After many years singing “Bonne Anniversaire a Toi” (translation “Happy Birthday to You”) in junior and senior high school French classes, I was perplexed and astounded to hear actual native French speakers singing “Joyeux Anniversaire” at a birthday party last night. Same tune. Different “happy” and lose the “you”. Are all the American French teachers wrong or is there a split contingent in the translation?

Microsoft’s Digital Diva has settled with the Digital Divas. Stacy Elliott now has the spiffy title of “Microsoft Digital Lifestyle Advisor”. Microsoft apparently does understand which battles are worth fighting. Their, or at least Bill Gates’, PR decisions have become much savvier in the past year. Unless you take the cynical point of view that they are just doing it to make themselves look better. Which is what PR usually is anyway.

Actual text from my condo association newsletter: “Please do not allow your dogs to urinate on the lawns, but instead lead them toward the barked areas.” Arf arf!

The funniest thing I’ve read about the Presidential debate was an article lamenting their dress uniform (dark blue suit, red tie, white shirt): “As the television cameras cut with each moderator’s question from Bush to Gore and Gore to Bush, the only thing that changed were their heads. It was a jarring scene.” (via MediaNews, of course)

Posters American Style from the National Museum of American Art (via xblog) offers a range of posters, some recent, many historically significant. David Singer’s lettering is incredible. Take a peek at some of his non-concert posters at Poster Planet. There’s also the David Singer site. I sometimes think about dabbling in vintage poster collecting, but I think I’d be just as happy with reproductions.

Speaking of old electronics magazines (as I was yesterday), Byte was another forerunner in the computer magazine scene. From the start of Byte in 1975, Robert Tinney created many of their covers. Some of my favorites featured chips masquerading as things like piano keys and insects. Many were impressively Escher inspired.

I can’t believe the Berlin Wall has been down for ten years. It seems like just a couple of years ago that the world seemed to be altering itself at a rapid pace while I kept hearing Jesus Jones sing “Right Here Right Now, watching the world wake up from history”. There’s still much unrest, still much to be solved, which I hope means there is more history to be made. I only caught a few minutes of the documentary After the Fall, but I hope they were the oddest minutes. A man was describing how his pharmaceutical firm makes homeopathic pills out of finely crushed remnants of the Berlin Wall. That’s recycling for you.

I got my copy of David Bowie’s BBC Sessions, but Peter Gabriel‘s OVO album appears to only be available as an import.

I read whatever was in the house (in English) when I was growing up. I was a voracious reader. I read magazines about things that I didn’t really have an active interest in because it was words. Interesting words about strange things. My brothers had a subscription to Popular Electronics. I actually based my eighth grade science project on a fiber optic project printed in two issues. I got lots of help, of course, and promptly forgot how to read a circuit diagram afterwards. A few years after that, the magazine changed its name to Computers & Electronics. The beginning of the end. Someone is planning to scan in all of his 330 issues, but it’s going to take him a while. Other folks have reproduced specific items, such as how to make your own Pong game. The name Popular Electronics was resurrected, but recently got mushed into the less appealing (in my opinion) title: Poptronics. Sounds like another breakfast cereal, cartoon show cross-marketing deal.

Glass artist Dale Chihuly has been at it again. You may have seen the PBS special on his chandeliers in Venice, Ireland and other international locations. Now he has Jerusalem under glass. The Crystal Mountain is just wonderful.