Cranks

June 15th 2008

Cranks is a coverband formed by 5 employees at POKE; Igor Clark, Mattias Gunneras, Dom Baker, David Kelly and I. Two weeks ago we had our first official gig.

The name of the band comes from the term used to describe crying and wanking simultaneously – Crank. Someone suggested it as the band name, we accepted it and then Simon Cook, aka made-in-england.org got to work and did us an ingenius logotype and other graphical assets.

I have been in various band formations playing various genres and styles, but this one is my first coverband and the first band where what we have in common is not a similar taste in music, but our professions. So, naturally, we’ve had very heated discussions about what to play and what not to play. What’s good and what’s not good. But after a few weeks we were finding a common ground and we managed to get together a set list of 16 songs we all liked and enjoyed playing.

Our first appearance went down well. We managed to get a slot on the last ever Club Pub that was held at On The Rocks. The theme was, appropriately — ROCK!

Photograph captured by Jaypeg

Many of our co-workers weren’t sure what to expect from Cranks, which I think worked in our favour, since we basically took them by surprise and rocked their socks off. And they liked it (without socks), which was brilliant.

Photograph captured by Greg Reed

I’ve done a fair amount of concerts in my days, most of them I can’t really remember. This one will definitely be one that I do remember. Mainly because of the ROCKING audience!

People who have seen me play live knows that i’m a bit of a different person when i’m on stage… or, it’s more like most people don’t expect me to behave the way I do on stage based on my personality off stage.

Nothing I do on stage is done intentionally. So it’s always fun to see all the photos afterwards. Apparently, judging by the photos, this time around I screamed a lot.

Photograph captured by Marc Davies

Below are some links to blog posts and flickr sets and tags documenting the last ever club pub and the first ever public appearance by Cranks.

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Ottolenghi

April 27th 2008

Through POKE I was given the lovely opportunity to work with the great people at Ottolenghi and help them to design and build their new website. When working for a medium-sized company such as POKE (approx. 50ppl), where larger clients take up the majority of studio time, these kind of smaller/independent clients and projects come as a long awaited breeze of fresh air on a hot summers day.

A few words on the design:

Working with the Ottolenghi brand was difficult — or maybe ‘challenging’ is the correct phrase. They are very minimalistic but still carry a personality. So the difficulty / challenge was to keep it very slimmed-down but still engaging.

The above screen is of the current homepage.

The design is based around a simple 8 column grid (show / hide grid). I decided to left align the page to give use of the browser edge for a “full bleed” photographic treatment. Another repeating photographic treatment is the overlaying and slightly anti-top-aligned treatment that can be seen on all top level pages (except the blog) and on recipes where images are in portrait instead of horizontal format.

A few words on the build:

I also did the front end build of the site, while the back-end was delivered by Nilesh Ashra. It was my first project using the jQuery javascript library and the first project i’ve been involved with that uses the “Death Star”, which is a Model-View-Controller approached PHP framework developed by Igor Clark and Nilesh.

If I knew what I know now, I would probably have used the MooTools 1.2 (currently in beta) javascript framework instead of jQuery 1.2.3. Not because jQuery didn’t get the job done or was hard to work with; at the time I hadn’t tried either of them, or given jQuery a chance. Since then I have worked on another project and given MooTools a chance and it turns out that MooTool suits me a bit better.

Working with Nilesh and the “Death Star” framework worked out great. It made me hungry for more Model-View-Controller approached PHP and I am now looking into what codeigniter can do to please that part of my brain.

So, wrapping up,

I’m pleased with the result and the project was a real pleasure to work on. No other client has offered me such good meeting snacks and lunches as Ottolenghi.

One of the few downsides about working on this project was that it kept me constantly hungry. I thought that working on the GoodFood website last year had made me immune to fooling my body that the glycogen level of the liver has fallen and activating the hunger feeling by looking at food photos on screen.

Thankfully, in a few weeks, their new cookbook will be out (which I have flipped through and can confirm looks amazing) so that Willow and I can cook all the dishes I have been drooling at for the last couple of months.

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Clubpub

November 16th 2006


above photo of Willow and me was talken by Iain Tait, and stolen from his flickr page

Last night we (POKE) held another Clubpub party. This time the theme was ‘back to basics (again)’, and held at a pub called ‘At the Horse and Groom’ in east London.

As always, it was a brilliant night.

Judging from the photo below, Willow, Gustav and I probably left the party a bit to soon.


From left to right, Johan Blid, Igor Clark (with tape hat), Kate Theakston (head banging), Cookie (sweaty guy with an impressive mustache) (photo by Dominic Goodrum)

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It started with an email about two knackered iPods and ended with a heavy discussion about capitalism and todays economic growth

July 20th 2006

About a week a ago (or so) this email:

I’ve got 2 x 4th generation ipods at home, both with knackered hard drives. My inner environmentalist says that I can’t throw them away. But getting them fixed will cost £150 quid each. Which just isn’t worth it considering they’re old and scratched up. Is there anything you can do with them? Or like mobile phones is there a charity that can do something with them?

turned a mailing list into a temporarily war zone about capitalism, corporal responsibilities, old mechanics vs new. A lot of good thinks got said;

…in a way it’s our own fault for supporting it and propagating the apple-is-best mythology simply because ipods are so much nicer-looking, more nicely designed and more ergonomic than e.g. creative or any of the other dog-ugly pc-like clones. i guess we’re victims of our own taste, or something? personally i don’t think it’s too much to ask that we should have nicely-designed and ergonomic technology that doesn’t cost the earth and lasts longer than a mayfly, but it seems the man doesn’t agree with me, because that would interfere with unfettered economic growth.

i’ll get my coat.

good point were made:

so that they can make more money from extended guarantees, a relatively recent bit of sharp practice. from what I understand of older times, this was not previously the case.

and a lot of good links got send around:

  • Slavoj Zizek: Nobody has to be vile
    An article including both good and bad things. So maybe not all good – but definitely an interesting read.
  • Apple battery replacement
    Apple’s batteries scheme, that was, according to some sources, set up as a response to all the complains coming in.
  • Apple and the environment
    “Apple has long been an advocate of product stewardship, and we believe that this concept extends to the proper disposal of electronic equipment at the end of its life.”

So all that (and a lot more) came out of a email about two knackered iPods in combination with some brilliant people and their thoughts (and will to share them). I actually didn’t contribute to the discussion at all, I just agreed towards the end. So well done everyone and thanks for once again proving that TV is a bad choice of entertainment (and that the world is fucked up and we all gonna die and burn in Hell).

So thanks Iain Tait for fucking up two iPods. Thank you Andrew Knott for winding up Igor Clark to produce some absolute top quality rants.

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