It’s been a while, the last newsletter was in April, but lots has been going on, so let’s catch up.

Moving

The big news is that we’re moving. On August 4-5 we’ll be truckin’ our stuff, practice room and piano included, from Bonn to Cologne. We’ve managed to get financing to buy an apartment there, which is very exciting and a lot of work. People visiting us in the future will appreciate that there is now enough room for 3-4 people without having to stand on anyone’s shoulders or sit on anyone’s lap.

This Book will Save Your Life

Hello Everybody,

Animals

If you like animals, especially elephants, there’s some good stuff for you this month. First, make sure and check out the amazing video of an elephant painting. This blows my mind because one of the things that is supposed to set humans apart from the rest of life on this planet is the ability to process visual abstractions (pictures and language symbols, for example). I don’t know if you can train an elephant to paint without him seeing anything in the final product, but I doubt it. I get the sense from watching the video that the elephant knows he’s painting an elephant.

Hello Acquia

I’m very happy to announce that I’ve accepted an offer to join a new company called Acquia. Acquia is the brainchild of Jay Batson and Dries Buytaert (the founder of the Drupal project). The company is based in Boston but I will continue to work from home in Germany.

http://robshouse.net/blog-post/hello-acquia
http://acquia.com/node/33

Comments open on Robshouse

For the first time in many years I’ve enabled comments on RobsHouse.net. Feel free to leave a note on any post and tell me what you think about things. As RobsHouse.net continues to evolve and morph as a website, your feedback and suggestions are welcome.

Presented in FOSDEM

Hello everybody,

Staying in touch is hard to do. I want to make it easier reach out to all of the people I know and let them know what is going on in my life. To that end I’ve relaunched RobsHouse.net and made it easier to navigate and to find things. I’ve also created this newsletter and taken the liberty of subscribing you to it. This first “issue” of the newsletter is specifically for those people who don’t want to receive it =)

If you don’t want to receive any further copies of this newsletter, please use the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the mail. If I’ve reached you in error, my apologies. If you would like to write to me you can respond to this mail.

Best wishes,

Robert Douglass
http://robshouse.net