Amazing news story about how termites ate an Indian man’s savings by destroying all the paper money and documents he had had in a safe at his local bank:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7334033.stm
It reminded me of the quote “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.”
At the pub tonight one of our Games designers told me: “The truth is what makes us happy.” It was a quote from a book about language, that would probably classified as semiotics nowadays.
What does this sentence mean? Is it to do with the fact that we humans only remember what we like, that is certainly not true, because painful memories are very strong. What about people who live in states of constant fear or neglect of the world. Does this sentence “The truth is what makes us happy.” apply to them?
Or is it to do with the fact, that everybody creates his own mental model of the world according to what he likes. That also can’t be true, beacuse there’s so many people that hate their live and can’t make any sense of it, because the reality is nothing like what they would think it should be like. Is this truth? What truth was the author of this sentence talking about?
Our science and history is based “truths” or facts. Theories that are proven by several witnesses and usually can be proven time and time again.
If I tell you that I know something that is real for a fact, and it doesn’t make me happy, is it not true? Say, I know for example that hell is real and I hate it and I often think about why it has to exist, would that stop hell from existing?
Similarly, even if I hate the idea of God and would like him not to exist, he still can be there.
Christian propaganda starts here:
You can easily find out if God’s real by praying.
Popsiyo is a simple Javascript Tool that works in every browser. Just load websites through the form provided popsiyo.com and it shows you the translation of words in a tooltip, when you mouse over them. Simply wonderful.
Popsiyo does English <> Japanese, and other Asian languages.
Some time ago I was looking to buy a geometric set square that can be used to draw angles (”Geodreieck” in German) in the UK where I live. I visited several stores and found a lot of other geometric tools, but no such triangles. There was a lot of toolsets available for maths classes in school and most of them had a half-circle angle measuring tool, a so-called “protractor”, and other shapes but no triangles with equal sides.
As somebody who is used to these triangles for drawing and measuring everything, I wondered about the reasons for why I couldn’t find any. After reading the corresponding article on wikipedia I uncovered a very interesting fact: The Austrian company ARISTO has the original design for these tools patented and (I think) it totally dominates the German markets with their design.
Read the rest of this entry »
I am helping with some graphics on a friends website. It is an event management project, started by his girlfriend, called Saltypepper. You can find the website here: saltypepper.co.uk. its not officially ready yet, but it will be soon.
I am currently working on a small flash animation project centering around the biblical parable of the rich fool. Have a look at it here: kornbauer-animation-0.1
I did this painting in Photoshop yesterday evening. 3-4 hours. I am happy with how I fast I have learned to paint in PS. I learned a lot of my technique and got lots of motivation from the threads at CgTalk.
Seibu Lions: An example of a gigantic and successful Corporate Identity project. Some interesting facts about the history of the Seibu Lions from the Book “You gotta have Wa” by Robert Whiting, 1989.
Sports sponsoring is an important part of many corporate brands in the West. Baseball has for a long time been the favorite sport of the Japanese people (It has lost a lot of ground to Soccer in recent years) and unlike Western sports clubs most Japanese clubs are 100% owned by big corporations. Seibu Lions belongs to the Seibu group which is most visible with its Seibu department stores all over Japan. The Seibu Baseball Team is a tightly integrated part of the Seibu Corporate Empire.
Back in the 1980s when I was a small kid in Japan the Seibu Lions were for several years very successful. The people either loved them or hated them for being a giant money machine (they still are today).
The Seibu Dome in the Tokyo suburb of Tokorozawa is connected by a Seibu railway line directly to the Seibu store in the centre of Tokyo. There is a Seibu Amusement park next to the stadium, as well as a golf driving court, swimming pool and an artificial Ski slope. It is a huge fun and money-spending place for every age group all dressed up in the Seibu Flag colors.
Whiting writes that every major Seibu win was followed by a massive celebratory sale at Seibu stores throughout Japan. Back in 1987 their owner Yoshiaki Tsutsumi was the richest man in the world and famous for taking interest in his Baseball Team merely for the money.
According to Whiting Seibu employees were expected to show up at games regularly, even to the extent that their attendance was being recorded. The extreme philosophy of Japanese sportsmanship was like a corporate religion. All Employees were expected to be well-mannered, not to drink and smoke or gamble and to respect their family and the company. Players like employees had to appear always well dressed with a short haircut and no beard or moustache. Mr. Tsutsumi even had the family ties of his employees checked to see if they fit into his company.
The corporate culture of the big Japanese enterprises was incredibly strong on the hand and incredibly narrow on the other hand. You could probably call it Corporate Nationalism. Or compare it to a religious sekt: You live your life for the company and in return it will care for everything you need (including arranged marriages etc.).
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