The proof is in the hoodie: 5 hours of gingerbread mayhem

Having not baked since I was circa 12 years old (and that was under mum’s close supervision and mainly involved licking the icing bowls) I was slightly unnerved by the MWorks Xmas Challenge. However, I rose to that challenge and after 5 hours of trials and tribulations I was the proud creator of 29 gingerbread snowmen (does that work? A ginger snowman..? Albino..? Reverse-albino? I'm slightly confused.com). Three of the gingerbread men were hand-in-hand with other gingerbread men (go figure what you will) as the first round had resulted in a three’s company, four’s a crowd-type situation within each baking tray, and they’d melded together.

Problems encountered were largely of the ‘much too sticky’ nature and were eventually solved with about 4 kg worth of flour wafted strategically all over the kitchen, as well as into the cutter thingy. It also took a good few profanities before I figured out I had to press LIGHTLY with the cutter and then simply lift it off and pull away the trim around the shape, not add 25 acme anvils’ worth of weight onto it until I cut through to China and then attempt to retrieve the sticky dough from inside the cutter.

All in all, I proved against all odds that contrary to my first impressions I am NOT the worst baker in the world, ever!!

Happy Christmas to one and all….
J

A sign of the times

Balham Woolies this morn :0(

Help Santa keep his job!

I love this, I love this!

Green Santa was originally created by Chief Productions who teamed up with MAKE (part of LOVE Creative) to create a site which educates kids on the climate change issue + encourages them to pledge to do things to help, all in a fun + engaging way. It's based on the premise that Christmas is at risk because global warming is melting Santa's runway preventing him from delivering presents to children.

Children can browse the site to see how global warming is affecting not just Santa, but other characters living in Lapland including Jack Frost, the Snowmen + the wooly mammoths! Children can also make a pledge to help such as turning off the TV when they're not watching it or walking to school + they can even write to Santa himself.

More like this I say!

Paying in spiders?!

With recession looming, why not save money by paying in spiders? PLEASE PLEASE READ THE WHOLE THING HERE

Google Android vs. Mobile Mac OS X

An extremely thorough + very useful article here comparing the 2 operating systems..

We're watching..

Vodafone Live Guy.

I like this. Vodafone has sent 'Live Guy' on a tour of the UK - stopping in a number of cities to give away a Netbook (with built-in mobile broadband) to the first person to find him in each location.

From today he'll be leaving clues as to his whereabouts within his various online environments including his Twitter feed, Facebook, YouTube + Google Picasa. His updates also feed into his blog housed at the campaign microsite, with highlights shown on the homepage.

The campaign is pushing Vodafone's mobile broadband product. And with mobile internet EVERYWHERE right now I like that it creatively demonstrates the benefits in an exciting + innovative way, interacting with people online as well as in the real world.

I WILL find him when he comes to London on the 28th..

Faris at Interesting on MASH-UPS

I'm fast becoming a HUGE Faris fan. At the risk of simplifying the content of this great presentation, Faris talks about mash-ups (the subject du jour in the MWorks office) + how everything is actually a mash-up, including our very selves. There's certainly loads in here for us to steal + combine with the other stuff we steal to create presentations to show our clients to explain why they should let us combine stolen things on their behalf.

This link takes you to a page which is effectively a mash-up of a video of Faris presenting at Interesting NY, with the presentation itself. Haha.

Thanks Faris.