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Jurjen's world

build your own world, cause the real one sucks!

Promised picture

Some time ago I was looking for a nice picture of the city I live, to share with my friend Angeliki (ellinidata). Back then I couldn't find a very nice picture but I did found a nice painting. So I included that. A few comments later I kind of promised I would take a picture from the very same spot some day. Angeliki said she never forgets a promise she is given, so I'm sure she is still waiting!

Of course you would have guessed, waiting is over! I took the picture and here it is:

As you can see it was not a sunny day! :frown:

The painting I included is somewhere in comments in some post somewhere on opera. Funny enough I had to google it to find that it resides in the Google post of Angeliki! :lol: You can find the post with the painting there.

For those who wonder where my I haven't commented older post yet, don't worry, I will. There is just this thing with time that you can only spend it on one thing at a time... Very annoying! :D

Not really a catsuit

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I already designed very fashionable shoes two weeks ago. I did that after I saw a fashion show of Alexander McQueen, which had some ridiculous shoes in it. So I thought: why should I not be able to think of something completely ridiculous, yet cool looking. So I did. :smile:

Anyway in that blog post somehow in the comments catsuits were mentioned, so I thought: hey, I already design shoes (I guess I have to be gay now p: ), why not try something else, like a catsuit. So some thoughts crossed my mind and I ended up with something I thought would be worth putting on paper. While drawing it it evolved in something not so much a catsuit anymore, but hey who cares? I don't.

I better stop talking and show you what I came up with, right? The quality of the picture isn't really very good. I made a picture of the sketch and it is actually to dark to get a good result. I try to get a better snap sometime soon!

design sketch of a 'Catsuit' or at least some piece of clothing. Pencil on paper.

For those who wonder how to get into this thing. There is a zipper on the back of the suit (on the light brown line) that goes from the bow all the way up to the collar. The boots have buttons on the inner leg, which are light brown.
I guess that should work right?

It flies away

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I stumbled upon this video, and it just made me smile. I don't know if it's the music or the beautiful thing this Japanese man made. I would have loved such a toy as a kid, I'm sure I would have had a lot of fun running after it when it flew off.

Blog Action Day '09, Climate Change

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When we are talking about climate change it might give the impression that we are talking about raising temperatures and melting pole ice. Of course this is part of it, but in this context I like to see climate a bit wider then just the weather but as our natural environment.

Personally I don't think the change of the weather is such a big deal. Of course sea levels can raise, more heavy rains or hurricanes may occur. These are serious things and we can not ignore those changes. We need to act upon them, invest money and take action, but it's something we can very well protect ourselves from. Nature also needs to adjust, it might mean not everything will survive, perhaps polar bears will not survive. Don't get me wrong, this is a very sad thing, but this has always happened in nature. We might get new species in return. The world will change, but that is not necessarily a bad thing.

Unfortunately the change in weather is not the only environmental issue we are facing today. The biggest issue we are facing today is the scarcity of resources. There are a lot of people today on our planet and they all want a lot of stuff. In a balanced natural environment, you can use everything around you as a resource and give back your waste as a resource for other elements. Like humans take oxygen to breath, and give back carbon dioxide back which is used by trees that make oxygen out of it again. Animals eat plants and there defecation works as fertilizer for the plants again.
We only remove things from nature

Today we remove so much from nature and give so little useful things back that this balance is seriously damaged. An example of a very serious problem is fertile soil. For many years now we are using the soil to the max. Heavily using fertilizers and cultivate an enormous amounts on small pieces of land. The soil has no time to recover and by now on many places the earth is just empty. Not useful anymore for cultivation. A year ago National Geographic wrote a nice article about it.
Nothing will grow anymore in our soils

So we take an awful lot from our earth, and we process it in such a way that the waste it eventually gives cannot be used by nature again (or it takes up to 100.000 years to do so). How is nature suppose to maintain its balance when we keep acting like we presently are? We cannot expect that to work! Fortunately most people start to realize that too. But is our focus right?

I notice how much the world is focusing on CO2 emission today. It is a very hot item, and it sells. Cars with low CO2 emissions, even websites that are “carbon neutral” while they mean carbon dioxide neutral. I have to admit I'm skeptic about it. I see hybrid car with low emissions, but I wonder how well those batteries are for our environment. These things are pure poison!

And those CO2 neutral websites, so they plant a tree for every amount of energy they are using. But what about all those toxic elements inside those servers? Are they eventually going to end up in India where they burn the plastic from the copper wirings and everyone over there ending up dead or serious ill because of the destroyed environment it has created? You can read more about it in this Greenpeace article
We just dump our waste somewhere

I think we need to keep thinking what we are actually doing instead of yelling about a populair item as CO2 emission where the consequences are yet quite speculative. Since there are more urgent and evident environmental problems around, I think we are better off asking ourselves questions like: Why is everything packed in 10 layers plastics? Why do we travel so much? Why do we buy so much stuff we actually don't use? Why do we light out everything at night without anyone being there?

Most of those things we can easily change, and those actions would really make a difference. And we need to make a difference because else we are digging out own graves. In the mean time we can keep investigating the unclear defined problems like global warming.
Picture from an initiative of multiple organizations in the Netherlands called hier, that started a campaign that changing the climate start here with your self and your own actions!

designing shoes

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Yesterday I posted about a fashion show of Alexander McQueen which had awesome and ridiculous shoes in it. And today it made me think if he can get away with these designs, then I can design shoes myself too!

Since I hadn't much to do, I grabbed myself a piece of paper and sketch a few ideas, which resulted in this concept.


I actually thought it was a pretty cool idea so I worked it out a little bit more. I'm not to happy about the final drawing, but I think you'll get a good idea how those shoes are suppose to be like.


So now I'm looking for volunteers to actually make the shoe and someone who is willing to wear them too! Anyone? :smile:

They may also going to be produced in red and orange and perhaps even bright pink and green.
O, and did I mention I'm also looking for investors to finance the branding and distribution of the new Jekav shoe-line! :lol:

Creative stuff

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I love browsing the internet, because you stumble upon all kinds of creative things. Browsing one of several blogs I visit on a regular basis, I found a nice Flickr group Cool Dudes and they sure are cool! Of course Lego always get me warm inside p:, but look at those fellows, aren't they amazing? :smile:


I like Pulp Fiction very much too, so that second image is an absolute winner! :up:

The same blog brought a fashion show of Alexander McQueen to my attention. Loyal readers may know I kind of like fashion shows, I think they can be really creative and quite impressive shows to watch. Well this one sure was creative, its the spring 2010 collection. Of course these are museum only pieces, because there is no way these are going to be used as clothing :lol:


Look at those shoes, aren't they magnificent? :D

Here is the show (in two parts) if you would like to check it out:



I kind of feel sorry for the girls, they have to walk an enormously long runway on those shoes. It must have been hell :eek:

Want some beta testing?

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When I started this blog it was to tell you about some project I then started. It was all about creating some server software which could do dynamic picture processing (I know how boring it sounds p:). I then made some stuff which can still be found over here. I investigated quite some techniques but I couldn't really find a fast way that I liked to process images.

So then I left it alone for a very long time, but recently I picked it up again (perhaps because I had nothing else to do over here :lol: p: ). I did some more research and I think I have now found a good solution to do some cool stuff with. So I decided to continue with some of this programming. I started with a little project to have your own text inside an image. And guess what, I have it finished by now :smile: Anyway the beta version! It's not perfect yet.

So if you think it would be cool to test it all out, be my guest! Please let me know what you think, what goes wrong and what you think should be different. I like to know! :smile:

You can find program running over here http://lab.mrpencil.nl/protest

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