It’s amazing the number of tattoos you see these days. From tiny ones like Ed Westwick and Jessica Serfaty’s matching heart tattoos or Miley Cyrus’s portrait of her puppy Emu and Pablow the blowfish, to larger tattoos like Demi Lovato’s lion or Rihanna’s Goddess Isis tattoo on her ‘chest,’ every celebrity seems to be sporting a tattoo or five or 62 like Justin Bieber. The subculture has become mainstream. With summer coming up and because it’s National Tattoo Week (April 25 to 29th) I thought it might be a good time to reveal the tattoos that Velsoftians have (or wish they had).

Let the tattoos be revealed!

  • Jan – A series of tattoos from each country she visits. On her latest trip she got a sombrero, a male flamenco dancer and a toucan. My favorite, though, is the panda tattoo from her China trip.
  • Carol – Jon Bon Jovi (in his big hair days)
  • Jim – Steve Jobs and Bill Gates
  • Brandon – A donair
  • Dylan – A Broke t-shirt (I guess that’s advertising – cool)
  • Sandra – An isolated Caribbean island
  • Ian – The evolution of Apple computers (from the Apple II to today’s – he even has the Newton on there – pretty cool!)
  • Marty – Cheshire cat’s grinning teeth
  • Ben – Has no tattoos
  • Sydney – A large dog’s head with a diamond collar
  • Cindy – Portrait of Professor Snape
  • Michael – Dave doing rap on stage
  • Dave – Michael dressed in a Tottenham soccer jersey
  • John – ZZ Top standing in front of the 1933 Ford Eliminator coupe
  • Scott – Toronto Maple Leafs logo over his heart (no surprise there)
  • Jean – An erupting volcano complete with flying cinders and molten lava
  • Pete – The Queen (at 25 years old)
  • Simon – A triangle of Gloucestershire cheese (got it at the Cheese Rolling in Gloucestershire)
  • Craig – A leaping springbok
  • Nathan – Codes for Python, JavaScript and CSS slash and burn tools
  • Pablo – A quote: “Martin Rules”

What’s in the Pipeline:

  • Ben is finishing custom projects and working with new client projects.
  • Carol is editing new courses, working on custom projects and writing blogs.
  • Jan is back from vacation and working on CA releases.
  • Sydney is creating CA eLearning and working on custom projects.

Tech Topics:

  • Implemented new tools into the course editor to allow for modifying the Text-To-Speech output.
  • Fixed an issue causing some SCORM files to not import properly.
  • Updated the technical specs to include current browser versions.

Course Count:

Courses released this month:

Here is the official count of courses for both courseware and eLearning, broken down by Computer and SoftSkills.

Computer SoftSkills Total Courses
Courseware 279 168 447
eLearning 879 164 1043

Interesting Facts:

  • Tattooing dates back to 10,000 B.C.
  • Barbie got a tattoo in 1999 (a butterfly). It was quickly discontinued due to parents’ complaints.
  • More women than men have tattoos, but women are more likely to have them removed.
  • A talking tattoo was featured in the X-Files as I wrote about earlier this month.
  • Sailors with an anchor tattoo have crossed the Atlantic Ocean.
  • A ‘flash’ in tattoo lingo is a from a pre-made design. Custom is where it’s at!