Year: <span>2011</span>

Year: 2011

Google Ngram Viewer – The Beatles weren’t more popular than Jesus, but Madonna was.

Kevin Kelly’s post on the Technium blog has just taken over my Friday evening. It includes a link to the Google Ngram viewer. The what? The Google/University Consortium has digitised over 15 million books so far, and the Ngram viewer allows you to investigate the frequency of use of various …

Time lapse photography with Instalapse, Hipstacase and Gorillapod.

Actually make that time lapse photography with Instalapse, Hipstacase, Gorillapod, a large Velux window, a 30m extension cable and several volumes of the 1955 edition Chambers’s Encyclopedia. Instalapse first. Instalapse is an iPhone app that makes time lapse photography pretty darn easy actually. You set the interval between shots, set …

Where I was on 9/11.

I can remember exactly where I was as the 9/11 atrocity unfolded. I was in Edinburgh then Brussels. The Brussels trip was for a pan-European advertising pitch on 10/11. As Gerry (creative director), Giles (bag carrier) and I dashed out of the agency, an account manager came dashing in saying, …

The worst job I ever had.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eDaSvRO9xA&] This Lancashireman is struggling to compete with the extreme, and extremely competitive, privations described by the four Yorkshiremen. Working a twelve hour overnight shift in the (now defunct) Rathbone’s Bakery in Wigan may not be as bad as licking a motorway clean before breakfast, but it felt pretty close …

Personal and professional on Twitter. A marriage made in heaven or hell?

What does it mean if you include your employer’s brand in your Twitter name? Whoa! Let’s back up and rephrase that highly assumptive opening sentence. What does it mean if you include your employer’s brand in the name of a Twitter profile operated by you? In other words, can a …

Mongolversary

A nostalgic post, it being a year since I flew to Kiev to join my Mongol Rally team-mates for the adventure of a lifetime. Indulge me. Great memories. Great friends. Great event. If you ever get the chance, jump at it. Follow @Phil_Adams

Word of mouth. Making jokes that people know other people will get.

Comedy depends on you sharing a set of reference points with your audience and if those are very divergent then they just won’t simply get your jokes. Helena Lewis Hasteley, Assistant Editor, New Statesman on the Radio 4 Today programme, Thursday 21st July 2011. Paul Stokes from The Daily Mash …