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Making porridge more appealing

In Uncategorized on 13 March 2010 with no comments

From the Guard­ian, just what I needed to read at the end of a week without any sugar (well, almost):

Sugar, fat and salt make a food com­pel­ling. They stim­u­late neur­ons, cells that trig­ger the brain’s reward sys­tem and release dopam­ine, a chem­ical that motiv­ates our beha­viour and makes us want to eat more. Many of us have what’s called a “bliss point”, at which we get the greatest pleas­ure from sugar, fat or salt. Com­bined in the right way, they make a product indul­gent, high in “hedonic value”.

And yikes:

But it was think­ing cre­at­ively about how to attract more con­sumers that led Star­bucks to the Frap­puccino, the ven­ture cap­it­al­ist told me. Although its stores were crowded early in the day, by after­noon “they were so empty you could roll a bowl­ing ball through them”. The cre­ation of a rich, sweet and com­fort­ing milkshake-like con­coc­tion utterly trans­formed the busi­ness. A Star­bucks Straw­ber­ries & Crème Frap­puccino comes with whipped cream and 18 tea­spoons of sugar: all in all, this “drink” con­tains more cal­or­ies than a personal-size pep­p­er­oni pizza, and more sweet­ness than six scoops of ice-cream.

Com­ing up tomor­row: the chocol­ate chunk short­bread has crack in it.

2009: You were my biggest challenge of 2009

In Uncategorized on 9 December 2009 with 2 comments

At some point in late October,deep in the midst of post-viralness when the most act­ive thing I could do was think, I real­ised the strange­ness of months and years: how could a group of days be so eas­ily cat­egor­ised as Septem­ber or This Week or 2009, and how could I spend so much time blam­ing that month or that year for everything going wrong, when the days, the years, really have no more in com­mon than the sun­rise and sun­set? It was no more October’s fault that I had been con­stantly ill than it was the people next door’s, and I wasn’t cry­ing at their front door each night, ruing the day they moved in. So I’m find­ing myself try­ing really hard not to blame 2009 for the cata­logue of gen­eral lous­i­ness that has been 2009, try­ing hard not to pin my hopes on wak­ing up on Janu­ary 1st 2010 we a sense of focus and clar­ity and bound­less energy. But if I were to look at 2009 as a whole, to lump the days together into one neat bundle: wow, 2009. You sucked.

The biggest meas­ur­able chal­lenge? Eas­ily my dis­ser­ta­tion, com­plete with overam­bi­tious, over­crit­ical, under­qual­i­fied, under­help­ful super­visor. No, really, did I ever tell you that story about how she only sent me the first draft feed­back at 7pm the night before the dis­ser­ta­tion was due in? And how that feed­back included a huge list of things she wanted in it that she’d never men­tioned before? I can­not let go of the whole thing. Spend­ing six months hav­ing to answer to the every whim of a slightly crazy per­son will do that to you.

The biggest chal­lenge to my faith in the world? Either my purse being stolen (I know. It sounds so… petty.) or the ran­dom stranger Waitrose incid­ent. Taken alone — even taken together — these seem like such rel­at­ively minor incid­ents, and you know, I am fine with repla­cing bank cards and watch­ing bruises sub­side: I’m both alive and I’m grate­ful not to be in the head­space that makes attack­ing people in super­mar­kets seem like a good idea. But I’m increas­ingly real­ising that both incid­ents eroded some­thing in me: I’m leav­ing 2009 with much less trust, and most less con­vic­tion of the good­ness, of the world around me. I’m aware of how over­dra­matic that sounds, but that per­son who reaches around me to pick up a loaf of bread? I don’t think I can trust them anymore.

The biggest me-challenge? Try­ing to find out who to be when uni ended. I left uni­ver­sity know­ing two things: 1) I didn’t want to be a lin­guist 2) I didn’t want to jump onto the gradu­ate career tread­mill. It turns out that rules out very little and there is still so much hanging in space, unde­cided. I’m lucky enough to have a mar­ket­able enough skill to pay the rent while I work as a (some­times very) part time freel­ance web designer, and for someone with no design back­ground what­so­ever there have been vic­tor­ies — I some­how man­aged to brand an awards cere­mony, got two very con­ser­vat­ive organ­isa­tions to adopt social media policies, have yet to be arres­ted for the shoddy filling in of a tax return, and I’m cur­rently dis­pro­por­tion­ately excited about being on some Cre­at­ive Review Twit­ter lists as an actual designer. [That’s just crazy. There are real design­ers on those lists!] But I don’t know if this is really the dir­ec­tion I want to take, don’t know if this is really what I Want To Do and whether I shouldn’t just go and do what my fam­ily sug­gest and get a “proper job”.

But the biggest chal­lenge of 2009, the one I will look back on and go I can’t believe I did that? Just keep­ing one foot in front of the other and keep­ing going. It has been so ridicu­lously hard at times, but I’m start­ing to regroup and start­ing to look for­ward. You have been a lousy arbit­rary col­lec­tion of uncon­nec­ted days, 2009, but I’m look­ing for­ward to the next lot.

[Note: I wrote this, which is less of an entry and more of a col­lec­tion of ran­dom thoughts, as part of the Best of 2009 Chal­lenge. I’m strug­gling to find any “bests” this year. I’m just going to go ahead and assume that the next dec­ade can’t get worse than the last one.]

Hardcore, but not too hardcore

In Uncategorized on 30 November 2009 with Comments Off

If you’re won­der­ing, the image is from a copy of the Sunday Times Magazine wherein Mariah Carey describes her music as “hard­core, but not too hard­core.” I love this. It proves you can say any­thing, and as long as you believe it — even if you are the sort of per­son so deluded that you want a mil­lion white kit­tens to ser­en­ade you as you enter a room — people will print it without ques­tion­ing. Okay, so it prob­ably helps to be both extremely rich and superbly fam­ous, but if Mariah Carey can claim to be hard­core without any­one so much as rais­ing an eye­brow, I should be able to get away with more.

We’ll refer to it as a blip

In Uncategorized on 16 August 2009 with Comments Off

Can we just gloss over the dis­tinct lack of any­thing resem­bling an update in three months? Awesome.

(Note: mov­ing server seems to have broken most of my links. I’ll dis­cuss this with my web­host until he gets so fed up of me whin­ing he works out what the prob­lem is just to shut me up. I should totally be in the dip­lo­matic corps.)

Pioneers of recycling

In Uncategorized on 21 April 2009 tagged disney, video with Comments Off

Note: I totally recom­mend watch­ing this while listen­ing to The Sug­ar­hill Gang’s Rapper’s Delight

Actually, Bill Gates is quite cool. Oh. Just me thinking that, then?

In Uncategorized on 20 April 2009 tagged apple, billgates, malaria, Quote, stevejobs with Comments Off

Bill Gates may lose out to Steve Jobs in the cool­ness depart­ment, but if the Gates Found­a­tion can erad­ic­ate mal­aria in Africa, do you think the Nobel com­mit­tee will award the prize to the cre­ator of the Mac­Book Air?

Chris Guil­le­beau