Aid to Sri Lankan IDPs

I thought I should post some links to good people we know who are on the ground in Sri Lanka who can and are getting food and medical supplies to the refugees from the war with the Tamil Tiger Rebels. These guys need money and they need money now in order to help the many wounded, starving people who are the unfortunate victims of this terrible war.

Please help if you can.

http://www.actlanka.org/
http://www.grassroots.lk/

lost my iPhone :(

Well Elsie and Mark's wedding sure was a blast on Saturday, but the annoying thing is I managed to loose my iPhone somewhere on the way home. If anyone tries to sell you an iPhone with a Chimovski logo as the background image, please get in touch!

Some greeny product design stuff

Just been catching up on various blogs etc to do with green-design. Here is the current Greenpeace rating for electronics companies:

Also, I just discovered Worn Again, who are making stuff from old stuff. Awesome!

It's always sunny in Wales

Just on the train home after a fantastic long weekend at Fforest, where the sun shone, the lambs bleated, and we generally ate, drunk and were merry. Bobby is in the process of buying some land so the first thing I did was build a style over the fence to gain access. It's five acres of fantastic land that rolls down from the house to the road, and is currently occupied by the owners sheep and their offspring. Leah an I sat on the style watching the elambs play as the sun set over the hills on Saturday night - lovely!




Here are some of the (tasty) little dudes watching us watching them.

I went for a three hour rude up into the Brechfa forest trails on Sunday- it's amazing up there, and I'm starting to see lots more people. Most of the people I spoke to had made the journey down from London, and one bloke was from ipswich way!

Last night we had 18 for dinner, including my friend Frank and his partner Sally from the Eco design centre in Cardiff. They had bought along their chocolate Labrador, Marley, and bobby's friend marcus had bought his one, Rollo, so it was a bit like seeing double at times! Still, alisha and ffyon made good use of them by incorporating them into their show, which was awesome. Frank had bough some authentic Irish patchin so things deteriorated a bit as the night wore on, with peter polish even chosing frank's drink over his native vodka- a sure sign of it's authenticity!

It's a real shame that rob and claire don't feel that they want to hang out with us all and sort out the situation that has brewed over the last five years or so- they're really missing out and it's a great shame not to be a part of bela's life- I need to write to him but it's hard to know what to say....

Nerves

Pre gig pints!












-- Post From My iPhone

Maida vale drama

Two police vans and two cars have pulled up opposite....but they've all come put again empty handed....


-- Post From My iPhone

Amazing Maldives!

Just read that the Maldivian president is aiming to make the islands completely carbon neutral, which is such a positive step. They are hoping to do this with wind and solar power, which will hopefully lead to innovation allowing other places to follow suit.


-- Post From My iPhone

More music Sunday

It's a beautiful day outside, but we've once again chosen to sit in the bedroom and record Chimovski tracks - it all for you, folks! Dedication or what?







Here is buzz doing a rough take of Come and Get It... The ironing board kinda ruins the cool factor, but this is a home, not a studio, so what to do?! I should get my surf board in there, or maybe my new Bustin long board once I've figures out how to get it over from NY...

Getting in on london2012

Been at an Olympic 2012 business network meeting this afternoon in the museum of London in the docklands, trying to work out how to get in on the fun. They are working hard to make it 'sustainable' but as usual there are some crazy things going on. For example they've tied the heating up to a 40 year contract which is supposed to provide combined heat and power from waste at the site using bio-matter. However, this means that the houses they build on the site can't have solar hot water heating as this would eat into the projected returns of the power company... Crazy! Anyway, it was raining when I went in, but a lovely night when I came out, with all the lights of the docklands and a big moon rising between the buildings. The iPhone camera can't do it justice of course, but you get the idea.

Simple sounds

Been recording more chimovski this week, trying to get a few more tracks nailed before our next gig, which is Friday the 3rd April at Dead or Alive in Bar Rhumba on Shaftesbury Av. Should be a good one as it's Rich's birthday that weekend. Jim is having a party on the saturday too so it might be a mad weekend.








Went to comedy at the Arts Club on Frith St on Saturday- was very funny and a cool venue, though I wasn't reduced completely to tears as I often am. Must go to more comedy, laughter is great.

Freedom Path longboard

I've just been checking Core77 and it looks as though my Freedom Path long board has been cut and is on it's way! COOOOOOL. Ch ch ch check it here.

Ten at Fifteen

Went to Jamie Oliver's Fifteen retaurant last night with a bunch of friends. Was pretty nice food and not bad value overall, though I think there's probably a fair amount of hype about it. We were given a set menu, the starter being a large plate of various tasty treats including aubergine, yummy pate and, king sqaush and some mozarella. For my main I chose haddock on a bed of chick peas, but for me it a was a little salty and the chick peas a little to crunchy- I know they're supposed to be 'al dente' but personally I prefer the Spanish style soft ones...

Anyway, here are some photos of the fun:

First mobile blog

Just checking, while I await my sandwhich, whether blogging from my iphone is working...


-- Post From My iPhone

Boiler Man

Poor engineer dude is here from British Gas....his afternoon started badly with a difficult to maintain and repair boiler that had broken down in some poor old dears' house, leaving her with no hot water and no heating. He toiled all afternoon, when I called to find out where he was, he said he was looking at bits of a boiler all laid out over the floor....so I waited patiently, just hoping he would come today so that I wouldn't need to wait until tomorrow. And come he did, at about six thirty, and he's still beavering away in the kitchen trying to get my boiler to work properly...

I made him a cuppa tho' so he'll be right as rain soon.

Just been reading through the Howies blog, those guys still rock. I'm sending them some jackets back on which the zips have broken....I'm hoping their design team will find it useful to see where their jackets fall down and make them even better.

Snow fun, comp winer and more.

Well, Manu Chao was awesome, I was right to be excited! Following that Leah and I headed to Sri Lanka for a lovely holiday over Christmas, with Bobby, Netta, Laurie, Beth and Family...I should post some photos thinking about it.

2009 has started well. Chimovski played an awesome gig at the Bull and Gate in Kentish Town. We managed to get 99 people down to see us so the place was heaving - they had to open the doors at the back so that the people who couldn't get in could see! I'll try and sort out video and photos soon. We're playing again at the Bullet Bar in Camden on the 26th Feb.

This Monday serious snow hit London, which meant my office was closed for the day, which was a nice surprise. Went for a nice walk with Jesse and Katharine through Regents' park and up to Primrose Hill. The snow was perfect for snow-balls and snow-men. This lead to everyone rolling MASSIVE snow balls, until they couldn't roll them anymore, and they lay dotted about the park like some kind of strange art exhibition. It was a shame to see the number of discarded bin-liner bags all over Primrose Hill. People are SO lazy.

From cold snaps

I had a result today as I found out that I'm one of the winners for this months Core77 1 Hour Design Competition. You can see my 'Freedom' entry here. Always nice to win something.

Seriously excited: Manu Chao next week

I'm sitting here winding myself up watching Manu Chao videos on You Tube. I've managed to get some tickets for next Wednesday to see them play at the Forum and I'm seriously excited.



It's grandma's funeral that day too, which is less exciting obviously, tho' I'm hoping it wont be a dour affair, I'm pretty sure she wouldn't want it to be.

£120 road sign

This almost invisible congestion charge sign ended up costing me £120 last week since I missed it when I drove to work to return the hire car that I'd rented for the weekend in order to go to Wales. Unfortunatley, due to a crash on the M4 we didn't make it to Wales and instead spent fives hours on a Friday night driving nowhere in order to end up back home.

The really painful thing is that the hire company, Capital Hire, have charged £50 + VAT to photocopy the congestion charge letter and send it to me. OUCH.

The sign should be bigger, it's stealth! If the van on right was on the other side of the road you wouldn't see it at all.

Chimovski return to the Stage

A big thanks to all those who made the French Revolution in London party last night and gave support to us. Was great to be back on stage playing music, we've got some great new songs and it felt really good to be up there. Hopefully I'll get hold of some photos soon.

We're working on the website, so that should be live soon, and we're still recording so we should have some more stuff for your iPods soon.

Glastonbury 2008

Here are our photos from this years' Glastonbury festival.

Once the rain stopped it was a great festival, I think my favourite band to see were Vampire Weekend - see them if you can 'cause they're great live. We also saw Manu Chao again, who rocked, a bit of Leonard Cohen though we split early as Tasha didn't really like him, some great circus and comedy, and lots of other stuff too.

Keeny Greeny

I've been spending the last few months trying to get under the skin of sustainable and 'good' design, but it's proving very difficult to reach a consensus in many areas as to what we should all be doing. True, there are some examples of great forward thinking design, like the Herman Miller Aero office seat, but the main difficulty I have is convincing everyday clients and my fellow designers as to what the best steps forward are and how we can make them economically viable. One of the main problems it seems to me is that consumerism is so fundamentally woven into our society as the model for happiness and good living. I finally got round to watching the http://www.storyofstuff.com/ video and it says everything I've been thinking and reading for ages... only thing is trying to change the momentum behind our current way of life and alter the rather self destructive direction we are currently pursuing.

There are lots of great ideas coming from people like wearewhatwedo.org and http://www.dothegreenthing.com/ but I wonder how global all that really is - who's actually reading them and taking part other than what probably amounts to a pretty small concerned minority at the moment. So how do we get these thoughts out to your every day Joe Blogs? Well the Internet is certainly doing it's part on many fronts, as I suppose is some of the media. But many of the arguments are still unresolved, and some ideas that seem really good on the face of things have terrible implications - such as trying to run our cars on Bio Ethanol- Bye Bye Forrest and food!

Anyway, just some ramblings as I sit here musing on how to draw all this stuff together into something that makes sense.