Red, the Colour

Hearts line on gold background

Useful article on the colour red, its meanings, development of different shades and uses through art history.

‘Fun fact: In Medieval times, synthetic vermilion was as costly as gold leaf. Thus it was used only for the most important aspects of illuminated manuscripts, while less costly red lead was used for red letters within the text.’

Beware Too Good To Be True Domain Name Offers

Phish Buster

Today we received an email enquiring about the purchase of one of our domain names. Giving the benefit of the doubt, we responded, and then received the sting, offering a ridiculously high price for said domain provided we supply an “appraisal certificate”. Here’s the email from Domain Lawyer <>:

Our commission is 3 %. It’s paid after you receive the funds.

The buyer offers $15,000.

How do you want to get paid: Check, Wire, Western Union ? If my buyer does not support your preferred method he can send you the funds via an escrow service that supports it.

Do you have a certificate? The appraisal certificate gives buyer confidence to proceed.

My buyer also needs it for tax and accounting purposes.

If you don’t have it’s not a problem. You can order it online.

Please note he cannot accept it from any agency. He needs a manual service. It also must be a third party independent agency (not your broker our auction site) he knows and trusts.

The certification must include the following:

1. Independent valuation of the market price. It will show your domain name is not overpriced. On the other hand if the valuation comes higher, he will increase the price accordingly. In the domain name industry, there are many appraisal tools that people use to estimate the value of a domain name. My client does not want to risk and doesn’t accept services that use scripts. If you are unsure about some service feel free to ask me.

2. Trademark infringement verification. It proves your domain has no trademark problems. He would like this verification to be included in the appraisal report. It’s not a problem because some companies include the TM verification for free.

I’m also interested in a good estimate of the market price because you will pays me % on each sale.

You can read about certification agencies at http://answersgoogle.org/answers/threadview/id/96283720.htm (“Domain Broker” is my nickname).

The process is very easy:

1. Go to the certificate agency site and order a certificate. Just submit your domains and let them know you have a buyer with $XX,XXX offer. It will help you to get a better valuation.

If your domain is worth at least $1000, they will send you the payment instructions. If it’s not possible, they won’t send you the instructions. This way you will not lose anything. It’s very convenient and gives you the full protection. Other services charge you upfront even if your domain is not worth spending the appraisal fee, so I don’t recommend them.

2. Send the certificate to me and we will start the sale process. As soon as he receives your certificate he will buy your domain via an escrow service of his choice.

If the appraisal comes higher he will make a better offer. His final offer will only depend on the appraisal results.

If you are new to the certification process, I can help you with the step by step instructions.

The answergoogle thread, like the email, looked concocted and suspicious so we googled the email address Domain Lawyer <> and quickly found evidence of multiple attempts at this scam.

Another gift horse exposed! Lesson – always verify that offers are legit and deliver no information to these scammers if you reply. Also it is best to use a throwaway account when one does reply to prevent your email being added to additional scammer/spammer lists.

New Site Release

The current Sibagraphics look is inspired by the abstract expressionist art of Wassily Kandinsky, one of our favourite artists, and by the colours of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland.

Der Blaue Berg (The Blue Mountain) (1908-09)
Der Blaue Berg (The Blue Mountain) (1908-09)

Based on the Twentyseventeen WordPress theme, our child theme has been heavily modified to enable full width pages and extra widgets for slide shows and side inserts, using our own page template. Because the slide shows are easily changeable, we’ll be able to add and subtract new photos, or change the whole look sporadically as we wish. The new Twentyseventeen theme also permits videos rather than photos.

The variable height headers are deployed through a combination of css and dynamic widgets.

Gradually, the complete, very large site will be moved over to the new template, with more photos, graphics and animations to be added as well.

Enjoy!

New Year, New Host

Bear with us while we find time to re-customise our blog! due to our old host going out of business, we’ve had to move, so we’re going to work on a whole new look. No promises about when we’ll have time to finish, but you can rest assured it’ll be attractive and fun!

Meanwhile, here’s a retrospective of some of our old designs.

NASA Retro Posters For Free

Delicious NASA space-themed posters feature the retro holiday style you can long for in your dreams. How many of the fonts which have been used do you recognise? Download the posters and print out your back to the future brochure reminder.

We like Earth the best – perhaps the Universal Travel Bureau may wish to keep humans from actually holidaying elsewhere until they can care for their own backyard sustainably.

51pegasib-small

ceres-small

earth-small

enceladus-small

europa-small

venus-small

titan-small

superearth-small

nightlife-small

mars-small

kepler186f-small

kepler16b-small

jupiter-small

grand_tour-small

Academy Dance Studios, Southport

Academy Dance StudiosAre you interested in learning to dance from qualified professionals for pleasure or looking to begin a career lifetime immersed in dance? Academy Dance Studios can assist you build a solid foundation in ballet, tap, musical theatre and many other dancing styles.

Situated conveniently in Southport on the Gold Coast, Queensland, Academy Dance Studios can fulfill your dancing tuition needs.

Blues

From an interesting article promoting the exhibition “Blue: Alchemy of a Colour”, currently showing at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) in Melbourne, examining Asian and European works of art employing the colour blue from the 7th century AD to the present:

‘The ubiquity of indigo dye has resulted in blue becoming the colour of the everyday clothes of the working class in Europe and Asia. But predominantly blue textiles and garments are also some of the most prestigious textiles, imparting status to the wearer and worn on important ritual occasions.

Their prestige may be signified by the of valuable materials such as gold and beads, the incorporation of extra colours, patterns and techniques, or special finishes.

In China the colour blue generally signifies the natural world, springtime, youth and immortality. The emperor wore a blue court garment at annual ceremonies associated with the heavens and crops, and indigo blue was the most common ground colour of Manchu clothing during the Qing dynasty (1644–1912AD).’