READ it!

This little bit o news on Gizmodo captured my imagination.

It's not that I'm a fan of zombies... I mean who is? (If you are that's definitely not an invitation to meet you as I suspect you're nuts.)

But I am a big fan of this book!

I find it so well written that I describe it as "terrifyingly bloody-well believable!"

But why should I go into a more detailed description when I've found a nice person named Duncan who's done it for me!

World War Z: an oral history of the zombie war is the second zombie book by Max Brooks (Mel Brooks’ son). The first was The Zombie Survival Guide, which I’ve not read, but I believe is basically a lightweight spoof of other ‘survival guides’.The scenario is there was a worldwide zombie outbreak, which pushed humankind to the brink of collapse, but after several years we overcame the walking undead. It’s set in the immediate future, i.e. there are references to current world leaders etc. It’s structured as a series of interviews with some key survivors, ranging from those who first witnessed it, to soldiers who fought in conflict against the zombies.If you ignore the basic zombie plot, this seems to be as much about topics like environmental catastrophe andgeopolitics. The chapters are all set in different locations worldwide, and for the most part are convincing in their attention to detail. There were only a couple of instances which didn’t ring true.There’s lots of nice little surprises along the way too… mainly the way certain country’s fortunes change due to the zombie war, with a few slightly satirical moments to savour....

read the full review on his blog here!

and then READ the book. It makes ya think...

Psst...

Hey you. I know if you could, you would walk around like this the whole day. Masculinity be damned!

Yeah you know who you are... ;)

via Favim.com

Must'ave Mustache

Right interwebs... where can I find these puppies? All I have so far is an image I stumbled upon on a tumblr account. Eep.

I'm assuming (ah assumption. you mother of all...) you can buy them as they have numbers next to them giving a catalog effect.

Thats both the wonder and the problem of this monster we've created. You can find almost anything, but that doesn't mean you're going to necessarily be able to track it down and have it for your very own. This is going to seriously stretch my cyber stalking capabilities, but here goes. If I track them down I'll try to remember to let you all know.

Happy Anniversary X

Here you go... (not that you read my blog :P but just in case you stumble across this my love) THIS is our new unromantic and at the same time romantic song.

And don't judge it on the bad youtube vid. It was unfortunately the only one I could find that wasn't MUCH worse. Find it on your playlist ;)

You are the hole in my head

I am the pain in your neck
You are the lump in my throat
I am the aching in your heart
We are tangled
We are stolen
We are living where things are hidden

You are something in my eye
And I am the shiver down your spine
You are on the lick of my lips
And I am on the tip of your tongue
We are tangled
We are stolen
We are buried up to our necks in sand

We are luck
We are ]fate
We are the feeling you get in the golden state
We are love
We are hate
We are the feeling I get when you walk away….
Walk away

Well you are the dream in my nightmare
I am that falling sensation
You are not needles and pills
I am your hangover morning
We are tangled
We are stolen
We are living where things are hidden

We are luck
We are fate
We are the feeling you get in the golden state
We are love
We are hate
We are the feeling I get when you walk away
Walk away
Walk away

You are the hole in my head
You are the pain in your neck
You are the lump in my throat
I am the aching in your heart

P.S

Thanks for my breakfasts!

Oh I'd DEFINITELY make space for these!

Could I please have all of these for Christmas? These paintings by Jeremy Geddes are so absolutely beautiful they actually make my chest feel tight.

Via The Given

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If I were more adept at "assembling" and technical things I would so make one of these for the Foo-boy. Noone I know is more fun when it comes to organising the watching meteor showers or spotting iridium flares. It would be a great gift for someone who keeps you aware that there's a universe out there and we've got our tips of our toes just dipped in.

ISS Lamp Alerts You When Space Station is Flying Overhead @Craftzine.com blog

"The International Space Station (ISS) is a marvel of current technology and humanity. Sadly, we often forget it's there.
This light sits on a desk and lights up when the space station passes overhead. It stays lit as long as the station is more than 10 degrees above the horizon.

Being reminded that there are astronauts doing science over our heads every day helps reconnect us with our space program."

Pandamonium

As Swiss Miss says "there are some serious Panda Loving People out there", and my mum is certainly one of them.

I don't know too many women who'd buy a box of cereal just because they're called panda puffs (or whatever) just because of the name and picture. Good thing my cat seems to love them because none of the humans in our house have been lured into trying them yet.

I found this cutie and thought about how cool it would have been back in the day for the playschool that my mum used to run. Of course ipods would have needed to have been invented 15 or so years earlier as well, but hey, if time travel existed then this would have been the perfect gift!

Panda Pal

panda-monium |ˌpandəˈmōnēəm|
noun
wild and noisy disorder or confusion; uproar : but with cuteness
Panda-monium broke out at the playschool

;) look at me playing with words...

Braided Typography

So this popped up in my reader today via TrendLand

What a great reference for practicing my drawing of hair - something I need to do more often. I'm trying to encourage myself, instead of obsessively doodling little arrows pointing North, South, East and West (yah I'm not sure what that's all about myself...), to try drawing actual things I see in meetings or on my desk while on the phone.
So far I have a very rough brown pen drawing of an earphone. Not much but it's a start! I'm taking my doodling back from my subconscious... it's way too boring these days.

Braided Typography is the outcome of Teagan White’s semester-long research project on pre-Columbian Native American culture for my Ideation & Process class.

(...) Read More about Braided Typography (6 words)

Crass, crude, but still often charming

Crass, crude, but somehow still often charming – that's how I would describe the one blogger I follow called Coke Talk.

Honestly the things that come out of her mouth are like a shock and awe tactic on my brain. Most of the time though, I find myself thinking similar things and we do seem to share similar interests if you manage to minus the c-word etc from her posts

Here's one of her much much milder posts called "Otherwise known as “The only way you’ll ever survive..."

"Pahsties" and "Paysties"...

"Pahsties" and "Paysties"... That latter pronunciation has lead to several people being nearly chased out of our house. Mostly of course when my gran is visiting.

Having a Cornish gran and heritage is something I'm quite proud of. Don't get me wrong I love being South African, but I also love the culture, history and beauty of Cornwall. One day (holding thumbs it's soon! November maybe?) I WILL go there and see it for myself. It's a big one on my bucket list.

Pasties have always been a favourite in my family and it's a tradition passed down from mother to daughter even if my surname is very afrikaans. I can braai... and I can make pasties... watchout people. Elite skills these.

I wish I had time to make them more often just as I wish I could see my gran more often. She's such an amazing woman. Brutally honest, quick-witted, hysterically funny and puts up with all of her crazy grand kids only to a point and then you meet her sharp tongue. My mom does keep reassuring us that she definitely still loves us though.
I like to think of Granny June as having plenty of gumption. I've decided on that word in the end to encompass all of the above.

Here now is some pasty love as a sort of dedication to gran's visit last month. Can't wait to have you visit us again!

OH and don't forget. It's PAAAAAHSTIES! ;)

I also managed to find this little guy via Pasties and Cream
A great blog which manages to always trigger my dreams of a visit to Cornwall even more acutely.
Meet Teddy Pasty!

Teddy Pasty™ from Emily Fishpool on Vimeo.

Lazer Blast it all...

Lazer Blast it all! THIS is how i should have tiled my bathroom! Ah well. There will be a next time I'm sure. I just hope I haven't matured by then.

Chances?

Star Wars Shower Tile

Just when you feel a little low

Just when you feel a little low you can always depend on the internet to serve up little titbits to keep fuelling your mini melancholy.

Good thing this particular serving is quite pretty!

The Greatest Writer Alive

CIVILIZATION

The leaves have grown thick
atop the monuments
erected in memory
of horrible men
who amassed by horrible means
all of the wealth needed
to cement their legacies
as heroes.

—Dallas Clayton

We <3 Infographics

Actually, I'm pretty much contractually obligated to say something along those lines these days.

I do in fact like infographics a lot and always have, but the obsessive nature with which art directors and editors have fallen in love with them, leaves me with a little chill running down my spine.
Someone far away (apparently in Brazil) announced to the rest of us that they're the NEXT big thing in publishing for delivering content to our readers. Now a large group are treating the idea as a shiny new one that popped out of a box.
Weird.
Luckily infographics have been around for quite a long time and there's plenty of inspiration out there. So have hope all you designers and we shall weather this "new" pictorial pressure... I will survive and hopefully so will my appreciation for a cleverly illustrated idea. Eek.

As a form of encouragement for myself I'll pop up any new infographics I heart onto my blog. Well look at that. Here's one now!

Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions
by Shell Greenier via Information Is Beautiful

"Robert Plutchik also created a wheel of emotions. This wheel is used to illustrate different emotions compelling and nuanced. Plutchik first proposed his cone-shaped model (3D) or the wheel model (2D) in 1980 to describe how emotions were related.

He suggested 8 primary bipolar emotions: joy versus sadness; anger versus fear; trust versus disgust; and surprise versus anticipation. Additionally, his circumplex model makes connections between the idea of an emotion circle and a color wheel. Like colors, primary emotions can be expressed at different intensities and can mix with one another to form different emotions." - Wikipedia

Today I had my lovely performance appraisal. That wonderful thing that always turns out to be torturous and beneficial all at the same time. I would say, tentatively, that it went alright. It didn't exactly go terribly wrong from what I can tell so that's a bonus.
What I realised again, while discussing my future and past, is that these kind of situations really show me over and over again that I live in a bubble of extreme emotions. In that long meeting I think I could have coloured in QUITE a few of the segments of this wheel.

Six months to the next one... THANK GOODNESS! Now to achieve all the things I came up with that I should be achieving... doom doom doooooom.

Earth Hour 2011

Do not forget people, it's Earth Hour this Saturday 8pm!

Last year, at the B residence, we sat in the bottom flat, in the pitch dark, with bottles of wine and watched as whole sections of the the pinpoint light carpet I love so much blinked out. It was fantastic!
And not just because I consumed way more wine than was necessary...

There's nothing to do with the lights out, except to sit still and appreciate the company you've found to spend that hour with. It's a moment (if you're like me) to just take a breather and let your head quieten. Listen to something or someone else other than the whirling craziness that can take over inside. If you know us personally, you'll be shocked to hear that it all seemed so hushed and calm that the B girls even spoke in whispers and tried to giggle as quietly as possibly. I did mention there was wine right?

This year The Dad has built a deck and I'm thinking that could be the new spot for this year.

There will of course not be ONE light on in our home. No way. Because don't think the scenario in this youtube video hasn't occurred to me before... *shudder*

quiet screaming desperation

With the potential for everything from your colleagues, to the parking your fought hard to get, to the milk in your canteen fridge being under threat of "restructuring" these days, I've been thinking a lot about what we're willing to sacrifice so as not to meet the same fate.
The problem is you can't really predict these things, not even in the media industry where current knowledge is meant to be a click away and often gets typed up by the person sitting next to you. So we end up giving up more and more just to dig our fingers deeper into the crags and hang tight.
We're now at a point where we're given teeny tiny perks such as casual Fridays and flexi-time and we're so very grateful for these things if we have them and horribly jealous of others if we don't.
Yesterday was Human Rights day here in South Africa, and sometimes it's hard to remember through all this chaos and on a deadline that we all have a simple right to go home to our families at 5:00pm. Use it :)

Nigel Marsh says...
"...the reality of the society that we're in, is there are thousands and thousands of people out there, leading lives of quiet screaming desperation, where they work long hard hours, at jobs they hate, to enable them to buy things they don't need, to impress people they don't like. And it's my contention that going to work on a Friday in jeans and t-shirt isn't really getting to the nub of the issue."


Via swissmiss
How to make work-life balance work: "

Work-life balance, says Nigel Marsh, is too important to be left in the hands of your employer. At TEDxSydney, Marsh lays out an ideal day balanced between family time, personal time and productivity — and offers some stirring encouragement to make it happen.

Don't panic...

But I'm toying with the idea of redesigning my blog again... "clean and uncluttered" might not be portraying myself very accurately. So if you're visiting and this place looks a mess please have patience for a while.

Food & WIne Pairing

kis·met

[kiz-mit, -met, kis-]

–noun

fate; destiny. Two parts of a whole

Some things in life are just meant to be paired up. Food and wine, bare feet and sand/grass/mud, ice cream and chocolate sauce, ebony and ivory, my hair and a hair iron etc.
Ah you get the drift.
And in case you were wondering about some of those examples I gave that would be the influence and help of my imaginative family sitting nearby and answering what I thought was a pretty normal question.

Another personal example of kismet, to me, has always been at how perfectly Ushi and The Pyromaniac seem to fit and make sense. So when they got engaged the rest of the B's breathed a collective sigh of relief that the madness of our family hadn't scared him away over the years.

Recently they've both started blogging (more successfully and frequently than I ever have come to think of it) and how's this for perfect? Hers is about food and his about wine. See what I mean? A perfect pair!

Go see how it's all starting out before they become famous and give them a little encouragement. These are two blogs I'd love to see stick around!
Meet Season's Eat-ins and Dear Wine Diary and read their descriptions in their own words rather.

I still hope...

I still hope to see THIS beautiful place in real life one day, and the chance that it might just be sooner than I ever originally imagined is in itself a very exciting thought!
Holding thumbs!

This'll do in the meantime though - A clickable swivelly interior with choir and all.
The Vatican provides...

Nerdiness!

I think I have a new favourite site to visit for a while! Fast Company.
I was put onto it by N, who sent it to me as another link to help with my investigations as to which tablet I'm eventually going to buy (in my dreams).

What a great site. I particularly loved this short film:

I wish I'd seen this video yesterday, so I could've told my valentine that I wanted to passionately juxtapose my orbicularis oris muscles against hers. (Well, maybe it was a blessing that I didn't see it in time.) Anyway, the factoids are still fun: 90 seconds of scientific and cultural tidbits about kissing, presented in animated infographic form. Watch and learn:

The Kiss - Infographic from Marija Vidanovic on Vimeo.

"Don't ever get used to it..."

I'm a blog junkie. I'm not entirely sure I could help myself to quit, and to be honest, I do think I'm border-lining on the whole web-addict thing that seems to be plagueing facebook vampire teens around the world and a little place called, oh, the whole of Japan (at least that's what the weird news reports seem to be saying)
If you've written something interesting and I've happened to stumble accross it, chances are you'll get a notification to say one Keyna B is now following your blog.

Yes there's a bunch of nonsense being put on the web, and not every post by the hundreds of people I follow is going to win any prizes, but I love the feeling of browsing through other people's creative moments and often finding something that feels like it's been written almost to you. Sometimes it can feel like it's even been written about the day you've been having or just survived.

Here's just one of those moments. via CokeTalk and dedicated to one or two good friends going through a rough time. The first two points feel a bit like the past, but I think point number three is the one I can honestly say I'm realising more and more each day!

Three pieces of advice I'm about to give other people that I would do well to remember myself::

1. You can’t be crippled by an emotion unless you’re the one doing it to yourself.

2. Just because your issues have a name it doesn’t mean you’re aware of them.

3. Assholes are gonna violate the social contract. You can come to expect it. You can even be prepared for it, but don’t ever get used to it.

I could wait here in South Africa...

OR! I could donate part of my liver, cash in my leave early, book a plane seat and then pray for a ticket to Coachella! Once there I can see half the bands I'd like to see before leaving this earth and then rest easy for a few years.

With this kind of line-up it really doesn't seem like that much of a ridiculous idea, does it?

Photo
via Coke Talk on 1/18/11