Fireworks fun

You know winter is approaching when things start going BOOM in the night. I flipping love fireworks, so I was very pleased to join some friends at Norfolk Showground for a colourful display of well orchestrated explosions and fun-fair induced nausea. Some English traditions are so mad they’re wonderful.

More photos over on my Flickr, but it was very cold and I was too busy sipping luke warm tea and chewing under-cooked burgers to take very many.

Also sparklers are great fun to mess around with now I’m old enough to disregard safety warnings.

Just for kicks

As you may well be aware I’m not one to get into a scrap. In fact, to quote Dylan Moran, “I’m not a fighter, I’m a bleeder.” However this weekend I went along to the Leisure Centre in Bury St. Edmunds to watch my brother take part in a kick-boxing tournament.

For the uninitiated (like me) it should be made clear that this is a LIGHT-CONTACT sport (which apparently means that instead of just beating hell out of each other they put gloves, head and leg guards on first). The emphasis is not on knocking your opponent out, although I did see one big bloke crash to the mat unconscious after getting kicked in the head. Rather the victor is determined by points scored, not just from the blows you land, but also the techniques you use. Apparently a full spin-kick is highly regarded.

What most surprised me (although it probably shouldn’t) was how many women/young girls there were taking part. More startling (should that be shocking?) was the age of some of the competitors. The youngest kid was just 6 years old. Is it ‘right’ for children to be taking part in a sport like this, even low-contact? On the plus side I guess it channels aggression, teaches self-discipline and builds confidence. On the minus side it promotes violence to impressionable minds as a something that they will be rewarded for. Hmm, tricky one.

Anyway for the full photos head over to my Flickr.

Also in case you were wondering my brother’s opponent had to retire with a dislocated shoulder in the second round and the bout was declared a draw, bad luck Pete!

Reading too much into it

Recently I’ve been looking at house shares in Norwich, with a view to moving closer to where I work and avoid the soul-sapping commute in and out of the city. This has involved a bit of me asking everyone I know if they’ve “heard of any rooms going”, but mostly it’s been trawling Gumtree online.

It works like this; someone has a spare room going in their house. They can’t find/can’t agree on anyone they know moving in, so they decide to throw it into the arms of fate and place an advert on the internet. They spend (possibly) hours constructing a short description of the available space, taking photos of their living room from fifteen different angles, then moving the pile of laundry and retaking the photos, then plonking the whole lot online so prospective tenants can indiscriminately click through them. And competition is fierce. For the house-hunter (ie. me) there’s no a lot to go on. It seems everyone has a “Lovely Large Double/Single Room within 10 mins/30 mins/Walking Distance of the City Centre.” The pixelated photos, taken at ‘artistic’ angles are no help whatsoever in judging the size of the room.

So I’ve donned my finest Sherlock Holmes headgear, waxed my Piorot-like moustache, and raised one eyebrow, Columbo style, in order to undertake some detective work and unravel the clues left in the style and tone of written description of each property.

As the following examples show, you can tell alot about a person from the way they write.

I would argue that gender actually matters quite a bit, gay or not. Needless to say I did not contact them.

Now I found this advert much more appealing, full of actually useful information and charm, especially the bit about nice pots and pans. Though I found it a bit surprising that the first advert and recieved double the number of viewings as the second, despite being posted only three days before.

By the way I blurred out those people’s email addresses so that I can beat you to viewing the house. So long suckers!

Forget Photoshop!

Think fancy photoshop effects are the bee’s pyjamas? Remember that the universe has been around for much longer and is much better at eye-popping visuals than anything Adobe is able to offer.

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Stormy skies o’erhead

We’ve just been hit by the storms that have been battering the UK today. It seems like a long time since I’ve seen a really big bundle of thunder and lightning and this particular maelstrom had it by the angry, echoey, bucket-load. The sultry atmosphere and thick grey clouds that hung overhead all afternoon were warning enough of the approaching storm; no-one needed some smiley weather forecaster to tell them. Up the road a neighbor battled to cover his newly varnished piping with a tarpaulin before the rain fell. And fall it did, flooding the drainpipes and filling up the patio, hammering down through the old roof tiles and seeping in cracks in the windows. Of course this storm would pale in comparison to those witnessed in many other parts of the world, but right here, it’s mightily impressive.

I love stormy weather, provided I’m safely tucked inside a waterproof shelter of some kind, there’s something so terrifying primeval about it. When I was a kid (and I’m sure this is just a trick of my nostalgic memory), we seemed to get such storms at least once a month. They were bigger two, with more blinding flashes that lit the sky like a monstrous strobe and crashes of thunder that shook the ground beneath my feet like an earthquake. One thing definitely hasn’t changed though and that’s the power cuts. Being in a pretty rural location such severing of amenities were to be expected, lasting for hours, sometimes days. I remember we always had a stock of candles in a handy cupboard (candles not battery powered torches for some reason).

However the lack of electricity this time around (because, true to form, the storm has knocked out the shaky local connection) feels much sharper and more meaningful. Without it I’m disconnected, my mobile, something I never had as a child, and my laptop, will run out of battery, the butter in the fridge will melt and I can forget about watching tv or surfing the internet. The water heater is gas powered, but the electrical gizmo telling it when to switch on, is not. It’s suddenly apparent that life would be utterly paralyzed without electricity to power my modern, 21st century life.

The thunder is still echoing around in the distance and I can smell the wet, earthy scent of rain on dry ground. A rainbow, shimmering stripes of colour has appeared over the river. It’s time to turn the computer off and go and watch the skies.

It’s all political

Like many people, I’ve really lost faith in the current political system. With the European Parliamentary Elections coming up, and the major political parties descending into farce, how are we supposed to make a decision on which one, if any, of these smug bureaucrats we are going to elect to represent us in Brussels. Well fear not, I’ve devised a full proof way – careful aesthetic analysis of their visual promotions, or rather, I’m going to vote for the person who’s flyer I think is prettiest.

Unfortunately for Gordon, Labour lose out straight away as they didn’t even bother to send me a leaflet.

First up are the Lib Dems.

The Liberal Democrat’s leaflet make shameless use of Impact titles and drop shadows on just about everything. The typography is crowded, it’s far too busy, with too many dull, muted colours to be eye catching or interesting. Attempts to create a bit of visual excitement with red colour bars, reversed out type and photos in circles, fail miserably. The photography is pretty low quality, grey and tightly cropped, not helped by the quality of the printing. It’s probably recycled paper though, and I like the A3 fold.

The Conservatives flyer uses thick semi-glossy stock with clear, bold typography and a nice combination of green and blue. The typography and general layout is well organised and consistent, although the photography lets it down, being too boring and posed for me. The left-side inside spread jars against the rest of the pages, looking like it belongs in another publication. The colours on the bullet-pointed titles also seem bizarrely out of place, almost as if the designer got afraid they weren’t using enough different colours.

Rather obviously for the Green Party, the leaflet they sent me is predominantly green in colour and printed on recycled paper, although taking into account their supposed ethical credentials, can they really justify carrying out unsolicited mail campaigns? I do like the choice of font, a chunky slab serif, authoritative but still friendly and used in conjunction with thin green bars with a decent consideration for consistency. I really don’t like the web style graphical ‘buttons’ on the inner right spread, they aren’t appropriate for this kind of publication, although they do reference their policies into clear, easy to understand symbols (bus = public transport!). Simple and effective use of imagery, all obviously taken at the same time, but they give a good sense of location and again consistency. Awful cropping job along the bottom edge though.

I also received a flyer from the BNP. Leaving aside the disgusting, barely disguised racism (I did say I’d judge the flyers on aesthetics alone), this looks at a glance like a bad insurance company flyer. Type is plain and pretty boring throughout, the bright yellow colour very lurid, but I suppose eye-catching. Imagery used look like stock photography, mainly using poor cut-outs or white backdrops. It’s rare for a piece of design to make me actually angry, but this monstrosity managed it.

None of these efforts blew me away, meaning my experiment has rather failed. I can’t make a decision based on the graphic design of the parties as they’re all pretty awful. Is it that they don’t care about good design, or do they not understand the value it can add to their message? I think they’re missing a trick there. However when the elections come round next week I think I’ll probably just close my eyes and pick a candidate at random.

Fresh design from the Otherside

Christopher Elkin is a talented designer/illustrator/all round nice chap. Check out his newly updated site here.

Dramatic increase in pig related deaths!

Seen on GOOD magazine.

Justice for Gurkhas

About bloody time! The British government have finally been forced to reverse the ridiculous laws that deny Nepalese Gurkha soldiers discharged before 1997 the right to remain in Britain. As the news story will tell you, it’s been a sustained campaign fronted by Joanna Lumley and picked up by the Liberal Democrats that has made this possible. The arguement that “we can’t afford” to keep them is as insulting as it ludicrous. The British Government cannot, in all good conscience, hire these men, train them to be some of the best soldiers in the world, send them to fight in foreign countries, usually the most dangerous war zones and then turn their backs on them once they’ve served their time.

Nepal will always be a special subject of interest to me, but this is a triumph for forcing a government to face up to it’s responsibilities.

Link it up: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/4/20090430/tuk-gurkhas-celebrate-commons-victory-dba1618.html

Also: http://www.gurkhajustice.org.uk/

Let us eat cake!

For the past couple of weeks I have once again been on a work placement at yet another creative design agency. I think I’m becoming something of an expert in “short-stay” assessments of how such companies operate, deciding very quickly whether or not I want to stay any longer, and more importantly whether they’ll even want to keep me on. I have to say I’ve never had any problems with any of the other people I’ve worked with, they’ve been to a person, interesting, intelligent and engaging. Maybe it’s easy for them to be nice to an intern for a month as they know I’ll never be coming back and/or they’re going to lump all the shit jobs onto me so they feel as if they at least should smile whilst doing this. I’m fairly certain this isn’t the case though (most of the time at least).

The time I’ve spent at Spring, tucked away in the affluent seaside town of Southwold, has been as refreshing as the breeze that blows in from the adjacent North Sea. A nicely sized and tight-knit bunch, I feel like I’ve been taken under their collective wing, and although I know this is not going to be a permanent arrangement, it’s great not to be treated like a passing faze, like teenage acney or the yo-yo.

The ritual that I’ve most enjoyed taking part in (and this even tops CPB’s paper plane competition) is the elaborate cakes that are made whenever anyone has a birthday. By sheer luck three people had birthdays in the last two weeks (pretty long odds for a ten person office), and the cakes have been stupendously bizarre.

First up was Rob’s cake, baked by Sophie, which commemorated his beloved VW Beetle. The cake, as you can see from my crappy  phone camera picture, was coloured blue; no mean culinary feat, as was the VW logo iced onto the top. Tasting rated it excellent, light and spongy with sweet butter-cream filling.

Second was Chris’ Crisp Cake, again made by Sophie (I think she just enjoys doing it!) and literally was a cake made from crisps, using layered tortillas and enchillada wraps, with tomatoes, cheese and peppers forming a savoury filling. Whilst it looked flipping impressive, I’m afraid to say that once it was reheated in the microwave I declined a hot, soggy slice.

Finally there was the cake made for Sophie by Rob, an epically oversized chocolate monstrosity, welded to the bread board he brought it in on by the solid chocolate icing he used. Superb piece of cookery though it undoubtably was, no-one was able to eat an entire slice as Rob had, he claims, used 20 ounces of sugar in the making of the cake. Tasting confirmed deliciously chocolately up to the third bite, followed by a burning sensation behind the eyeballs and migranes.

Hurrah for cake!