Archive for September 2009

Mouth

In Photos and Videos on 29 September 2009 with Comments Off

I think there’s a very high chance Al took this photo, because I had the little camera taking footage for my awesome sea creature documentary I will never edit into an actual film. This was taken at the point where “stay in the Atlantis Palm Hotel” was added to the list of things to do before I die, because even standing in the lobby/shopping centre/aquarium was, frankly, amazing. I’m fairly sure that most of the people who designed Dubai were on very strong hallucinogenic drugs at the time, but you really need to hand it to them for actually making it all happen. And for having no end of awesome ice cream for sale.

Och, ye cannae come in the noo, hen

In Rants, Websites on 27 September 2009 with 3 comments

I’ll be honest: I secretly love the Daily Mail. Not in a serious way, or even in the same – admittedly slightly evil – way that I love watching people get parking tickets, but in the way that something goes so far beyond the boundaries of bad that it begins to transcend reality and become breathtaking awesome, in the true ‘worthy-of-amazement’ way.

If you’re from the UK, you won’t need a primer in Daily Mail Hate, and the quite worrying trend of people reading a Daily Mail headline or story and using that as an allegedly factual basis for some form of prejudice. In fairness, the DM also does a good line in cute animal photos and in quirky stories that BBC News will steal the next day, although they tend to be somewhat less contentious. But they have now published a headline that goes wildly, entertainingly, beyond even the DM’s usual standards: “English passengers forced to show passports when arriving in Scotland“.

In short, we Scottish people hate you English people so much, even though you pay for everything for us and we steal all of your money and give it to students and ill people that we now make you show us your passports at the airport. We think you are such a major terror risk that you might do an incendiary Morris dance or football hooliganise us all to death that we have decided to to inconvenience you slightly in order to make our point.

So let me do all of middle England a favour and translate the headline into actual fact: some passengers, regardless of where they’re from, are being asked to show their passports at some airports for security reasons. This, strangely, will probably also include some Scottish people, returning home to Scotland in order to deep fry a Mars Bar and toss a caber or two before nipping back down to Engliand to steal your votes. And so horrific is the abuse of our Scottish powers that the Mail end the piece with the news that “Metropolitan Police, which covers Heathrow and City airports in London, also use the powers on domestic passengers. A Met spokeswoman said: ‘From time to time we to stop people and look at their travel documents. It’s not that unusual.’” This would considerably undermine the entirity of the Mail’s argument but, erm, you know, that probably doesn’t count as kilt-screening because, erm, ooh, look what Sienna Miller’s wearing today! And is that a baby duck without a mother?

I admit it: I’m a bitter Scot who sometimes gets annoyed when Dorothy Perkins in Sussex won’t take my 100% genuine Scottish £20 notes without first treating me like a money launderer who’s put on a dodgy accent. I’ve had whole arguments with my English boyfriend when he won’t accept that the word “juice” covers all forms of drinkable fluids apart from water and alcohol. The words “answer” and “dancer” do not – and can not – rhyme. But regardless of that, even we money-grabbing, bagpipe-playing, meanies, who have sent our entire population to work in the Cabinet, really couldn’t care less about looking at your passport unless we have to, apart from to laugh at  your photo.

After all, our time is precious: we have chips we could be eating instead.

Image inspiration

In Design, Websites on 25 September 2009 with Comments Off

Like most people who have to be creative for a living, I go through troughs and peaks of inspiration. And sometimes the troughs are bigger than the peaks, with my most recent trough lasting, well, all summer.

One of the ways I store images and ideas that feed the idea machine, though, is on a big folder on my hard drive, not an ideal solution since I’m not always sitting at my desk when I need to be inspired, so I was quite excited to find ImageSpark. Free (for now), ImageSpark allows you to upload and share the inspiring images found online and, importantly, give some credit where it’s due. Fun even for those who don’t have to filter everything they see in life into Photoshop, I just love to watch the somewhat whimsical trends and patterns that emerge in what I like. Today, poster design. Currently, colour. Always, birds.

This time last year…

In Hamster on 12 September 2009 with 1 comment

When we took him through to Glasgow for his last holiday, it was claimed that babysitting Fripper is, “scarier than looking after [my] actual baby would be”. This is true. I couldn’t have Fripper and a baby, because the baby could never compete. But just because the boy pees in a potty and gets a treat every single night when going to bed (and a feast on his birthday) and yes, we maybe checked flats we were viewing for how hamster-manoeuverable the doorways were, doesn’t mean he’s spoilt. It just means he lucked out so hard the day we walked into the pet shop.

Mind you, does that look like the face of a hamster who thinks he lucked out?