Russell Davies

scary youth

Are you a planner? Have you been doing it for a while? Pretty good at it? Doing it like you've been doing it for years?

Be afraid, be very afraid.

I had a small moment yesterday visiting blogs and stuff that trainee / ad school planners are putting together and it struck me; these people are really smart. Informed, insightful, energetic and funny. And they're blogging and sharing and connecting like mad. These people will take our jobs and they deserve them.

Here, here and here are some people worth employing.

And actually if you're a wannabe planner without a job, but with a blog/website let me know, by commenting here, or emailing me and I'll make a little link list so people can see who's out there.

the sixth assignment

Don't forget. Assignment 6. Due in by Midnight Sunday (GMT).

fast food, fast book

Kevin Jackson has written this splendid book - Fast: Feasting On The Streets Of London. (the image above is from the book, off of Amazon).  Portobello books were kind enough to send me a copy.

It's splendidly enthusiastic about all the brilliant varieties of Fast Food you can get in London from kebabs to eels. (Though it's predictably sniffy about the corporate varieties.) It's dense with all the little facts you want to know about the histories of London's coffee houses, Milk Bars and chip shops. It has a nice line in mixing the trivial anecdote with the heavyweight academic reference and I really like the photography. You really get a sense of an author who likes what he's writing about, which meant I powered through it in an evening, using little sticky notes to mark all the places I'm very keen to visit. Top stuff.

sleeping machine sounds

I love the serendipity of the web.

Campular posted a comment on the buddha box below, I followed the link backwards to simonsound. And found this simple goregous, elegant site for a company that does all sorts of sound stuff. With great podcasts, stories of fascinating projects and best of all some gorgeous music. (Scroll down and listen to Sleeping Steam Machines, completely lovely.)

funky lunch

I just had lunch with Funky Dave. At the Breakfast Club. What a nice and interesting man.

Anne has questions

...about family holidays and the wisdom or otherwise of holidaying with other families. I'm sure she'd be grateful for your thoughts. If you have any.

(I think she worries we'll go mad if the three of us keep doing this kind of stuff together. On our own.)

clouds

If you ever have a look at my flickr stuff you know I like to fill an idle moment taking cloud pictures with my phone. But my cloud appreciation is nothing compared to Gavin at the Cloud Appreciation Society - one of the best looking sites on the web. The photography is stunning. (Much better than the one above. Maybe I should get a new phone.)

And now the book's finally coming out. Hurrah.

idle moment from the archives

I was touring the Davies archives the other day (ie I was looking under the bed) and I found this old copy  of The Idler from 1994. And then I remembered I'd written an article for it - click on the above to read it. It's rather quaint. Very cliched view of the web, you could tell I'd not lived in the States yet. What dates it even more is that on the next page there was a piece from Ivan Pope explaining things like what a URL is.

this is why you shouldn't have a business of just planners

am I too late for podcasting?

You'll have noticed the absence of video recently. Sorry about that. Lugging the camera around was too much, and it's not like my visual presence made much difference. So I've decided to try a proper audio podcast. It's got some music, some bits of radio and audio and this week features a guest appearance from Elmer Wheeler whose record (Selling the Sizzle) is as good a guide to planning as any you could hope to find.

I also try to answer a question someone sent me about the difference between advertising in the US and the UK.

Caveats: I'm still learning how to mic myself properly. My taste in music is odd. I can't mix.

The levels are a bit up and down. It's not graded yet. MP3 It's about 58 minutes and about 53 MB.

And you can subscribe in itunes by typing Russell Davies into the podcast directory. Two entries come up, I'm not the Doctor Who one. Let me know what you think.

MP3