 min....
And I have to say, I like my costume.

It was between this:


And
Julie Child.

The iPhone won. :-))))

Was quick to put together too..and nice and light.

More photos shortly of me in it.

Eichborn: Creative Advertising

I think it's actually kinda of gross - but take a look at this little stunt that the German publishing company Eichborn pulled off at the Frankfurt book fair. They tied tiny little banners to LIVE FLIES and sent them zooming around the conference. Certainly attracted a lot of attention. I just wonder....why didn't they use butterflies...? (Ah...now reading....Eichborn's logo is apparently a fly...ok...there was a specific connection.)

Note: at the end of the video there are two screens. The first one says (more or less): "No flies were harmed." And the second says "The banners fell off after some time because they were attached with wax."



Looks like the little campaign might have been created by Jung von Matt in Stuttgart - an agency with generally good ideas. I think they accomplished what they wanted to, I just personally get yucked-out by the flies. But I guess you can buy flies at pet stores (to feed your frogs....?) and butterflies might be harder to come by. They could have dropped by my apartment to pick up a whole bunch of ladybugs though. We have an infestation every year about this time when it starts to get cold.

Pretty Pretty

Russian designer Natalia Ponomareva has developed an origami bird tea bag concept, which expands as the tea steeps. (Not yet in production.) Would be interesting to attach a couple extra strings to the wings of the bird - pulling the strings would be both beautiful, because it might look as though the bird was flying in the water, and useful, because it would simultaneously help infuse the water with the tea.

Fish Monger

Yesterday's lunch - Paella from the local fish guy. Quite tasty.

Cat Car

Sammy and Sophie need this I think....although probably they would just sit and watch the thing travel around the room. :-)

Halloween Around The Corner

I still am thinking about what I want to dress up as on Saturday night for the Halloween party I am invited to. My host is insisting on costumes, and she is insisting on a large number of people. Cause as she says...."10 people standing around in costumes makes everyone feel stupid. 100 people standing around in costumes is hilarious." She is explaining to everyone how easy it is to make costumes and gives examples of simple weird ones: "One year I was an artichoke. I just cut out an artichoke shape from some cardboard and painted it as an artichoke."

I love artichokes, just don't want to go dressed as one. Of course I could do something easy like a vampire, but I think that would sort of be a cop out. So......I think I might have found the perfect costume. Just don't have enough time to still build it. And I am not quite sure how I would bike over to the party wearing it. ;-)

Solution: Spinach and Lamb

The husband's weekend cooking request was "hmmm, something with spinach....and something with ground beef." A longer discussion ensued and I asked him:

"Like what? Spinach how?"

"Well, what about a souffle? Like my mom makes."

(grin) "Ok, but then what do you want me to do with the ground beef?"

"Put it in the souffle?"

(Short discussion about how ground meat is heavy and it would be pretty difficult to get a souffle to rise with meat mixed in...)

"Well, I don't know - you're the innovator in the kitchen. Somehow ground meat and spinach...."

I thought a bit and then asked: "well, what about ground lamb instead?"

"Ok."

A long time ago I had a middle-eastern dish a few times at parties called "Stuffed Kibbeh." I never made it before, although I have been tempted a few times. It's basically a yummy baked meatball with an inside and an outside. Inside is ground lamb and pine nuts and Syrian spices. Outside is a mixture of cracked wheat, lamb and spices. It looks like this:



So I thought about the Kibbeh as a base for this spinach/lamb/souffle request. I could bake it in layers, flat, and then afterwards simply pour the souffle on top and bake again.

So that's what I did. Looked like this from start to finish...








Results?
Very tasty - homey comfort food, but we both agreed missing SOMETHING. Just something to make it really pop in a way. Maybe a yogurt sauce with lots of fresh mint that one pours over it at the end - rather than the dollop of yogurt on the side.

But all in all, a success.

Leftovers? Yes...will be eating this for awhile. Need to learn how to cut recipes down better...

Magic

I think "magic" is the new buzzword of the day. I admit, I have only recently seen two uses of it in the last few days, but I am waiting for more. Apple announced its new mouse the other day - called the "Magic Mouse," the new multi-touch mouse is the innovative next version of the "Mighty Mouse."
I *really like* my mighty mouse - I just bought the wireless version of it, so I can imagine that the magic mouse is gonna be pretty awesome as well. If I hadn't JUST BOUGHT the wireless mighty, I would be headed towards the Apple store to pick up said magic. Only problem with the wireless version is that it does go through batteries more quickly than I would like. I have to get better about turning it off, but I think the batteries should last for at least a few months (like I have heard other wireless mice can manage), and at this point I am going through a new set once a month. Ok, I only have had the mouse for 6 weeks or so, but still.


And although Scholly makes fun of me every chance he gets for not being enough of a Twitter freak for collecting/publishing news minutia from our industry (and beyond), I confess I still love Google Reader. Reader just came out with a bunch of new features that are kinda cool, although mostly not particularly innovative. The one I did like though, at least based on how it sounded, was "Sort by Magic."


The idea behind it quite nice: you have 10 or 15 minutes in the day to use as you like and you want to quickly zip through the most interesting news of the moment. When you (normally) head over to Google Reader, you might be bombarded by 1000+ unread items, which is a bit challenging to skim, even with super-human speed reading skills. "Sort by Magic" helps you to read the items you normally would find the most interesting. How? By noting your reading patterns - which items do you read the most - and presenting you with a short list (seems like 10 articles) of the items you would be the most interested in.




Yeah, well, with a bit BUT. BUT I think the little program behind the innovation still needs some work. I keep sorting by magic to see what it comes up with during the day, and while I admit I read a lot of Mashable and Boing Boing, these are RARELY the first places I turn to. So overall - because of how many articles these two sites publish, the number of articles I read there may be more than anywhere else, they are not my first priority. So...hey Reader guys....please add some more intelligence to "Sort by Magic." Please consider taking into account 1) what I read first, 2) what I email most, 3) the headlines I click on to read the entire article, 4) keywords in articles I read most (e.g., "apple," "social media," "web analytics," "mobile," etc.) 5) the time of day, for starters. Better yet - let me help create the magic if I want to: give me the option of customizing the prioritization algorithm - let me say what factors are most important to me. Would make the magic ever so much more magiliscious...

Two Takes on Windows 7

Really liked the newest Apple Vs. PC ad launched in the last few days that makes fun Windows 7. But I love the whole series. :-)




Came across this interesting partnership deal between Burger King and Microsoft that has produced a food monstrosity in Japan in order to promote Windows 7. (Britta - take note! And try one of these before you come back. (NOT!))) Really disgusting.

Pizza by the Meter

I keep passing this place on the way to my favorite afghani
restaurant. Today i stopped and chatted with the chef about his
amazing looking pizzas. He let me taste one and it became immediately
clear where I will be eating lunch tomorrow.

That was Then

Just a quick post to throw up some photos. I have been discussing the new(ish) eReaders popping up right and left with a couple friends and acquaintances in the last couple days because of the most recent emergence of Barnes and Noble's Nook as well as the presentation of txtr at the Frankfurt book festival.

Do I want an eReader? Well, I'm almost always game for a nifty piece of new technology, but to be honest, I'm not ...yearning for one. I'm happy enough with the combination of my iphone and laptop, but then again, maybe I just need to hold one in my hands and experience it to know what I am missing. But really, I somehow can't imagine it because I love books as physical objects. I love turning pages, having this sense of satisfaction as I make my way through them, always having a sense of how much I have read, and how much is left. I like to browse through them at random too - just stand in front of our bookshelves and pick up something I haven't looked at in a long time and turn to a favorite section or page. I like the smell of books, and the lightness of them. And as I spoke about with my mom last night as we discussed the fact that on the Kindle I could get a subscription to The New Yorker and other magazines and thus avoid throwing out so much paper, I said "yes, but I love to see the artwork on paper." Kind of selfish. Maybe print magazines are meant more for luxury consumption in the future, or as a collectable....

For whatever reason, 10 years ago, I felt quite differently. The Rocket eBook from Franklin came out on the market, cost about 350 bucks if I remember correctly, and I was one of those slightly crazy early adopters. I bought it, used it a bit - perhaps bought about 10 books? I don't remember....and then it ended up in the "we-put-our-too-difficult/cool-to-throw-out-or-recycle-valuables-in-here" closet. And I have dragged it from country to country, not having the heart to get rid of it because of how totally jazzed I was to get it when I did. (Yes, the Nabaztag is also sitting in this closet as well as a humidifier in the shape of a penguin, keeping the eBook company, and god-knows whatever geeky toys I have collected over the years.)

Christian asked for a photo of my Rocket eBook, so here are a few - quite a bit different from those on the market today. I think it weighs...about a kilo - which was one of the primary problems with it - it made your arm tired to hold it for any length of time. (Phone next to eBook photo is so you can get a sense of size)

Wild Thing

It's been a looooong time, but I sort of remember when my mom used to read to us from Maurice Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Are" when we were little.

And now there is a movie coming out which looks really great. People are starting to talk about it here too (well, I guess my American friends more than anyone) and I have been reading a lot of press about it as well. I hear that it won't arrive in Germany until December, but maybe I'll go see it when I am in the US for Thanksgiving. :-)
Trailer looks really good:





To accompany the movie, Warner Bros put out an iPhone App - a really cute one. The main character - Carol - throws rocks at you, eats your photos, etc. Nice piece of value-added, engaging advertising...

Best Job In The World

:-))))

Pulp Wave Fiction (R-Rated!!!!)

Normally I wouldn't post something like this and if you are averse to images/sounds/text depicting violence/profanity/sex, please do not press the little play button.

But I couldn't help but laugh really hard at this one - it might be a little too much of an insider's joke if you don't know much about Google Wave and haven't seen Pulp Fiction, but if you claim to know something about both, I think you'll find this pretty funny too. :-) Pulp Fiction is probably one of my favorite movies, and at this point I can claim that while Google Wave has a lot of potential it's still pretty buggy and will entail a pretty steep learning curve for most people (me too) to actually find that it creates efficiencies in their communication - for the sake of comedy, it's already miraculous. ;-)

Surfing the Wave

I signed up to be on the preview/beta tester list for Google Wave as soon as I heard about it. Have been muttering and cursing under my breath for the past two weeks or so because no invite arrived and the whole blogosphere won't shut up about how wonderful it is.

Then, to add insult to injury, I got an email which LOOKED LIKE it came from google telling me to invite all my friends to Google Wave and to BUY A RAFFLE TICKET to get an invite to Google Wave (Read the fine print at the bottom of the email ...a bit later - seems the email was written by some fan or something). Unbelievable. So I wrote back a super nasty reply telling them to more or less....shove their suggestions and requests for money into a deep dark hole.

And LO AND BEHOLD! This morning, an invite arrived. :-)

Probably I will find out that everyone got one, and my nasty email was completely unrelated. :-P

But I appear to also have 8 invites to give away...well...kinda...you can see for yourself. Who wants one? Any takers?

Ah...you don't know what Google Wave is? Take a look.

__________________
Later:
Played around with the functionality with my friend Henning who I haven't seen in almost 10 years - my one and only contact who has ALSO received an invite. After "waving" for an hour - Henning patiently put up with my testing out every little gadget and widget I could get my hands on - we decided to meet up for a burger tomorrow evening. He threw in a photo so i could recognize him. (Thanks Henning!)

Also funny is that the wave is still working on a few kinks....got this cute error message a moment ago. :-)
At least they are keeping a sense of humor about it.

Snow Day

What you can't see because my camera is not good enough, is that in
addition to that terrible number on the thermometer there, it is
SNOWING. Aaaaaah! Tooooooo early!

Octopus on a Stick

yawn. After a long day of shopping and cooking and cleaning and even a
little yoga, i'm ready to sleep. Will post a couple photos tomorrow.
Sushi party was a success, so I'm happy.
________________________________________

A few photos of the mess we made - but had lots of fun doing it. And lots of happy sushi eaters.
Mike has officially signed up to create an Indonesian feast (a date please? ;-)), Mallorie for a Halloween party, and Rohit and Nichole for Indian curries...

I didn't take that many photos last night, was too busy rolling sushi, but here are a few. Nicole - I think you have some on your camera - please send over.









and...Andreas got up early to help clean up. whew! Made it very easy. :-)

Weekend Reading

:-) Haven't picked up a copy of Wolf Hall yet, but i guess I have
enough reading material for the weekend.

Happy Hormones

With winter coming the days are getting shorter. I finally hauled my bike in to the repair shop today to get the light fixed so that when i ride home at night I will be able to see (and be seen). But I think I am also one of those people who is a little moodier in the winter when there is less sun. Came across this article a week back and I keep talking and thinking about it.

I am a little surprised that someone didn't come up with the idea in California - where the whole "you are what you eat" movement practically was invented. I can imagine a restaurant like this smack in the middle of Marin county being an extraordinary success. Yoga moms stopping by for a little snack before practice...work-stressed women stopping by on the way home and picking up dinner to go....(or men...) Instead....it is far away from me in the other direction - it's in the Philippines.

I like the principle in general - certain foods appear to be better at helping your brain regulate serotonin and dopamine levels - those happy hormones. So based on the menu that was posted in facebook, i was able to see that actually, our diet more or less revolves around these foods as it is. (Fish, whole grains, spinach, nuts, garlic and onions, etc.).

Morning Concert

Dancer

Cake

Hearts

Church

Newlyweds

Balloons

Garden

Silhouette 2