whatleydude

Five things of note from this past week. Not as exciting as I’d hoped (I’ve had a week off and, surprisingly, haven’t spend much of it online) but here we go -

1. Troll Hunter! I arrived home yesterday to discover that someone had sent me both the newly-released Blu-Ray of  Troll Hunter as well as a rather funky matching t-shirt. Which in turn meant that last night I finally got to watch a film that I’ve been busting to watch for AGES. You’ll be pleased to hear I was not disappointed and – freebies aside – I’d genuinely recommend seeking it out for its pure scandinavian bonkersness alone.
   .
2. Rubbish QR Codes. I spotted this ridiculous QR code placement on the tube earlier this week and popped it up on Flickr without thinking about it. Jonathan Waddingham spotted it and, before we knew it, a whole new QRFail blog had been set up. I love Twitter for this kind of stuff. Good work, friends.
   .
3. #CommsChat. The engagement currency post from Jan 11th got a fair bit of pick up [Huzzah!] and as such, Communicate Magazine asked me to host their weekly Twitter chat with my blog post as the theme. Cracking stuff, with some really nice banter too. Worth a look.
   .
4. The Marketing Academy opened up nominations for their third year of scholars this past week and – having been a part of the successful first year of entrants – I honestly cannot recommend this enough.
   If you know of a high-potential, rising star in the field of advertising, communications or marketing, why not nominate them today?
   .
5. Beef Welly! I love cooking. But last week I had guests over and one particular guest insisted on putting together a Beef Wellington with not only the best damn piece of beef I’ve ever laid eyes on (thank you Ginger Pig) but also the finest homemade meal finesse I ever did see.
   It was my first and it was superb. Try it.

Following on from yesterday’s Chocolate Chilli post, I thought I’d share this video that I created using images that I took with my Nokia N82 (set to ‘sequence mode’).

So this is me making chilli and blogging the recipe at the same time.

Enjoy!

And if you’re wondering what the hell ‘sequence mode’ is, don’t worry,
I’ve blogged that too

Doing things in ‘sequence’ – the hidden Nokia feature

Have a great Easter folks!

Last week I was fortunate enough to be invited along to take part in a new food-based event rather amusingly entitled: ‘Nom Nom Nom‘.

The brainchild of London Underground blogger, Annie Mole – Food 2.0 Nom Nom Nom (to give it its full title), was a LOT of fun.
I was there in two capacities. First as a representative of SpinVox (lead sponsors of the event), and second, as a competitor.

The event you see was the online/digital version if you will, of Masterchef.

As one half of GO TEAM SIX (the other half being my good friend Ribot, foodie, photographer and a mobile UI designer to boot), the challenge was twofold.

First to create three dishes (one of which had to be cold) for four people in just under two and a half hours. The second to create ‘output’ for the Nom Nom Nom blog pages.

Ribot and I, being the mobile geeks of the group, Qik’d and photographed EVERYTHING. I went armed with my trusty N95 8GB, my spare N95-1 (packing an 8GB Micro SD), and also my rather snazzy Nokia Tripod.

After reading a blog post by a fellow contestant – one Russell Davies – I had an idea for the day’s content. As well as Qikking left, right and centre and of course, snapping anything that moved I decided to set my N95-1 to SEQUENCE MODE.

What is this crazy mode of which I speak? Well, at first I had no idea. I even put a call out to try and find some software for my phone that would allow me to do this… One email conflab with Mr Davies later and it turns out that this mode is right there!
And what’s more – it’s been there the whole time!
Look!

I never knew it was there. I had to be told about it. That’s right. The first Mobile Geek of London didn’t know about sodding sequence mode!
(but it’s OK I did my research and not many other folk knew about it either)

Moving swiftly onward I popped my N95-1 into the tripod (as shown above), and set sequence mode to go off at 1 minute intervals…

Over the course of the afternoon, while Ribot and I put our chosen dishes together, my cheeky little handset took 154 different photos, and to what end?

Well, with the content that came out of it, I was able to create the following video:

Shot on a Nokia N95-1, standing on a Nokia Tripod and edited together using Windows Movie Maker, (who needs a Mac anyway?)

I know this ain’t ‘news’ per se. But it’s a feature I didn’t know about and it’s made me look at my N95 in a completely different light.

I thought I’d share it and show you just what’s possible.
The original N95 still manages to surprise even me.

Brilliant.