the year in pig cheeks · 31.12.08
I’m often asked what was my favourite meal, or most remarkable dish. I’m terrible at deciding, especially when put on the spot, but luckily I photograph to remember. 2008’s memories are dominated by trips to Japan and San Sebastian, both with lashings of crispy pork bits.
Japan = tonkatsu. And tempura. And okonomiyaki. And sushi.
I ate my weight in pork, notably at Butagumi tonkatsu restaurant. Fantastic tempura and my first earthquake at the original Tsunahachi. Pork cheek shio ramen at santouka in Kyoto (who also have some odd mall food court outlets in the US). Hiroshima style okonomiyaki, including flattened mochi, at Michan.
San Sebastian: 8 Michelin stars in 3 days. Plus great pintxos, washed down with Txacoli. And sun, sea and surfers. I loved the place.
My meal at Mugaritz was the best, and 3 dishes stood out – ‘flowers, flowers, flowers’, vegetable carpaccio, and crispy pig tails with langoustine. Actually, the cheese plate was great too, as was a sublime honeyed fish stew and cloud-like cheese gnocchi.
Elsewhere, the superb pigeon with goji, and chocolate grapes in strawberry soup at Arzak, and the peach at Akelarre. And the genius chorizo sausage roll from a bakery in Bilbao.
It’s been a cartography of pork: crispy pig’s head at arbutus and magdalen, cheeks cooked at home. Odds and sods: the shack, of course. Steak of awesomeness and dessert of triple awesomeness at Les Trois Petits Bouchons.
Happy new year.
blown · 23.11.08
I went glassblowing yesterday. I’d found a place in London doing one-day courses (I’ve also found another), and after enquiring a week ago, I was lucky enough to get a cancellation. A lot was covered – about the same as 4 months of a normal glassblowing course – gathering the glass, working it into shape (using the secret weapons of glassblowing: blocks, jacks and the Yellow Pages), colouring, creating a number of different shapes, and blowing. The morning was spent getting used to hot glass, and then the afternoon was spent blowing pieces.
There were 4 students and 2 teachers, and there was emphasis on you thinking about what you wanted to make, aided by all the work in the studio and gallery. And then you made it. The demos of what we were about to do were daunting, and it was a revelation to get anywhere close to what we were shown. I only lost one gather of glass – trying to extend the length of a paperweight.
What I really liked was getting into the rhythm of glassblowing. Hot glass is only malleable for about a minute before it has to be reheated, so the process was heating, working on the bench or marver, reheating, working again, and gradually introducing colour, the bubble, further blowing, and final shaping. I still consider glass to be an extreme craft – you’re working with and fighting gravity and momentum in those 60 seconds before it starts to harden – but you learn to take your time, even if there are lots of moments of extreme concentration to keep a piece from disintegrating. You’re always just seconds away from the piece disappearing.
There are so many variables – colour means that the glass has different properties, and multi-colour means that different parts react differently. You’re also working blind – colours are hard to see until the glass is cool, and also it obscures seeing the bubble blowing into the glass. I also learnt it’s strictly a right-handers’ craft, with the triangle of gloryhole, marver and chair carefully set up, and that it’s teamwork – from transferring from rod to rod to work on the neck of a piece, through to protecting the other worker’s arm from the heat of the glass using a paddle.
Anyway, my pieces are slowly annealing at the moment, and I should have them next week (if they don’t shatter). Thanks to the wonderful trainers at the London Glassblowing Workshop, and I can totally recommend doing the course if you’re in any way interested – it’s also a lot of fun if you just want to get your hands dirty in some other subject too – they run lessons once a month. If you want to see the Bermondsey workshop or the glassblowing process, they’re holding an open house and sale from this Friday (28th November) until Sunday 7th December. More photos here.
to be clear · 5.11.08
I’m happy for you. No, really. I’d be happy too, but it’s hard to smile when you’ve been kicked in the teeth.
In the US, 3 more states have (probably) voted to ban the possibility of gay marriage. Arkansas banned gay fostering and adoption. In the run up to California’s Prop 8 vote, The Yes on 8 Campaign held a rally against gay marriage. It’s not often you see pictures, in a civilised country, in the 21st century, of 15,000 people, that, well, hate you.
It’s not about gay marriage. It’s about equality. Human rights.
There are 6 countries which give gays and lesbians equal rights (apart from maybe blood donation) – Canada, Spain, Belgium, Norway, South Africa, the Netherlands.
In the UK, I can’t get married or give blood.
There are at least 76 countries where homosexuality is illegal, in 7, punishable by death.
So, be happy. Really. It’s a great day for equality, today. Celebrate, today. But tomorrow, there’s work to be done.
Comment [7]
usquebae · 20.10.08
12:00 <@ChrisDodo> eeep. I have just bought a bottle of whisky that has its own flickr account.
12:00 <@jerakeen> does that count as a spime, or just annoying marketing?
12:00 <@ChrisDodo> it certainly has a story.
12:01 <@jerakeen> you have to admit, a slide saying 'IT'S A TALKING BOTTLE OF WHISKY'
is going to get a different reaction from the shoe one.
12:01 <@ChrisDodo> http://www.flickr.com/photos/27759146@N03/
12:01 <+mind> [ Flickr: Glenfiddich cask 4414's Photostream ]
12:01 <@jerakeen> IT'S MY ONLY FRIEND
12:01 <@jerakeen> NOONE ELSE UNDERSTANDS ME
12:01 <@ChrisDodo> and yes, i am a sucker buying whisky the same year i was born
12:01 <@ChrisDodo> dammit, there's a blog post in that
with apologies to Russell and Tom
So here it is. I think Glenfiddich have done a very good job talking about this whisky. In June, they held a tasting to select the best barrel, which was videoed and put on their website. It’s a no-nonsense undumbed-down half hour discussing the dilemma of what makes the ‘best’ whisky, and gives a clear understanding of why it’s both an interesting whisky and representative of Glenfiddich. It’s a nice example of pre-experience design: reading about the process of selection and watching the tasting will alter my experience of both buying and tasting the whisky.
We know the history of the cask, how it was made, what it’s been filled with, and seen the result, the selection, and the craftsmanship of distillery. We know what it tastes like, and what others think. I’m sure more digital detritus will be left as people receive their bottles. So, it’s a spime, vaguely. I used to be very adamant that the data should reside in the object itself, rather than in the messy Internet. I’m changing my mind on this. With simple tools like Google search, information of all kinds can be revealed easily, and the connecting story has to be reconstructed personally.
Comment [4]
Pepsi Raw · 19.10.08
I finally got to try Pepsi Raw – Waitrose/Ocado now stocks it. It’s interesting to see big soft drink manufacturers trying to crack the super-premium market, and without turning to ‘healthy’ fruit juices.
The bottle clearly apes the iconic Coca-Cola bottle. On pouring, there’s a strange very stable, almost waxy foam. The taste is, well, apples, then molasses, and burnt sugar – in a bad way. There’s little complexity of flavour, compared to Coke, and it’s quite sweet. There’s also little carbonation, which goes immediately on pouring.
The ingredients list is odd. They play on the natural angle, but it’s pretty weaselly – lactic acid, gum arabic, xanthan gum. Now, I’m not against the use of chemicals in food and drink (I have a tub of xanthan gum in my kitchen cupboard), but to say they’re natural is a bit rich. The gums are also the reason for the stable foam. They’re there, I guess, for mouthfeel – but it’s a longer ingredients list than real Coke.
I don’t mind it having a different taste to standard Pepsi or Coke – there’s always a push for a new flavour to help differentiate – but I’d want a premium drink to be more complex than the standard drink, whereas Coke is an incredible rich mix of flavours, very carefully balanced, Pepsi Raw is one-note (apples), two-note at best (burnt sugar), and weirdly ends up tasting more artificial than the product it revises.
the new luxuries · 13.10.08
Way back at Eurooscon in 2006, I gave a talk in which one of the main messages was ‘privacy is a luxury’. Only those that can afford to miss out on offers, savings and discounts will be able to keep their privacy – perfectly illustrated in a recent catandgirl cartoon:
I’ve been speaking to Russell a lot about where advertising is going. Firstly, as he mentioned in his designengaged talk, advertising is appearing in loads more places than it used to, and there’s little or no civic discussion about if this is a good thing or not. Screens in buses? Screens in train tunnels? Screens in shops? Screens as facades? Screens everywhere. Will everywhere become like Times Square? What seem like well intentioned digital extensions of future buildings, will, rather, become vast square kilometers of new ad space per city. Should every building be used as an advertising hoarding?
When targeted messages are present in everything you do – on your buildings, on your screen, on your phone – you’ll get the advertising you deserve. Literally. One of the remaining web business models – freemium – puts a price on how much you need to spend to remove advertising from a ‘media property’, which is no longer where you’d expect to find adverts, but anywhere you spend time and attention, such as computer apps and websites.
And the final kick in the teeth is the complexity of the ads themselves. Clarity is a luxury. Ads that present a brand message tend to be simple. Ads that convey a monetary offer or benefit, are not only hard to decipher, full of words, small print, competing offers, but take extra cognition to even dismiss. “Will this be good for me?” “Will this make my life better?”. They also tend to be more cynically designed, with added lizard brain semantics. “These great offers won’t last” “Call us today.” Time, effort and worry are the price you pay for having to make hard financial decisions constantly.
Comment [6]
radio on · 10.10.08
What happens when you turn a radio on?
Sound comes out. Then you pick the sound you want.
Radios are silence-suckers, not sound-creators.
I find it weird that a lot of Internet radio and music apps and services (and even products like iPods) go the other way; silent when you start them, causing you to select the music you want, before getting any sound out of it. In some ways it’s the optimal interaction design, or at least it’s the most rational, but I think there’s something nice in just starting and letting you guide it into what you want.
It’s certainly a different way of looking at interactions from the traditional action-reaction flows that seem to dominate computers and technology.
Comment [1]
of montreal · 8.10.08
Still digesting Design Engaged, meanwhile…
not present in the present · 8.10.08
I had a thought kicking around in my head, and it was amplified by nicolas’ presentation at Design Engaged.
The future is terribly easy to predict. It’s predicting the instantiation that’s hard.
Human needs change very slowly. Sometimes they suddenly become possible to fulfill, but more normally, they just get better, easier, cheaper. Future visions are always filled with the instantiations, even not mentioning the fulfilled need.
I disagree with Nicolas that the videophone was a failure. Personal communication with pictures as well as sound is very human – and it’s happening all the time. It’s just that the instantiation that took off was laptops and PCs with webcams, and Skype, rather than a box plugged into the phone line, or indeed, webcams in mobile phones (I personally think that this will take off quite soon too).
I remember watching Tomorrow’s World in the 80s, and it was filled with exotic shopping trolleys, each equipped with a computer (hard to find early examples, as, well, it’s still happening – 1998, 2002, 2004, 2005 and, oh look, 2008, 2008). The need – shopping is boring and annoying – remains, and is true; the reality was online shopping, in all its forms. Service design, rather than technology design.
It’s true that the future is not evenly distributed. My present is about 3 years in the chronological future, both in my work and the way I’m using technology. I’ve generally noticed that big technologies, like the Internet, Bluetooth, wifi, DVDs take at least 6 years to become mass-market, from the first true consumer product. So my present can be 9 years ahead of even sophisticated, monied, privileged Western people. I’ve had several serious meetings about 2015, even 2017 at work. Big ideas take time…. self-parking cars: 17 years, digital radio: 8-9 years.
I’d also say that if you can’t predict rough instantiations 3 years out, you’re not paying enough attention. In 3 years, there’s unlikely to be revolution, but many weak signals are around. If it has physicality in any way, companies have to work this far out, and the research would have been done years before that. Pay attention!
Comment [6]
you're doing it wrong · 7.10.08
It’s interesting to watch Google start rolling out advertising to Google Maps. It seems to be travel related websites – I’ve noticed activehotels, hotels.com and Expedia so far, and this careful selection of ads seems to make sense.
On the web, little square boxes pop on the map as well as the search results.
I suspect that activehotels either didn’t have a logo that fit well in the square, or my adblocker blocked it. I thought it looked like a speech bubble, and expected a comment or some other geo-encoded content.
Now it’s gone mobile.
It’s the same deal; adverts on the map added as square pushpins.
However, there are two obvious problems and a bigger dilemma when turning this mobile.
The first problem is screen size.
On the web, a banner is 1-5% of the page; on a mobile it’s close to 30%, and it isn’t like Google search, where the ads are carefully positioned in a separate part of the page – they’re first. You have to parse it before getting to the place you were actually looking for.
The second is interactivity.
Clickthroughs make less sense: the links aren’t mobile-optimised (in fact, it’s an 800k full, heavy page) and it isn’t just opening another window. Multitasking is hard. In this particular example, it’s even weirder – they’ve pre-filled in that it’s for a hotel tonight, for 2 nights, leading to an error in this case. Saving the link as a favourite (which makes more sense) only contains the hotel name – there’s not even the full address or phone number.
The big dilemma is that needs are different. I’m normally on Mobile Google Maps when I’m frantically trying to find a place, often the hotel I’ve booked. I’m lost, I want to sleep – I’m not exploring the possibility space, and I don’t want to wade through marketing garbage. Note that this doesn’t make sense for these kinds of advertisers either: I’ve booked already, and I don’t want alternatives.
It’s good to see Google experimenting with this. It’s a hard problem, and I hope everyone learns what’s good and bad, and changes and optimises accordingly. It’s weird that marketers just want to copy techniques from other media, that people will be willing to have to make the decision to pay attention in these new spaces, and that advertisers will think this the best way of promoting themselves.
Comment [1]