I haven't disapeared >> Dr Who

I haven't disappeared, as all of you will know sometimes things just get too busy. this time it was a positive, had to drive all over last night (picking up a new car, well new to me) didn't get home til very late and was ben's 9th birthday (on friday).

I am amazed at his obsession with the bbc TV program dr who. and he is not alone at all in his peer group. As a child I did watch it and as an adult I have watched a couple of episodes with him and actually fallen asleep much to his disgust.
the products available are scarey and as he is so captivated by the programme friends and relatives have joined in the buying dr who stuff. he now has a dr who lunchbox, as well as dr who cards, a cyberman that is movement activated, as well as a dalek computer game, never mind four different versions of the tardis.

I have to say the merchandising of the programme is incredible, some-one is making a lot of money, just from the amount of stuff ben has!

gizfolio >> hope the rain stops

for a while now I have wanted to mention gizfolio as I think the their refreshing attitude to design and creativity as well as working creating/finding work for freelance designers & others within realm of new media is worth checking.


perhaps it is a shame that I have cause to mention gizfolio today as I have been watching the news of the floods in the north of the country closely as carols family are from up there. hope you haven't been too badly effected.

logos >> sammy the surf dog

I just thought I would show that even I will design something on a whim, I was just checking out paula the surf mom's site when I saw she had a little competition. to design a logo for the surf report for north carolina's outer banks (usa), written by sammy the surf dog.
well how could I resist and just a short while later I had emailed my freshly designed logo. (macromedia fireworks is a wonderful thing!)

little did I know that not only would it be used for the surf report but also a complete clothing range, and accessory range. (the hoodies look good and the messenger bag is a must have!)

cross curricular >> different thinking

never mind the london olympic logo have a look over at for some great opinions and ideas davidthedesigner and noisy decent graphics. am fighting with my own design demons to create something that will hold the attention of 14 year olds for the best part of a year. it is part of a large cross curricular project. I am currently making a flash movie these here a couple of images from the as yet unfinished film.
the idea/premiss is a good one, drawing together the disciplines of product design, food technology, textile design, graphics, ICT, resistant materials, systems and control, & new media. to make a complete marketable package for a healthy, fast food restaurant/diner food chain.
I think we have a lot of work ahead to get it right.

>> glastonbury

every year I think this year I will go to glastonbury festival, and yet again I haven't gone. I seem to be the only person I know who hasn't been. even ben and carol went in 2003, that's when ben was only 5 years old. but I was too busy with work as usual.
I found out yesterday that the husband of a work colleague (who is famous in the car industry) has been almost every year and this year he has gone in their big motor-home that sounds a good idea especially with the mud.

I hope to go next time (camping) with the idea that hopefully all the separate parts of my family meeting up through the weekend, any way enough of that pipe dream.
check the links for more information. I hope its a good, if muddy weekend.
I will be watching on TV.

glastonbury festivals
music guardian
guardian, blogs, glastonbury festival

happy birthday gabes >> serious woodies

firstly a very happy birthday to my son gabes for friday 22.06.07. I really hope you have a great day gabriel.

and special thanks to davidthedesigner for pointing me in the direction of some seriously good looking woodies (american/californian surfing wagons).

>> go skateboarding day 2007

tomorrow (thursday 21.06.07) is go-skateboarding-day-2007 and all across the world skaters of all types and ages will be going skating. I am no longer part of the brighton skate scene as I moved to cornwall years ago my son gabes is. I am sure that during the day he will be going skateboarding.


as part of the event the vans skateboard team will be at the west pier brighton around 2pm. now the reason I am interested in the vans team is that they have some old school skaters as well as contemporary skaters, I will always consider myself old school, I first went skating in the 70's and that was in brighton then later london. since moving to cornwall the skate possibilities stopped as the old school skateboard parks became derelict, and generally we have less tarmac, and concrete down here, so the beach becomes the way to go and surfing the real deal.
however more recently some repairs and rebuilding has happened and I now have some good skate parks close by, and good friend and surf98 colleague moby is the man for them (check his surf pictures on the surf98 site).
anyway to add to the skateboard day I thought this video made in brighton might be worth a look.

.ppt >> projectors and presentation

probably because I work in a room that has a fixed projector coming out of the ceiling (mounted on a piece of polished scaffold pole) connected to a desktop computer that I can set it up and make sure that I have a screen that is in focus, no reverse parallax's in my room. I think I am getting increasingly intolerant of a badly presented anything.

I work in a educational situation where so many building have been adapted, I know that my room in its fifty years has been a sewing room a science lab, and now a room full of computers.
so I have to get round the problems of a strange shaped room and odd acoustics as well as the lure of computers for students to play with and look at web based email working around the network restrictions firewalls. generally playing on line rather than studying, using proxy servers so as not to get caught.

(there is just no need for this!)

it is funny that many people who do not work on computers all the time have a different idea of what is interesting. I am still surprised that a really academic educator will sometimes arrive having spent ages on a Powerpoint and wonder way the students are so bored as soon as the presentation starts, not realising that most of the audience have been using Powerpoint since they were in year 4 (uk) 8 years old.

I am even more surprised when at supposed professional meetings presenters don't take the time to set up equipment to provide the best viewing experience.
I know that there is heaps of stuff on youtube, talking about death by Powerpoint, but I could cope with some of it if only the equipment was set up properly as well as the presenter not reading it out and then giving me a photocopy of it all!

back to what you know >> george greenough

it wasn't going to be long before I returned to my love of the ocean and surfing and whilst looking for something else I found a few pictures that I had to share the first one especially. even though I grew up on the south coast of england I have a few photos of me as a 12/13 year old looking like one of my all time surfing hero's george greenough. I was born a few years later than him but with out knowing I seemed to have had a similar interests and dress sense, until I decided to be david bowie for a year or so.


the man who did more for surfing in general not just kneeboard surfing which he is most usually only credited with. his designs for smaller surf boards along with revolutionary attention to the detailing of the skeg (fin) broke new ground in the late 60's and 70's and to this day the hydrodynamics of a pretty much all surfboards in some way have been influenced by george's designs. the site I was looking at was california surf museum.

be sure that I will return to mr. greenough as his influence is firmly embedded, in both my surfing and design life.

artfinder >> tate liverpool >> sir peters retrospective

as you will have gathered I am a fan of sir peter blake therefore it was pleasing to get a comment left by (lydia) of artfinder, who is opening a second gallery in the albert dock liverpool in 2 weeks! to coincide with the major retrospective of sir peters work at the tate liverpool. looks like a trip north is in order.

more info Peter Blake: A Retrospective

sir peter >>

with reference to the last entry I posted this on twitter in may, didn't get the job by the way! but thinking about a month on, its probably a good thing.

ideas >> peter blake

I while ago I ran a very short project with some year 9 students where they had to choose any object from a pile of prepared cuttings and images as well as toys and other small items the only had only 10 minutes to create a grouping before I took a photo to create a picture these are just two of the results.

They were not given any theme or title to work to, only shown some of peter blakes work, and the idea of creating something from popular images were shown.

the students really enjoyed the experience. I could see that it completely broke down the barriers to being creative. as their thoughts were based around having fun, making something that they liked, from things that were popular and provided. these are just a couple of the results picked at random.

surf nation >> alex wade

about a month ago I remember reading about alex wade who I have heard of within cornish surfing and seen the name on articles in the british press but I was introduced to his blog through paula who as some of you know is based in north carolina, USA.
paula runs a cool blog herself queen of the surf pirates and daily surf check for the outer banks area, small world!

if you haven't checked it I recommend you have a look at alex's blog surf nation, as well as looking out for his new book surf nation (in search of the fast lefts and hollow rights of britain and ireland alex wade), published in the uk in early july.

london 2012 >> banksy

it is probably all the coverage of the london 2012 logo that set me off thinking about graffiti and tagging, though the more I think about the london 2012 logo the more I think that aside from it being unbelievably awful the publicity it gained was out of all proportion. perhaps that was the intention? as I still can't see any other reason for it, but I can't see the marketing guys on that brief being as clever as that.

any way to the graffiti I have long been a fan of banksy and and have to say that in the right place the banksy work is so good, not so much the visual tricks more the political statement and place that have made me look and notice.
whatever you think of banksy the marketing or lack of it in the conventional way is major a reason for his/their huge success.

back to what I know >> starman

I have been a fan of david bowie since I first saw him on top of the pops playing starman in 1972. my best friend ham ran over to my house to see if I had seen it. He also asked me if thought david bowie was a man or a woman!

This particular song reminds me of being at school putting henna in my hair and listening to music my parents didn't like things were pretty good and I probably thought that I was pretty cool around that time.

rationalisation started >>

I have been doing even more thinking than usual. instead of finding things to take a picture of and write some inane comment about, I thought I would rationalise this blog malarkey (or try to).
I have spent hours considering whether it is worth carrying on with this blog every day.
as with so many things I am not doing it for money, but I am doing it for me and hopefully you.
just a short comment from davidthedesigner last week, he has known me since I was a little student, (more than 27 years) so he is allowed to question me. followed by a conversation later on with carol, who said 'she must thank david for pointing out the bleedin' obvious that I couldn't see for myself'.

so rationalisation started, no more podcast, no more davo - (mobile), might even stop doing some other stuff. I have taken off two of the six email addresses that forward to my blackberry, I mean how important do I think I am! stuff can wait!

any way the rationalisation starts as of now
I will only update the blog monday to friday.
I will try to keep it positive and for the most part design based.
I will obviously include surfing stuff when ever I can.

one (extra) thing I will not stop doing is the surf writing and obviously surf98 website.
I have to finish the next article for Go2 magazine July's edition to finish by monday night. good news Go2 it now available online as a .pdf file so you can read it anywhere in the world.

it feels as though I am starting again with a clearer mind so I have changed the look and feel of the blog and actually feel happy about it again, that has got to be good.

now I might concentrate on my day job a bit more!

rationalisation time >>

more >> busy stuff

yes you guess it another very busy day but time enough have picked this rose from my garden, it a a special type (not sure the name I will tell you tomorrow). my mum gave it to me last year. I am afraid that is all I have to say for my self. if I get a chance I will post a proper blog tomorrow afternoon, the dust might have settled by then, but the way things are going I can't be sure.

so busy again >> but I stopped for this

another silly, busy day of even more stuff to do, sorry again for such a short post.
I did however have enough time to check the shop that had the printing sets as above that I had talked about in previous post.
this time I bought one (it was 2.99! reduced!) and I have had 10 or so minutes of fun loading it, getting printing ink all over my hands.

(sorry for the very crude picture editing of my mobile number, just thought it sensible)

so busy today >> only stopped for this

sorry for such a short post today, I have been ridiculously busy and only managed to force myself to stop for enough time to take this picture of the sunset.
I was outside my house getting in to the car on my way out to somewhere else!

I know it is a bit strange >> my fridge

I might be a bit odd or even obvious but you can tell a lot from what is in peoples fridges.
I can remember it was a question carol asked me when we lived at different ends of the country and only saw each other at weekends, (before we got married and carol moved down to cornwall).

I took this just now I wonder what it says? included in the fridge today is
asda irish cheddar
pj smoothies,innocent smoothies, innocent smoothies kids
fruit juices from tesco and asda
drink cartons recycling advice
bertolli olive oil spread
pizza express olive light dressing
danone activia yogurts
loyd grossman tomato and basil soup
quorn sausages
duerr's seville orange fruit spread.

there is a whole lot more even the salad in the salad crisper's is local but has a web address associated with it.
as you can see pretty much all the items in the fridge have web sites.
except carols south australian chardonnay, it simply has a postal address I wonder what that means?

it would be interesting to see what's in your fridge?

I like this blog >> dan lockton

I am not really sure how I found my self looking at this blog/website today but I must have spent 30-40 minutes just finding more and more to read.
dan lockton an industrial designer, engineer and writer with a special interest in consumer products, transportation and mobility, and the relationship between technology and society, especially architectures of control.
dan seems to have got things sorted as far as the thinking, looking and doing, so I will be sure to check again.