Posts from — January 2008

My girlfriend Barbara tipped me on Finnair latest marketing campaign Early Jack which is really good.

Early Jack

Joe’s boss Jack is away for a trip to Japan, leaving his office wide open for mayhem, and you can take part in it too. Following one of the most funny ad since a long time, you have access to a minisite, including a game with flying tickets as a prize. All you have to do is break loose as much as you can in Jack’s office.

That is until your boss comes back….

Stuck between the flat country and acid green Vosges, with the stock market charts like Himalaya, and “le gratin” in Davos: a little seasonal video to recover (and give me some time to put something new on my blog)

Not far away from Luxembourg by car, you can easily reach “La Gaume” in Belgium and one of the favorite place of many beer lovers: Orval.

One of the 6 trappist beer in the world (5 in Belgium), it is still made under the supervision of the monastic community (no visits of the brewery are allowed for “simple” tourists).

Orval is a “living” monastery, you can only access the ruins of the old abbaye, the museum and the visitor stand in the church. Still worth a visit, and a trip back home with a trunk loaded of the famous beer.

Just grabbed my bike after work to go and shoot Luxembourg, best thing to do after a hard day. I went back to the Philharmonie, it has been quite a time since I took pictures there. This is definitively a great spot at night, the new buildings offering plenty of opportunities with the huge reflections.

Luxembourg has recently (January 2008) modified its law on intellectual property. Already known as a “Tax Haven” for E Business companies (Ebay, Paypal, Skype,… have their headquarters in Luxembourg), the new law is designed to boost the development of intellectual property business chain.

Luxembourg will propose a 80% tax deduction on the income generated by a patent, copyright on software, trademark, design or model…The effective rate will be of 5,9 % on the net IP income. It should also be noted that the 80% deduction will also be applied to the revenue generated by a taxpayer using his own patent for business purpose (relatively to the net income that would have been received if the patent was licenced to a third party). The 80% deduction will also apply to the capital gain realised on the disposal of this IP.

For startups, I think this will definitively help boost their creation in Luxembourg; slowly (hopefully) creating a viable cluster that would help sustain the development of such activities. Some of you might be interested…

Luxembourg is a nice place to live and even greater if you like walking. The best thing you can do is go to the tourist office and buy the official 171 rambling routes guide. With that little help, you’ll end in place like this. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Let’s forget about snow, rain and winter. While digging into my archives, I found this picture I took a while ago.  While not technically perfect, it shows one of the things I like for my pictures: geometry. 

It’s important for a photo to be successful “to take the eyes for a walk”. That is to give some lines, flows, foreground and background, with which looking at the picture is a little trip. As in this example, geometry can also be the meaning. Moss is not a sexy subject but with closeup shots, it oftens reveal a fascinating microstructure.

So everyone: grab your camera, buy a romanesco broccoli and start shooting and eating.

A while back (exactly October 2005), I started my first blog at http://madpingouin.blogspot.com and it has been alive pretty much since that time, mainly with pictures. Pushed by the example of a couple of friends (see Blogs) who were launching their own blog, I have decided to set my own, fully hosted, totally independant project: Mysberg, this brand new blog.

• Mysberg obviously stand for “My Isberg (swedish)” which is both a reference to the rather silly/funny name of my old blog, and a statement of what this is going to be: a place where I will try to look a bit deeper into things I care about, but also a place where you will only see “the visible part” of me. After a couple of years of blogging, and with the evolution of the blogging world, it has become more and more obvious that blogs are part of your numerical identity and should be controlled as such.

• My first idea is to publish this blog in English. Obviously because a couple of friends are not able to read French, and I would like to communicate with them. Also because I need to train, for reasons that may become more clear.

• This blog is not and will not be monetized in the near future.

• Even if my ego may ask for it, I don’t think the audience will be huge. But I hope that people coming here will share their opinions using the comments (or tell me it’s too damn boring to even comment…)

• So much for the explanations, the rest will come in the next posts

Now, welcome everyone, the paint is still fresh. Any advice on this blog will be highly appreciated.

Thanks to Chris Pearson for the theme.