¿DÓNDE ESTÁ MI COCHE?

I´ve seen some strange stuff whilst I have been away but this is up there with the best of them. Whilst walking along the plush streets of Palermo in BA I stumbled across this.



To add to my confusion towards Argentinian motorists I was baffled by all the half full bottles of water on car roofs. I wasn´t very good at science but I´m pretty sure it wasn´t attracting the blistering heat away from the car to be stored magicallly inside the bottle. Then I thought it was perhaps just an old wives tale, but as it turns out it is a sign to say the car is for sale. I don´t know how you are supposed to contact them. May be they put a message in it! Not sure what is wrong with the good old single minded proposition, for sale, along with contact details.

The Jane-O-Meter # 2

The Jane-O-Meter has been fairly quiet recently until it registered this new Bradford and Bingley ad. It would seem that there has been an error in the casting.

The Jane-O-Meter said: 'Oh my god she is annoying. I'm sorry I can't stand her irritating little face, turn it over'. I'm sure it's nothing personal, but here's a more expansive critique.

iTunes U

Sorry if this generates even more information overload for planners, but I think it's worthwhile.

iTunes have just launched, iTunes U, 'the campus that never sleeps'. You may have noticed it on your iTunes interface already? It's basically 100s of free lectures from some top Universities in the US. I haven't had the chance to have a good rummage, but there are a couple in there I've spotted that look interesting. Particuarly lectures from MIT's comparative media studies course. Which features the fantastic Henry Jenkins.

You can read The Guardian's article here.

The Jane-O-Meter

This is Jane, otherwise known as my beautiful other half (I don't know why she insists on wearing this mask). One of the many things that I love about Jane is her straight talking, say it how it is attitude. Jane isn't afraid to give her opinion on a whole host of issues. Most notably me leaving my socks lying around. So whenever an ad of note comes on TV I always listen to see what she blurts out. I never prompt her and she probably doesn't even know I do it until now. I think it's a good way of getting an anecdotal, objective opinion straight off the cuff.

Now there has been quite a few posts lately relating to the Cadburys Gorilla ad and Smirnoff's airplane ad with many people arguing the whys and wherefores of each.

So I thought I would post how they scored on the Jane-O-Meter, who is a heavy consumer of both vodka and chocolate I might add...

Smirnoff Vodka

The blogosphere said this, this and this



The Jane-O-meter said: "Er, I don't get it"

Cadburys

The blogosphere said this, this and this



The Jane-O-Meter said: "How random...I bloody love it"

The Internet killed the alien star

Image via.

To be honest I'm fairly open minded about the idea of sharing the universe with other life forms but until I see something with my own two eyes, I'm a wee bit sceptical. A recent article by Ziauddin Sardar in the New Statesman draws an interesting correlation between the reduction in UFO sightings and the development of the Internet. Yeah I know, it sounds weird. Sardar's opinion is that UFOs are merely cultural devices that allow people to explain the unexplainable: 'Instead of projecting our fears of the inexplicable on to outer space, we project them into cyberspace'. Although seemingly sightings haven't reduced by the hilarious flaming the poor guy gets from some serious UFO twitchers.

People are apparently now seeking solace in virtual worlds, online gaming, chat rooms, blogs, and forums, instead of in religion and UFOs. Sardar essentially believes the Internet has made us become self absorbed and inward looking. I'm not really convinced by his argument but there are some thought provoking opinions in there, whichis always good. You can read the full article here.

I personally believe that the Internet is anything but inward looking. It is far from being just an introspective tool, it gives people more freedom and confidence than ever before. Rather than feeling the need to seek out 'the meaning of life' perhaps people are just more comfortable with their existence and have a greater desire for self expression? It's the generation of the creators rather than the followers.

Only average people see the average in things

“Every tree and plant in the meadow seemed to be dancing, those which average eyes would see as fixed and still” - Jalal ad-Din Rumi

No one likes to think they’re average. But the fact of the matter is at least half of us are below average. Yes it’s true I’m afraid, averageness is all around us.

Now I think I’m quite a proud Englishman, despite the fact that we are generally average at everything in the modern world. Our culture is average, we’re average at sport, our economy is average, our service is average, our music is average, our weather is average and it would seem that even our creative industries are now seen as average. At least that’s how people generally think of it.

As a nation we seem to be a pessimistic bunch with such high expectations - God forbid should our great empire be considered average. I think we are way to hard on ourselves sometimes and perhaps a bit of optimism is in order. Just like this fantastic exhibition currently on at Tate Britain.

‘How we are: photographing Britain’ was an open exhibition that invited anyone to contribute photographs of Britain taken through their own lens so to speak.

It doesn’t necessarily celebrate our averageness, but embraces it and portrays Britain in its most unspoilt and often humbling way. Much of it is optimistic and endearing, looking for the interesting thing in an ordinary life or object. Such as these:

Enjoy the stormy weather


Grandma



Leeds Leap


You can view all the entrants and winners here

Cringe alert

The BBC has shown off its understanding of youth culture and social media by creating a 'virtual desktop' for one of their teen characters in Eastenders. After all: 'Now Lucy's parents have read her diary she wants to put her thoughts somewhere they won't look - Online.'


I can't even begin to rationalise it because I have no idea what they were thinking of. It's bloody awful. At least they didn't try and do it on Facebook I suppose.

If you really want a laugh have a look at Lucy's videos.

Close but no cigar

When I heard about The Filter I thought it sounded fantastic. An application that integrates with your iTunes and iPod to creates your playlists for you.

Sounds like the answer to all my dreams. Particularly seeing as I'm on my third iPod in 18 months and I can't bothered to spend hours creating playlists if they give up the ghost halfway through the year. And for the record, I'm yet to meet a genius or be given an alcoholic drink to numb the pain at Apple's so called 'genius bar'.

Essentially The Filter allows you to pick a broad criteria to be analysed, such as by track or by genre. You then click on a track on your iTunes or you iPod, click on 'create playlist' and hey presto, it generates a play list of similar tracks directly into your library. The problem is they aren't that similar.

I'm off on my hols soon so I thought I would create a nice lazy, summery playlist. So I selected Jack Johnson and let it create a list of 30 similar songs from my 5,000 strong library.

It's a bloody good job I checked because there I would have been, chilling out, lying on my sunbed, dozing off, listening to a bit of JJ. When I would have been awoken by the dulcet tones of Joe Strummer and Mick Jones singing London's Calling.

To be honest I think it's because of the inaccurate tags iTunes puts on the tracks. Jose Gonzalez is alternative punk apparently. So until I can be arsed to go through and change the genres it won't get used I'm afraid. It's almost there though.

What's your planning style?

I've only just come across this, but Leland posted this a while ago about the taxonomy of planners. Thanks to Adam for flagging it on the Plannersphere. I find stuff like this really interesting and I was particularly intrigued to see how I might fair doing the Myers-Briggs test. The Myers-Briggs test is used by Mckinsey to assess the cognitive processes of candidates.

According to Leland's description my hunch would be I'm somewhere in between 'emotional' and 'relationship acumen.' So after a brief search on zee veb, I managed to find this very rough version of a Carl Jung and Isabel Myers-Briggs personality test.

I came out, so to speak, as a ENFP

Strength of the preferences %
Extroverted 56
Intuitive 75
Feeling 25
Perceiving 11

This means I'm apparently...

- Moderately expressed extrovert
- Distinctively expressed intuitive personality
- Moderately expressed feeling personality
- Slightly expressed perceiving personality

I think it's actually scarily accurate. I agree that I am all of the amazing things it says I am ; ) It categorises me as a Champion Idealist. Which after reading makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. This part being my favourite:

'This type is found in only about 3 percent of the general population (the top 3 or the bottom 3 I wonder?), but they have great influence because of their extraordinary impact on others. Champions are inclined to go everywhere and look into everything that has to do with the advance of good and the retreat of evil in the world. They can't bear to miss out on what is going on around them; they must experience, first hand, all the significant social events that affect our lives. And then they are eager to relate the stories they've uncovered, hoping to disclose the "truth" of people and issues, and to advocate causes.'

I've made the front page...

...of Marketing Direct

This magazine normally sits in the pile of things I'll flick through if I have the time and to be honest, I very rarely get to this one. But while I was having a sort out I caught sight of my name literally plastered all over the front page.

It's a great piece of personalised DM in my opinion and to be honest I agree with most of it. I am the best planner ever, I am cool and I should be Prime Minister. I'm not sure about loving Southampton though, only parts of it.

The world has gone mad I tell thee!

At the moment I’m about half way through my Open University Ethnography course and throughout the study material they always use the possessive adjective, ‘her or his’ instead of ‘his or her’, which incidentally should be replaced by ‘their’ in order to avoid any suggestion of sexism – which is fine by me. Now my spelling and grammar is distinctively average, so I’m not preaching about being grammatically correct. But when political correctness starts making the English language sound ugly I get annoyed. Try reading or writing a sentence using ‘her or his’ in it. It just sounds and feels weird.

"A student studying for their first degree". Sounds normal to me
"A student studying for his or her first degree". Sounds a bit too formal
"A student studying for her or his first degree". Sounds like a man hating, bra burning women wants to make a point.

I’m all for moving away from sexist or discriminative language, but please get a grip.

Read all about it, read all about it!

Image via

Breaking news flash, just delivered to my inbox. Apparently young people don't follow the news as much adults. Yes, you heard it here first. OK, maybe second or third. But you can read the latest mind blowing research here.

It's not in the report, but it's also true that young people are in actual fact younger than old people. I interviewed my parents and my grandparents and it turned out we were all different ages. Would you Adam and Eve it!?!

I think I might start posting these pointless 'insights'.

Don't sit down, don't sit down, sit down next to me

Image via

On the odd day I don't have the car I'm forced to use the train. I hate trains, they suck. Everything about them, or more specifically South West Trains, annoys the hell out of me (there is another post in here I think, but I'll try and keep on TRACK for now. Bo bom che). Suburban railways are a bit of a different experience than the tube where all people do is stare at each others armpits. You seem to either get involved in or over hear loads of random and sometimes interesting conversations, with random and sometimes interesting individuals. Yesterday was one such day. I'd had a hectic one and sat down opening up my current read, Ethnography: principles and practices, whoo, whoo, when what society might call a chavette sat down opposite.

She wasn't being very British at all and had the cheek to start chatting to a couple adjacent to her. Can you believe that, striking up a conversation with people you don't even know - I bet that was uncomfortable for them. This was my first inaccurate sweeping social generalisation I made of her. That being a girl who will talk to anyone, wear a Lacoste tracksuit and a gold clown round her neck must be loud, gobby, annoying and uninteresting. She couldn't possibly just be being friendly.

Anyway, I thought phew, I'm not in the mood for making polite conversation today, I'll let some other poor buggers get it for a change. So I pretty much kept my head down and shut all the 'yeah mates' and 'innits' out and I didn't really take much notice until the couple got off the train at the very first stop! Guess what? Yep, it was my turn for a chat. I tried to resist the first time after an 'alwight mate', with an abrupt 'yep, good thanks, you?' reply. My head went straight back to the book. 'Ya jus finished work hav ya?'. As I looked up I must of had a bit of a face on as she said straight away 'sorry, ya probably jus want ta read ya book? Ignore me, I jus like a chat me'. So I thought bugger it. She hadn't been offensive, seemed genuine and after all I'm reading about ethnography, why not undertake an ethnographic interview with a real life DE, right hear, right now.

I'm not sure if I heard this right, but I think she said her name was something 'Destiny' something. I blame Beyonce to be honest. Anyway, we went on to exchange life stories for the next 45 mins and whilst she often gave me a bit too much information on her sexual encounters with ex-boyfriends and asked some very personal questions of me, she was quite sweet and just generally inquisitive. She asked me about the book I was reading, what I did for a living (this wasn't easy to explain), where I lived, who with, what was she like, is she pretty (after all you don't want to be going out with a munter as she so eloquently put it). My life looked pretty rosy in comparison to hers and everything I found out about her made me quite sad. How she was so jolly, chatty and amazingly wise for her age was beyond me.

Without going into too much detail everything bad in society pretty much happened to her. She was only 20 and had finally got her daughter back after months of 'Sofa surfing' as she called it (which turns out to be a huge social issue). She was off drugs and doing an NVQ in hairdressing. I felt quite proud of her and I was thoroughly pleased I had a good chinwag with her. It reminded me yet again how judgmental we can be and the importance of 'liking your audience'.

To Facebook or not to Facebook?

I finally joined Facebook after months of deliberation. After all it is my job to be up to speed on things like this. The basis for my resistance centred around comments such as: I don't have enough time for another form of social media, it's only for the kids and it's only for sados who don't have friends in the real world. Fortunately I was pleasantly surprised on all counts. Although some things I did find strange.

When I first joined it immediately worried me that anyone who seeked out my profile at this very minute would think I was short of mates since I last met them. Therefore you have to frantically add friends and even steal others who you can tenuously claim as your own. Once you have a healthy list, ideally larger than an ex-girlfriend's, the amount of time required on Facebook reduces.

Whilst there are loads of people I would like to get back in contact with, there are a few who I would quite happily keep as a distant memory. I had a bad experience with Friends Reunited when I stupidly left my mobile number on it. The result of which was a number of random phone calls from people I vaguely remember going to school with, let alone talking to. One of which was from a guy who told me he was up on a manslaughter charge. Fancy a pint? Did I bollocks! They were horribly awkward conversations I didn't want to repeat.

I also didn't and still don't understand ex-girlfriend protocol. Is it OK to 'poke' your ex-girlfriends and see if they bite? I'm worried that my current girlfriend, who isn't on Facebook will take it the wrong way if I tell her I have been poking Amy on my lunch break, even though I haven't actually seen her since we did PE in our pants together.

Whilst it is great to upload photos from nights out and have conversations with your mates, the thing I like about Facebook is that it's like having a fight with a midget and keeping him, or her, I must remain PC, at arms length. It allows you to keep in 'just enough touch' with people you won't phone every week, but would like to know how they are doing from time to time. There are 100s of other neat little features that to be honest make up a fantastic social network. Thumbs up to Facebook. Thumbs down however to the 'Don't tell my mum I'm in advertising, she thinks I play the piano in a brothel' group. You can only join it if you work in London apparently. I don't want to be your friend anyway, I've got other friends now so nerggghhh.

Ground up thinking # 4

“It's better to be known by six people for something you're proud of than to be known by sixty million for something you're not.”

Albert Brook

What do people do with their lottery winnings?

What do people do with their lottery winnings? I don't mean the big life changing amounts. Just the £10 here or the £20 there. I've tried to find out how much prize money this equates to every week but no luck as of yet. I'm thinking about this because I was on the train the other day and I overheard a lady telling a friend she voted 5 times for the winner of that irritating Joseph programme after winning a tenner on the lottery. I imagine there are loads of little micro-economies that benefit from these winnings. Things like takeaways and off licenses are the obvious ones, but I thought this example of lottery winnings funding reality TV voting interesting.

Isle of Wight Festival - Let the children play

I haven't blogged for a few days as 1) I was at the Isle of Wight Festival and 2) I needed time to recover and catch up with work. I had an awesome time. Highlights for me were obviously the Stones, but Kasabian rocked. Snow Patrol, Keane, Groove Armada and The Thirst also put in great performances. The Isle of Wight Festival has such a different atmosphere to the likes of Reading and Glastonbury. It's definitely more family orientated and generally more laid back. However there were still plenty of people passed out around me through out the entire Stones set. You could smell weed pretty much everywhere you went and there is absolutely no chance of getting more than a couple of hours sleep and a clean toilet, so it certainly isn't a picnic in the park.

On top of being jealous of the children who probably don't realise how lucky they are yet, after all these are about as far as I got for a weekend during term time. It was great to see families doing something different together. Something that many parents probably consider to be unsafe or unacceptable to take young children to.

In The Telegraph last week, David Willetts the Conservative Shadow Education Secretary suggested that the reason Children in the UK have such poor basic skills in Mathematics and English isn't necessarily due to an inadequate education system, but because our culture is too protective of our children. Willets stated that: "Children are so cocooned by their parents that they rarely venture far from home and have little concept of space, volume and how the world actually works". Coining the term 'nature deficit disorder' the article cites research that alarmingly says the area in which children are allowed to play in by their parents is a ninth of what it was a generation ago.

Willets continued: "It is very hard to make sense of geometry if you haven't thrown a ball around or make sense of volume if you haven't messed about with water and sand or do arithmetic if you haven't collected things and arranged them." I don't often agree with much of what the Conservatives have to say, but on this I do. You can read the full article here.

Ground up thinking # 1

“The best thing a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to endeavor to carry out those schemes which he entertained when he was poor”

Henry David Thoreau

More on football

I’ve been watching a few matches lately and some clubs are attempting to recreate that lost atmosphere by giving all the kids inflatable noisemakers (nicely branded of course). I admire their efforts, but it’s a bit like putting a small plaster on a gaping wound. I can hear the die hards now saying something along the lines of: "When I was a lad I had to sit on my Grandad’s shoulders just so I could see".


Clubs are going to need to do a hell of a lot more than this to get the atmosphere back. Although I do think some ingenuity from the fans would also help. After all, they will understand what is needed better than the club. I was reminded of this great example from Blyth Spartan. Spartan are a lower league Scottish team in the Highlands who have an avid following that dress up as Mexicans in order to add a bit of fun on match day.

Planning and poetry # 1

Network South East - By John Cooper Clarke

It's so insubstantial, it swerves on the curves.
The noise of the upholstery batters the nerves.
If you were a passenger day after day
You'd pay to have somebody blow you away.

As I travel these tracks I cannot forgive
How I lose by degrees the incentive to live
Knowing that vengeance will never be mine
That's what hurts on the misery line.

Hell on Wheels with go-faster stripes.
These passengers here are the tolerant type
I'd like to see them in seven months' time
When the shatter-proof windows are splattered with slime

And they've sacked all the fellas who did the repairs
And shovelled the cheeseburgers off the chairs
From germ-free services smelling of pine
Now it's travel no-class on the misery line.