Archive for February, 2009

Sightseeing Europe

Sunday, February 8th, 2009

I’m packing my suitcase for yet another Tour d’Europe this week.

I’ll first be heading South, then East, a bit more to the East, back West and finally flying up North. In capital cities this comes down to Oslo – Amsterdam, Amsterdam – Vienna/Bratislava, Bratislava/Vienna – Amsterdam and Amsterdam – Oslo…yeah, I’ll be working from our Dutch and Slovak offices this week.

As always I’m looking forward to it, but having the first flight tomorrow at friggin’ 06:35h is NOT cool!! I’ll have to wake up around 04:15h, so I’ll hit the hay early tonight!

Snow keeps coming down

Saturday, February 7th, 2009


It has been snowing for two days in a row now, we’re having more than 70cm now!

Cleaning the path seems useless; you can start all over again after you finished! There’s SO much more snow compared to last year, hey, THIS is what they call winter!

Oh, and taking the car out for grocery shopping ain’t a good idea on days like this; it was slippery all the way to and from AND it took me four tries to get the car up the last and steepest part of the hill!
And nope, I’m not complaining!

Originally uploaded by raymondpoort

Men, woman and a drink?!?

Friday, February 6th, 2009

TGIF!!!!

So, what goes through YOUR mind when someone says “Let’s go for  a drink”?

(and let’s not generalize 😉 )

QOTD February 5 2009

Thursday, February 5th, 2009

Michel de Montaigne: “I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself.”

Amazing brainpower

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

If yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too.
Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can.

I cdnuolt blveiee that I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd what I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? Yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

And, were YOU able to read this???

Beamer, beemer or…bimmer?!?

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

Last week I wrote ‘The Beamer is IN!‘…today I learned that not everyone is familiar with this term, and it got me wondering where it originated from.

Some poking around on the Net gave me a surprising answer; the term beamer, or beemer is not correct, I should refer to the car as ‘bimmer‘! (thanks to Yahoo Answers!)

Why?

In short; in the old days, BMW motorcycles were referred to as ‘beemers’ (track slang).

Since one obviously should not confuse cars with motorcycles, the cars were called ‘bimmers’…something not many know, but at least y’all know now!

Btw. in the German language, the correct pronunciation of  ‘bimmer’ is ‘beemer’, and that completes the circle! 😉

We live in Public

Monday, February 2nd, 2009

Yesterday I read an email/blogpost that Jason Calacanis send/posted some days ago. The piece was based on the documentary ‘We live in Public‘, telling the story of Jason’s friend, the dot-com entrepreneur Josh Harris. Iin his post, Jason describes the movie as: ‘a cautionary tale about the dehumanizing effects of technology, a somber topic that we all need to consider in the age of Facebook, blogging, linkbaiting, and, sadly, the MySpace and JustinTV suicides.’

I haven’t seen the movie myself yet, but will try to find it in a theater in Oslo (or otherwise uhh, download it…from uhh, somewhere!?! 😉 )

For now, one should read Jason’s post. It will give you some enlightment in the sudden shift in behaviour that many people encouter while turning their non-digital lives into purely digital focused lives plus the lack of empathy that seems to come with it…

I emailed Jason and told him that it is great to see him and others evolve over the years and (slowly) bringing the internet from the purely digital hype, back to our emotional/spiritual/’analog’ lives. Afterall, there is only one life, one NOW, and it’s up to us to integrate the different media and influences into it.

As I told many times before, I believe that the internet is mainly a TOOL, intended to bring us back together in order to become ONE again (trust me, it’s not as freaky as it sounds 😉 )…that’s a complete opposite to us loosing empathy and actually enlarging the gap between people.

Lastly, Jason started “empathy day” on Twitter. A pretty simple concept: say something nice to someone and put #empathyday at the end. I dig the concept…so:

I love you all! #empathyday

One hundred!

Sunday, February 1st, 2009

I reached the 100-milestone, both in Facebook friends () and Twitter followers ()!

That’s roughly one new friend a week. Not too bad, considering that I am not that active on Facebook or Twitter. It’s mainly blogging on raymondpoort.com these days, the daily posts are automatically cross-posted to the different social networks though.