Russell Davies

half the day in blurry photography

Started with breakfast at Farina's. That blur of whiteness hovering over the table is me reading the paper.

Then I recorded a podcast with Richard at the offices of United London. Shows you how odd the pinhole portrait is. This is the results of the camera pointing at him for about 45 minutes. And he's wearing a black t-shirt, it's completely removed him.

Then I had coffee with Dave who's camera you can see right there, with his triplicating coke can. And you can just make out where he was from the blur behind it.

Then lunch with Gary at Thanks For Frank's. I had chips.

november deadline

I forgot to set a deadline for the voting for November's Post Of The Month. So let's say it's Wednesday 9pm (GMT). i.e. you've got a couple of days.

round-up

Here's another random collection of links and things for a Sunday evening.

House - here's something from the Arena blog about the death of house music, a phenomenon confirmed by Dino, our resident expert, but who also pointed out that vinyl's enjoying a resurgence.

Creative Generalism - the Fallon planning blog has got some interesting stuff about the University of Colorado's family of degrees about innovation.

Twittererings - thoughts on twitter from Liz Henry, Kathy Sierra (via rodcorp) and JamesB.

Steven Johnson on the positive effect of kids on city living  and thinking from Richard Rogers on cities and suburbs (both via city of sound)

A brilliant report on an encounter between Craigslist and some Masters Of The Universe. A welcome reminder that not everything wants to be (or has to be) monetised. Via plasticbag. That's what I'm liking about this new round of web fun. Bubble 1.0 was business plan first, idea second. Bubble 2.0 is idea first, business plan maybe.

David's written some smart thoughts about Thomas L. Friedman's NY Times editorial about the Creative Consumer. (And he's kindly attached a pdf of the original for those without a subscription, thanks Dave)

A splendid way to start an impromptu gaming network with your wifi DS - badges. (via blackbeltjones)

Whenever I hear one of those huge motorbikes roar past ridiculously loudly it's obvious to me that there goes a rider who's afraid of speed. Otherwise why would they be expending that energy on sound when it could be directed to the road? A US think-tank expands the same point and suggests that only 1% of a car's energy is directed to ferrying the driver from A to B. As The Truth About Cars points out, this has serious implications for the future of car design.

This motorway map of the UK is just cool.

helicopter quartet

A wee post on The Rest Is Noise led me to a load of great stuff about Stockhauasen's Helicopter String Quartet. Which although first performed in the 90s feels immensely and appealingly of the 70s. It's always teetering on the brink of being a Look Around You-style parody but it's actually rather intriguing.

Stockhausen's notes and description of the composition are fascinating. The score just looks brilliant:

And, judging from this extract, the thing sounds pretty splendid too. I suspect the last 20 years of popular music have rather prepared us for Stockhausen's always changing, resolutely unconventional sound and he doesn't seem as jarring as he might have to previous generations. I'll have to get the CD.

united visual artists

Went to the V&A late this afternoon to see Volume by United Visual Artists. I really liked it. I was caught in an echoes dilemma for a while about the music, but it really won me round. Especially when I saw how much it delighted Arthur.

They've got better pictures of the opening night on their own blog and some great behind the scenes pictures here. It's hard to explain. You should just go.

want to work at deep focus?

Amber emailed this:

"Interactive NY/LA agency with a focus on entertainment and lifestyle brands seeks an experienced, innovative, and very creative Account Planner / Engagement Specialist.  Position is in LA office ( Venice!). Send materials to [email protected] - A full position description can be downloaded here"

(Russell: I added the picture, I don't think you actually get to work on the beach. Not all the time anyway.)

big noise for make trade fair

Stevie was kind enough to email about this. It's an opportunity for people to offer their ideas to Oxfam's Make Trade Fair campaign, the winning ideas will get made. It seems good. But it's only for people under 30. Damn.

decoration

Since this little corner of the blogosphere seems in sentimental mood today, I thought I'd share how much fun we had decorating our Christmas Tree yesterday. We're a typical agnostic/atheist/lapsed CofE/lapsed Methodist household. Christmas isn't particularly about religion for us. But it's still quite a special time.

I like the way that decorating the tree prompts you to think about previous Christmases and previous years. You remember the times you bought particular decorations. Where you lived. What was going on. Most of this stuff here reminds me of the rather splendid years we lived in Portland. I know it looks like a lot of dumb pop culture stuff but they're all rather evocative to us.

These always reminds me how lucky I am that Anne indulges many of my whims.

Arthur's a big fan of this plane.

It made me sad that we don't have more 'decorating festivals' in Britain. There's only one real occasion  when we alter our houses a lot, haul some special decorations out of the cupboard, bring in a tree, hang up some lights, mark the moment with significant occasion. That's one of the things I liked about the US. They had the 4th of July, Thanksgiving, all that. They were all occasions when you'd put up some decorations of some sort, mark the occasion by adorning your space with some objects that had specific associations and memories. They were handy little moments of reflection during a busy year.

penguin

There are still few enough good corporate blogs in the UK that it's worth pointing them out when they hove into view. So all hail the Penguin books blog (and associated flickr stream). Simple. No frills. But oozes Penguin-ness and lets you have a little peek behind the publishing curtain. They're also doing Penguin Podcasts (and they're already up to no37, I've obviously not been paying attention) which again is a simple, smart use of all the resources they have at their disposal.

You could make a convincing case that Penguin are the smartest branding/product business around at the moment. (And that they're have had the longest history of doing so, they've been innovating since 1935)

They're doing all sorts of interesting stuff. Much of it is purely the crafty, entertaining re-purposing and repackaging of existing content. There are The Designer Classics, the My Penguin idea and the Penguin 60s were innovative so long ago that Suck wrote about them. Then with new works there are little bits of genius like The Glass Books Of The Dream Eaters. And I particularly like the transparency and openness of this post about Puffin books. (Those that remember Puffin, I'd encourage you to take part, I will, when I've thought of something to say.)

I wish Harper Collins had been this smart when I did egg, bacon, chips and beans.

a transparent campaign

Chris Anderson (of The Long Tail  and editor of Wired) has written a fascinating series of blogs considering the future of journalism and media, focused through the question - what would radical transparency mean for Wired? (part one, part two and an interesting follow-up).

Some really provocative, thoughtful stuff in there, and through the serendipity of bloglines it was the thing I read just before the latest musings from Gordon's Republic (a blog by the editor of brand republic, the online presence of Haymarket titles like Campaign and Marketing).

And although you wouldn't call Gordon's Republic 'radical transparency' it's a really welcome slice of timely opinion on ads and marketing and stuff. It's sharply-written, simply designed (versus the visual assault of Brand Republic) and has the blessed feedback mechanism of commenting, which at least gives it the potential to be more of a conversation than a lecture (to use Mr Anderson's analogy.) Let's hope the Haymarket powers that be read The Long Tail blog. It's also good to see that George Parker is going to be writing for Brand Republic next year. That'll wake some people up.

(Full disclosure: I write a column for Campaign so depending whether you think I'm bigging them up or having a go, you could see me as either sucking up or nibbling the hand that feeds me.)