It’s half past three in the morning and I write this post while the book about use of iodized salt in bakery is printed. Infographics and tables I wrote about couple of weeks ago (Infographics Howto: Iodide! Iodate!) were used on the pages of this book. Some of them changed a bit, others changed a lot after discussions and specifications of charts targeting. Furthermore there happened to be two books not one as it was expected at the beginning. The second one is thinner about use of iodized salt in Denmark. I’ll write about changed charts at first and then I’ll describe the books makeup process.

I wrote a column for Yeti News about branding using game technologies which is a mix of one and a half clever thoughts and something stupid. If you’re good in reading in Russian, you are welcome to read my column.

As you may know I’ve broken the glass on my iPhone 4 16Gb that was bought in Great Britain and was never locked. After that it was replaced with brand new front glass and I broke the back glass. So the back part of my iPhone now looks pretty much like decorated with stained glass and doesn’t cut the user because it’s very cool glass that looks quite stylish. As the glass was broken by me one can be sure it is designer’s edition of iPhone. As opposed to other designers I’ll sell my edition much cheaper than iPhone 4 costs here in Kiev (even if you decide to replace the back glass the final price would be still lower than used iPhone). You are welcome to contact me on this matter.

And if you still vague if the back glass is so important here is a story for you I wrote this winter. Thanks to it you would be as sure as I am that iPhone is not just about the back glass but more about user experience and being and iPhone.

Not so long ago me and my fellow antique, travel and glamour photographer from Minsk started a project called Walkyrie. Time passed by and here we are with helveticized vintage photo number 100. One-wow-hundred. It’s not just some kind of milestone or a reason to have some champagne but also some kind of a birthday.

Know how to make ideal strawberry crème? Take fresh strawberry, little bit of blender, three smiles, cream, something listed in recipe, vanilla and make it to cooperate somehow. We don’t have any strawberries, and have bunch of smiles and photos taken while walking and made to look a little bit vintage. As in an old joke, we just had to add Helvetica texts and serve. So take your mental spoons, my dear intellectual foodies, because we are serving to the table of your imagination the Walkyrie = photo × helvetica.

Today was the day to buy cider and meet bear in the grass. Real cider and toy bear. Couple of weeks was the time to draw a logo with “anime like fox” and company name. As to me my drawing suits Firefox loving mac-nazi t-shirt more, but logo consumer was happy. And I was and am happy. Leave you to taste cider.

So Apple announced it’s iPad that looks much like iPod that was rolled and now supports 3G networks. Though I expected normal Mac OS X on it, not awkward iTunes syncing clumsiness called iPhone OS or something much like it, I think that this product is a big step forward. No, I won’t buy it now or in the next generation, but I can see positive trends.

Every time when I start doing something for periodical publications I can hardly choose between blue-black and black-blue combinations. This color combinations is diluted by grey, which makes it more — hahaha — delightful. Newspapers are mad about blue. Magazines are mad about red. It’s a good news that guys who made press color schemes didn’t paint our world. Otherwise we would live in the world without photosynthesis because there would be no green. We would choke — we can’t breathe without the oxygen.

How were things invented couple of ages ago? You tied key to kite, set under the apple tree and waited while physics did its work. Not the most laborious process. You just had not to mix up what to tie and where to sit. Inventions are much easier nowadays: google it, find it, twitter it and here’s you fresh baked invention!

Nevertheless there are some freaks who glue keys to the hedgehogs, launch pines to the orbit, sit under different objects, clap the desolate falling tree in lonely rainforests with one hand and act even more meaningful trying to find something unique and interesting. So new and useful that everyone would say “ORLY!!!” and understand how the Universe is working.

Such a perfect intro and it’s in vain.

My friend who doesn’t start his blog just to make me unable to link to him is now a sectary of community where it’s believed that people must eat iodine. Not pure iodine to prevent wounds inside the had but iodised salt. It helps to fill a person with necessary iodine amount. It’s very important to have enough iodine in your body if you live in radiation affected places like Ukraine. Iodine also prevents kids from growing idiots. Doesn’t help at 100% and gives a warranty but minimises some risks.

My friend is visiting the conference of that iodine-addicted missionaries about saving Ukraine. So I’ve created him a uniform, so he can spread the news that iodine and salt are good together!

It was supposed to be bacon and eggs breakfast. I fried bacon and a little bit of bread, took tasty olives out of the pickle and placed the fresh and green onion. The dish was ready and served. I ungrudgingly ate it but something was wrong. Something was missing. I forgot to put the eggs!

There are three ways to make a tasty dish. You can take everything you consider to be tasty, mix it and throw into boiling oil. It would be fried and even can be tasty. My friend, who came from London to have a pint of beer with me in Kiev, told me about Fried Mars — you have to fry Mars in boiling oil. Someone can even find it tasty, but let’s get back from Mars to Earth. The second way to make a dish is used by chefs in restaurants: you’ll have to know how to cook masterly. But this is the hardest way and not everyone can do it while the first is within everyone’s power. There is one more way where you don’t have to be virtuoso of cooking but still will be able to make a tasty… erm… result ;) Just cook like it’s written in the cookbook!

I’ve just realised that the metaphor would only win if I use cocktails instead of dishes but the I’ll have to get rid of Fried Mars, so let’s leave the things they are.

So, the choice of the way to cook for a person, who just wants to make tasty dinner but isn’t in any way chief cook, is obvious. He or she takes the cookbook and cooks instead of throwing pickles, Skittles, two sausages, vanilla and unagi in boiling oil, expecting for acceptable result.

Okay, it was morning, I wanted to sleep and somehow wrote long interesting and long comment in one blog. Then I woke up swearing at myself: not recent posts in my blog and I write long comments in others. So I decided to post that comment here, adding pictures. It’s about pay cards for cellular operators and its’ usability.

I bought a new kettle today Copco Torino (central on the photo) to replace the old one made in Czechoslovak and burnt like heretic. It’s a miracle that I could find a pretty-looking kettle that suits my kitchen design. I was desperate about other kettles and was about buying electrical one (they got pretty designs). The sparkling circle on it’s lid is whistler and the lid is opened by the gentle press on the front part of handle. I was proud to know that this water boiler without only a hint on spout is 2005 Housewares Design Award winner.

After redesign of the blog I mentioned, I needed to find the way to display my twitter messages on mega.genn.org. I used Twitter for WordPress but it doesn’t load message from time to time because of timeout when fetching RSS. So I improved it a little bit to cache the latest RSS of twitter messages, so we could load that cache if RSS from twitter.com is unavailable at the moment.