Futurotextiel

If you follow the many banners and flags to Futurotextiel and you find yourself in a place that looks pretty much deserted, don’t be discouraged, you did not miss the exhibition, it does not happen to be closed on that very day, it’s just the way it look. The entrance is under the “exteriors” sign, yes the door with no markings on it.

It would have been incalculable more interesting/appropriate/etc to hold it in such a pavilion as shown inside. Or at least I as expecting long flowing banners or any form of textile on the outside, like the ones in the Grote Markt , which were a brilliant form a promotion.

Pretty much a design and tech exhibition, in a very cold room. Must be a secret way to promote those self heating clothing. To bad you couldn’t actually give those self heaving battery powered tights a test run.

Despite the cold, don’t put your gloves on just yet, unless they’re fingerless, as Futurotextiel is a very hands on exhibition, literally. And do use that, just to know how clothing made out of corn, bamboo or basalt feel.

If you’re thinking textile= clothing, you’re in for a treat, as the use of textiles is apparently limitless. Which brings me to one of my favourite pieces, the Recyclable Car, with tires based on, again, corn fibbers. The car is the work of a UK University and reaches 140km/hour and looks much like a 50 F1 car.

My all time favourite piece is MidiMinuit, a interactive dress with embedded led that react to music, and to test it, you have a synth, the rest is up to your musical skills.

I had no idea of the range of fabrics and their uses that can be viewed at the expo, in medicine and welfare alone… .Clothes to make you feel better, to make you healthier, clothes that thell you when you’re not well, the range was so big that I do have to generalize, despite that it may sound like a cliché.

And I do wonder how fashion would look if these innovations were seriously taken into account, if the fashion industry accentuated function half as much as it accentuates form

web campaigning , now with live video feed

On-line campaigning. For the past year and so myspace has been just torturing me with the promotion of the US elections. It should have come as no surprise as social networking campaigns hit Europe, well mainly Romania.

Over a week ago the media signalled the case of a politician recruiting voters on facebook. And over the last week I’ve also seen there discussions on this topic and other cases of politicians doing the same.

Today a new form of web campaigning pop up: live video feed.

A couple of young politicians running for seats in the Romanian Parliament set up a webcam in their home and use it to broadcast 24/7 on their blog.

I’m talking about Bogdan Petre și Roxana Ionită and they can be found on

http://bogdanpetre.ro/ (don’t ask me why the blog is in his name only).

You can find there also their CVs, projects and such, as the actual webcam has no real relevance to the political situation.

More devious things have happened, like ex-president Iliescu starting a blog, so I don’t doubt as much the truthfulness of their action. To their support come their CVs, which tell me they just really might be open minded people, people of this generation.

If I’d vote for them? I don’t even know when the elections are, sadly enough. Maybe I will if they go full out with web campaigning. It would be totally wicked for someone to win a seat though such means of promotion alone. A politician with all of the Romanian web force behind. Sadly enough that is not the case as they will only be voted by people in their own college.

Well good luck to them.

AciD FLavoR

I do have more than one jSongs on cds in my car and occasionally I can be caught humming “aoi aoi , sora ni tsuki no hikari wo tomosu amaku awaku omoi sonna mono ni torawarete” but I’m not by any means a groupie or connoisseur of JMusic .

If you’ve come to read this you’re most likely as described above used to, if not a fan already, of anime soundtracks. And so, I bring you Acid Flavour, J-rock band at the end of their European tour.

And all I can say is they sound good. First night I got on their myspace I got trapped there all night listening to their songs. That was over a week ago. I took some time out before I actually recommended them because I wanted to see if I’ll still remember them and if after a week I’ll still feel like listening to their music all night, all over again. Answer implicit.

You can still see them right here in Be , in then first week-end of November:

on the first at, ”De l’Aut’Côté” in Mouscron (21A rue des Brasseurs) at 8pm. Tickets :8.00 €, for an acoustic gig

and/or the second at Asianim (Pallais de Liege, Liege) , tickets 10€

Have fun and enjoy Acid Flavour!

Oh, yeah, album available for purchase from ramen-events.com.

Asiamin 3 Promo

It’s on it’s way

It’s closer and closer

11 days till Asianim 3:

And here we have the official promo:

I knew spiderman was evil

here’s the proof:

OSAKA — Police have launched a search for two assailants including one who was disguised in a Spider-Man mask, following a spate of robberies in Osaka and the neighboring city of Sakai.

Police said that the assailants approached a 62-year-old restaurant worker on a street in the Sakai-ku district of Sakai at about 9:30 p.m. on Sunday and brandished what appeared to be a metal pipe in front of him, saying, “Hand us your money.” They fled after snatching about 2,000 yen from him.

About 40 minutes later, a 37-year-old man was threatened in a similar manner in Osaka’s Naniwa-ku. Roughly 30 minutes after that, a man in Osaka’s Nishinari-ku was also threatened, but in both of the incidents in Osaka neither of the victims was injured and neither of them had any money stolen.

In a fourth incident, another 15 or so minutes later, two men who approached a 22-year-old university student in Osaka’s Abeno-ku, saying, “Have you got any money?” suddenly hit him in the face. They did not steal any money from him.

One of the attackers riding a motorcycle was reportedly wearing a red mask with a black spider web pattern on it.

Source: Mainichi Daily News

they say a man in a spider mask, maybe it was spiderman trying to  look as a regular person, ah they never considered that did they?

US elections, I care why?

I’m sick and tired of the US elections. I don’t care. I’m not pro american. I do feel that the best interest of the US and those of the rest of the wold do not coincide. Despite I might have sympathised with Obama at first, I do not trust anyone whom can smile continuously for a 18 months. Why must I see something related to it every freaking day? I do realise the importance of the outcome however, I can’t influence it, so why uselesly  suffer the media agression?

And for the days you just felt like punching one of them in the face, let’s say Palin we have this :

KUNG FU ELECTIONS

So, pick your candidate from the following:

and have mortal kombat type fight … so run along and have fun!!

kungfuelections.com

My anime list.net

Very organised by nature?

Watch so much anime your head is spinning?

Read too much manga to remember?

Or just plain bored…

At myanimelist.net you can find a list(s) of all the anime in the world ,or close to it, and create your own list. You can also rate shows, reviewed them, keep track of how many episodes seen and also of shows you plan on seeing. Same goes for manga.

You can also join clubs, keep blogs and other such social features.

Exporting your anime/manga list is possible as well. And this is the only thing I found a bit off. It gets exported to an “XML” file which I have no clue how to use, nor does it come with instructions. Yes, I googled it and gave up on it after a while.

An alternative to showing off your anime history is the direct links to the anime/manga list and they show up kinda like this or this.

Enjoy

Asianim

It seems that the first week-end of November is going to be a great day for cosplay Along side NijiKon in Bucharest , the far bigger Asianim is taking place Liége.

At it’s 3rd edition, Asianim will take place at the Palais des Congrès de Liège.

A glance on the activities section is enough to entice  any  person with a soft spot for japanese culture:

• Cosplay,
• manga drawing contest,
• DanceDance Revolution  -for your own amusement or for the amusement of others and maybe for prizes as well
• video games – to be played on: PS3, Xbox 360,  Wii and “vintage” ones Nintendo, Mega Drive, Néogéo et PC Engine
• guests (Junko Kawakami , Keiko Ichiguchi et Jean-David Morvan)
• martial arts demonstrations — with the help of: Japan Asbl, Team SK de LIEGE and La Mante Belge
• Origami, Haiku, Go, Mah-jong – brought by “Le Clan Takeda”
• Tea Ceremony, (japanese:) cuisine, languge ,caligraphy , the wearing of a Yukata – with the help of Passerelle Japon
• the art of growing a bonsai  by Bonsai Club de Liége
• role playing ( bleach, naruto and one piece mentioned)
• inflatable sumo  )
• purikura booth
• fanzines
• anime projections (titles to be announced)
• amv booth
• j-music — with support from Abunai and Higashi Music
• concerts : AciD FlavoR
• snacks and drinks (sushi/sashimi/tea…they didn’t mention anything about sake thought)
• manga on sale — by Slumberland bookstores and also “used” ones from fans

Now if all that isn’t worth a trip to Liége I don’t know what is!

Tickets are already on sale  at Slumberland bookstores across Belgium. Prices being 7€ / day, 12€/week-end. Concents are 10€ apart from entry fee.

see ya there!

The Best 4.99£ you’ll ever spend*

“In 300 m turn left”

“In 50 m turn left”

“route recalculation” “route recalculation” ” route…route…route” ….and by this point you just might be so pissed with you SatNav system you will have surely missed your turn.  Mio Map’s James** did cost us about an hour in Brasov after refusing to give us any more instruction because of going off route (despite the fact that Ioana** usually did route recalculations).

For all you lucky TomTom users out there we have great news, the boring “bestemming bereikt” *** with “Thank God you’re there , I can shut up  now” . If the most fun you could have with you satnav was set in it swedish and listen to the directions on your usuall road home now you can have Eddie Izzard yelling at you “you turn ahead, I’ll stay here” . Sounds to good to be true? Go here for proof. Already convinged? You can buy it via CC at EddieIzzard.com . Instruction are available for free on the same website, just in case you go ” I don’t need these, I have used machines before”…and chuck ‘em out a window.

*or 6.2 € but with the financial thingie going on now that may vary

** standard Mio voices Jame for English, Ioana for Romanian.

*** destination reached = (nl) destination reached

Handkerchiefs vs Tissues

My memories of handkerchiefs  are from primany school as more of an uniform accesory. Since they were all starched up they were useless to blow your nose in  and later on came the hygenic argument. Or the handkerchief as an old romantic item : to wave goodbye with, used by high life ladies to flirt, etc.

Recently I’ve seen them come into use again, amongst young people. Since it defied my image of the hanky it made me give it a second thought. And soon enough the “eco” argument popped up, as hankies are reusable and kleenex-types are not.

A short googling later I discovered Greenpeace beat me to the punch and already have had for some time a program called Kleerkut.

Apparently the Kimberly-Clark corp(makers of Kleenex) uses only 19% recyclable material  in making tissues , the rest coming from a big old forest in Canada- figures being just for North America.

To support the boycott Greenpeace is providing us with the solution as well: organic(duh!) hankies 3 for 10 $ .

Alongside greenpeace and before myself other eco-conscious blogers(not that I am claiming to be one)  like ecospace and wasteweardaily and stumbled upon this matter.

hankies do have another one over the tissues… “hanky” sounds way cuter.