Ever wondered how much "nature" your lifestyle requires? You're about to find out. The ->Ecological Footprint Quiz estimates how much productive land and water you need to support what you use and what you discard. After answering 15 easy questions you'll be able to compare your Ecological Footprint to what other people use and to what is available on this planet.

My ecological footprint is evaluated to 4. This is less than the average for my contry which is around 6,2. This is much greater than what nature can support which around 1.8. If everybody has the same live than me, we would need 2,5 earth to support our lifestyle... scary.  
#  31.08.2003

 I have just returned from a conference and my first intense business and social interaction with the use of low vision. I found it very distracting to look at people's faces when I was having a conversation. I can see their lips moving, eyelashes flickering, head nodding and hands gesturing. At first, I tried looking down, but if it was a woman in a low-cut top that would be even more distracting. It was easier to close my eyes or tune out the visual input. This was often necessary in order to concentrate on what they were saying. I am sure there will come a time when all this visual communication will mean more to me, but for now it is just distracting.

Mike May in ->Learning to see again. Three years ago, Mike May has regained some sight after being totally blind since the age of three. 43 years later, he is seeing with the curiosity and newness of a child. You'll find more at ->Mike May's New Perceptions 
#  26.08.2003

 Try this sometime when you are bored:
1) Take one pound of raw peanuts (not roasted!)
2) Shell them, saving the skins and discarding the shells.
3) Eat the nuts.
4) Grind up the skins and roll them into a cigarette, and smoke!
You'll have fun, believe me! -------------Jolly Roger

All this and much more in the ->Index of The Anarchist's Cookbook 
#  25.08.2003

 Very simple. Take a piece of spam mail and make it into something new. Get the rules and possible prizes at ->Fried Green al-Qaedas. If you want to submit something, hurry up, entries are due to August 26, 2003! I'll check for the results and report here. stay tuned. 
#  25.08.2003

 I do not know this guy ->Edward R. Tufte but I fully agree with him when he explains why Powerpoint is Evil. Power corrupts, PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely.

Presentations largely stand or fall on the quality, relevance, and integrity of the content. If your numbers are boring, then you've got the wrong numbers. If your words or images are not on point, making them dance in color won't make them relevant. Audience boredom is usually a content failure, not a decoration failure. 
#  21.08.2003

 If you are bored or if you look to escape a bit from "9 to 5" life, have a look at the marvellous travelling adventures of ->Kaeru. Following this funny-looking green little frog, You'll go fishing, have a walk in Tokyo, or discover America, all this sitting at your desk!  
#  19.08.2003

 Ok, I should normaly not link to such kind of information, but it makes me laugh so much. So here we are, Ladies (and some gentlemens as well), a genuine, guaranteed 100% unaltered photograph of the next governor of California, ->Arnol Schwarzenegger butt naked nude and proud of it (and he's got nothing to be ashamed of). There are plenty other interesting picutres of Arnie ->out there. Amongs them, the ->Iron Man picture is my favorite.

Don't send Arnie an email to warn him because, apparently, he already ->knows it: I made my mistakes. I lived my life exactly like I wanted to live it, but I should have done things differently. I did things that were wrong, and I've regretted it.
Est igitur res publica res populi!  
#  16.08.2003

 The fact that each face of the cube is made of three layers of three blocks has an important meaning. The number three seems to have a particular significance, relevant in some strange ways to the relation between man and nature. Mother-child-father. Heaven-earth-hell. Creation- preservation-destruction. Birth-life-death.

Erno Rubik, a Hungarian professor who invented the ->Rubick's cube, in ->Call it neo-Cubism. He could have added something like Me-Myself-and I...  
#  11.08.2003

 By the end of July, ->Google introduced a new advanced search feature that enables users to search not only for a particular keyword, but also for its synonyms. This is accomplished by placing a "~" character directly in front of the keyword in the search box.

For example, a token like ->Unix ~help will have Google looking for "Unix help" as well as "Unix guides", tutorials, FAQ,... According to ->Google's weblog, the ~ character was chosen because it's shorthand for approximate and a good way for users to express their wish to expand searches to include synonyms. More information available on Google's ->Advanced search help page. 
#  11.08.2003

 Since the beginning of July, ->Le Gazon is back in the centrum of Brussels. Le Gazon is an open air DJ bar open from 10pm to 5am every sunny friday and saturday during the summer. This year, Le Gazon takes place at "Le Parc de Bruxelles" (commonly called Parc Royal), Brussels.

If you are in Brussels this Week-end, this is the place to be. You'll listen to some eclectic music (see the program), meet some nice people, drink some beers,... See you there! 
#  08.08.2003

 If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys

My colleague Xavier, today, watching some job offers on ->JobServe. Monkey consultants is exactly what you'll get at the ->Primate Programming Inc (PPI), definitively a cheap outsourcing trend in a a collapsing economic market. 
#  05.08.2003

 Ok. Here we are. After nearly 2 month off, YABON is up again. As you can see, the layout of the blog has changed. It is the 3th time that a major layout change happens since the begining of the story, back in january 2002. Yabon v2 went online around september 2002. Evelen months later comes YABON v3.

New layout is almost completely compliant with the ->HTML 4.01 Strict specifications. The only reason why ->I can't say YABON is fully compliant is the script provided ->eXtreme Tracker to monitor the connections and visits to this site. There is nothing I can about it right now.

Another great change for Yabon v3 that you may have noticed (or not) is the fact I moved the contents manager application from ->Blogger to ->Icogs. Icogs is based on the same idea as Blogger: to provide an easy way to publish information on a website.

As the name says, main audience for Blogger are the "bloggers", people who maintain a blog. A blog is a web page made up of usually short, frequently updated posts that are arranged chronologically; like a what's new page or a journal. If you read this page, you probably already knew what a blog is... One of the main element which allows one to differentiate a blog from a conventional web page is the idea of time. The fact that every new piece of contents is added chronologically. Blogger is fully based on this principle.

Grow your site... With a little bit of work and understanding, Icogs offers every functionalities Blogger offers (well in fact, there is still some work to do, read on). For example, it is easy to manage the template for your blog. Adding a new story is a piece of cake! But Icogs has a lot more to offer in fact.

Icogs is based on the idea of sitem. A sitem is basically a container for a piece of web contents. This is the power of Icogs. It helps you to update and manage your website by providing an easy (yet powerfull) way to manage the containers (or sitem) of your website. It lets you integrate the sitems into your templates and publish the result into a web page.

Lets say you want to have a list of bookmarks on a web page, like the friends section in the right part of this page. The steps are: in Icogs, create a new sitem (your container). Specify that your sitem is a bookmark manager. In your template, issue some magical cog commands to incorporate your sitem (see the example below). And that's all, Folks! Your are now ready to add/delete/modify your bookmark list using a convenient web interface and have the results directly visible into your web page... And the same easyness (lazyness?) apply to other types of sitem.

<p cog:witheach="/friends/bookmarks">. <a href="" cog:attribute="href = url ; title = description" cog:content="title">bookmark</a> - <span cog:replace="description">the description</span></p> - cog commands issued to produce YABON Friends section.

Currently, Icogs is still in ->alpha stage. Also it is not open to public. Nevertheless, they will soon move to the public beta version, providing to everybody the possibility to use their great service. YABON will inform you, Stay tuned! 
#  04.08.2003