Food 2.0

One of my favourite twitterers is noodlepie who blogs over here. I really like it when he decides to cook something in the evening and nips out to the market to buy the fresh produce. I find it inspiring and I'm a wee bit jealous till I get my kitchen sorted out.

In the meantime all I can do is take the occasional picture of the food I'm eating and blog it. This has made me think I need to get stuck into Jaiku again now that Google have bought the company and temporarily put a hold on new members.

It does feel like the future is heading into a Jaiku/Facebook and location based contextual information mashup. I can't wait for that day. The day when I'm waiting for a plane or train and I can hook up with likeminded individuals who have time to kill and who can also teach me more in 20 minutes conversation than any book could. Now I like books, I'm currently rereading The Master and Margarita but I don't think there is any other better face to face time than chewing the fat with someone I know a little bit about as a result of blogs or whatever other social media is available. Even a few pictures can tell me a lot. So here is my Haggis moment at Heathrow.

Then my favourite Turkish joint in Croydon which does all this for a fiver


I had lunch with Rory the other day. It was a much grander affair and well worth the trek over to Docklands for the best conversationalist in town. No time to snap the food but I can vouch for First Edition's yummy Lamb. Here's the layout I caught while waiting for the great man to arrive.


Then there was that awesome Scone on Picadilly that stopped me outside the window and lured me inside with thick cream and heaps of fresh berries too.


Then there was that Champagne and Chips moment last night. I went for the Rock at the Rock & Sole in Covent Garden with dirty hand cut chips. It was lovely


And no food post would be complete without a pic of Lloyd Davies of Perfect Path tucking into a Breakfast Club Breakfast of Champions


At this rate I'm going to be resembling the Pied Piper pork-pie-star himself Rob Campbell which I guess means I should get on the Diet Tangos ASAP

Update: Quite by coincidence Graham Holliday of Noodle Pie has blogged about a response I made to his twitter over here on his Guardian Blog for food.

The Hub

I went to The Hub not so long ago and was bowled over by the energy in the place which is ironic because they are all social entrepreneurs and very adept at saving energy for themselves and their clients. I want to show you a short film clip of their most creative hot spot. Right at the end I've revealed where it was filmed. Neat huh?

Tell the truth. Its more creative than most advertising agency departments isn't it?. Why? Because we need to tear down the department walls. Like yesterday.

Move Over Darling

That's China for ya babies. They gonna rock this century. Then its India.

Ophelia

I went to the Tate the other day with Lloyd Davis from Perfect Path. Mainly because I wanted to clear my head and I've been a wee bit obsessed with that painting by Millais of Ophelia. On the one hand it looks slightly fantastic and contrived but in real life it does have some of that Shakespearean drama licence of I'm drowning but I wont choke while I do it. Its beautiful anway and the attention to detail is such that all the tiny flowers are individually identifiable.

It also reminds me strongly of the video by Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue. Take a look around a minute and a half if ADD is getting to you. Neat huh!

Millais was kind of like the Damien Hirst of his day too. Totally up for squeezing every buck he could from portrait sittings, he was in much demand and there are a shed load of these which bored us a bit because he did so many. But then there are the Fancies including the Pears Soap Bubble painting that caused such a stir for selling out at the time and maybe he was, but tucked in this collection are some real gems not least of which is Ophelia which I still can't quite shake out of my head. Millais came from Southampton too, which is my home town so maybe there was a bit of that sitting in my head and willing me on to make the visit. I also lived on Millais road not far from The Kaiser although we didn't know each other at that time as youngsters. Also we had a gallery called Millais at Solent University where I studied for my degree even though that was pretty much a cover for not wanting to work for a few years after my girlfriend of that time tried to take her life. Much like Ophelia I guess.

Update: I received an email asking me to post ADD information. Warning: I checked their credentials and there's content of an adult nature there too. If you click on the image you can make your own mind up.

Living with yourself

Wherever you are in the world you may have scratched your head once or twice and tried to figure out what infinity means. Then when you'd given up on this you may even have reflected that we live in a world of finite resources. Fossil fuels are a great example. They are the reverse of infinite. That's finite to you and me. Once our selfish and greedy generation have used them up (like the fossil crack whores we are) there will none left for our kids. (Cue handing over responsibility to the scientists who make iPods we can put into blenders to show how clever we are, and will ultimately invent some mythical power that the kids can then forgive our first-come, first-served mentality)

We tend to fight wars over them, set geopolitical policy around them, have a century of the cheapest energy ever, and believe it or not make all things plastic out of oil before we throw them away in the contented illusion that what is OUT OF SIGHT IS OUT OF MIND. Other than that we like to fill up our gas guzzling SUV's from pipes at petrol stations and get scared if someone does it with a cigarette in their hand, because that would mess up our Christmas plans. Ah yes Christmas, where we go on another consumer spending bender topped off with orgies of indulgence before nipping into the vomitorium to make way for some more mince pies, Chrimbo pudding, presents and more cake while studiously avoiding any mention of the birth of Jesus Christ who I can assure you took frugality very seriously. Its time to make frugal a word to worship again. It may just save our skins.

So how can we do this while encouraging people to spend, spend, spend while achieving those growth growth growth (ugh) targets that make the world so tickety boo? Easy if you really think about it but it will take a rewiring of our economies, some sort of managed population decline and building businesses around recycling, sustainability, community and wait for this making money out of value not money out of stuff as Russell pointed out over here.

Anyway, just in case this is popping your amygdala out of its neocortex because your marketing and advertising acumen pays the mortage and the thought of saving the world really gives you a migraine then relax, because one of the worlds best thinkers on the subject John Grant has just published his book The Green Marketing Manifesto. You should stop sodding about and buy it immediately. As John puts it so eloquently in his book. If environmental issues are a moral question, then not doing the right thing is immoral. I say this is more important than reading the newspaper and casting judgement on others. Change the world. Change yourself.

Cheap is at somebody else's expense

Its been cropping up a fair bit recently but the idea that cheap is good is particularly obscene while we sit out this peak oil consumption frenzy. Cheap is only good if you can't afford anything else, otherwise it's just somebody else on the other side of the world scraping a living out of our frequent impulse-buys that end up as the pile of junk that heats the world while our collective urges are sated. I'm quite confident that oil at 200 dollars a barrell is the only answer for those oil junkies who are in complete denial about where we are. I will be having a little party around then but in the mean time here is the culture of our times on plastic bags. We worship cheap when in actual fact, we can't really afford it.

Advertising on the London Underground

I'm not very fond of the Underground because it's overly congested, can get hot and is a little claustrophobic. There is one upside that doesn't often get mentioned and that is the advertising. The poster advertising including the cross tracks are often unseen above ground and don't seem to get mentioned all that much. I love the simplicity of this execution advertising the V&A's Ice Station Antarctica Exhibition.

I also really like this campaign for a new type of Barclay Card that is a credit, debit and Oyster Card which is a cashless card first inspired in places like Hong Kong and Singapore.

The £800 million launch of the St. Pancras Station refit with its new Eurostar trains cutting the time from London to Brussells down to 1 hour and 50 minutes is also being advertised above ground.