I was thinking about writing another ‘All the Senses’ post for the past week when Yacco tagged me in the current meme sweeping the blogosphere ‘My Week in Media’. So here it goes…

What I’ve read

On top of my daily ritual of blog browsing, aggregated by the lovely Google Reader, there are a couple of things that have caught my attention online this past week. Firstly the intensifying US electoral run-in, the commentary of which has been provided by the Guardian online. Secondly, Mr Nuzzaci introduced me to Time.com’s 50 Top 10 lists for 2007 - where I naturally gravitated towards the listing’s for films, the featured ‘The Lives of Others’ pictured above.

My breakfast porridge microwave blasting sessions have seen me give Creative Review, Grafik and Campaign magazines a good skimming, whilst my xmas Amazon voucher was activated and soon I will be the proud new owner of a copy of ‘The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few’.

What I’ve watched

After being seduced by the blue, yellow and red of Channel 4’s Big Food Fight my Monday night attempt at tuning into the Hugh’s Chicken run failed miserably. What started with good intentions soon resulted in Hugh being relegated to background tv, the only thing I can recall is that intensively farmed chicken’s only live for 39 days, poor little blighters!

By midweek things had picked up as a friend introduced me to BBC Three’s ‘Man Stroke Woman’ which reduced me to man tears on several occasions. The comedy theme continued with BBC2 and the excellent ‘Never Mind the Buzzcocks’ where Mr Amstel’s target this week was ex Hollyoaks stud Jeremy Edwards, afterwhich I had my first experience of the laughter riot that is Little Miss Jocelyn.

The week of watching continued with a thrifty DVD night on Friday where I watched ‘The Bourne Ultmatium’ for the thrid time in as many weeks and we also pooped back and forth courtesy of ‘Me and You and Everyone We Know’. The final watch will be tonight as I have booked myself into ‘Louis Theroux: Behind Bars’, the documentary at California’s San Quentin prison.

What I’ve listened to
My brisk walks to and from the bus continue to be charmed by my festive soundscape of choice: Rufus Wainwright’s performance at Cancerigene Hall. The highlight of the week without a doubt was the rediscovery of my appreciation for the super Cornelius, who’s sound can be described as experimental and exploratory, well that’s what my recently restarted last fm widget thing told me!

I will now pass the meme baton of joy onto Joe, Asi and Iain. I will also leave you in Uncle Jack’s capable hands…

The Johnson Banks thought for the week sees Michael Johnson discuss the balance between working for ‘ethical’ organisations and selling your soul to blue chip / multinationals. Read it here.

“All the things you love about TV, fused”

Its a little odd and maybe needs some work, but looks like the future…

“FFFFOUND! is a web service that not only allows the users to post and
share their favorite images found on the web, but also dynamically
recommends each user’s tastes and interests for an inspirational
image-bookmarking experience!!”

I’m afraid to say it, but Dom made me jealous after his excursion to the usa to coachella.

I orignally wanted to go to ATP vs the Fans this weekend, but my buddies couldn’t get time off and to short notice.

I do fancy going to a gig like this, so I’m trying to line up going to Primavera Sound, but as usual nobodies available, so if you know anybody whos going or wants to go, give us a shout and see if we can arrange something…

Lates is a season of after-hours art and culture in London to be enjoyed at twilight, sundown or lights-out. Twelve of the capital’s top arts venues will be keeping their doors open for you to sample an exciting series of late night events. Let’s go!

This is just a quick note, one of the greatest music resources I found over a year ago seems to have disappeared! In fact Epitonic has been gone for some weeks, but I was hoping they might be tweaking with it (or something!).

(Some related links!)

The site has had a very turbulent past when it comes to the design and usability. Originally it was a standard flat easy to use site that probably needed just a spring clean when it came to graphics. But for some reason they went overboard when it came to designing the site. It looked really fresh and new, but without doubt the most painful site to use. It just didn’t work usability wise! It goes to show that usability can make or break a site.

What happens to all the data they collated, does it just get deleted, surely they have information worth money? Surely somebody could take over the project? Why not sell or release the data? Even though it look like its gone (I so wish it wasn’t!!) it was such a resource and I wish they would bring it back.

Until that happens, you’ll find me using Last fm which I’m loving, but I prefer to have lots of resources rather than just one.

A collection of german photographer Andreas Gursky’s recent work is being exhibited at the White Cube, Mason’s Yard. It’s big, it’s clever and well worth a visit before the show ends on Saturday May 5th (entrance is free).

I was going to write a post about Monocle a few weeks ago after a good impression of the first 20 pages, then I decided to wait and read the whole issue before commenting.

Unfortunately my reading stopped after that initial blast, not because it was no good, but because the week started and Monocle was put to one side never to picked up again, I am hoping writing this will spur me on to go back and finish what I started.

Anyway, my point is, If you get the occasional urge for a briefing on global affairs, business and international design stuff, and you would appreciate it presented with excellent typography, beautiful photography on nice
paper then Monocle could be very good for you, that is if you don’t mind parting with 5 pounds once a month. Plus you might like to know the world-wide-web property of the magazine offers the user suplimentary rich media content to the magazine’s lead editorial features.

Semi related to Dom’s earlier post, the Belfast chapter of Bearduary was founded in 2007 by University of Ulster lecturers Christopher Murphy and Nicklas Persson as part of the international Bearduary movement. They recently had a well publicised shave.. as covered on BB1 (…and Russian TV?)

Murphy and Persson (above) share a research interest in cultivating the return of the beard and are working together to spark a renewed interest in gentlemanly pursuits.

Chris Murphy pictured right, is one half of the design team working on the Glitch Book. The other half being Joe at Qubik Design.