i just had the opportunity to go to a 100th birthday party. my wife’s grand aunt adelaide, just turned 100 years old yesterday. the picture above is of the 4 generations of women alive in her lineage. the youngest is my daughter sophia, then my wife gina, her mother fran and the aunt ade. there is a 95 year difference between them.

the most amazing part is that she’s not a frail, sickly, crippled 100 year old. she is sharp, aware, mobile and barring some hearing loss, has her faculties intact. as a matter of fact she got her second book published last year, at 99 years old. another amazing thing about aunt ade is that she has been a nursing sister for 78 years. she’s devoted her entire life to helping others. talk about good karma payback. she is loved by hundreds of people and there were even visitors from europe who came to celebrate with her. she is really an amazing individual and inspiring to everyone who meets her.

more on aunt ade later…

about 2.5 years ago we launched our 2006 site… all proud that we had a hot flash site to showcase our work. but even back in 2006 - wow, we talk as if it was so long ago - the web was really only about 10 - 11 years. old. well technology has made leaps and bounds these past couple of years. now we’ve got web 2.0, facebook, cloud computing, google and wikipedia as our daily doses of knowledge and information…i could go on and on. and although we’ve designed and built a whole host of sites, produced a few dozen videos and animations and worked on a myriad of other projects. throughout this time, we were always like: gotta update the site, gotta update the site!!! but we never did…

and so, 2 years later, we’ve just launched our newest company site and with a bit of a change. first of all, although we’ve used the shortened name ‘visualmerc’ for a while now, we’re moving ahead and phasing out out our visualmercenary.com email addresses in lieu of the shorter url. plus, there’s whole bunch of people using the name ‘visual mercenary’ now. we’ll take that as a compliment. after all, it’s been our name for a long time now. second, our new site is a blog. besides our portfolio, we felt it was important to open up and share our thoughts, inspiration and work flow with the rest of the global village - and also showcase the wonderful talent of the individuals that make up our group.

to this end we invite our friends, colleagues, clients and the world at large to visit, comment and post. thanks… and now on to web 3.0

tonight i was reading the lorax to my daughter. she’s 5 years old and my wife gina and i have been reading dr. seuss to her from before she could even understand a word we were saying. the man was pure genius - proven many times over - and truly a spirit ahead of his time. the lorax, oh the places you will go, and i saw it on mulberry street are absolutely amazing. but quite honestly, there aren’t any books of his that i don’t like. there are lessons in there for 5 year olds and 65 year olds.