Archives - Misc


Looking Forwards…

Happy new year pop pickers! I hope your bells were jingled, your halls decked with boughs of holly, and your merry gentlemen rested.

So it’s that time of year when we make resolutions about things we’d like to do over the coming year (which we then utterly fail to achieve), make predictions about the year ahead that are either so obvious they’ll blatantly come to pass (or so inaccurate we ignore the fact we ever made them), and make top-10 lists of upcoming bands, artists, films etc.

Although this blog was very much personal writing (and links) between 2000 and 2004, since relaunching in 2007 I’ve mostly kept the indulgent personal stuff out. Until now, so apologies dear reader, but this is a thoroughly indulgent personal post, written primarily for my own benefit, in the hope that by committing to these publicly, I might feel guiltier about failing to stick to them.

So, what do I hope 2010 will bring? Apart from the obvious stuff like world peace, an end to world hunger, and the Apple tablet, selfishly these are the things I’d like to try and do more (or less) of over the next 12 months:

 

Take more pictures

[ photo courtesy ben terrett ]

I love how Tom and Tom’s Noticin.gs game encourages you to pay more attention to the world around you. Capturing those random noticings makes you so much more aware of your surroundings. I also really really liked Ben’s Flickr 366 project, whereby he tried to take a photo every day of the year. And they’re awesome.

I’ve got a camera on me at all times. I’ve got some lovely apps (incl. Best Camera, CameraBag, QuadCamera, Hipstamatic, TiltShiftGen) to indulge myself with. So now I just need to actually take more photos.

 

Take back control of my health

[ photo courtesy ]

I have a bit of a dodgy back. I smashed it up a long time ago, and ended up having surgery to remove big chunks of my spine a few years ago. It’s loads better than it was, but still very painful to sit for long periods of time. So to keep the pain under control, and be less reliant on medication, I have to try and manage my lifestyle. Less sitting (so less time sitting at my desk), more core & strength training, generally taking better care of myself.

I didn’t manage my health very well in 2009. Lots of pain and lots of medication and not ending up in a very good place. I don’t want to repeat this in 2010. This year I’m determined to take back control – and stop letting my pain control me.

 

Do More (Good) Shit

[ photo courtesy ]

It might sound trite, but the School of Life’s How to Live Well in 2010 has some pretty sound advice:

Work to live, don’t live to work. Cleanthes, who was a Stoic philosopher and also known as the water-carrier, worked by night so that he could do philosophy by day. He was clear that he would work enough, and only enough, to support his real passion, the thinking and writing. His story is timely, for in a year that will be marked by more job insecurity and credit crises, it will be even easier to work so hard that you miss what you want.

Talking about getting a better work/life balance is par for the course, and I can’t disagree with that as a lofty goal. But it’s not just about fewer late nights and taking work home. For me, it’s about trying to stem the bloat of infobesity – enjoy the stream, the feeds, the tweets and so on, but realise that you can’t consume it all, and it’s not helpful to try to.

Streamlining what I do on-screen and doing more good shit off the screen. Great, wonderful real life stuff to feed the heart and mind. Fixing up our first house and making a home (and a new life) together. Hear more inspirational people speak. Actually attend the exhibitions I want to see. Get back into going to the theatre more. See more live comedy. Enjoying this fantastic city I’m lucky enough to live in.

There’s loads of other things big and small – from the obvious ones like getting fitter and eating better, to the random ones like listening to more podcasts and getting my robot tattoo (although I still haven’t decided on this one!). But I’m hoping that committing to them like this will give me the boost to actually stick to them. Roll on 2010…

January 4, 2010 in Misc | Permalink | 2 Comments

Get Naked!

We’re hiring at Naked London, looking for a kick-arse strategist to get Naked and join our band of merry men + women.

The hiring policy at Naked is ‘brilliant misfits’ – our people think a bit differently, like to challenge the status quo, and are generally bloody awesome (well, my colleagues definitely are, present company possibly excepted).

Naked people come from a wide range of backgrounds – including ex-media planners, ex-brand and account planners, ex-research and insights people, ex-management consultants. And our people have a range of pretty amazing skills – amongst other things, Naked people are life coaches, hypnotherapists, stand-up comedians, DJs, run their own record labels and clothing companies and more. So we’re a pretty eclectic bunch.

We have three pillars at Naked – which are centres of gravity, rather than silos, as we all work in some capacity across all three pillars. We’re recruiting for a totally awesome strategist whose centre of gravity will be Naked’s heartland pillar – Total Comms Planning.

The role will include comms planning for COI, so you’ll need to have media planning experience (and be familiar with the UK market), with more traditional channel planning as a string to your bow. You’ll be comfortable in the dirty world of GRPs and effective frequency, but this will just be one of your skills, and ultimately a small (but necessary) aspect of this particular role. Fundamentally we’re after amazing strategic and creative thinkers, who will help our clients think about the most effective way to communicate – across every comms touchpoint, from advertising to events to packaging to in-store to customer service and beyond. Your other client responsibilities will depend on best fit – other Naked clients include Vodafone, Nokia, Sony and Coca Cola, as well as numerous ad hoc projects, so you’ll get the opportunity to work on different bits of business, with different people, and flex your strategic muscle in different ways.

We’re not big on hierarchy or box-ticking, but you’ll be passionate about challenging the traditional view of communications and comfortable planning across ALL channels, you’ll probably have at least two years comms planning under your belt, and will be a confident self-starter who’s eager to get stuck in.

It also helps if you’re not scared of a bunch of nutters. Being a nutter helps, to be honest. Life at Naked Towers is pretty random, and if you want to work somewhere that’s all about formal process and corporate culture, then we’re probably not for you. But if you think that that you’d be a great fit for this role, and would like join somewhere which Fast Company named as one of its top 5 most innovative companies in advertising and marketing in 2009, please do get in touch

November 6, 2009 in Misc | Permalink | Leave a Comment

I don’t care if Monday’s blue, Tuesday’s grey and Wednesday too

Although Robert Smith was probably being metaphorical when he sang, “I don’t care if Monday’s blue”, for some people Monday is quite literally blue.

It’s explained beautifully in this absolutely fascinating film from Boing Boing Video: a remix of “Synesthesia,” a documentary directed by Jonathan Fowler, about people whose senses blend, or mix. Synaesthetes experience this in different ways: for some letters or numbers are perceived as inherently colored; for some numbers, days of the week and months of the year evoke personalities; some perceive certain sounds as coloured, while others find different words or sounds taste of different flavours.

Synaesthesia was once thought of as a disease or disorder, but many synaesthetes consider this alternate form of perception as a distinct advantage. Liszt and Rimsky-Korsakov famously disagreed on the colours of music keys, whilst Kandinsky’s synaesthesia was central to his work – he observed that his work combined the four senses of colour, hearing, touch, and smell.

For many it’s simply what’s normal – my friend Naomi has grapheme–colour synaesthesia, and she observed that it was a big shock to realise that not everyone else saw letters and numbers the way she did. Writer Patricia Lynne Duffy vividly recalls:

“‘One day,’ I said to my father, ‘I realized that to make an ‘R’ all I had to do was first write a ‘P’ and then draw a line down from its loop. And I was so surprised that I could turn a yellow letter into an orange letter just by adding a line.’”

Save for the possible influence of psychedelic drugs, it’s something that non-synaesthetes like myself will never truly understand, which is probably why I find it so very fascinating.

In this film, Dr. David Eagleman of the Baylor College of Medicine explains the condition, and four synaesthetes explain how they perceive the world. Amazing stuff.

[ via Boing Boing - full length version available from the Research Channel ]

October 22, 2009 in Misc | Permalink | Leave a Comment

A New Home

So, after 9+ years of blogging at kitschbitch.com, I’ve moved the blog to a new home. Welcome to Seemingly Unconnected.

The blog will be business as usual, the same ramblings about planning and brands and geekery ‘n’ stuff. It’s just that when I started blogging, it was a personal blog, and the domain name reflected this. Now that I blog about more work-related-type stuff, it seemed time to move to a more, er, work-friendly domain. That, and you can only begin to imagine how much spam you get over 9 years with a domain called kitschbitch.

So here we are, in the new digs. Still some links to update before the old blog gets taken down. The old blogger archives went a big stripey in the import so the 2000-2004 posts appear to have doubled up, so still some deleting to do (although if you’re reading posts from 5+ years ago, you probably have more to worry about than a few double posts). Still a bit of tinkering round the edges, and given that my CSS is exceptionally rusty (I know just about enough to break things…), I fully expect to cock something up along the way. Backup is my friend. But it’s time to move into the new home. I still haven’t quite decided what to do with the old domain. At the moment the old blog is still up there until I update all the relevant links (oh joy). Possibly a Tumblog. Possibly not. Suggestions on a postcard….

Oh, and why ‘Seemingly Unconnected’? It’s from a cracking William Plomer quote:

“Creativity is the power to connect the seemingly unconnected.”

The fun is in finding the connections amidst the randomness. Randomness is good. It’s where the good stuff comes from. But the great stuff comes when you start to join the dots.

So, here’s my new home for exploring some of the randomness – and hopefully, somewhere along the lines, the occasional joining of the dots.

July 20, 2009 in Misc | Permalink | 2 Comments