One of the blogs I read fairly regularly is that of ex-BBC chappy, Hugh Garry.

He’s a smart chap and I finally managed to meet him at a social media week event a little while back, which was nice. One of the things he mentioned back then was an attempt he was making on his blog called ‘5 things I liked this week‘.

Once a week [well, nearly - get back on the horse Hugh!] he just puts exactly that: five links to five things that he liked that week. I’ve been doing something similar for the ‘heads for a while now and, well, I think I’d quite like to do something similar, for myself, in 2012.

Every Friday (hopefully on my way home from work) I’m going to jot down the five things I’ve done or seen that week. Or perhaps even five things that have happened to me or that I’ve seen or whatever. Either way, it’s going in the Moleskine and then, naturally, it’s ending up on here.

To kick off, and for memory’s sake, this is the one I started God knows when earlier this year, but with a much larger number than five. Call it ‘Cool things that happened in 2011′ or something.

So, in no particular order:

• Yes Prime Minister [on stage, at the Apollo]
• Friday drinks + comic book chats with friends, forever
• The worst Foursquare competition in the world [there's a whole presentation somewhere on exactly why this didn't work]
• Benny’s surprise birthday (and then onto Cam’s too)
• Batman LIVE
• Double cinema day [The Inbetweeners and Rise of the Planet of the Apes]
• Pan’s Labyrinth at West Brompton Cemetery
• Amazing lunches with friends at the Hawksmoor
• The Trans-Siberian Railway [Moscow - Mongolia - Beijing]
• Paris with The Marketing Society / Club 30
• The most beautiful Converse in the entire world
• Hat parties
• The Fancy Dress Picnic
• Music [Mona]
• Much Ado About Nothing
• Champagne, music, dancing… working in Cannes
• Transformers 3 (in New York and Miami)
• Getting drunk with U2
• Duck Tours!
• Cooking competitions [we came second - see below]
• Boating on the roof of Selfridges
• Beirut: the band, and the place (twice)
• Copenhagen
• Speaking gigs in Croatia, Lebanon, Helsinki, London and Exeter
• [Meeting amazing people at] Like Minds!
• Graffiti
• Friends, family and loved ones
• Stewart Lee
• Red trousers
• Foxcroft & Ginger!
• Winning a fair few work-based awards
• The Marketing Academy
• You Me Bum Bum Train [sorry]
• Art projects
• The Dark Knight Rises project
• Howl’s Moving Castle (followed by gorgeous steak)
• Helsinki, lots
• Film, (seeing and writing about). Film of the year? DRIVE.
• Breakfast (cooking and eating)
• Photography
• Byron
• The Cotswalds
• On the telly (twice)
• In print (GLAMOUR!)
• Anchorman in the park
• Polpo / Spuntino / da Polpo
• Ellie Goulding [she lovely]
• My iPad
• Snoop Dogg
• Sunday roasts (cooking and eating)
• Sixty Six Books; the best theatre I saw all year [all 24hrs of it]
• A post-Nokia-World night bus
• Raising over £1600 for Movember
• Wembley Stadium
• Something cool for Bourne Legacy [but I can't talk about it yet]

_______

AND THAT’S IT!

Wow…  I aimed for 5 and I finished with 55.  Not bad for my first go.

Let’s see how this works out for 2012.

Pic taken from aforementioned cooking comp; ‘Nom Nom Nom 2011‘, Alfie and  I – aka ‘The Hirsute Hashtag Slingers‘ – looking dashing and awesome, ready and raring to go.

We had such fun that day and this pic just makes me smile.

via Annie Mole

My favourite season.

Bring it on.

Note: this is not your average email, but we’ll come to that shortly.

If you’ve not seen the film before (I haven’t), it’s about a teenage girl (the amazing Saoirse Ronan) who has been trained by her ex-CIA father (Eric Bana) to basically be a complete bad-ass. Think Hit-Girl from Kick-Ass [but slightly older and with less pink wig-ness] and you’re probably halfway there.

Anyway, like I said, she’s been trained to be THE PERFECT ASSASSIN and then well, from what I can see from the trailer, Cate Blanchett turns up and the proverbial really hits the fan.

Speaking of which, the trailer is worth a look -

What do you think? I missed this at the cinema as I had only just got back from my mad trip across Siberia, but it does actually look quite good. IMDb gives it a solid 7/10 and, I think I probably will pick this up at some point also.

So, why am I blogging about it? Given that a) I haven’t actually seen it yet and b) although the film looks good, it doesn’t seem to be the kind of epic masterpiece that normally drives me to put e-pen to e-paper.

Well, it’s that email I mentioned at the top. It would seem that HMV and Universal have teamed up to create a rather awesome Foursquare-based treasure hunt across three major cities in the UK (London, Birmingham and Manchester) that kicks off this weekend.

Based around the central themes of the film, each hunt contains six codes that need cracking and from there you end up with six locations that need checking into.

The prize for completing said task? Er.. a weekend in Berlin! Sweet.

If you’re any of the above cities, your orders are available c/o The Galinka Project (but be quick, you only have until Monday). In the meantime, I have codes to crack.

Catch you later.

That is all.

Messing about with my family in my sister’s back garden – the perfect way to end Christmas Day

— Shot on a Nokia N8, yesterday, somewhere near Dulwich.

Last year my other half laid on the best birthday experience ever; including all my friends, all my geekiness and nearly all of London’s Soho district.

It was fantastic.

This year has been – amazingly – even better. Friday night I was out with work for a huge, multi-celebratory knees up. Three birthdays, two leavers and one awesome award win meant that it was the perfect combination for getting the whole company out together. It’s a rarity for all of us to unwind like that and it was definitely well overdue for some of us. I guess I got home about 4ish maybe? But even then didn’t get to sleep until the very early hours (what with deciding to carry on partying with everyone at home way back in the vale). Brilliant.

Last night was my actual birthday party; friends old and new, a few work colleagues, best mates from home, some family (it’s my sister’s birthday today too) and of course, my gorgeous rockstar of a girlfriend all made it one of the best nights out I’ve had this year.

A night of music from the 80s, filthy fairy cakes, beetlejuice-based hilarity, Marmite-flavoured chocolate… the list goes on.

Looking through my phone this morning there’s only a few photos to show off what a great night we all had (I’m sure others took many, many more), however I did find one video. One very special video.

Big love and thanks to Bryce & Camilla for today’s #vlomo10 entry. You guys rock… X

Enjoy.

Oh – and that photo that I took?

^Turn it up to 720p

^Turn it up to 720p