Don't forget, if you do like Retro 36, there are two competitions running. There's the Big Christmas Giveaway where all you have to do is fan Retro 36 on Facebook or Twitter and watch out for weekly questions. Prizes are awarded each Monday.
The Big Prezzo is a bit more weighty with bigger prizes. And all you have to do is Tweet or mention somewhere in your Facebook status what you like about Retro 36, and let us know so we can see it. But you get extra points for making it entertaining, such as doing a video. Check out the Big Prezzo and .. enter.
19 November 2009: I don't think I've ever quite gotten over, or forgiven, the BBC for stopping publishing BBC Vegetarian Good Food magazine. I subscribed to it (I rarely subscribe to magazines, although I currently do have an open subscription to PHP Architect) and cooked from it.
Then one day in 2000 they wrote and said they'd stopped publishing it. It was like a horror film. Nooooooooooooooooo!!!
It made no sense whatsoever. Vegetarianism is growing not declining, and vegetarians don't like seeing meat in their cookery books.
Anyway, I still cook from those magazines today. The week comprises four recipes from BBC Vegetarian Good Food magazine, one of the magazines from the current month (so, I've 1996-2000 for November out atm, for instance) so I'm cooking seasonally, and then three 'standard' meals that I don't have to think about.
Planning recipes and turning up to the supermarket with a list means I spend less and only buy what we need, so less waste.
Anyway, I mentioned some cheese and parsnip sausages last week and a Facebook friend wanted the recipe, so here it is. Actually it wasn't terrifically tasty so I'd season it before you add the egg (so you can taste it without dying). And I had to use Cheshire nor Caerphilly so that was probably my downfall. Maybe I've got Caerphilly wrong but I think Cheshire was my closest. A more tasty cheese might be interesting. I ran out of breadcrumbs too which is how come I used crushed cashew nuts in the recipe too. Then I oven baked them. If I'd fried them they'd probably have tasted nicer but the house would have smelled of oil. Click the pic for a bigger version you can put into Word and print out.
This other recipe didn't work either but it tasted very nice, and it's from The Observer a couple of weeks ago: pear and almond upside down cake. Except the way we did it it was wrongsideup cake. And maple syrup is £6 a bottle so honey might be worth trying instead.
15 November 2009: Back from BarCamp Bradford, my first BarCamp. A BarCamp (some call it an unconference (doesn't work for me)) is a user generated conference. Basically, a group of enthusiastic and like-minded people turn up to a venue with a few rooms, coffee and wifi, there's a blank schedule of 30 minute presentations on the wall and a few pens, someone shouts 'go' and you write your presentation on the wall in the slot of your choice. If you're quick and you go to my Twitter page, I tweeted and uploaded pictures through the day.
It's not just a geek thing, there was a photography BarCamp recently in Yorkshire, and in The Whuffie Factor Tara Hunt talks about a transport one.
Confession: I don't think I've ever been to a proper, paid for conference. So I'm not sure it's fair to compare.
The coffee was shocking, for a start (made with luke-warm water). Mind you, the coffee at the paid for Spa event I went to recently tasted of meat so .. . And it was free, isn't that horrid of me for criticising the free coffee?
There was an attempt to 'theme' this BarCamp to be around muttlymedia but it didn't really happen, people just presented what they wanted, which is in the spirit of BarCamp I guess. But a talk about what was happening in the year 1784? I don't know if it was relevant, I didn't go, and people seemed enthusiastic about it and I am too ... but in that case we might as well talk about fell running and how to make the best cheese on toast.
I'm circling an issue here, working it out on the fly. I think it might be this: I went to two presentations on "how our online / social marketing succeeded" which were basically run-throughs of what happened to them in trying to market their product. The thing is, both were really great products. I think they'd have been successful with a campaign of throwing leaflets out of their car window as they drove around town combined with telling their grannies. Good products get word-of-mouth traction one way or another so long as you make some remotely sensible marketing effort, so .. nothing to learn. Their methods worked, but other methods would have worked / might have worked better and maybe there were 99 other people who used the same methods for whom it didn't work and so they weren't at the conference. It's not proof of anything. Maybe there were a couple of things there that I could try but otherwise ..
If, however, you go to a proper conference and Wally Olins or Steve Jobs is talking, well then you drink in every word, and you buy the recording of what the guy said and watch it again and again until you've wrung every drop of useful information you can from it, not just in what he says but how he presents and how he dresses and what he's chosen to present on. That's because both have done quite a few things in their time, been quite successful, so their life rules are at least repeatable for them. Even then, that's their character, their circumstances, these things worked for them at that time because of their connections and abilities and timing so may not work for you. But it's still more repeatable.
Are the people at BarCamps just enthusiastic amateurs? Certainly not. There's enormous experience and skill knocking around and it's right there, accessible. Are their lessons repeatable? By and large, yes. I went to a 'legalities of photography' talk and that seemed to come from experience and knowledge. But at the same time I arrived 7 minutes late (previous talk overran) to a talk on "you can do animation" and it finished more or less as I walked in the room which was very disappointing as I was really looking forward to it. So there's a tension about which talk to choose from the quick descriptions on the board. The one on 1794 or whenever it was, would it be good, useful, interesting, funny? Who can tell beforehand? That one relied on you taking a chance.
At the end of the day, good presentations seemed to get repeated, so that seems a worthwhile system for those who missed things the first time around.
So I think it rides on its enthusiasm and positiveness which makes it difficult to criticise. It was free, for chrissakes. Everyone gave their time and energy and if you burst that bubble, it's nothing. I learned something though. I followed a few people beforehand who were preparing for #BCBradford and one's description said he was a lifecaster. I had an issue with that. Suddenly, on that one word, I thought "bugger, am I going to turn up to a place full of up to the minute bullshitters, am I going to feel old, out of place. Is Scarborough such a backwater that I'm missing something? I thought one of the great things about Yorkshire was we called a spade a spade .. lifecasting?" And at the end of the day I got speaking more to a really nice guy at the bar and we ended up travelling back together for part of the way and I mentioned this 'lifecasting' thing and .. it turned out to be him. And he was as genuine a guy as you like. So .. Allsopp .. stop prejudging people, give them more of a chance than just reading their 160 character Twitter profile.
Would I do another BarCamp? Sure, definitely, with enthusiasm. But next time I'll do a proper presentation. Here, I did a round table IM discussion (pic) and that kinda worked and kinda didn't so I think a proper presentation showing how I structured and underwent a campaign and what came out of it, and then get improvement suggestions from the audience, that would probably work better for everyone.
Might even organise one in Scarborough, I got talking to two people who organised them and there's really not a lot to it and there seems to be a group of us who want it to happen and maybe the venue is a given. Possible themes: music / mapping. Watch this space.
Funny thing. Looking at the pictures from Saturday now (on a Monday) .. I'm missing it. Missing the chance to talk with people. I think one magical thing about a BarCamp is the enthusiasm and positivity of the people there. I got the same thing from the Spencer Tunick event in Newcastle .. both were a selected group of positive people.
10 November 2009: I went out to interview the manager at Retro 36 this morning and, well I can't tell you how shocked we were at what we found, you'll have to see for yourself:
10 November 2009: It's ridiculously early to point you in its direction but I'm starting to work on a new shape for this website and if you want to poke fun at it even though it's only a baby, feel free.
7 November 2009: I'm working for a company (you don't know who) whose online turnover is about £10k and I'm doing about £500 of Internet marketing work for them. After the first week their website traffic is up by 7%, Google organic up by 16%, Facebook referrals up by 58%. If that all pans out, 7% of £10k is £700 so I've already paid for myself, yet my work is up to Christmas, and the benefits of my work last for years.
To all those who inhale sharply when I disclose my hourly rate ... it's an investment with a clear return. Employ me and you'll make more money, even if your turnover is only £10k/yr. And for bigger companies: I don't charge any more if your turnover is £100k/yr, but the benefit to you would be much greater.
4 November 2009: Might as well mention that Retro36 do have a great range of stocking fillers. When this was Upstairs Downstairs in what is now the council's arms-length voter interface unit they used to do fabulous Christmas decor as well as toys and furniture. Their strength always seemed to be in knowing what to buy.
Now as Retro36 they are doing the same thing with toys, games, gadgets, gifts and collectables. They go off to the toy shows and come back with one or two items .. very keen to bring only the best to Scarborough. My favourites atm are the Momiji Dolls each of which have personalities defined by two traits. The one I like best so far is "likes cheese on toast and pilates". Plus, you can put a personal and perhaps loving message up its bottom for the receiver to read. What's not to like?
Oh, and if you want to try accidentally setting light to a random person's shed there are sky lanterns too. That reminds me of a third hand joke (thanks Christina (and Billy Connolly)) .. before you decide whether you like someone, walk a mile in his shoes. Because, if you decide you don't like him, he's a mile away and you've got his shoes. The link is something to do with .. if you want to set fire to a shed, may as well do it from a distance.
If you order online they'll do free postage for orders over £20 but I'm told that might rise soon. No really, I'm not making that up for faux urgency .. often all his profit's going on the postage so it really has to go up.
2 November 2009: Can't quite believe this, it's a proper actual song with a video and everything: Smell Yo Dick. I guess we had Wayne County in my day so perhaps nothing's changed.
2 November 2009: I am frankly really creeped out by the amount of support there is on Facebook for an Asda on the Dean Road site in Scarborough.
The support for it seems mostly to be monosyllabic, like "ASDA!" Or the thinking is along the lines of "we already have a Tesco and lots of Tesco Expresses, I don't like Tesco, we need an Asda because we haven't got one". I did see someone say that Asda offers the best value. There's strong feeling too from people on low income wanting affordable food and goods. As a result of this I visited the York Asda and yes, it's an attractive shop. But it supports a city four times the size of Scarborough. Think we'd get an Asda as big here?
The first thing that comes to mind for me when thinking of Asda is Wal-Mart, their owner, and the frequency of their appearance in American labour protests.
The second thing that comes to mind over this project is that we've just spent millions on, and endured the disruption of, a new traffic system in Scarborough that is supposed to cut down on traffic coming into town. I'm thinking putting a supermarket in the centre won't help with that and, I imagine we (taxpayers) will get to spend even more money providing infrastructure support for a supermarket on this site, and one lot of spending will negate the other lot, meaning there's a lot of wasted budget being spent on contradictory projects.
I heard someone talk about the jobs a new supermarket would bring to Scarborough. This doesn't seem to be well thought out. Scarborough has a fixed population. If you add another supermarket, it simply means the same shopping will be spread more thinly across the supermarkets. That might lead to more price competition (but 4 supermarkets Tesco, Sainsbury's, Morrisons and Aldi is enough competition, don't you think?) So I would say if you create a till operator's job at a new Asda, you're probably just lessening the need for a till operator at one of the other supermarkets, net gain in jobs: nil. Plus, local businesses will surely go out of business, meaning those jobs would be lost.
Finally, I'm amazed at the lack of involvement by the Green party in any of this online debate.
"Wal-Mart may be the easiest and most obvious target for us ... but that's for a very real reason: its practice of colonizing new regions for stores amounts to a scorched-earth policy that leaves financial and social ruin in its wake. Wal-Mart monopolizes new territory by pricing items below cost and rendering local merchants incapable of competing. Once the competition goes out of business and the community is dependent on Wal-Mart, the corporation raises prices to more profitable levels. Free and fair competition, as defined by the market, favors the company with more money to burn.
Although Wal-Mart enters new regions promising gainful employment and an expanded local tax base, the opposite usually occurs. A Congressional Research Service report found that for every two jobs created by a Wal-Mart store, the local community ended up losing three. Furthermore, the jobs created were at lower wages (an average of under $250 a week), fewer hours and reduced benefits. A majority of Wal-Mart employees with children live below the poverty line, qualifying for public welfare benefits such as free lunch at school. Seventy percent of Wal-Mart employees leave within the first year of employment, and do so - according to a survey that Wal-Mart itself conducted - because of inadequate pay and lack of recognition for their work. Other studies have shown that, as a result of the increase in social services spent on the families of Wal-Mart employees, the net effect of a new store is to place a greater financial burden on the taxpaying community.
In spite of a huge "buy American" campaign, Wal-mart purchases 85 percent of its merchandise from overseas, and is consistently associated with sweatshop scandals, from Kathie Lee Gifford's clothing line and Disney's Haitian-made pajamas to child-produced clothing from Bangladesh and Wal-Mart-brand apparel manufactured by underage Chinese workers in New York City sweatshops. So maybe it's not even in Americans' best interests to be manufacturing for Wal-Mart, anyway.
There's nothing new in attacking Wal-Mart for poor corporate citizenship. There are plenty of organized protests and lawsuits under way, as well as at least some action on the part of the company to correct this impression and perhaps even its own behavior. What's more important to recognize here is that Wal-Mart's activities do not appear to be the conscious choices by a mean-spirited board of human directors who have any real relationship to the communities in which they operate. Rather, Wal-Mart's relationship to the world seems to be directed by the sort of charter written four hundred years ago for trade monopolies. The company's practices - abroad and at home - erode regional stability and self-sufficiency in order to conduct the long-distance trade at which Wal-Mart excels. Wal-Mart turns its home territories into colonies, robbing them of their ability to generate value for themselves and creating greater dependence on the colonial empire.
Wal-Mart's relationship to place has become so abstracted that the company views even its own stores through the conquistador's eyeglass. Like temporary forts build solely for purposes of territorial conquest, any one of them can be abandoned at any time. For example, it is deemed efficient by Wal-Mart to open two stores very close to each other if this quickly and most completely puts local merchants out of business. Once a monopoly over the region has been established, Wal-Mart can close the less profitable of the two stores. Residents will then pick up the externalized costs of fuel to travel to the farther one. As of 2000, by utilizing this strategy, Wal-Mart had already left behind twenty-five million square feet of space. In one Kentucky town, the abandoned Wal-Mart was eventually torn down at taxpayer's expense, according to the corporation's own website. After peaking at more than two new stores per day in 2005, Wal-Mart still planned to open 212 stores in the US in 2009, despite the credit crisis.
Wal-Mart's behavior is not terribly mysterious. What's more puzling is the widespread acceptance and patronage of this company and its peers by people who actually live in the wake of their damaging effects. While regions with very strong advocates for the environment, labor, local commerce, or health may have been successful in limiting the spread of the "big box" chains to their neighborhoods, the vast majority of American and, now, European counties have succumbed to or even welcomed their own colonization by international branded retail stores."
The only thing all that doesn't say that seems to be relevant to us is that .. part of Scarborough's charm is its shopping centre, containing as it does a number of individual shops and businesses that offer something different from normal life inland where every high street and out of town shopping centre seems the same.
By placing any large supermarket in our town centre, we run the very real risk of the demise of many of our local businesses, not necessarily because of their weakness or because they can't compete on price, but because our tax money would very probably go towards supplementing a supermarket on the Dean Road site, paying for infrastructure support like site clearance, road alterations and so on, to give them an unfair advantage and .. I somehow doubt such a store would pay the equivalent in council tax that a shop on town centre streets does. Imagine what that money paid instead towards the support of the town centre might achieve.
I'm not, incidentally, pro local businesses for the sake of it and I'm certainly not into protectionism or into retaining traditions for the sake of it. I just love Scarborough's variety of shops and think that's a major attraction. Having spent loads of money developing the town as a destination for tourists and as a result having gotten the attention of some big name retailers, I seriously fear we risk damaging one big reason people come to Scarborough .. they can wander around the sort of shops that no longer exist where they live.
More than that, the level of comment on Facebook suggests we might just sleepwalk into all this without people being aware of the track record of the supermarkets and Wal-Mart in particular, and that would be a real tragedy.
Well, except for the Dead Fred pen holder and the Jack Skellington Head Knocker which they blogged about, so they don't count, here's the top five:
Tara Hunt talks about a transport one.
by Douglas Rushkoff. It's a damn cheek of me to reproduce such a big chunk verbatim and without permission, but that's what I'm doing, here goes: