Little strokes fell big oaks. Marks left waiting commuters on a pillar. Seen on the platform of the Bakerloo line, Liverpool Street Station. Visualisation of people's average height in a bell-curved format.
On the corner of Stoke Newington High Street and Northwood Road (streetview). Much better than the original.
Café Oto near Dalston Kingsland railway station is my favourite place to spend a Sunday these days. It's spacious, friendly and no-one bothers you for having just one coffee in many hours. One of the least commercially driven places around.
At this year's lift conference in Geneva, Fabian and me gave a 5 minute presentation on knives (an off-topic tour d'horizon on the literacy of cutting):
That's not because of the absence of knowledge in form of books, it's rather through the absence of silence. The absence of mobile phone conversations, coffees and croissants. There are signs and staff everywhere to remind students that they actually are in a library and not on Oxford Circus. It's interesting how places sometimes fail to prompt behaviour that they could easily prompt a few years ago. Wonder how much the iPhone-ness of the Sir Norman Foster design has to do with this.
Spotted this recently on a toilet paper dispenser in Luton airport:
The text reads: "NOW PLEASE WASH YOUR HANDS".
Isn't this great? You are sitting there, doing what you have to do and then somebody nice tells you what to do next with your life...
I have tried to use digital to-do-lists, but they don't work for me. They have to be physical. Why is that?
For me, it's because the joy of crossing something out that I have done, is at its highest when doing it on paper. Multiple times. In several colours. Just to fend off all evils and negative images that are mentally attached to it.
And: If I have done something before it has even been on the to-do-list, I will write it down afterwards and immediately cross it out. Just for the instant gratification.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Have had the motorola F3 for a while now. It took me a while to get used to it, but now I do appreciate the back-to-basics approach of its design: No camera, no video, no help with text-input, no colour display, 6 ring-tones. It's a phonephone.
One thing has struck me though: Every single time I go to the carphone warehouse store to top it up, the guys behind the till ask me: "How easy do you find the phone to use? We had tons of complaints and people don't even know how to write txts."
They really do hate the phone. Maybe it is already too late for a phone that is as basic as the very first mobile phones that came out. People are already used to many-level menues so much, that they are swamped with a phone that can do ten things, no more.
I live in a flatshare (shortlet) and love my little room. It has old wooden-flooring and a beautiful view to the backyard. Only thing that troubled me was the single-glazed windows. Most time of the year that might be ok, but right now, at night, there is a cold and constant draught right next to my head.
Went to the local hardware shop and got some scrap-wood and nails, tape and clingwrap came from a one-pound-store. Soon a little frame emerged that would fit neatly inside the window surround.
It works perfectly and insulates very well. Square middle-class happiness.
I take it down during the day though...
Beautiful handmade display in a gardener's supplies on Stoke Newington Church Street.
Where else can you buy pebbles with names like York Gold or Green Slate?
Streetfurniture like lamp posts, distributing centres, switch cabinets and dust bins follow the strict rules of functionality and utility. They house a city's infrastructure and facilitate electricity, public transport or refuse collection.
Normally these profane functions are followed by profane design: grey is the colour of streetfurniture.
Lately I have seen two rule-breaking examples: Hand-painted (!) transformer boxes in the city of Geneva and cow-patterned Hackney recycle bins on Stoke Newington Church Street:
Is there a link between theses two neighbourhoods that are more community-orientated, organic and "conscious" than the average?
Did my shopping in a nearby grocery store today and – inspired by the recent I`m-not-a-plastic-bag-frenzy – I brought my string bag with me.
String bags are very practical: they weigh near-to nothing, expand impressively and mine is said to carry up to 11 lb.
But: When I carried the stuff home, I wondered whether people would like using these bags a lot because everybody can see what you bought. It felt a bit weird, this kind of public shopping. Not that I had to hide anything, but I guess there is stuff to buy in supermarkets you wouldn't want to be bringing home so highly visible...
In 50s and 60s Germany string bags were very common and used widely: Different norms of display then?
Spotted on a platform of Geneva's train station: A safety pylone – the mother-of-all movable barriers – bolted down to the ground.
On a side note: The guy approaching on the right is a soldier, telling me of to take pictures within the train station. He's very "movable" safety device...
