Playlab.net || Mark Rochefort

Filed under: Photos, London, Random

Polka Tables, originally uploaded by markrocky.

From our photography excursion (with Harvest Digital) on the South Bank using “Lomolitos” (mini Lomos), on Wednesday evening…

Filed under: Random

Where does all that creative juice come from? Behind the scenes tour of of an award-winning creative farm, juicing process and distribution in South West England.

Filed under: London, Random

Vote Ken, originally uploaded by markrocky.

I thought there was something strange about these stencils I saw this morning.

Rumour has it they are part of a campaign against Banksy’s backing of Ken. Subtle. Most people will simply think Ken has gone all street and down with the kids.

[Edit: cycled past this morning and they’ve now been boarded over]

Filed under: Friends, Random

Back in the day, my friends and I used to share mix-tapes. Many of which I still have - kept in an old school trunk - unable to listen to them due to a backwards compatibility error (I don’t have a working tape player), this trunk holds many musical memories. But, I digress, the point being sharing music was a great thing to do. And now we can again, with muxtape.com. Today I’ve been listening to a selection of tracks put together by a friend who has just returned from Kinshasa and what a joy it has been to listen to music like this again. I’d previously browsed through a few other people’s Muxtapes but I didn’t know them - there’s something very nice about knowing who has put it together, so thank you Fred! Any more Muxtape suggestions?

Filed under: Random

There’s been some good gags circulating online today:

• Gmail CustomTime - never miss a deadline again
• TrustBanners - incredible mind-altering online advertising.
• Google buys Facebook - a bit close to the truth?
• Microsoft finally acquires Yahoo! - even closer?
• Virgin founder Richard Branson and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin launch Project Virgle, the first permanent human colony on Mars

Filed under: Technology, Random

Bit of a random rant this one but I seem to be caught in a perpetual loop with Tiscali and BT support. Over the last couple of weeks, there has been no ADSL connection at home - which affects both our internet and TV, as we receive Homechoice (aka Tiscali TV). So we’ve called support, they’ve gone through the standard questions and then sent out an engineer. The engineer, when at our house, then blames the company that they are not from (i.e. Tiscali or BT). Rinse and repeat, ad infinitum. I’ve heard from a couple of other people that their ADSL connection with Tiscali is also down. Is this an issue with the ADSL line supplied by Tiscali TV then? Bring back Homechoice!

Filed under: Friends, Media, Technology, Random

I’ve just taken a quick look at friendfeed.com - it’s basically a lifestream service, where people can aggregate and publish their web-lives. It’s done rather nicely - enabling you to quickly create your own lifestream from various feeds (here’s mine) and not too different in look to the lifestream I quickly hacked together with pipes - but done way better and on a grand scale! You can also track friends’ feeds easily too, making it a much more two-way tool than others out there - say Tumblr, for example, which publishes your combined feeds. There’s definitely a need for this - with the whole micro-blogging/twitter/lifestream thing, it is useful to show this data in one place and provides an excellent way for potential stalkers to gather all their up-to-the-minute information on a particular target in one easily digestible feed

Filed under: Media, Technology, Random

I’ll admit I’m quite a fan of Tom Hodgkinson’s work (being an avid reader of the Idler and having read both his recent books - “How To Be Free” and “How To Be Idle”), so I might be more inclined to understand where his rants and raves are coming from. But his latest outburst in the Guardian concerning Facebook certainly seems to have generated a bit of a maelstrom in the murky waters of the social media world (more than 500 del.icio.us bookmarks after one day and counting). While a little conspiratorial, there’s a certain weight to what he’s saying.

Lately there’s been a spate of negative blog entries and articles slating Facebook - and the furore surrounding Mr Scoble’s recent quarrel with Facebook pushed things even further. [Although some may argue that this simply served as an excellent PR pre-cursor to last week’s announcement that Facebook (along with Google) were to join the Data Portability initiative.]

Is this the beginning of Facebook fatigue? In 2008, will Facebook go the way that Second Life went in 2007? Or is this simply the natural media/ public reaction to “hype”, as described in Gartner’s Hype Cycle, and we’re now in the “Trough of Disillusionment“? I have to admit that the tedious slew of unanswered invites in my inbox from zombies, pirates and vampires has sent me sliding down my own trough of Facebook disillusionment. Although, rather lazily, I do find it handy to have friends’ details in one place on the web - I use Facebook to arrange meeting after work or even to message someone, for example, as it is easier than digging around for their contact details. Will I still be doing this in 12 months? I certainly wasn’t a year ago, so who knows? Maybe Gartner does.

Filed under: Travel, Random

If you are sitting next to someone who irritates you follow these instructions:
[Read more…]

Filed under: Media, Random

Two complete strangers agreed to look at each other for an hour in complete silence. A lot can happen in an hour.
[Read more…]

Filed under: London, Random

From the busy streets of Brixton, the blood red dot in the sky was beautiful but rather washed out by the orange glow of the street lights. That said - it’s not every Saturday night at 11 o’clock (when most people are more concerned about what club to go to) that you see all the people on Brixton high street looking skyward! Anyway - people in less urban settings got a fantastic show by the looks of it.

Filed under: Photos, London, Random

Budding taggers learn how it is done..

These young whipper snappers were watching keenly as an older kid scrawled his tag on a wall along London’s South Bank. It didn’t take long. Let’s hope the pupils of this nursery school of graffiti move on to a higher level of street art sooner rather than later. Am I getting old? These pesky kids. Grumble grumble… I’ll be complaining about uneven pavements next.

Anyway - while I am on the subject, when a particular piece turned up at the bottom of Bristol’s Park Street a few months ago (on the side of a sexual health clinic, I should add for the benefit of the picture), I heard Bristol City Council were debating whether it was public art and should be left. Funny that they start to see the potential tourism benefits of leaving this stuff after years spent cleaning it up. They certainly wouldn’t have even considered the fact a few years ago. Well - they eventually decided to let it stay and it promptly made the Visit Bristol tourist guide.

Filed under: Science, London, Random

Some research from Bath University suggests that wearing a helmet might be more dangerous than not. And that drivers gave women cyclists a wider berth when passing. Personally I’m not taking any chances cycling around London without a helmet but I am considering growing my hair and wearing a skirt, just to be on the safe side when cycling to work.

Filed under: Random

On what is now officially the hottest July day since records began, here’s an interesting “subvertisement” that’s being passed about the office. It just shows how powerful word of mouth or “viral” campaigns can be these days. And not necessarily for the benefit of the brand supposedly behind the campaign. In this excellent game you get to play a McDonalds executive - in a Sim City style - complete with politician bribing, hormone enhanced beef patty production and employee motivation schemes. I can’t imagine this game being live for too long before the legal teams at McDonalds shut it down - by which time the damage will have already been done. Take a look now, while you still can.

Filed under: London, Random

As I cycled home, after a sweltering summer’s day in our Soho offices, there was a continental buzz in the air that is London after work - out on the pavements, enjoying one of England’s rare and blissfully perfect long evenings, cooled by a pleasant breeze and a beer. I turned into St James’ Park and who should drive past in a cavalcade? The Queen! I was genuinely monarch-struck - glowing with a patriotic pride I never knew I had. I’ve never understood all this flag waving, cheering and general whooping that our Queen seems to provoke but, I have to admit, she had a similar effect on me. As soon as I saw the outline of her familiar head I started to grin. I wonder, is it something to do with seeing that instantly recognisable hair-do? I am so accustomed to seeing her on casual everyday items like cash, stamps and so on that it is really quite amusing to see the real thing. A funny thing indeed.