I want to start a little collection of quotes I find on the internet or elsewhere. I have come across some really good ones and henceforce want to share them with you.

• “The value of an invention is based on how successfully you can commercialize it.”
  - Ron Kok
• “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. “
  - Thomas A. Edison
• “It is common sense that is the chief enemy of creativity.”
  - Picasso
• “The internet is fake, you can see the strings”
  - web
  comment no. 217 on The Secret Strategies Behind Many “Viral” Videos
• “Marketing is the view of the costmer towards a company”
  - unknown
• “The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten”
  - unknown
• “He whos laughs has not heard the bad news”
  - Bertolt Brecht
• “It might be true, but is it relevant?”
  - unknown

more to come…

This was found today on the awards page of the web agency pushhere.com. Sorry guys for the post, but it’s just too ironic But keep up the good work.

Last night, I could see The Sword in the Viper Room in LA and they played a really nice pure hard rock/metal. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a band that simply cuts the craps and gets to the point. Deep tuning and synchronous timing on the two guitars, bass and drums with nice straight beat made them sound really tight.

Additionally, it was nice to see that Dave Grohl from the Foo Fighters stopped by and enjoyed the show…

My life has been moving forward extremly fast lately, so that I couldn’t keep up with this blog. But I hope the time I can spend on it will get better.

After the Euro-Tour 2008, I was trying to visit most of my family and friends in Germany and of course stop by the original Oktoberfest in Munich. Meanwhile, I had to do some major rearrangements with all the stuff I owned. Sorting out, organizing and reducing were the key words. A big change in my life was about to take place, which made selling my long-lasting Mazda necessary.

I moved to Los Angeles for work and to live (again). After having already spent a year in LA in 2004/2005 to study at the University of Southern California and to work as an intern at the award-winning web agency Hello Design, I decided to come back again with Melody for a longer term.

With a new Era, comes a new Blog theme I’m not done with the design yet. I actually don’t like the color defaults at all and am going to modify them over time. But the Layout is nice and I hope you enjoy it for now.

So, since I have been here, many events have happened that I will just give you a quick overview:

• Visited the American version of the Oktoberfest in Torrance, CA.
  Accurate German band, but shitty beer.
• Celebrated Halloween in West Hollywood as Kurt Cobain (Mel was Courtney) and participated in traditional American pumpkin carving with the Mayer family
• As a citizen of the U.S., I voted for my president Barack Obama and hope he can use his excellence to majorly change the States as we know it today.
• I saw DANZIG live in concert.
• I saw Mudhoney live in concert
• I am becoming a fan of the L.A. Lakers. They’re on fire this season! Watched almost every game.
• I saw a SUV in the middle of a 6-line freeway missing a wheel?! What the…?
• Been playing my Fender acoustic guitar, Gibson Les Paul electric guitar (thanks Erik) and Fender fretless bass (thanks Alan)
• Oh yeah, I almost forgot. We were evacuated from the house, because the fires that you probably saw on the media was heading straight towards where I am living. We packed all our essential belongings and moved to a hotel for 3 days. Luckily the fire men could stop the fire less than a mile away from the house. It was scary watching the fire approach the house on the news from a helicopter camera. But as always, it was less dangerous as it sounded in the media.

This story was sent to me via email.

A SPANISH Teacher was explaining to her class that in Spanish, unlike English, nouns are designated as either masculine or feminine. ‘House’ for instance, is feminine: ‘la casa.’ ‘Pencil,’ however, is masculine: ‘el lapiz.’
A student asked, ‘What gender is ‘computer’?’ Instead of giving the answer, the teacher split the class into two groups, male and female, and asked them to decide for themselves whether ‘computer’ should be a masculine or a feminine noun. Each group was asked to give four reasons for its recommendation.

The men’s group decided that ‘computer’ should definitely be of the feminine gender (’la computadora’), because:

• No one but their creator understands their internal logic.
• The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else.
• Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for possible later retrieval.
• As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.

The women’s group, however, concluded that computers should be Masculine (’el computador’), because:

• In order to do anything with them, you have to turn them on.
• They have a lot of data but still can’t think for themselves.
• They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they are the problem.
• As soon as you commit to one, you realize that if you had waited a little longer, you could have gotten a better model.

The women won.

A few posts ago I talked about how user experience will change. This will be one of the most significant changes on the web in the next few years and I truly believe this. I’ve seen some smaller experiments on the web and at conventions in this direction (I especially like the work of marcos weskamp). I’m coming across this topic more and more every day. Just recently I found the yahoo innovation group (now called next) and could see some of their amazing and beautiful work. Today I discovered the labs at digg and it was really happy to see confirmation in what I think will be seen more often in the near future.

• http://www.net-games.biz/
• Sudoku Killer (ActionScript 2.0)