Happy Halloween

This guy Simeon from my work suggested russian doll pumpkin carving, so here we are. Click on the pics to explore.

Russian doll pumpkins (do view as slideshow - 1 second)


"The making of..." slideshow


The hardest bit has scraping the flesh out of the orange and lemon without damaging the skin. Most nauseating bit scraping the flesh out the pumpkin - worse than gutting a fish.

Happy Halloween.

borders bookstores

I don't go to bookstores very often. If I do it'll be those budget outlet ones where you can get big books full of pictures e.g. Reuters photography, 100 Greatest Pieces of Pop Art etc etc for less than £10.

Recently, I found use for the huge Borders Oxford Circus, where I met my friend, grabbed loads of Rough Guide books for the whole of South America, sat down for a coffee and worked out where we wanted to go for a holiday. Nice job. Struggling to think of more use cases for Borders in my life at the moment.

One thing that was cool is the products they have in Borders stores right next to the counter. They are an odd mix of books, unusable gadgetry, and 'novelty gift' (a euphemism for the worst side of consumerism tat). Here are some things I found interesting:


tiny little books of quotes, etc - I would enjoy reading these, but I feel uneasy paying for a book of e.g. Oscar Wilde quotes when I am sure that a google search would yield them all quicker than you could read them. I think these little books just need a little more innovation in the content and covers, packaging etc to get them to be more meaningful/standout-ish.



game-pens - can't think of anything interesting or even moderately witty to say about game pens. They are cute though.



I really liked the tiny Sushi box, with mini-mat, mini-bowl-thing, mini-chopsticks, and instruction book. Just cute - good for a desk. I approve of this kind of nonsense, I guess, because of the craft/learning aspect of it.

shop windows, PoS

As most of you who know me will know, I one day would like to run my own business of some kind, any kind, as long as it's a bit quirky and fun. It would be good if it had some kind of shop too.

Here are a couple of shop fronts round the back of Carnaby St, London that caught my eye. Click the image for my new fledgling flickr set of Retail/PoS things.

tea rounds

There are 2 desk units in my bit of the office, with a total of 10 people (a six and a four). The average occupation is 5 I guess. I have tried to instigate tea rounds, which initially met with surprising opposition, but happily, some people seem to have bought into it.

The other day I made my biggest round yet - only a 5 tho (I am used to regularly hitting 6's and 7's at my old work). I felt so filled with joy and satisfaction that I took a picture of it.


my first '5' at my current work. you can see my "position of cup = desk position of person" system in action for remembering preferences.

Tea rounds are so important because:

• they force you to get to know more about people. "1 sugar in tea, but 2 in coffee" is something I have not encountered before
• there is something about the level playing field of the tea round that for one moment, draws people's relationships away from role, heirachy, have you done your timesheets, etc
• they generate banter
• sitting there, and having someone make you tea is brightens your day
  
• the simple joy and satisfaction of servitude
• the ethos and art of doing a good job in everything you can: nailing 5-9 different tea/coffee choices and preferences like a pro

Currently we are at approx 50% participation with a frequency of about 3 per day, which I hope to increase to 70% and 5 per day by Xmas.

jake's clothing brand

Every month at least I will go to TopShop, Urban Outfitters and all the other big shops like that - just something I have always done. It kicks in like a bodyclock - not like a girly: sudden pause, mid sip of coffee - "I haven't bought new shoes in ages", more a need to go and look at things and people.
Anyway this caught my eye, it's probably not new or anything.


jakes clothing

I quite like this as an idea, some profits going to CP charity, while they use the whole 'jake' vibe. My one objection is that despite this unique brand position, the clothes look exactly the same as everything else you can buy on the high street! Pictured is a pink t-shirt with US-retro-inspired print (yawn!). The website is good though: www.jakesoflondon.com , but tell me such a cute special (can I say that? is that PC?) little kid wouldn't want to be screenprinting something a little more unique and original!?!?

painting a jacket

I bought this cheap as chips denim jacket from Tesco and have now started painting it! Work in progress - comments suggestions welcome.

Link to the flickr photoset here

Media fragmentation and prosumerism...

... and just about every other trend you read about every now and then in the Sunday Times.

It's Sunday night and I am half-watching Gladiator, while listening to a podcast on iTunes while talking to a mate on MSN Messenger who is travelling round South America while half-using photoshop to create some stencils for a digital/craft project while blogging while trying to woo someone via SMS while searching for a retro/ironic vintage Yamaha keytar on eBay.

But I feel ok about it all.

social network sites

Ok I am only putting this up because at work today I was in a brainstorm session where I had used some screengrabs and profiles from social networks. Hardly anyone had a clue what I was talking about, which I found a little odd. What is it all, they said, a dating site?

It’s quite hard to answer exactly what a social network site is really quickly, and if you haven’t used one, you will almost certainly be sceptical, but it’s a place where you put your profiles, pics, blog, announcements, and links to all your friends profiles too. So you can get to know people by virtue of being friends of friends – I don’t have any stats for how many people end up dating off these things.

For ad-people, we get a uniquely private but at the same time totally public view into people’s lives, full of stories, nuances, and they way they interact with their social circle. It really brings to life who we’re actually trying to talk to, complete, if you’re lucky, with pictures and audio.

Is it a fad? I don't think so - I think some form of web-esque media where pictures and events can be shared between friends is here to stay.

And check this out for brands being rep’d online by these co-creating consumers we keep hearing about – it’s Cillit Bang man!



72 people have added the Cillit Bang man (Barry Scott) as a ‘friend’ and people just drop him messages and props the whole time. You can find dozens of brands which have fan created content like this. My favourite one to check out is MySpace , as well the slightly less aspirational FaceParty , and the ‘original’ Friendster. Happy surfing.

jeans at Tesco cost £3

This is one of those ones where I am sure I must be the last person to be catching on. I have previously blogged about Primark and ASDA George, but £3 for a pair of Tesco jeans? How do they do that? Yes, I bought them. Baggy cut hip-hop stylee jeans? No, I just bought a size 2” too big.



The last fashionable thing I bought was a pair of £65 jeans from a webstore a few months ago – I don’t think I could do that again now, knowing that I could have bought 21 pairs of Tesco jeans.

Right, so if you know me, you might think that I generally dress ok and have a reasonable eye for fashion compared to most guys. So where do the Tesco jeans fit in? My plan is to customise these things, like a bored 14 year old girl. Initial ideas include:

• bleaching/using Cillit Bang on them so they go unusually Hoxton pink
• screen printing onto them – Banksy/Snoop Dogg-style stencils (here is a great tutorial on how to DIY screen print for small quantities, from some girl’s blog)
• sewing a bizarre series of patches onto them

There are lots of articles flying around about individuality, and consumers customising things being the next hugest trends. This is nowhere more apparent than retail fashion. At the bottom end, clothing is getting increasingly cheaper and higher quality, while in the middle all the styles get replicated and homogenised ever more quickly (e.g. Zara, Urban Outfitters).

I'm happy to pay over the odds for something silly and little like a £4 sweatband, but £30 t-shirts (since when did high street t-shirts cost £30) are off the cards. Will keep you all updated with my clothing projects.

new technology on deadinsect

I have installed an rss/xml button feed.

If you're not familiar with the technology, for most people RSS is just a slightly quicker and more ordered way of reading news websites. It gathers the headlines and stories into convenient chunks for your perusal.

For example if you use RSS to read BBC News, you go from this:


To this:


So, for work I read about 20 news sites/blogs that are related to advertising (new campaigns, research, industry news, etc). Using the rss reader 'Sage' for Firefox prolly reduces the time this takes me from about 45 minutes to about 15.

The other bit of news, is that I have installed a search-deadinsect-using-google feature! I don't know what you would even search for, as frankly I haven't got a clue who even reads this site. I like the idea that someone might find it useful one day though.

parks and my nEW PhoNe CaMera!!

There are a couple of points to this post. One is that I have a cool new phone!

SonyEricsson K750i


It has a 2 megapixel camera, enabling me to bring you big hi-res goodness like this..

Click to enlarge!


(This squirrel is too fat to be on crack).

The second point is that being a W/SW London person I had never been to Victoria Park before today. It's turns out to be a lot like Hyde Park - nice. I was generally casing the area cos I'm looking for a place to live there but ended up only looking at parks and animals.

Hyde Park (old camera)

Hyde Park is surrounded by the poshest areas of London, and is full of tourists. The Diana Memorial is cool too.

Victoria Park (new camera)

Victoria Park is in Hackney, which has Broadway Market (sells extra extra extra virgin olive oil, wooden childrens toys, and burgers made from cows that have lived very good lives) and a small crew of 3-wheel baby buggies, but on the other hand doesn't have the best crime rate.

Homerton Hospital in the London district of Hackney treats more gunshot and knife wounds per capita each month than the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto, South Africa.

But when you reduce it to lakes and geese, they look the same.

golf putter shapes

Check out these putter head shapes (was strolling round Harrods)! Some people in some sports R&D departments are having a lot of fun out there. When I get old I will take up all the things that I haven't had time to do now, like golf and breakdancing. When I do, I will get the most outrageously shaped putter I can. I would like to get one that is a laser etched from a block of solid iridium silhouette of myself in a breakdancing freeze pose, where the face of the putter is my crotch.

tube art

I have fleeted through this a few times, but this is the first time I have really stopped to look at it. Pretty cool. Why can't all stations have art in them? I like the idea of having a series of pieces installed in adjacent stations, so you can get a story as you go through.


Gloucester Road tube, London

robot dog blog

I have always liked these Sony AIBO dogs. When I get an actual flat/house I think I will try and get one.



So I was intrigued to find the world's first automated robot blog from a Sony AIBO. It is no doubt a cool concept, though I would love to know what it’s thinking when it sees these things.

Being an intelligent, autonomous robot, Pedro wanders freely around our house. Every day from noon to 4.30 pm WEST, he takes a photo every half-hour with his nose camera and mails it to this blog through his wi-fi internet connection. All on his own! Hence, the term roblog - a robot's blog with no human intervention, of which I believe this is the very first one.

This Sony product creates it's own user co-created advertising content. How awesome is that?
If any of the pics had people or action in it would be really exciting.
Link here!

insects with advertising on them

I like insects and advertising. So this is the best thing ever. POW!



Link here!

the kings road again

This weekend I spent some quality time with the Kings Road, Chelsea. (Seeing as it is my high street and everything). Here is a cool offer:


The sainsburys/market thing just where Bluebird is has shut! I was in there just 15 mins before it closed it's doors for the last time. Not many people can say that. -_-

best sign ever

It might be because I was still very sleepy, but seeing this on brick lane almost made me cry with empathy. I like you tooooooooo......



I wanted to see what this store actually was, but was late for work.

goodbye old office

At my work, they have moved me from one office to the one over the road. I will miss the blackboard behind me. Here are some pics from my last day in the black and green office. (The new office is white and grey).



My two bosses who will no longer be forced to stare at my chalk art everyday.