money obsession
Since I came to London, I’ve become more and more obsessed with money. I still don’t know if it’s this city organism trapping another human being into its complex yet simple system or if it’s a mix of me facing real adult life and being frustrated about not becoming the creative individual I always aimed to be.
Somehow I suspect the city and myself are both to blame. London, and the UK in general, is for sure one of the most money-driven societies I have ever come across. To have a decent life you need quite a lot and by decent I just mean renting a flat in slightly nice area of London (i.e. where you don’t fear to be stabbed to death), take the tube to work, pay your bills, eat more or less healthily and still have some cash for a bit of entertainment (this being cinema and the occassional drink / dinner). Anything else it’s out of the question, at least if you have an average salary.
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Tags: london, money, reflections
trivial day
It’s half past ten and I want to go to bed. I am tired. I was tired this morning too. I just wanted to go back to bed after having my breakfast. It may just be the prospect of Autum.
At work, people were actually quite excited when they noticed that it was dark pretty early again. They like Winter for some odd reason. Some like it for the seasonal fashion, which I can perhaps understand. Transitions are exciting and I wouldn’t appreciate Spring and Summer if it wasn’t for the dark seasons. However, “light is life” and I have no energy.
On top of it, I had one of the most boring meetings this morning. Right after, I went back to the office and had the most confusing lunch I’ve ever had. A friend of mine calls it “leftovers”, even though they were sold to me by a really enthusiastic guy from the local Indian restaurant. But to make you understand why he calls it “leftovers” I should explain what it contained: the base was rice (good), on top of it a weird Indian sausage and some chicken, then some curry sauce. This could be a chicken curry, but no, this doesn’t stop here. On it, you also get fried aubergine, potatoes, carrots, salad and yogurt sauce! Plus a piece of naan. How are you suppossed to eat all that together?? Definitely not having it again.
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Tags: disapointing meal, mood, seasons
retrospection entry
I totally abandoned my beloved blog for the past 3 months. It feels so long since I started it… and I am still trying to remember why I did it. This is not my first one… I guess I find it difficult to finish personal projects.
This reflection doesn’t emerge by coincidence… it’s a constant in my life but I think I know the reasons. However, let’s rewind a little bit…
Yesterday I went to the cinema. I have one of those Cineworld Unlimited cards (which I am by no means promoting!) which allows me to go to the cinema as much as I want in exchange of a specific amount of money a month. It’s great and lately I’ve been using it more and more. That way I get to see dozens of films, good and bad. Yesterday, as I was saying, I went to see “Julie and Julia“. A film about cooking, perhaps. For me, it was quite like watching myself (with some slight differences) in the life of Julie Powell. It was like a reflection of me, her frustration and her desire to finish something.
I’ll explain myself now… unlike Julie, I do like my job. I like the subject, I find it extremely exciting. I could almost say my job is my passion. And not a lot of people can say that. However, I have a bigger passion which has been somewhat neglected since I came to England. This passion is writing and has been in my life since I remember. I used to write little tales which I also illustrated when I was about 8, then when I was 9 or 10 I used to create “small” magazines that my mum would “buy”. I wrote a whole stupid novel when I was 13, at the same time that alongside my best friend I published the first magazine of my secondary school.
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Tags: film, julie powell, passion, personal, retrospection, revision, writing
my away time digest
I recently started this new blog, determined to write an average of 3 posts a week and now I have my doubts again about whether I can keep it up. It happens all the time, it’s like in a marathon when you hit ‘the wall’.
Anyway, I am now on holidays, at least for a few days, and I’ve spending my time reading magazines, books and of course browsing online. And here are some of the things I’ve read about (and learnt about):
Mercator vs. Peters Projection: Since the 16th century and up until very recently the most accepted world map was drawed using the Mercator projection, this is, a quite distorted vision of the real area of continents. For example, Greenland looked very similar in size to Africa, when in reality Africa is 14 times bigger than Greenland. This is a typical world view of the colonial times. This projection is also used by Google Maps.
Peters projection
Peters Projection in the other hand, it shows a more accurate reflection of the world, at least in terms of area. However, America and Africa look considerably big for our Western-oriented / Europe-centric culture. These are interesting facts as even nowadays most world maps are still based on the Mercator projection.
During my flight, I was reading Esquire magazine where they had a full article about Jason Rohrer and his videogames creations. His first game was Passage, what he described as a ‘memento mori‘ game, where the player has to make life decisions and death is impossible to avoid. He has been praised by industry experts as the only one capable to create a game that triggers emotions in the player. He even cried while first playing the game and has now been recruited by Steven Spielberg to work with him in the development of a new form of gaming. I am now about to play Passage (it only takes 5 minutes) and will write about it.
Then, these 2 past days I’ve been finding little tiny things that have made me smile. For example, today “My Milk Toof” has got me over 10 minutes smiling and I’ve been sharing it with friends. It’s so cute and refreshing.
It’s a great comic about 2 milk teeth that wander around the house and out. And that’s all for today really.
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Tags: jason rohrer, mercator, my milk toof, passage game, peters projection, videogames, world view
why cats are made for the web
I can’t stop watching keyboard cat videos and every new one is even more hilarious. I have to confess that at the begining I didn’t really find it that funny. At least the 2 first videos I came across with, maybe they weren’t the best ones. However the more videos I see the more I laugh. Plus I love cats. Cats are the kings of the Internet.
The Internet was actually invented to post pictures of cats, to upload videos of cats, to mash up all these and we have a long history of wonders about cats. I love lolcats, Fridays are the days when you send or get sent videos of cute kittens to or from your workmates, I created a Facebook page just for cat as well as a profile in cuteashell, I love the engineer’s guide to cats and now… now it’s time for keyboard cat, the new Internet sensation.
But why this obsesion with cats and its exposure on the web? Why keyboard cat can’t stop being funny? How long will this new sensation last?
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Tags: cat, cats, content, internet, keyboard cat
new times for search engines?
Some have already dubbed it as Google’s rival, even thought this is a completely new tool.
I am talking about Wolfram Alpha: a computational knowledge engine. This system provides “definitive answers to factual questions” and it’s fuelled by raw factual data either entered manually by the Wolfram team or pulled in the system automatically.
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Tags: digital, google, innovation, insight, research, useful, wolfram alpha
Filed under: social media | Leave a Comment
Tags: insight, research, social technographics, social web, strategy, useful
Twitter essentials
As part of a small (personal) piece of research around a digital agency presence in social media, I have started writing some tips for brands on how to use Twitter.
Something that I’ve observerd is that some brands have included social media as part of their SEO strategy, which I am not very convinced about. Of course having a blog will improve your search rankings, as Google loves new and interesting content, but I am a bit wary of those who have a narrow view of what social media can do for a brand. I see social media as a completely difference discipline, even as a new way of communication between brands and consumers (as I’ve expressed in several occassions). In my opinion, social media strategies should not be focused on driving traffic to a website but should instead engage your consumers in those places where they’re already socialising and talking.
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Tags: brands, content, marketing, microblogging, social media, tips, twitter
It seems that marketing professionals don’t know how to use social media to help brands. In a way, I am not very surprised by these results uncovered by McCann Erickson’s survey as I had the same feeling 2 months ago, during the social networking world forum in London.
Most of the speakers in the forum had a very narrow view of what social media is and what it can do for brands and people. Some saw it as another tool to optimise websites, others as a traffic driver to main web properties or another medium to place advertising. Social media is so much more than all that, it’s basically a way of understanding communication and the real reason why the Internet was actually created for.
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Tags: insight, marketing, social media, social networking, survey
