In Hard Times

For Wilf.

Death to the Addicks...

Well, as the title says, death to the Addicks. If you are a Charlton fan like me (Wilf) or in fact any of the other teams that have been unfortunate enough to be relegated this season, follow my advice, and get pissed!

The demise of my local club has been swift and pretty devastating - 'how could this happen?' is a question that will be ringing in our ears for a very long time. It is now the third time I've witnessed my club relegated (twice from the Premiership, and now the Championship) and as with most other Charlton fans, this is probably the bleakest of recent times. Our club has a strong history of coming back from having nothing - 18 years ago, we didn't even have a ground and had to share with our local rivals Crystal Palarse. Unfortunately for me, I was a wee lad then, living in Hong Kong so don't have those days in my memory to comfort myself. The task ahead is all the more daunting due to the imminent departure of our best (hahahahahahahahaha if you can call them that) players. All I can do is retain hope that we can pull ourselves back together and beat the Millwall twice and my other team, Yeovil, next season. Bring on League One.

Ah well...

'At Valley, Floyd Road, the mist rolling in from the Thames,
my desire is always to be found at Valley, Floyd Road.'

Want A T?

Howies the lovely clothing people that seem to want to help us all out, have introduced a nice scheme for anyone who feels a bit creative. It's called Teepay and it lets you produce T-shirts with Howies help and you might even get some money from it.

Howies are a really nice crew and so far it seems like Timberland haven't ruined them.

The Annual Report

We received this in the post a while ago and it was well worth the investment. Its the 2008 Feltron Annual Report, by Nicholas Felton (His work is also done under the studio name of megafone.)

We are suckers for data visualisation and mapping, and it's something that we are looking into for our university final major project.

Mr Felton is also behind Daytum, which we've been using for a while now.

NIN Access

Really like this, it's the future for music and is exactly the mindset that inspires us. The GPS related chat feature is the best function, it has the potential to change the experience of seeing a gig for those who are present or watching on the internet.

Wierdly nice stuff

This is very random and odd, but if you go 22 seconds in to the video, you have something really nice to look at. I've never really liked clapping or at least gone out of my way to look at clapping movements, but this amazing display of clapping by the North Korean hierarchy has had me watching this snippet over and over and over again. The movements are all very robotic and look like they've been performed in a certain amount of pain, however the end effect is the most synchronized mass-clapping spectacle I have ever seen, and may hope to see. Enjoy.

Matthew Dent

Matthew Dent is an illustrator and was nice enough to do this image for us as part of his IYN project.

Cheers Matt.

Old-done-new

We love it when we see anything with a new perspective, this is certainly a new look on a classic.

BSA

Deadline time for our Brand Sector Analysis unit last week.


It was loads of work, but we're pretty pleased with the result of our report on the Science Museum.

We Are Art Directors

From the guys at KK Outlet.
It's good to spread the love.

In your face parents!

We had been told that something like this might happen
when we play computer games. Now, we're not too sure.

According to researchers in the US, all our hours of convincing ourselves that leaving the PC or Xbox alone to get on with our work was the best course of action, it seems that (and also for the sake of our eyesight) we were wrong! Groups of adults were tested in large numbers (22 students, yup just like us), split between Sims 2 and Call of Duty 2 and Unreal Tournament. Those in the action half recorded a 43% increase in their ability to detect different shades of grey and 58% increase in ability to detect fine differences of contrast, whilst the boring old Sims lot scored none.
Thus, we have deduced that it is now more useful for creatives and those who look finely at bits of colour to play action computer games than it is to read a book on it. And also for the sake of our eyesight, we should be doing it the honour of honing its skill in detecting a fuller spectrum of tones and colours...by playing games.

Cake

Ate this cake the other day, it was really nice. It was for a birthday, so there was a reason for the lavish cake.
What we're not sure of, is how do they make the amazing patterns on the sponge?

If anyone knows the truth, let us know please.
Maybe we should just ask Fallon or Skoda.

Power To The Masses!

This post may be old news now, but we feel that this exciting breakthrough is well worth a mention as it could change the way that we use computers, our consumption rates and also the fate of electric cars. Read this for further information...

Masterpieces

Saw this today on the Guardian site, it's created using Brushes on the iPhone.

It's made us think about the notion of masterpieces. We had a debate a while ago, wondering why we hardly hear about modern masterpieces, there's loads of work in the Tate modern, but nothing is really described as a modern masterpiece. Besides, we aren't really fans of what is considered contemporary art.

Maybe, masterpieces are dependent on the context of when they are made. Lots of paintings were created a long time ago, that will forever be considered masterpieces. Does that mean that the masterpieces of our time, should use technology that is specific to what we use now.

In this case, the work linked above by Jorge Colombo could be considered a modern masterpiece. His skill in creating pictures on a tiny screen using his fingers, that could easily have been created by an abstract artist with a brush, show huge amounts of skill. So could it be that we just need to push the limits of current technology? Masterpieces on canvas are gone, we should now explore other possibilities.

Wish We Had This When We Were Kids

The genius people at Total Immersion have developed their product to the next level. We've been following these guys since we fist saw Augmented Reality during our days at Contagious for Radio 1's 'Band in your hand.' They have just realeased some work with Topps Baseball cards that kick the crap out of those old football cards that we used to collect. It's such a clever way of taking an out-dated product and reinventing it for the current generations.



Also, whilst on the subject of AR, this work for Lego is awesome.

Topps cards work via Contagious mag.