Friday, September 28, 2012

Bonami Workshop


A slideshow based on a photo-shoot I did yesterday at the premises and workshop of this very up-market and exquisite quality display mannequins from Aalter, Belgium. I have written about them not long ago in the same blog.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

A Transactional Analysis Test

I attended a class to learn and practice Transactional Analysis 32.5 years ago, almost to the day. It had such an impact on me that I have used it in my daily life ever since, at least when the stakes were high. For many years I have also been teaching TA basics in various classes at the University or in Business School classes, for more than 10 years now. I haven't met many in my life who were practicing TA, but I've met a few folks here and there, in any case. We were kinda like belonging to a clan of some sort, although it ain't that bad at all. It's a good theory and tends to explain well many of the things that are happening in our lives and the way we face and address everyday situations. Download this PDF kindly offered by Dr. Solomon on her blog. This will provide you with a great description of the TA Basics.

A few months ago I taught a sales class in Athens, Greece, and I found out that one of my participants was also a practicing TAer and a certified teacher for a US based training company. He showed me a questionnaire that they used to test someone's TA scores in terms of the weights of someone's respective ego states. I found it quite interesting, and I decided to translate it in English (it was given to me in Greek) and to send it to friends and acquaintances. The way to fill it is simple. Answer all questions/statements. For each one you decide which column fits best to your character. Each column carries a weight. Never is 0, Seldom is 1, ..., Always is 4. You decide which column fits you best and write down the column weight in the cross-section cell (between the statement row and the best suitable column). You then send me the filled-in table and I'll send you back your scores in terms of ego states, your dominating one, your strongest, and weakest states, and whether your adult risks to be contaminated by your child or parent... and stuff like that. It's fun. Just do it...

Here it is (click on it for larger view).





Sunday, September 2, 2012

Trackers, f*** off!

You surf to your heart's desire and spiders and crawlers sent by evil marketeers watch your every step wherever you go. Until someone sells you a tracking strangler like the one I'm using on one of my browsers. Not that they'll discover anything worth mentioning I wouldn't like them to see, but the sheer thought that people keep watching my surf promenades together with those of 100s of millions of others just pisses me off. Look at the screen capture here. As I was watching the Burning man burning night on a live broadcast (sorry, webcast) there were 7 sneaky a-hole crawlers sent by ruthless marketeers with Google on top (be no evil, remember?) watching my moves... with 1047 having done this since a few days that I installed the tracking stopper. Go figure. That's one of the reasons iPad apps are way better. You don't have to put up with crap like this. In the spirit of the burning man, lets burn down these f*ckers. Install tracking stoppers everywhere you use browsers of any sort. I only hope they work as advertised...