Waterfall by MC Escher

MC Escher was an amazing Dutch artist whose surreal art prints like the impossible Waterfall shown here still dumbfound people as was undoubtedly Escher’s intention.  MC Escher challenges the way we look at the world and the way our sense of sight works.  Just glance at any Escher art print or poster and it hits you as he shows how the perspective can be manipulated to trick you into thinking we are seeing something you are not seeing.  Even when you look closely at MC Escher’s art it can be hard to see how it all works.  How did MC Escher manage to make it look like the waterfall is perpetual?  How does it end up where it started defying all the logic of our perceptions?  MC Escher was an extraordinary Dutch artist with a keen interest in geometry.  MC Escher produced many surreal visual puzzles and some of these Escher puzzles were used for album cover art like Reptiles for the Mott the Hoople album.  MC Escher’s work, has never really dated and an MC Escher impossible puzzle looks as freash today as it did back when he drew them.

A guest in your home seeing Escher’s endless waterfall is going to be drawn to comment.  If you’d like to see our range of MC Escher prints and posters then just click here where there are plenty of different Escher products to chose from either for yourself or to give someone else a slice of Escher mind-bending!

Thor in 3D - Wow!  Thor the Norse god, Thor the comic hero and now Thor the film star!

What a change appears to have come over PayPal in the last few years.  Even a short while back we were writing that we have tended not to promote PayPal as a main payment method but things certainly have changed.  In years past we tried to tell PayPal what we unhappy about only to be met with complete indifference.  No replies to emails.  Nowhere to phone other than on a premium rate number etc etc.  Now that PayPal have become a “proper bank” they seem to have changed their ethic and are now proactively encouraging businesses to use PayPal by offering competitive rates and good customer service.  Yep, they DO reply to emails now.  So; we now have the PayPal Express checkout as well as our own PCI DSS compliant secure checkout so customers have every option they need to be able to make their payment easily.  We also have a few customers who prefer to send a cheque or postal order to us and so this “payment separately” option still exists.  Of course, the advantage of PayPal is that if you have a PayPal account you can buy online without even having your credit or debit card with you.  Now all that has to be seen is whether this payment option is truly as secure and free from fraud as PayPal claims it is.  If it is then I guess we will stay pals for many years to come.  You can see it all in operation here  :-)

Customers who have visited to order from us a few times over the last month may have had the surprising experience of paying in three different ways although selecting the same option.  As you would expect, we are always doing our best to keep our systems up to date and to comply with the ever more stringent banking legislation.  The challenge for many online retailers has been to offer a PCI DSS compliant system that is efficient and easy to use both for the business and the customer as well as not being too expensive to run.  After all, if you are paying high fees for transactions it is the poor old customer who ends up footing the bill.  That is one reason why, like many other main retailers, we have tended to not have PayPal as a main payment option although we do review this from time to time.  Anyway, a customer could have paid through our old Shared SSL a month ago and then via HSBC Secure ePayments a week or so later and now via Actinic Secure Payments.  Why?  Well, nobody at Actinic or HSBC saw fit to mention that there is an incompatibility issue (known for some years too!) between Actinic and HSBC Secure ePayments.  We had to find out the hard way.  We also found out that a number of the ways we had previously made customer purchasing easier would no longer work.  That is why it had to go out in favour of Actinic Secure Payments.  There are now just one or two minor design issues left and then, really, when you think about it, what we achieve is to end up back where we started since our track record for efficient card processing and security was excellent to start with.  Anyway , at the end of all the hassle and hair-tearing it all works and we can say we are PCI DSS compliant.  Does anyone care?  Who knows?  I expect most of our customers come to us by recommendation and all they are concerned about is how soon their order will arrive.  If you’re not already one of themk and you’d like to join them then click here.