This is hilarious – and I love Photojojo. Bold and kooky products at a perfect price point; amusing, engaging, personality-filled copy and – as you’d expect – pretty cool photos every time. Corporations: this is what you get when you employ someone good to manage your emails! I usually dread mailing list emails as it’s just more monotonous marketing spam to dredge out of my inbox, but these are great – sign up now!
The Collapsable Camera Extender
Go-go-gadget tripod arms! (If only, right?)
All those romantic getaways, family vacations, and road trips and not a single photo of the photographer to show for it. You were there too, and you deserve a photo of you in front of The World’s Largest Artichoke.
It’s time to replace your outstretched arm-pod, impromptu rock/fence/tree/table-pod and the “Excuse me sir would you please take a picture of us”-pod.
The panacea to your portrait problem: The Collapsable Camera Extender.
Lightweight but incredibly sturdy, it collapses to just 6.5″ and fits in your pocket. When you’re ready to shoot, it telescopes to nearly five times the size.
Get me, you and everyone we know into one photo — without nasal shots, thumbs on the lens, or MySpace poses.
To set up your shot, just put your camera on self-timer and attach it to the tripod mount using the quick spin knob. Then adjust the head (it rotates 180 degrees) for the perfect angle, extend, and click the shutter!
DERN you’re looking good in front of that giant ‘choke!
DON’T YOU JUST WANT TO BUY IT NOW?? If only to be a tiny part of the success of a company that lets, nay, pays someone to write this on the internet.
Pearoasted from the EK blog. Jeffers speaks:
“The shock of yesterday’s 7.0 earthquake in Haiti is being felt around the world.
We wait now for news of both damage and survivors … we pray for those whose lives and families have been devastated … and we unite, in concern and compassion and with a desire to do whatever we can to contribute to the relief and recovery Haiti and its community desperately and urgently need.
Waiting is unavoidable. Praying is, for many, instinctive. But uniting in common concern and acting, in hopes of turning devastation into renewal, is where our greatest power now lies.
A few months back, Timberland announced its partnership with Yéle Haiti – a grassroots movement that builds global awareness for Haiti while transforming the country through educational, cultural and environmental programs. At the time, the vision for our partnership with Yele Haiti was one of reforestation – building a tree nursery in Gonaives , a city in northern Haiti devastated by a series of hurricanes and storms; enlisting local farmers to maintain it; and using the trees grown there to reforest the hillsides surrounding the city.
Yesterday afternoon, our partnership with Yele Haiti took a dramatic and unexpected turn. Many communities in the island nation have been reduced to rubble … and instead of focusing on ways to positively transform those communities, Yele Haiti today is mobilizing medical and emergency supplies to provide them critical relief.
As part of our partnership with Yele Haiti, Timberland makes a donation to the organization for every pair of Earthkeepers™ Yele Haiti boots and every Yele Haiti t-shirt that we sell. While the original intent for that donation was to support Haiti’s reforestation, we’re now rededicating our efforts – and our donation – to the country’s earthquake relief.
It is good intent and good effort … but undoubtedly not enough. Should you wish to contribute personally to the massive relief effort underway, this link will allow you to donate directly to the Yéle Haiti organization. You can also donate $5 to the Yele Haiti Earthquake Fund by texting the word “yele” to 501501.
While the enormity of this earthquake has left destruction beyond comprehension, the will, spirit and soul of people around the globe who are willing to help a nation in need will equally astound. Together, we can and will help Haiti and its people heal, strengthen and recover.”
Jeff Swartz
President & CEO, Timberland
Perhaps sent by Wellington, perhaps not; this letter (via Dave Trott’s blog) perfectly sets up the need to do one’s job against the pressure to appease the masses as they clamour ‘me, me, me!’.
Gentlemen,
Whilst marching from Portugal to a position which commands the approach to Madrid and the French forces, my officers have been diligently complying with your requests which have been sent by H.M. ship from London to Lisbon and thence by dispatch to our headquarters. We have enumerated our saddles, bridles, tents and tent poles, and all manner of sundry items for which His Majesty’s Government holds me accountable.
I have dispatched reports on the character, wit, and spleen of every officer. Each item and every farthing has been accounted for, with two regrettable exceptions for which I beg your indulgence.
Unfortunately the sum of one shilling and ninepence remains unaccounted for in one infantry battalion’s petty cash, and there has been a hideous confusion as to the number of jars of raspberry jam issued to one cavalry regiment during a sandstorm in western Spain.
This reprehensible carelessness may be related to the pressure of circumstance, since we are at war with France, a fact which may come as a bit of a surprise to you gentlemen in Whitehall.
This brings me to my present purpose, which is to request elucidation of my instructions from His Majesty’s Government so that I may better understand why I am dragging an army over these barren plains.
I construe that perforce it must be one of two alternative duties, as given below. I shall pursue either one with the best of my ability, but I cannot do both:
1. To train an army of uniformed British clerks in Spain for the benefit of the accountants and copy-boys in London or, perchance,
2. To see to it that the forces of Napoleon are driven out of Spain.
Your most obedient servant,
Wellington.
These people are worth more than a quick tag on delicious, which is all I seem to do with things I like these days. Studio on Fire is a Minneapolis-based letterpress print and design company that makes wicked stuff like this:
Needless to say I LOVE the one of a girl riding on a fox. Of course they do other stuff too, like business cards and invitations, posters and more. There’s a real fresh spirit in their prints, an energy all truly self-indulgent creative things have before the excecution become stale, ripped off or mainstream. And there’s nothing more certain to kill off zing like this than clients saying ‘Do me one like that!’. This makes me remember that to make something really special, sometimes you have to make sure you don’t set boundaries – both for yourself and for others.
Now I have a blank canvas of my own to work on, I’m turning my back on mass production and considering independent artists and renegade set-ups much more. I could spend hours browsing commissions, limited editions, obsolete and one-of-a-kind items; plus I’d like to show support for people whose work I admire. Appreciating an image or a concept is all well and good, and I will always mentally file things like this away, but I’m starting to realise that surrounding oneself with beautiful, authentic and unique things, imbued with meaning, skill and passion will make for an inspiring, fulfilling environment to live in.
Drivers: please stop with the abuse. You are warm and dry; I am soaked to the bone. You are in your cosy pod of laziness and I am being buffetted by forty-mile-an-hour winds. You have a horn, indicators, seatbelts and airbags; I have a polystyrene hat, two hands and a grass verge if I’m lucky.
Perhaps you are on your way to the hospital. Perhaps you have an important appointment. Perhaps you are running five minutes late for work because the au pair wouldn’t clean up Tarquin’s sick. No matter: you are all in a rush. If a lowly cyclist such as myself happens to elect the same route as thou, please, beep at me and shout out of your window; this will not alarm me at all, in fact it will make me disappear so you can continue unimpeded on your journey.
Be sure to overtake me on a blind corner or coming up a hill because you cannot stand to drive another second behind such an inconsiderate road user. Should you meet a vehicle coming the other way, just swing in to avoid it. Bikes are so slow you are probably about five miles in front of them by now anyway. Don’t worry if you crash into anything because your car is so damn expensive and shiny it will flatten anything in its path and YOU will be fine, darling, that’s what matters.
It sounds incredible but about a quarter of the drivers I encounter are aggressive or inconsiderate towards cyclists. It doesn’t take much to check your mirrors before you turn left (especially when you have just OVERTAKEN somebody on a bike), to wait until it is safe to overtake, to take a wide line when overtaking, or to anticipate a cyclist’s speed and not pull in or out directly in front of them.
Rant over.
I remember reading endless Enid Blyton books when I was little. It was a world of toadstool houses, pantries and fairies, shillings and sixpences and picnic baskets with crab paste sandwiches, where people are called Jock and Joan and Prudence and Mummy puts coals on the nursery fire. When I found this 1951 first edition in a charity shop (Maidenhead has half a dozen excellent ones) I just had to get it.
I’ve got memories of this one too; a yappy dog chewing off a cat’s whiskers and a golliwog toy coming to the rescue, Will and Won’t, Prick-Ear the imp and the seven Crosspatches. Sober moral tales, riddles and wordplay mixed with fantastical and wholesome fairy stories.
I didn’t appreciate the beautiful drawings the first time I read this; simple line drawings by Dorothy Hall, with mono-coloured fill which must have been quite exciting at the time.
As I read through I couldn’t help noticing parallels with how I write now. Simple sentences, twee poems, over-use of hyphens… These books haven’t just affected my writing style; reading through these tales again at an age where I can see them more objectively, it’s clear that they played a huge part in shaping how I saw – and continue to see – the world. Nostalgia for the lost values of the past, wanting to believe goblins and imps live at the bottom of the garden, and a tendency to imagine toys and creatures have secret lives.
The Goblin’s House
I went into a goblin’s house,
It was a funny place.
The table had a missing leg,
The clock had got no face.
I counted quite a lot of things
That really were quite wrong;
Just see if you can find them too,
It shouldn’t take you long!
It’s strange to think that so much affects you in your formative years; determining what you’ll be interested in later and how the world will appear to you. I think I learnt more from this than I did from English grammar and creative writing lessons at school. Enid Blyton books, along with other childhood delights like Fingermouse, Greenclaws, Meg and Mog, Just William and Letterland, had arguably more of an effect on my blank slate of a mind than anything could now.
Bilderoo is coming
“Bilderoo is coming!” shouted the little pixie, as he ran down the streets of Twisty Village. “Bilderoo is coming!” Everybody ran out of their houses in dismay. “Oh! Do you hear that? Bilderoo is coming!”
It was no wonder that everyone looked dismayed, for Bilderoo was a real nuisance. He was a powerful goblin, hard and mean, who thought a great deal of himself. He travelled about the country, staying in this village and that – and whoever he chose to stay with had to give him an excellent supper and breakfast – and then give him a very fine present.
Now, nobody minds having visitors they like, and giving them good meals if they can – but if the visitor is somebody you don’t want, who boasts all the time, and makes himself most unpleasant, well it’s a perfect nuisance to have him.
“Who will he stay with this time?” the folk of Twisty Village wondered. “He stayed with Millikin last time, and poor Millikin had to give him his lovely new clock for a present.”
Soon Bilderoo’s little servant came running into Twisty Village. “Where does Pippin live? I’ve got to tell him that the great Bilderoo is doing him the honour of spending the night with him! He must make ready!”
Poor Pippin! He was cross, because he already had a visitor, his best friend, Poppin. Now he and Pippin would have to turn out of their one and only bed, and let that horrid, boastful Bilderoo have it! Bother! Blow! And Bother again!
