« December 2005 | Main | February 2006 »
I have this work practise of writing in notebooks, and then, when I've finished the notebook, scanning and archiving all the good ideas. It's not as onerous as it sounds. I don't have that many good ideas.
I had a bit of a backlog and in going through them I found some stuff I'd intended to blog while I was computerless. I thought I'd stick them up, if that's OK, hope you can read my writing. Apologies for spelling mistakes etc.
I have this work practise of writing in notebooks, and then, when I've finished the notebook, scanning and archiving all the good ideas. It's not as onerous as it sounds. I don't have that many good ideas.
I had a bit of a backlog and in going through them I found some stuff I'd intended to blog while I was computerless. I thought I'd stick them up, if that's OK, hope you can read my writing. Apologies for spelling mistakes etc.
This is from a Julian Cope interview in Word magazine. This is better brand strategy advice than you'll find in a stack of business books.
Found a lovely geek-oriented handkerchief at Magma books in Covent Garden today. It's made by Sukie but doesn't seem to be with the other hankies on the Sukie site.
I got my copy of Tom Peter's 60 today. On first glance it looks splendid, though I've not had time for a proper look. But what made me really smile were all the stamps, you can't beat the real, organic touch of genuine stamps - they're a sign that an actual person has been involved. And they illustrate that it's come from somewhere other, it's exotic, it's like the crackle on the World Service, it adds to the appeal.
Popped out at lunchtime to visit the Richard Long show at the Haunch Of Venison gallery.
I liked it. I liked that it was quick to visit but still worthwhile. I liked that he's picked a thing to do and he keeps doing it, you don't get the sense that's he relentlessly searching for novelty, he's found something that he thinks is good and he's been doing it since the 60s. And he's had a consistent typographical and graphic approach which gives the stuff a pleasingly timeless quality, like those Swiss railway clocks.
But most of all I think I envied his life. It seems like a great gig. Though I'm sure there is much travail along the way.
The title of one of his works reminded me of a post I want to do about the benefits of simplicity and of complexity. Must get around to that.
OK, here's the first of the serious videoblogging experiment things. Since I didn't get a question before the weekend I had a ramble about something I've been thinking about recently - the value of sharing a brand's expertise. It's not enormously coherent, but there might be something in it and it's only 5 minutes long.
There's two versions - .m4v which is optimised for ipods etc and a straight .mov version.
expertise.m4v (About 22MB)
expertise.mov (About 6MB)
And here's the Sherry Turkle piece referenced in the video. And here's the book of cool site.
Let me know what you think.
Walked through up through Regent's Park and went on the Belsize Way. There's a guide here.
To start with it was pleasant, but kind of boring, I wasn't suprised to learn that a lot of Belsize was developed as a rival to Kensington - it's got the same big, blandly impressive feel. If slightly untidier - full of academics and lawyers rather than Eurotrash and models.
So I was quite pleased to see a bit of tagging on a wall, made the place feel a bit more lived in.
I did like the look of England's Lane. You could easily imagine it being used allegorically by a N. London novelist. Has there yet been a novel called 'The Bins On England's Lane'
And being early January you see these corpses of Christmas all over the place.
It gets more interesting as you head towards Hampstead but you also realise that this is the place where the cultural elite was hatched. From Girl Guides to Montessori schools, Bloomsbury, communism, Air Studios, the BBC, Lee Miller, Roland Penrose, Goldfinger, they're all on this walk. And so you can see where the vision of Britain we're often being sold has come from. Little shops, leafy streets and everyone living within a dog's walk of Hampstead Heath - this is what we're supposed to aspire to.
I keep promising myself I'll go swimming here one day - or more excitingly winter swimming in The Serpentine.
So then I sat on Kite Hill and realised I could see the BT Tower in the distance, and since that's just about where we live I thought I'd try and navigate my way back - which was slightly perilous, becuase I don't really know North London. But there were a bunch of interesting things on, what I think was, Southampton Road.
I read this article in The Guardian today - about various popstars swapping ipods, it made me think I'd love to swap ipods with interesting people and discover some new music. I've got a shuffle sitting in a box that I don't really use any more (since I was lucky enough to get a nice nano) - it's loaded up with a fairly random selection of stuff from everything I own. Anyone want to swap?