bluetooth headsets, what that all about?

I know that they are hardly a new thing and I am a bit surprised to be writing about them. but I had to. yesterday I was out in my nearest city having a look around bit of shopping playing on the mac's in the mac shop (wondering how long a macbook air would last in my house).

when having sat down for a nice coffee I could help noticing the bluetooth headset that one middle aged lady had on, it was the black version of the one above. I tried to get a picture but was too worried that her (much larger than me) friend/coffee partner/husband might get cross. then I started to think and look more. quite a few people had bluetooth headsets on. not the average people you would think of delivery van men/women sales reps, I know that sounds pejorative and I apologise for that but I am sure you know what I mean.

what do these all these people need them for, how important are the calls they might miss? I have my phone with me most of the time but tend to turn it off when I am sitting down for a coffee, in fact its on silent msot of the time. I know in the scheme of things what I am saying is really not that important but I had to say it somewhere.

a rare putt, while in the city computer shopping

the weather was cold but very sunny & bright this past weekend.
tempted in to the city (carol successfully got the new laptop she wanted). we parked up at the hoe, close enough to walk into the shopping areas, but also a nice place to enjoy the size of the sky.
I love sunshine and the light especially when the sun is low in the sky, perhaps too much as my eyes are suffering from being in the sun a bit too much over the years as (well as age).

while we were walking back to the car we noticed I new addition as far as I am aware to the greenness of the hoe a putting green. I am a great golf fan but I like playing at it , (well pitch and putt). so we decided to have a go 18 greens later the sun was going down and the freshly made coffee was calling from the cafe, a really enjoyable time hour or so.

torch >> recharging >>99p

it is not often that I find something (apart from the occasional food stuff) that I actually like in a morrisons supermarket.
I had gone to the dentist with ben we both had check ups great nothing wrong so I am free from the dentists chair for another year!! ben has to go back every three months as they are monitoring his new teeth as they come through (he is 8). the dentist is near morrisons so we dropped in to get some bits (as carol says).
while we were there carol pointed out this torch. I am sure that it was produced in china under bad conditions of overwork and underpay. just looking at the design and the function and had to buy one (well we bought two). the torch is selling for 99p, as it works using dynamo system and no batteries it should have a much longer life, the batteries alone for most torches would cost more than a pound.
I thought I would post it I realise that it is nothing new, both wind up radios and torches have been used across the world for more than ten years largely thanks to trevor bayliss.
it was more the place and the price that I found interesting. its not to get you to rush to morrisions (as it probably would not be worth it) but just to make you think that things do not have to be expensive to make a difference.

batteries are so difficult to breakdown when dumped in land fill and at least this torch though plastic does not need batteries and actually feels nice and I think looks good as well.
at 99p, I do worry how a profit can be made on it with out exploitation, I wonder whether the workers who make/assemble the torch have the opportunity to have their children's teeth checked every three months without charge?

(morrisons press release fair trade coffee in their cafes)

the hammock

one of the best things I ever did when I set up an area in the house to work (when not at work) if that makes sense. was to put two hooks in the walls each side of an alcove that doubles as a dining area. in which we have a square table, a couple of computers, and the dogs crate on one side on other side is a round dinning table.

when we have family staying and we have to juggle bedroom space or when I fancy an afternoon relax I get my parachute hammock (carol bought it for me when I was away in france a couple of years ago) hooked up using a couple of climbing caribinas. (I love caribinas)
today was such a day I cut the grass in the front (its a very small garden so it is not much work) and generally took it easy outside in the beautiful spring sunshine. then came in an put up the hammock and had a lovely snooze ZZZZZZZZZ ......

back to normal >> if there is such as thing

well enough about the complexity of my family and the posts of the last two days.
back to some observations.
I was in of all places tesco today and was very surprised (I started as a fashion/textiles designer in 80's when ms hamnett was a fashion icon) a katharine hamnett display, in tesco.
it made me think I was surprised perhaps I should not have been but as I no longer follow the fashion business from the inside as my work has lead me to a different side of the business.

I really only get my information from looking about me and reading stuff. I don't have to go to trade fairs that tell the designers what the yarn company's and the colour forecasting company's will be telling what colours will be available the following year and then design stuff for between 18 months to 2 years ahead. which is a bonus as far as I am concerned.

I thought a lot over a tesco coffee (the ham salad was for ben) about whether katharine hamnett had sort off sold out to have a collection of her clothes (well clothes that she adds her name to) on a rack in the largest retailer in the country famous for under cutting other mass-market sellers/supermarkets. even allegedly producing the £3 pair of jeans, which you can buy in the same store using cheap (I did not say slave labour) labour at that price it would nave to be cheap,
the selling points of the tesco/hamnett range is that the E in the name is for ethical, all clothes carry the fair-trade mark and are 100% organic.

I have come to the conclusion that I agree with her, even bought a 'choose love' 100% organic cotton hoody (for carol).

gabes >> coffee >>

I have only turned my computer on once today and that was to do this no work for a whole day!
the images I have put in the is post today are not random, but considered.
gabes goes back to brighton in the morning, hope you have had a good week (enjoy the surf dvd) and the steaming coffee well I like it. no links today and yes it took less 5 minutes to do this.

family eating out >> pizza express, starbucks

today we were in our city again, first to starbucks then after a good look around the shops and the new mall! rather too long in waterstones looking at books is so unbelievably absorbing. as me, carol, gabes (13) and ben (8) were all totally engrossed in books for ages. all we bought was a dr who book (ben) and a small model of stonehenge (don't ask).
we decided to go to eat, now I have probably as much trouble finding somewhere to eat as the fussiest child. I don't eat any meat or cheese but I have started to eat fish in the last few years, so starbucks is fine for a coffee and a snack.
I have always liked italian food and much as english style pizza especially at pizza express is not really italian in the true sense well it is close, much like starbucks isn't only a little coffee shop I am prepared to buy into the world of a corporate money making image. if it tastes ok, does not harm any one, does at least something positive (fair trade coffee, for example) and is designed well.

pizza express is somewhere I can remember going to as a child, it has been around since the mid sixties I know that italian interior designer enzo apicella designed a lot if not all of their restaurants and the corporate identity / logo. I was looking at their logo today while enjoying the meal all with the rest of us and I am sure that is has changed over the years, I have no basis for this just I think it looks different than it did in the 70's. does anyone know if I am right?
any way thats all except to say the idea of having a children's menu at last is nice especially bambinoccino a bit corny but ben liked it.

early post >> hopefully short as well

a couple of people have mentioned today that the last few posts have been to long and rambling so I am going to make this short, I have to get some work done as well.
in the past as some of you will know I never used flowers in my design work. for some reason I have changed I not only embrace flowers in my design work and photos (check my flickr). I also happily wear flower designs have a look at the fabulous billabong shirt I got yesterday (left).











another surf/design related thing that in the past annoyed me was the idea that you had to have a vw camper to be a surfer (I have nothing against vw campers it is the stereotyping of the surfer I hate). well don't worry I haven't got a real one but carol sneaked one in the house in the form of a money box a few weeks ago, and yesterday bought another one. do you know I don't dislike them so they are even allowed to be kept in the kitchen in the area that I sit to have my coffee and work on my laptop when I need to think. is the boring old fart (me) excepting change? I doubt it.

special mention to davidthedesigner for posting two video clips on his blog in the last few days that gave me a very good retro feeling and a laugh as well thanks d~the~d.

one of those days >> thinking too much?

I have been so unproductive today, I can't think it was just because the clocks moved forward or we had to get to falmouth for ben's rugby match (his team won again). we were a bit late as well as had to relying on the sat-nav to get us there which in its self quite interesting.

all the time I was involved and watching the game but thinking about the ideas I have for the hub again as well as trying to work out why the mp3 recordings I have been gathering for the podcast dgthekneelo.podbean aren't working properly. since I have been not getting round to doing stuff by finding other things to do that don't really need to be done, so as you can imagine I haven't got anywhere. in a way it has been an OK day though, I can't expect every day to be the way I want it to be.

I have had one of the least creative days for ages. I did manage to achieve something I found a nice place for coffee in truro. I also bought a nice new cup to drink it from when I got home.
oh yes I bought some good coffee as well.

in a rush >> waiting >> store design/layout

how many times have you rushed to get somewhere got there exactly on time only to be kept waiting and waiting! well that happened to me today I had to go into work two hours teaching then into a meeting then rush to see the consultant (about my shoulder) but ended up waiting for 2 hours 20 minutes. now I know that there are always people worse off and I realise that my need is not as great as others but it was a clinic I had an appointment time! I just had to wait quietly.

I don't want to use this blog to complain about stuff that has nothing to do with what the blog was started for so I'll stop.

I did however have a chance afterwards to go for a surprisingly nice coffee, (I chose not to have it black as would usually in case it was not very nice) at a very large retailer, as I was enjoying my coffee and carrot cake. I got set to thinking if this retailer take £1 of every £8 spent in the the UK, how does this reflect on the design/layout of the shop.



I also remembered that in the early 90's I was responsible for designing the floor layouts for a very large menswear retailer when they opened their flagship shop on oxford street, london and across the country the group where then bought up by eventually (arcadia). the design/layout of a shop obviously makes an enormous difference on how much money it makes I then realised why I had stopped doing it!

I have added a few pictures I took while I was there. I can't say I found any of it inspiring in any sense. though is so successful perhaps i need to think why, it can't just be price can it?


love the jars of octopus, I am sure not all the shops in this group sell them, so regional tastes must be catered for.

3 things from the kichen >>

I have been trying perhaps too hard to be inventive, informative and or complex in the last week or so in this blog.

but after a very interesting conversation this afternoon which ranged from barcelona to goudi, creativity to starbucks, ICT and the performing arts, I realised that sometimes you can try just too hard.

in the so called creative/design world things/images are so often not that good, it's more the explanation or intellectualisation of them that convinces you that it is good.

so I thought i would go it my kitchen a photograph 3 things that I liked for no other reason other than I liked them for some reason. Some cake, left over from carols birthday, a waitrose espresso tin (I just liked the red), and some chilli plants that we are growing as I like chilli's.
as I was thinking in 3's I have included in no particular order and for no particular reason 3 blogs that I looked at and enjoyed today that I wanted to pass on art design by, urban fonts and idealist, none of them new to you all I'm sure, but never the less still worth a look.

oh yes I ordered the (what if) 'sticky wisdom', book as well a good day all in all.

couple of things >> yesterday & tomorrow

carol and ben went in to the pictures today and out of interest (mine) I asked if they well carol could get a picture of the interior of the McDonalds with the green outside from yesterday. as you can see upstairs where this was taken, makes no reference to McDonalds at all. not that it was a question but the place that I went to yesterday with the nice coffee was M&S.

looking through the surf sites as I do I found that London will soon be getting its own wave. an huge indoor surf park boasting machine-generated waves is being planned. called the Surfdome, the first of its kind in Europe, will feature a 75m long pool recreating perfect surfing waves. apparently able to create breaking waves up to 8ft high. I have been to a few places in europe with an artificial wave machines and they have been a bit rubbish. lets hope that this one is good as it will keep the London hordes away from cornwall! (joke) as a full time resident of cornwall it can get a bit crowded in the water with summer surfers. they should come down this weekend with the waves we have currently 8ft and some, water temperature is 10C and air temperature about the same. I am not really a cornish independence protester but I was reminded of the cost of living down here when the water bill came this morning, the highest water bills in the UK by far!

late again >> dress it up >> coffee >> colour

I have been giving myself a deadline to get this blog finished by 12 o'clock midnight each day as I have my surf forecast site to do and other work stuff as well. I am writing this is for Thursday so I missed it once again, hey just checked the clock and I made it.
nice day if a bit long, no real work done whatsoever another day in the city (with ben and carol). as you can see I have not been using a real camera just the mobile. do you believe the quality is in the photographer or the photographer and the camera? I think I need all the help I can get so I will try to use a better camera when ever possible. I have been looking up and walking slowly as usual and noticing that is matters so much how things are dressed up. maybe it's country wide I am not a McDonald's fan but the branding / I-D for one of the branches has changed / changing it's not my area if specialty so I might be way out of date. I think it is still selling the same stuff, I didn't go in but it looks nice especially the chairs. Starbucks has a better image and is a comfortable environment very soft sofas even space to work sometimes, sells fair trade coffee and usually my coffee stop of choice. however today I took a risk and tried a different (coffee) cafe. not somewhere I would like to think to be aimed at people like me but I found out the coffee was really very good indeed, can you guess the cafe just from the colours outside (the last picture) hardly difficult but still. after so many years of looking (up) at colours shapes and stuff, working in the industry, even currently teaching business and enterprise trying to get students interested in the importance of colour in selling an image, product or service is not easy. unless you are one of us many people don't seem to realise or care what is happening to them every day.

saturday >> shapes & colours

must have be to eden 25 times perhaps more each time I see new things I don't mean their events but shapes and colours that are always there. it was a cold day and not crowded it made interesting as I could see the buildings and the shapes of the structures rather than the people. I do like eden, it usually looks better in very bright light but today it was dull and things glowed rather than being bleached out by the sun. I love the colour of the tables and chairs in the right hand picture, it was starting to get dark when I took this one. I do realise that it carries is own message about sustainability, and eco-friendly living that is not lost on me, however colour, shape and form have an important place in living. get this for a change the coffee was very really nice today.

kitchen & bathroom >> tiles

I was sent this link, it's well worth a look.

nothing to do with the link but I have to show a picture taken in my hallway, the story is that a year ago almost to the week we decided to get the kitchen and the bathroom done. well the kitchen is sort of finished the man who came to do it went months ago but it still isn't completely finished. I should have done it all myself but you know work and it is better to get a professional in? anyway I had a few issues with the way it had been done I am a bit/very fussy in that things have to work and look right, and they don't well not as I had planned but it is very nice and I spend lots of time there, its where my coffee machine is!
back to the picture it is the tiles for the bathroom, you see when we bought all the stuff for the kitchen at the same time as we bought most of the stuff for the bathroom. well we asked another man to do the bathroom if we did the design stuff and got all the materials. he came round gave us a quote which we liked and said we would ring up to arrange a time to start but he hasn't and the tiles are still in the hall the old toilet doesn't flush properly the shower doesn't work and the new bathroom suite is all wrapped and boxed in the loft. for about 10 months it was in the hallway too! oh yes the new shower is in our bedroom still in its box. I am sure he will ring this week?

no snow in this city

we didn't have any of the snow today that the rest of the country seems to have had. these 3 pictures show parts of my day. it was a day away from work because of two important hospital appointments but instead of talking/moaning about them like I would have done. I thought I would show in pictures 3 things/images that I noticed. that have nothing to do with the reason for the trip! the car is nice and clean now.