Yvonne has got a big heart, she is a tough athlete but a dear and gentle women. This is now underlined by the fact that the price-money that she receives for the second place in the IRONMAN Geelong 70.3 race goes to the victims of the gigantic bushfires in Australia.
Here her personal statement :
„We are currently training here in Australia and could enjoy a great first race at the Ironman
70.3 Geelong. The hospitality of the people and perfect training-facilities in Geelong give us
the possibility of a perfect preparation for the upcoming season.
Sadly we have to face news and pictures of a tragic catastrophe that is happening very close
to us in the state of Victoria. There are many Dutch immigrants as well as Australian families
victims of the bushfires, which need help and relief. My modest donation shall be a sign of
our empathy for the victims.“
Grass is stapel food for cows. Quantity and quality of the grass influence the amount of milk that is produced by a cow’s udder in an amazing correlation that I was never aware before I started working with biestmilch and the New Zealand style of cattle farming. Cows need grass. This is one of the reasons grass became a very important symbol in grafic design. Hey, Elisabeth (she is my great Manitu) that is why there cannot be enough grass in our biestmilch universe.
Biest eating grass
Today I got some more scientific information of this interesting topic from the agricultural rural development site in the UK that shows impressively how sensitive cows react to grass.
High quality grazed grass has been shown through research trials to have the potential to support up to 27 litres of milk production. This is only possible under ideal grazing conditions during May as shown in figure A. Actual production from grass will depend on: the stage of lactation of the cows, the quality of the grass, and the weather conditions while grazing.
feeling like … excuse me for being a racist today, but only today I promise ;-( … tomorrow I shall return back to political correctness again 
…
Source: gapingvoid, Cartoons drawn on the back of a business card.
I take up this topic and the ASCII Adcampaign of Sixt car rental company today because of our own plans to use it as a design tool for the new header of our blog (coming soon), ASCII files mimicking words and words and words raining on the biestmilch universe.
I thought it makes sense to have look at the original meaning of ASCII. Many of us are using this abbreviation, at least in Gemany without having a clue of what it means. Here is the clue for those who are as ignorant as I am 
!
table of ascii signs
ASCII stand for »American Standard Code for Information Interchange«, pronounced /ˈæski/. It is a character-encoding scheme based on the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that work with text. Most modern character-encoding schemes—which support many more characters than did the original—have a historical basis in ASCII.
Historically, ASCII developed from telegraphic codes. Its first commercial use was as a seven-bit teleprinter code promoted by Bell data services. Work on ASCII formally began October 6, 1960. Compared to earlier telegraph codes, the proposed Bell code and ASCII were both ordered for more convenient sorting (i.e., alphabetization) of lists, and added features for devices other than teleprinters.
ASCII includes definitions for 128 characters: 33 are non-printing, mostly-obsolete control characters that affect how text is processed. 94 are printable characters, and the space is considered an invisible graphic. The ASCII character-encoding scheme is the most-commonly-used character set on the Internet.
ASCII Cars and cars and cars...
Ours would have been words and words and words raining on our
ASCII car racing in the address ba
Source: Advertising Lab; animated version here.
In case we use the ASCII header at least we have some more awareness of its roots.
Western Beach, Geelong, Australia
The Snap Ironman 70.3 Geelong, 2009 has been by Craig Alexander and Samantha Warriner stepping up from short course racing to take her first Ironman 70.3 title. Athletes were lucky on race day. The temperature had returned to safe and much cooler levels, allowing the race to go ahead as normal. While on the days before the event the ferocious heat wave had hit Geelong as well. As athletes were checking bikes in on Saturday the thermometer display showed 47°C.
Yvonne van Vlerken on the bike
For Samantha Warriner, it was her first Ironman 70.3 – following her 2008 World Cup series successes – and a dream debut. Yvonne swam her best swim time ever, nevertheless she was 4 minutes behind. »No problem«, she says and smiles in her soft way. »I shall continue to work hard on this«. Australian Pip Taylor led the women early into the bike, following a strong swim, but soon relinquished the lead to Yvonne. Warriner soon reached second place, at the half-way point of the ride. Yvonne could not get away on the bike. The big moment of the race came, when Warriner made a lightning transition, heading onto the run with a 90m lead. Over the next 21.1km, Yvonne wasn’t able to run the New Zealander down, making a dream debut complete.
This time without blood, sweat and tears
I don’t want to comment on this game. I am no expert, just a fan who loves to watch games so brilliant, full of physical power, mental strength and great intelligence, simply more than just a sport. Those who want to read more about it find a good comment on the blog of »The Science of Sport«.
Roger and Rafa, still partners at eye level?
The following is a quote from Nadal’s coach and uncle, Toni, taken from a Time Magazine article:
“Federer is too good. Rafael must play like himself, but better, less spin, quicker points.” But how can Federer be too good when Rafael is ranked No. 1? “There is a difference between who is better and who knows more,” says Toni. “Better now is Rafael, he is No. 1 in the ranking. But who has the best game? Federer.”
I think one can learn from this attitude, it is wise, it is intelligent and open-minded. It reveals something about the thinking and planning that has gone into how a player with »inferior« ability has climbed to surpass the apparently better player, a genuine quote that implies that Nadal has worked out his strengths, Federer’s weakness and he’s gone about working out the game specifically to win.
For this reason it was such a painful loss for Roger Federer. It was more than just loosing a game. It will be interesting to see how he is going to respond to this defeat. It will be tough, especially tough, because it is the French Open, since long the domain of Rafa, that is the next tournament about to come.
