What does TWINDEX stand for?

      Are you twins?
        Are you identical twins or fraternal twins?

      If you are fraternal, I'll eat my hat.

      I wanted to ask if you have had genetic testing to determine your zygosity?

      Who are you?

      I am just curious if you guys have the same sexual orientation.
        I have identical twin friends, 2 sets, where one set is gay and the other ones are straight...

      So when did you start the project?
        Do you plan an ending?

      Why don´t you smile?
        Why do you always have the same face expression?

      I wonder what´s the meaning of this?
        Do you want to see, how you´re getting older or whether you don´t look that similar as time passes by, or what?

      Why do you guys take photos every day?
        Who had this sick idea?

      What cameras do you use for taking the photos?
        Which kind of hardware are you working on, which software do you use?

TWINDEX is a word creation, a mixture of TWINS + INDEX. Twins because we are twin brothers, and Index because of that photo indexes you get with your paper printouts. So we created the first  "TWINS-PHOTO-INDEX" = TWINDEX !

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Starting this project, we were sure to be fraternal twins. As we received lots of emails with people telling us that we are just to similar to be fraternal, we became unsure about this. One mail (from a genetic expert) told us to check our blood group, and we both have the same (A+). This is a strong indicator that we are identical twins. To be absolutly sure, we have to do a DNA test. We are looking for a cheap opportunity in Germany. In our childhood, we really looked very similar, and people often took one of us for the other. In the course of time, the similarity seems to fade away. But just take a look at our pictures, and form your own opinion.

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Hope your hat is made of sweets... ok, our mother was told that we two guys were fraternal twins because there were two placentas. We received an email with following explanation:
There are two types of twins, dyzygotic and monozygotic. Dyzygotic twins arise from two eggs and two sperm. These are "fraternal" twins. They share an average of 50% of their DNA, because they have the same parents, this means they can have the same hair color or different, the same blood type or different, the same eye color or different, but in most cases will not resemble each other any more than regular brothers or sisters. Monozygotic come from 1 egg and 1 sperm, these are "identical twins". The single embryo divides after fertilization. Since there was one set of DNA involved both babies share the same DNA, barring genetic mutations occuring after division, which can happen). Because the DNA is the same, each baby is "built" from the same set of blueprints. Hair color, eye color, basic body type, and gender, and blood type will all be the same. Physical differences can appear because environment can influence any aspect of development after the embryo divides. It is not true that moles have to be in the same spot either. And in fact, genetic accidents can occur while the fetus is forming, and the differences can be extreme, such as missing limbs or other congenital (in utero) defects that affect the facial structures or health of the fetus causing identical twins to not look very much like each other. However, in cases of normal development, identical twins do look exactly like each other. About 25% of identical twins are dichorionic, just like fraternal twins. Dichorionic = two gestational sacs. The gestational sac a baby grows in is made up of the placenta, the chorion and amnion (which are bot membranes), the amniotic fluid and the baby itself. As the pregnancy progresses, the chorion and the amnion fuse to make a solid structure. This is easy to picture if you think of a Balloon inside of another balloon. Dichorionic monozygotic twins occur when the embryo divides BEFORE the embryo attaches to the uterine wall. Since two completely seperate embryos exist, they will attach in two different places and they will proceed to grow their own gestational sacs. About 75% of them are monochorionic - diamniotic(sharing a gestational sac, but with their own amniotic compartments). This occurs when the embryo divides after the placenta and chorion are formed, but before the amnions and baby are started. To picture this, imagine a large balloon with two 1/2 sized balloons blown up inside of it. In monochorionic-diamniotic twins, both babies share the placenta and the outer membrane, but part of the amniotic membrane grows to create a partition between the two babies. In about 1% of the cases of monozygotic twins, the embryo will divide AFTER all the structures of the gestational sac are complete. This means that there is no opportunity for the partitioning membrane to form, so the babies will end up sharing a single compartment. These are called monochorionic-monoamniotic twins. They are at high risk of dying due to cord problems, since there is no dividing membrane, they can tangle on each others cords and make knots and stuff. This category also includes conjoined (Siamese) twins. These occur when the embryo divides so late in the game that the baby has already started to form. My guess is that you and your brother are monozygotic, but were dichorionic in the womb. Your original embryo divided before it attached to the uterine wall. When your mother delivered the two of you, she delivered two placentas and they told her that the two of you were "fraternal". There are STILL some doctors who don't know enough about embryology to understand that 25% - 33% of twins born with 2 placentas are identical.  

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We had no DNA test so far. But we plan to do one, and we will post the result here. If someone knows a good and convenient way to do this in Germany, send in an email. 

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Sven Staude. Tobias Staude. We are living together in Düsseldorf (Germany), a nice town placed at river Rhine, near to Cologne. More information about us and more pictures are available on www.staude.org (sorry, but those pages are only available in German). 

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Yes, we both have the same sexual orientation. We are both straight, having girl friends.

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The official start for the website was the 27th of  December in 2003. As this was our 27th birthday at the same time, it was the perfect date to launch the project with from the beginning of December.  We do not know when the project / experiment will end. We plan no closing date.

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The images are on purpose neutral with no facial expression. If you want to see us smile for once, you should have a look at the photo albums at www.staude.org  There are enough photos which are not so "artificial" and monotonous. On some you even see us smiling :-)

Well, granted, the project doesn´t really make sense. No poor seals in the Himalaja will be saved from the death of starvation and the hole in the ozone layer won´t get smaller from this either. On the other hand, it does not get bigger as well... The whole thing is just a "fun project", over the time it will be fun to see, if one of us drops out of the project, or is aging faster than the other. Be patient and see, how the cat jumps... ehm, the project develops...

The whole thing started, when Tobi found the webpage from the first Daily Photo Project, created by Jonathan Keller - www.c71123.com. Tobi was surfing the web for good FAVICONS, and found an interesting icon at Jonathans page. After a few weeks of talking about setting up our own project, drinking a couple of beers together, we started thinking about a good name for our own project. We decided to register the domain www.twindex.de. After dropping a few lines of PHP to read out the images from the webserver and purchasing the camera equipment, we launched the webpage ...

Tobias started with a Casio QV-R4 with 4 MegaPixels. He was pretty pleased with that CASIO which was his first digital camera. The display started to flicker after one year, and some buttons did not work properly, so he had to give the camera to the service once. On the 18th of August 2004 a television set fell from its cupboard and smashed the QV-R4 (yes, I know, that sounds stupid - but sometimes things happen you just can not explain). The optics were fine, just the LCD display and the body of the camera were damaged. Tobias bought a new Casio QV-R51 two days later, and perhaps you can see a switch in picture quality from the 21th of August 2004 on. Tobias liked the quality of his old camera more, and therefore he decided to try to repair it. Christmas 2004 he had all the necessary spare parts, and from the 11th of January 2005 on the pictures are again taken with the repaired Casio QV-R4. Pictures are more vital and they look more natural.
Sven worked with an Olympus C 750 till 13th of may 2014 (3827 pictures). Starting with 14th of May 2014 he changed to a Canon EOS 100D and since 3rd of September 2015 he uses an iPhone 6. To work on the pictures, Tobias uses Ulead PhotoImpact 8 SE with Windows XP Professional. Sven uses GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program).

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