The week so far

I remember having a conversation with Andrew a while ago about never being too busy to do something, there is always time to fit something in. So far this has been some of my work starting on Saturday.

Saturday
ARKADE - shop interior and do some voxpop's for research project

Sunday
Day off - (although I did manage to edit the voxpop video's and plan some workshop's for later in the week) also I went to visit the folks.

Monday
Work then me and Car drive to North Wales.

Tuesday
Meeting for Hoffi (hope they liked us), nipped to LLanberis Pass for a quick climb (rude not to) drive home, once home go and do a few things for the ARKADE at Laura's studio. SLEEP

Awesome

Economics never my strong point

I woke up this morning to the news. Once again doom and gloom, England are crap in the football, recession is going to be a 'double dip' and of course the on-going BP oil leak. One of the more interesting pieces was around the recession and how it is affecting our daily lives. In particular the ex-pats in Europe who are struggling to live due to the strength of the pound against the euro. For some this has meant a radical change in the way they shop. They are ordering their food from Britain and then it is being delivered to them. And to top it all off it's cheaper. In some cases by about a third.

You can see more about it here

Irony

On our way back from meeting one of our customers. The project is about lactose free and soya based products. Ironic about the company nearby.

London day trip

Having been deep into two brands for Hoffi and trying to help out all I can for ARK and it's empty shop project, it was nice to get away for a few hours by traveling to London. It wasn't entirely pleasure as i was there to go to an event around design and sustainability. We managed to get around a few areas including Brick Lane area. It was nice to go there after so many years to see the graduates setting up their work. It was quite chaotic but it brought back fond memories of it. I particularly liked the pop-up shop outside exploiting those desperate graduates.

Best picture ever

This is one of those pictures that I love. I accidently took it this week while working on a project in Cardiff. I love it and think it is by far my favourite image ever.

Genius of Britain

Has anyone else managed to catch the Channel 4 series Genius of Britain this week? You can catch on their YouTube channel here would have embedded them here but for some reason it's not allowed???

Anyway the series was amazing and has made me realise just how much I would have liked to be that clever. In school I was never that interested in science but I have always been interested in how things work and why things are the way they are. To this end OI wonder wether it may have been just the teaching not being amazingly inspiring. Now though I am going to make a concious effort to try and broaden my knowledge within science and in particular the field of Hamilton's Rulewhich in the basic sense looks at how organisms work together to increase future good. This altruism I think is hugely interesting for me on a personal level and through the work I have been getting involved in over the last year or so.

I think I am going to try and look at this in a number of avenues (maybe to aspirational but hey);

- firstly I want to look at how social media creates communities but maybe also leads to less 'physical' responsibility to the real world's resources. This thinking has been sparked by a recent article I have read by John Thackara and other pieces within the TED talks archive.

- secondly I want to look at how through rules such as Hamilton's we might be able utilise them in the development of new workshops for the involvement of communities within the evolution of social design tools.

- i think finally (and this a really long project that probably dates back to 2002) I want to reinvestigate gameplay with storytelling to utilise in design terms within projects. I am aware of a number of sites that include 'knowledge games' and workshops but I think there is something extra that could be used.

On another note I have finally managed to get around to doing some work on the creative networks project for ARK LAB it's hard fitting it all in with work at Hoffi and also the empty shop project which is taking a lot of time up at the minute. But if there is anyone out there that would like to help out and take this on further please let me know. You can see the full article here.