Testing the Posterous iPhone app
Here, have some photos of the estatesgazette.com offices in Holborn:
Tim Relf has no taste...
It shouldn't be this way – some of my best friends are farmers, my girlfriend is a farmer's daughter, I even work for Farmers Weekly. But The Archers epitomises all that's wrong with so much radio drama. It's too acted; too hammed up. It's as if the actors are trying to compensate for the lack of pictures with grunts that are a extra grunty, stutters that are over-stuttered, ooh-arrs that are a little too rustic.
BURN THE HERETIC...
The Past, in a Skip
via ageofuncertainty.blogspot.com
One of my obsessions that I have to keep at bay is a love for found photographs. I find photographs at sale at antiques fairs or in junk shops almost unbearably heart-rending; objects that were once beloved momentos thrown away and up for sale, totally removed from the context in which they were created.
I've had to be disciplined and resist their lure, because I have vast amounts of fmily scanning to do before I can think of any found photography scanning, but this tale of rescued photography just fills me with joy. Well worth checking out.
Conkered
It was just laying there, on the patch from the car park, as I made my way to work this morning. How could I not photograph it?
Walking in the Cairngorms, March 1989
Back in my final year of school, a group of friends invited me on an Easter holiday with them. It wasn't expensive; we took the train from central Scotland, where we lived, up to Aviemore, and then stayed in a youth hostel for the week. We cooked ourselves dinner, and entertained ourselves by spending our days walking through the Cairngorms, stunning mountains in the Highlands.
I was 17, and this was my first real holiday with friends, and I loved it. After a small accident, involving ice, gloves, my face and a swinging frame in a children's adventure park, I had a blast. I had experiences that week I have never repeated since:
- being caught in a whiteout, and then finding our way to a nearby bothy to shelter, by holding on to each other's backpacks.
- going from snowy winter to glorious spring simply by heading down from the mountains to the valleys between
- being so tired at the end of the day that sleeping in the communal bunkrooms was easy
It would be four years before I would go away on holiday with friends like that again, but this really felt like the first big step towards independent adulthood that would continue six months later when I left for university in London. Sadly, I'm no longer in contact with the four other people who were on the trip with me - Daniel, Phylida, Claire and Katy - but scanning my way through the transparencies I shot that week reminded me of what a great, life-shaping week that was.
The whole set's below:
Adur, Evening
You know, I could just get used to living here…
Tech, 1988 Style
This is my computer desk from the late 80s - probably '88 or '89. Yes, that's a portable TV it's connected to. And yes, that's a tape deck for loading programs…
RevStan might live to note the RSC production poster just visible in the top left of the picture. And yes, there's a hairdryer by the mirror. It was the 80s, I was a teenager. You blowdried.
Just noticed - two toy Daleks by the "monitor". WIN.
Amen (or your secular affirmation of choice)
So it seems we know too little to commit to strict atheism, and too much to commit to any religion. Given this, I am often surprised by the number of people who seem to possess total certainty about their position. I know a lot of atheists who seethe at the idea of religion, and religious followers who seethe at the idea of atheism - but neither group is bothering with more interesting ideas. They make their impassioned arguments as though the God versus no-God dichotomy were enough for a modern discussion.
Debenhams Matures…
This got a huge thumbs-up from my (fashion-obsessed) mother-in-law over the weekend. Debenhams is using older models in some of its adverts.
She actually felt she could identify more with the people on display. Goes to show that "aspirational" doesn't always need to mean "aspiring to look 18"…
Hints of that double dip
Our food costs have increased frighteningly since last year. Just to take a few examples from Le Manoir's own provisioning: our blueberries have gone up by 16% since 2009, butter 4.5%, flour nearly 12%, Jabugo ham 15%, Manuka honey 11.5% and milk by more than 8%.
That's the chef Raymond Blanc blogging about the business challenges of the current economy. Base materials and energy costs up. Interest rates are going to have to rise at some point. Many public sector cuts to come.
Anyone nervous yet?
Pre-requisite for modern media?
We firmly believe that you can't build a modern media company without having a platform, and TypePad is our platform for doing that.
Interesting choice of words.
Living in the UK - not so great
The UK and Ireland have been named as the worst places to live in Europe for quality of life, according to research published today.
I'm not sure how and why the UK went so wrong, but this article actually sums up what we've been feeling for a while. Unless you're in a certain income bracket, the UK isn't a great place to be right now.
Where now for Movable Type and Typepad? - a post on my "work" blog about the Say Media news. I suspect several people reading this know way more than I do about the future, but I wanted to put an alternative spin on it to some of the predictions of doom circulating...