Russell Davies

hey mr consumer electronics manufacturer

Took Arthur and his friend Finlay to the Transport museum. Fantastic. Afterwards kept them entertained by letting them play with my camera. These are some of the shots they took. They had a whale of a time. Why isn't someone making a cheap digital camera for kids? They're great kids products. They get instant results - looking at the pictures they just took, they don't have to peer, one-eyed through a viewfinder (which they find quite hard) and they can take as many as they want without having to worry about paying to get them developed. Wouldn't have to have bags of megapixels, resolution's not a priority, would have to be fairly rugged, wouldn't need zoom and stuff, would have to have an LCD thing. Other than that, should be quite do-able at a reasonable price

two quotes in one day

"you do not reason a man out of something he was not reasoned into"

Jonathan Swift

quote of the day

"I think that you've got to be prepared to write a load of nonsense to start with and then you can tart it up. The business of getting going, getting started, is enormously important, and this can be physical. Solvitur Ambulando as the Romans used to say, which means the solution comes through walking."

Colin Dexter

pointed bag

Found this at Hidden Persuader. Tom Bihn makes laptop bags and stuff. This is one of their bilingual labels. The extra bit of French at the bottom translates as "We're sorry our president is an idiot. We didn't vote for him". That's a brand with a point of view.

underwater audio joy

I've been going swimming every morning, staving off boredom by listening to my ipod encased in one of these. Pretty good. But now, splendidly, it looks like Oregon Scientific are releasing a proper cheap underwater mp3-player. Read more at Tech Digest. Given that previous options were much more, this is a good thing.

saab selfridges shame

Saab have now got a showroom in Selfridges. All they've done with the windows though, is stick some posters up. I hope that's just while they prepare something spectacular, otherwise, shame on them.

where is north?

Went on the London Eye at the weekend too. Never been before. Very good. But it makes you realise how skewed your view of London is.

Conceptually, I think we mostly just assume that the river is a straight line running East to West. But of course it isn't, and the bit of the river where the Eye is definitely isn't, so you see all sorts of strange things; like Battersea Power station appearing to be North of the Houses of Parliament.

This really screwed me up when I lived in Portland, where the river ran North to South. I could never quite conceptualise it like that in my head, couldn't stop thinking of the river as dividing North from South. Made it hard for me to find my way home.

master of all he stands on

We went to Regent's Park yesterday, covered in large Croatian sculptures, which, of course, all the kids were climbing on. On the way out we noticed a very small sign saying, 'no leaning or climbing on sculptures'. I don't think that's going to do it. They're fantastic for climbing on. Maybe the sign's just up for insurance purposes.

how fire fighters get into gigs

influence

Your youth marketing experts will tell you that influence is dead in your youth marketing. No-one has heroes anymore. Well, we've got Arthur's cousin staying with us, and his mate. And Arthur absolutely worships them, as you can see from where he's put his skateboard.