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Yayyy, it has been snowing (a lot, 20cm) last night…fiiiinally as wintersnow came much earlier in the past years!

The first snow of the year always makes nice pictures as you can see below, but it also meant that I have been snow plowing to clear the area in front of the garage this morning. That, *and* the traditional ‘first-snow-of-the-year-traffic-jam’ are the down sides of living in winter wonderland…other than that, it is PERFECT!! 😉

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I just noticed that I have 365 FaceBook friends…ha, that’s a friend a day! (yeah, yeah, I need to find one more friend for coming year as 2012 is a leap year! 😉 )

Obviously, only a portion of those are the ones who are really close to you and whom you stay in touch with on a daily basis, updates from another group are great to have so you keep yourself somewhat connected to their lives, and there is the group of people from ‘a’ past that you don’t pay too much attention to…it is still nice to have them there though, they are after all part of the story of your life and who knows, they might boomerang back in your life for some reason and you too can bring past back to the future if you want, or need…giving fate a hand in accomplishing what it is written in the stars?!? 😉

Hmm, that Google+ implementation of ‘circles’ makes sense, eh?

Disclaimer: I don’t see the number of FB friends as an accomplishment of any kind, anyone can easily have over a 1000 ‘friends’…really, who cares!

Even though the ‘official’ celebration of the Dutch Sinterklaas tradition is tomorrow, most homes have been visited by the Saint and his ‘Black Petes’ (Zwarte Pieten) this weekend…we got lucky as he managed to find the way Up North too, yay!

We celebrated it with dutch friends tonight and as you can see below, little Misha loved it too! 😉

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Tonight we have ‘Julebord‘ with work; this is the traditional Norwegian Xmas dinner/party and while the literal word julebord translates to ‘Christmas table’, the actual meaning seems to be: ‘drink till you drop on your boss’s expense, while enjoying some food’! 😉

Well, I will make sure not to ‘drop’ as I am a responsible dad now…Kissy and Misha are coming too so it will be great no matter what! 😉

I am pretty sure that the food and atmosphere will help in making it extra special too as we will be dining/partying at the Alfred restaurant (next to the Alfred Nobel peace center) in Oslo, NICE!

Huffington Post: “A security researcher has posted a video detailing hidden software installed on smart phones that logs numerous details about users’ activities…In a post about Carrier IQ on his website, Eckhart called the software a “rootkit,” a security term for software that runs in the background without a user’s knowledge and is commonly used in malicious software…Carrier IQ could not immediately be reached for comment. But the company told Wired.com that its software is used for “gathering information off the handset to understand the mobile-user experience, where phone calls are dropped, where signal quality is poor, why applications crash and battery life.”

Yeah…rrrrright!!

The software has been seen on Nokias, Blackberries and various devices running Google’s Android, but not on anything from Apple…

So, are you happy with your Android, Nokia or Blackberry smartphone?? Keep on dreaming, grtx from my iPhone! 😉

I am (well, actually we/’The Team’ are) extremely busy these weeks on preparing a proposal for a BIG tender. The deadline is today/tonight so the pressure is ON!!

It is a strange word actually; ‘deadline’ (as well as; ‘meeting a deadline’)…hehe, it does feel as we are almost dead after working so long and hard, but we didn’t meet any line and no one really died, so what about this ‘dead line’? As if there would be a living line that dies at a certain point? (huh, point, line…now I am getting really confused!! 😉 )

Anyway, we are continuing to work hard and through the night as we are not done yet (we did however send a crucial part of the proposal already, just in time!! 😉 )

Yay, our little angel has his own passport (with the sweetest photo, see part I 😉 ), technically in 3 days, we only picked it up today…WAY faster than the embassy promised, nice!!

So this means that we are free as birds in the sky, can travel abroad and make Misha the youngest frequent flyer around! 😉

His first trip: The Netherlands for two weeks around Xmas and NY!

Besides the traditions that are mostly filling these days, we’re gonna show off our royal cuteness at his ‘baby shower’ on December 28 in the afternoon, everyone’s invited!!

Wow, WoW, WOW…we have been watching Avatar on Blu-ray tonight (finally I might add, I got the Blu-ray for Sinterklaas last year).

What a FANTASTIC experience: Blu-ray really brings out the best in the Philips HDTV (46PFL9704H)!!

This was as good as the 3D cinema experience, and after having a delicious burrito dinner first (Ozzie style), this was a great way to spend the last evening with my brother!! 😉

Willem-Jan and Patricia are visiting us this weekend! Their third time in Norway and this time for one very obvious reason: Misha! (AND to have a great brother-brother weekend, of course! 😉 )

Hehe, they are very experienced travelers and therefore know how to travel light, uhhh, *ultra*-light; they arrived with just one small backpack!! It turned out that their suitcases never left Amsterdam, thank you Schiphol Airport baggage handling… 🙁

Anyway, it will sort itself out…I am looking forward to have a great weekend!

Your every day fairytale just took a different turn…

(c) Carlos Naude

Find more inspirational graphic design on his site.

Check out this amazing video; ‘Address Is Approximate‘!

The storyline: A lonely desk toy longs for escape from the dark confines of the office, so he takes a cross country road trip to the Pacific Coast in the only way he can – using a toy car and Google Maps Street View.

All screen imagery of this Google Street View stop motion animation short was animated – there are no screen replacements…it was made as a personal project by director Tom Jenkins, theoryfilms.co.uk /facebook.com/theoryfilms.

Please also pay attention to the FANTASTIC music: ‘Arrival of the Birds’ by the Cinematic Orchestra (cinematicorchestra.com).

Living abroad with a baby means that having a passport for the little one is a must; there is no traveling without it and with Xmas/NY coming up, well, we simply NEED that passport! (yes, we WILL be in NL then! 😉 ).

The passport application is done, the embassy says it should take just a week, so it is all good…I just ‘had to’ post his passport pictures, too cute! 😉

It is becoming a tradition since we moved to Norway in 2007: around this time of year, when the days are getting shorter and the evenings are long and dark, we find ourselves an interesting TV series, get the full season(s) in, get hooked and become a couch potato a week orso! 😉

We did this before with ‘24‘ (Season 1 – 8!), ‘Lost‘ Season 1-6…Prison Break is this years choice; 4 Seasons, 80 episodes…let’s roll! 😉

Angel Misha is 7 weeks old (/young 😉 ) today and is already turning into a little Buddha! 😉

Kristel’s mom and aunt flew back home tonight after a ‘long’ and nice weekend at our place. Ha, and it seems as if they took autumn with them and left us with winter…FINALLY I might add, in the past years snow arrived as early as October!

Oof, it is friggin’ -8C at the moment, the daytime temperature tomorrow will be -10C and the first snow is expected coming Friday evening…yeah, winter is coming to town!!

An affirmation.

Say the following:

“I deeply, completely and profoundly, accept myself with all my faults, problems and limitations”,

“I deeply, completely and profoundly, accept myself with all my faults, problems and limitations”,

“I deeply, completely and profoundly, accept myself with all my faults, problems and limitations”,

Follow this with:

“I deeply, completely and profoundly, accept myself with all my gifts, strengths and ability to love”,

“I deeply, completely and profoundly, accept myself with all my gifts, strengths and ability to love”,

“I deeply, completely and profoundly, accept myself with all my gifts, strengths and ability to love”,

Add to this the activation of the acupuncture system by placing the tip of your fingers of your right hand just up over your left breast on the chest, and circulate your fingers up and out (clockwise).

It will move you in acceptance of the whole self…

(from Lindsay Wagner on Healing with the Masters last November 3)

Hi, my name is Misha and I am SWEEEETTTT!!! 😉

…just 6 weeks old now and this little big miracle is growing like crazy!! (hehe, he has lot of catching up to do if he wants to become as tall as his daddy! 😉 )

Sinterklaas has arrived with his ‘pakjesboot’ (boat full of presents) in The Netherlands today. We are still celebrating this dutch tradition as despite the distance, he somehow managed to bring some presents ‘Up North’ in the past years, NICE! 😉

We unfortunately have to do without the special atmosphere in the cities, children going crazy when Sinterklaas and his Zwarte Pieten appear, and obviously the sweets like speculaas, pepernoten and kruidnoten…yeah, it’s a nice tradition! (and very hard to explain to foreigners, especially Zwarte Piet (Black Pete or Blackface)! 😉 ).

Ha, and I guess that this recording of the typical Sinterklaas song ‘hij komt’ does not really help either…jeez, Ellen ten Damme sings it sooo sexy! 😉

Isn’t amazing that today, 11.11.11, feels so special, while dates are ‘just’ numbers and almost completely artificial? If you pick a different calendar (the Chinese for instance), it would be a different day, a different month and a different year…and yet, today *is* a special day!
The number’s link with the the ancient Mayan long-count calendar that ends on December 21, 2012 (the Mayan Apocalyps) marks the new spiritual era…11.11.11 is the unofficial start of the 2012 metaphysical year!

So, for today and all days to come: open your heart and let the LOVE flow in!!!

The first iPod showed up in stores exactly 10 years ago today, can you believe that?? It seems that it has been around forever!

Take a few minutes to watch the original product announcement, it brings back good Stevenote memories:

An interesting quote from a New York Times analyst in 2001: ”It’s a nice feature for Macintosh users, But to the rest of the Windows world, it doesn’t make any difference.”. Well, by now we that the iPod made a HUGE difference, it changed the way we listened to music and put an entire industry upside-down!

And consider this; the form factor, specifically the width is pretty much matching the iPhone 4(S)…design and success apparently did not come out of the blue, eh?