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Playing with the N900

London’s Piccadilly Circus, at dusk.

Snapped, uploaded and posted all from my N900.
This makes me very, very happy indeed.

1000heads: Some of the old IN-N-OUT

So here I am at 1000heads (or ‘a thousand heads’ – depending who you ask) and I’ve been charged with becoming a regular contributor to the this here 1000heads blog page.

Does it have a name?
No.

Is it front page?
Yes.

Excellent.

About that whole 1000heads thing, we’re the Word of Mouth people don’t you know. We teach brands and people, big or small, how to talk to other brands or people, big or small. By using that most ancient and naked form of communication, word of mouth.

Astonishingly simple when you write it down like that but in the main, relatively difficult to achieve by comparison. Or so you’d thinkâ€¦

One of my personal favourite word of mouth (or WOM) thingy wotsits of late is that of In-N-Out Burger.

Sorry, who?

Who exactly?

The WOM hasn’t really worked here has it? Well it kind of has, but locally. The thing with In-N-Out, is that it’s a Western US-exclusive burger bar. The menu is made up burgers, cheeseburgers and fries… and that’s it. Yes there’s the usual array of soft drinks, fizzy and milky in equal measure, but in the main the overall offering available for your delectation is somewhat lacking,

Or so you might think.

In-N-Out have a ‘secret menu’ (not so secret that it’s not on their own website – but still), that is only available if you know what to ask for. Animal Fries for instance. Can you see it on the menu? I can’t. The 4×4? Nope, not there either…

In INO’s own words (on the secret menu page):

“Ok, you’ve heard the rumors, wondered what was on it, maybe even felt a little left out of the loop. But in reality, we don’t have any secrets at all. It’s just the way some of our customers like their burgers prepared, and we’re all about making our customers happy. So here are some of the most popular items on our not-so-secret menu…”

Yes they’re up front(ish) about it, but notice how they only give away ‘some’ of the most popular items on the secret menu. There be gold in them there hills. Oh yes…

There’s something inherently cool about being ‘in the club’ and ‘in the know’ – and reaching those lofty pinnacles of whispers on the beaches of Los Angeles betwixt one surfer and another is – as I stated earlier – no easy task.

But one small chain of burger bars in the US has managed to do just that.

Now tell me you’re not hungryâ€¦

“She cannae take it anymore Cap’n!”

Swung by the Pink Pigeon offices to see Benny yesterday, we’re both trying to help each other out as the end of NaVloPoMo approaches fast and well, it’s always easier filming off the cuff stuff when you’ve someone else to bounce off.

Something to lighten the mood if you will.

This is us, messing about.. As usual.

Done here? Want more? Seriously… I’m still laughing at what Benny managed to pull together from the ten minutes of madness that we spent larking around leading up to the above exchange.

Heh.

For Rob

One key thing that was an amazing constant throughout the Lucozade Challenges was that no matter what far flung corner of the world we found ourselves in, we always had an awesome, local guide to train us and look after us.

For the last challenge, yacht-racing in the Caribbean, we had this guy, Rob Brinkworth.

An Englishman through and through, Rob took great pride in telling us about the Stars and Stripes yacht we were to race, he’d been looking after the boats themselves for years. In the short time we spent on St Maarten, Rob educated us all in the ways of the 12-metre challenge, he made us feel confident enough to handle this multi-million dollar winner of a vessel and at the same time made sure that we respected his word and his skill as a fine seafaring yachtsman.

A fantastic teacher, I remember Rob expressing to us at the end of the week how much he had really enjoyed coaching us all in the science behind sailing and reminisced about his days as an instructor educating school teachers on how to sail, preparing them for a Summer of PGL (a UK institution set up for children to take part in activity courses, such as sailing). He had rediscovered his love of sharing knowledge and, as we left St Maarten at the end of the week, I sensed that maybe there might be change in his future.

Sadly, Rob died last week.

Struck down by an aggressive illness, his life was cut short before he could put any such plans into action.

I heard the news late yesterday afternoon. Al, one of the winners from the challenge, had stayed in touch with Rob after we left. After he told me I immediately started trawling through my files… The following video is put together from all the footage I took while under his tutelage.

Rob, this is for you mate:

While waiting for the video to export, I checked through my notes to clarify a few dates and I found this entry, the last one I made before we left the Caribbean –

Moleskine entry: September 16th, 2009

Race Day

“Later at the bar that evening, Rob tells us that today’s race was kind of a big deal for him. The night before he had called a meeting between our crew, the opposing crew and the race judge. They all agreed that the race today would be ‘for real’.
You see they race these boats day in and day out and could’ve quite easily made some decisions (that wouldn’t have been obvious to us), that meant they would’ve handed us the race. Rob, having trained us all week and seen how we respected the skill and the effort that went into it, insisted that this would be the case.

He told the rest of the staff that the race was to be exactly that.
No fudging it for anyone.

“Throw everything you’ve got at us.” he told them “Try and thrash us. If you do, it’ll be their fault. If you don’t, well then.. they’re awesome. Either way, these guys will not appreciate being handed the race and will know if you do…”

Wow. What a guy. I for one am very glad he called it like that because, come the finish line, yes we came second – a very close second in fact. But boy did we earn it.”

Good luck Rob, wherever you are.
Your friends, old and new, remember you well.

Soup: YUM

This is today’s navlopomo, I know I have a couple of days MIA from the weekend, but I’ll get round to fixing that sooner or later. I have the videos, I just haven’t published them yet. I’ll be sure to link back to them when they’re backdated and up.

Much love…

Operation Concrete

Operation Concrete, at its core, is a collaborative media project. It brings together the aesthetic and audio qualities of art and music around the power of the written word to provide the viewer, listener, reader, with a complete experience.

Operation Concrete is also, at its core, a fantastic experiment by good friend of mine, Rich Galbraith. I guess I’ve known Rich properly now since September last year when he was part of the team that ran the Nokia OpenLab event in Helsinki that I spoke at. Back then he was telling me about Concrete Operational, the book behind the project…

Germany Germany, a man who was free, a man who loved, now an instrument in their machine. They have turned him into the very thing he hates, what he and everyone he loved fought against, the world’s greatest celebrity, a tool in the subjugation of man.

.

But the memories of freedom and love remain, and he will fight and change the course of human history for the better, but at what end?

.

As humanity progresses and turns to face the eternal black of the universe, the questions of free will and fate, of love and peace, of the riddles of time itself will arise and Germany will be called upon. But is his will strong enough, his his mind ready to breach the void and provide us with salvation?

All of this aside, Rich is great guy and when he invited me to the launch party of the exhibition as a whole, I was over the moon. Alas, I will be out of the country that night and am unable to make it along.

However, I am in the country RIGHT NOW and fortunately enough, so is Rich. I caught up with him at lunchtime earlier today so he could tell me more – what I didn’t know, was that Rich had had the first of the limited set of project boxes made up with him…

It’s very nice… and I want one.

If you’re free this coming Thursday, November 26th. Get yourself along to Vibe Bar on Brick Lane in London’s Shoreditch from about 8pm onwards. Rich will be on hand to tell you all about the book, the bands and the art…

Be there.

Sounds of the Underground

My small obsession with all things London Underground continues unabated with this video pulled together of different shots I’ve taken in and around our fair public transport system.

I love it, I really do.

There’s so much interesting architecture to photograph and shoot that one can easily get quite carried away. Originally I intended just to make this video a bit like a scrap book; it’s ‘pages’ made up of all the out-takes and un-used footage that I’ve taken so far this month. But when I found the stuff with my old friend Basti, I had to whack it on the end.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=7734212&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=00adef&fullscreen=1

Yes the audio is out of sync. It’s supposed to be. If you ever meet Basti, you will know that he operates on his own planet, in his own dimension, running by his own rules.

Time and space and all that jazz work around him, not the other way ’round.

😉

Thanks man, you rock.. I’m smiling.
Hope you are too.