It's been a year now since I first stumbled upon the SMASHING MAGAZINE's website while working on a re-skin of an online search tool, which demanded a particular, Web 2.0 type style. What authors know as writers' block, I have experienced various times (and still do) as designers' blank. The big blank space that we feel, when the ideas won't come,; when pushing pixels from left to right on screen doesn't bring the satisfying, exciting visuals; when nothing fits and everything looks boring, dated, uninspired and naff.

It often just takes a few flashes of inspiration, checking somebody else's work, ideas and directions in design, to get the engine started. And for this purpose, websites like the SMASHING MAG - amongst others - offers a never ending source for creative fuel and bright new trends for web and print. Updated almost daily, the guys who put together what the web has to offer, what's out there and what's being added and tweaked by the minute, do an amazing job finding and evaluating content that's worth being presented the wider community of web creatives.

People like me benefit from such work immensely and I would like to take this opportunity to say "Thank you, SMASHING MAGAZINE! Keep it going and see you tomorrow."

Dr. Michael Shermer, Scientist, Professor of Economics at Claremont Graduate University, Author and Editor of the Sceptic Magazine is one of the most popular figures spear-heading the atheists' movement, the growing group of Skeptics, Brights and however else you want to call us - world wide. Along with such figures as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hirchins and Sam Harris, he is getting involved in inspiring debates and fascinating argumentations about the true value of religion and the big questions, which are not so much "Is there a God?" - which undoubtedly cannot be answered by anyone - but rather "Why does religion play such an overwhelming part in our society?", "Should we really allow religious beliefs to rule international affairs?" etc.

One of his 2007 debates with Dinesh D’Souza (Robert and Karen Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University) is now available online.

All available thumbs up for the guys at BullZip (www.bullzip.com). After several unsuccessful attempts to get my multi £££ Adobe CS3 package's Acrobat PDF writer to accept that I am now working on a Vista x64 system and pull the relevant driver, I gave up - which is much unlike me - and kicked a few lamp posts. Only until I stumbled upon BullZip's free PDF writer, which works a treat with x64, is free and even features high-quality settings for pre-press and print-output files.

You rock, people! Thanks for being so switched on and keep up with the great work.

Long time no blog. But I have been busy planning and managing a concert tour for a great Jazz Quartet and had to find time in between for a few urgent musical design projects besides the day job...

This though, this link I just stumbled across created an unbearable urge to make a quick blog entry at the end of the working day: Heaven Simone let's you buy style-emptied, pseudo-funky clothes, claiming to make it more attractive to younger people to show their faith. Obviously we are only talking about the Christian faith here. Because that's the only one, the one that counts and the one that deserves to be printed on tasteless T-Shirts with ever tacky slogans... "Team Jesus" wants you to join. And the best way to do it is by wearing a cheesy turquoise Tee with embossed gold rubber print-on for $35.00. You gotta be kidding me.

A friend of mine just produced this music video to support this band project experiment he's currently undertaking. It's all about super-low budgets and the biggest possible impact. This video was done from idea to publishing in 10 days flat, spending no more than £500. All very impressive and exciting...



Find out more about everything and what it's all about: www.theschema.co.uk

No other film director's work have I watched and studied more in the nineties at University in Köln, than Ingmar Bergman's. He was my genius of poetic film, my hero of silences, my antidote to anything catering for those with low or no concentration spans; low emotional concentration span specifically. Nobody else knew the words between the lines quite as well as he did, while telling gentle stories which turned out to be so much more powerful than all the noise and the fast cuts and words that you would find elsewhere. He showed that cinematic narration could still be philosophical, beautiful, angst ridden, and elegant. "Herbstsonate" (Höstsonaten) blew me away at the time and remains solidly amongst my top 10 movies of all time. It touched me deeply, and it sums up so much about all of us and our mothers.

Ingmar Bergman died peacefully at the age of 89 on the island of Farö.

Getting the chance to see Barbra Streisand and Wynton Marsalis within a couple of nights was an extraordinary experience. And although both have completely different meanings to me, they both transported me back to being a kid - to another great place. While the one was a part of a decade long, very personal and almost spiritual ambition, a highly important piece of a puzzle which I had been putting together since I was thirteen years old; the other was a more the fun hang, another notch in my musical bed-poste and an opportunity to meet some old and new friends.

Seeing Streisand live for the first time is nothing I would want to share here any further for it's deeply personal nature, other than saying that the extraordinary vibe that streams out of such talent was truly mind-blowing. It was very much my moment.

Thanks to Elliot, I was able to spontaneously pop into the Barbican for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis the next evening. Admittedly my first ever "back to the roots" Jazz concert, it was a great pleasure to 'jump on the train' and get to that certain place which reminded me all too much of my happy musical childhood, with my dad instinctively turning the volume up as soon as exactly this kind of sound came on. Meeting Wynton afterwards and hanging with Elliot Mason, Michael Janisch, Marcus Printup and Guy Barker backstage made it all that extra bit more special. Thank you, guys!

I never thought this moment would come. For a long time. Very long in fact. Not many signs had been pointing at it. And yet I feel strangely at ease. Natural, does it come. As if it was always meant to happen. And the moment is not even here yet. The build-up has been short - almost sudden. The excitement is slowly taking control over heart and tummy. I just hope I can give it the landmark euphoria is deserves. I don't want to be too cool - as coolness seems to have been such a great companion and protector in recent weeks and months. Falsely. And I don't want to lose that original childlike excitement - now that it is about to happen, seems almost too true to still be such a big thing... But it is. The biggest. For who knows me knows how big, and it has never been shared with many.

As natural and always-meant-to-be as it suddenly may seem, it is coming along at exactly the right time. Unbeatable. Overwhelmingly deliberating and empowering and meaningful. It is going to be spiritual - a coming-home start of something new. A new beginning and a heart going full-circle. Finally. Finally, for it was such a screaming desire for so long. Very long. Always more than just the music, the music and the charisma just being vehicles. For what it made me, where it brought me, what it taught me, how it deliberated me and how it strengthened me - will be set free. Finally. Happily.... deeply personal, sensual and lovingly embraced.

I cannot wait. I feel warm and emotional. Only to be shared with one.

Calculate your own personal carbon footprint. This is a great tool - easy to use, very intuitive and packed with entertaining animations... all in the name of showing each of us, how much CO2 our life style is generating per year: http://actonco2.direct.gov.uk

But they don' just leave you alone with the result. You will get a useful facts sheet helping you to decrease your current pollution further through simple savings, switches and common sense changes to your daily life. Most of us know more or less where we are with our ecological awareness, about the dos and don'ts. But seeing the figures staring at you from your own computer screen, is a daunting experience. Worth a shot - and don't lie.

I take everything back - everything I ever said about the responsible way of German driving. Slagging off my fellow British country men and women with regards to their handling of moving cars in traffic, compared to the style of driving in Germany, where I passed my license in 1988 and was a motorised road user for almost ten years before coming to the United Kingdom, that was unfair and blue-eyed.

My recent experiences on the infamous German Autobahn this summer, where I ran up a staggering 3,000km within one week, where atrocious, scary, shocking and hellish. The lack of a continuous speed limit turns the fast lane into a race track with no regards for safe distances, weather conditions or traffic volume. On busy days the fast lane turns into the slow lane, as most drivers cannot imagine ever being allowed back into that lane, once they love over to the right. So they decide to stay there - come what may. Ignorant and dangerous.

The exhausting and straining concentration I had to switch on for entire multiple hour journeys was something I didn't know from British motorway. It can be extremely busy there, too. But it's clearly working without this unhealthy portion of haste and impatience.

A speed limit would do the trick on many levels - let's not even mention how the environment would benefit from a 130 km/h max. speed. But the race character and enormous hassle that drivers inflict on each other on German Autobahns would be eased immediately.

Gimme the box to tick. I'm all for it.

Swiss free-climber Ueli Steck suffered a massive blow - yet thankfully remained relatively unharmed - just hours into his solo attempt on the south face of Annapurna. The last 2500m to the 8091m summit in the Himalayan Annapurna massif are an almost vertical ice and rock face - one of the most difficult climbs in the world.

Steck didn't make it and fell - after being hit by a rock - over 300m down the ice wall, escaping with minor injuries and a broken illusion. his ascent had been postponed over weeks due to bad weather forecasts. He finally gave in to temptation and risked his life. This idea of unsecured solo climbs continues freaks me out and I am yet undecided whether to admire or dismiss such endeavours. Kill yourself if you must. The decision is yours and nobody else's. As long as no other person is endangered - physically or mentally - I feel indifferent. The achievement after a successfully completed risky mission is one of power, endurance and luck. But while adding unnecessary risk might generate additional adrenalin for the participant, it does not add grandeur to the achievement.

Fortunately Ueli Steck has survived his "day out" at Annapurna. Luck he would not have needed.

Only when we got back from an active day out by the Southwark Embankment did we hear about the violent escalations of the day's demonstrations in Rostock. While we joined G8 protesters from various groups and organisations here in London, gathered between Westminster and Lambeth Bridge with street music, bells and whistles and African drums, stones were flying between police and radicals in North East Germany...



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