All posts by Armand

Internet, Software

Twitter’s usefulness diminished by good intentions

Leave a comment

I’m sure these guys meant well. They’re trying to explain the micro-blogging Twitter service to people — whether because they were paid to, or because they just want to promote it… but: it wholly misrepresents the usefulness of Twitter.

I do like the style of the video, though

Sure, there’s times when its helpful to know the minute details of the lives of the people you follow – but mostly, it’s a fantastic collaboration tool. Does anyone know… Can anyone recommend… Has anyone done… Can anyone make it to… Once you have a network of people in place you get wholly enlightening and entirely useful responses.

Oh – I’m here.

Food

Chicken curry 2.0

Leave a comment

My love for Videojug continues – last night I made this:


How To Cook A Chicken Curry In Ten Minutes

…needless to say, it took a little more than ten minutes but worked out very satisfactorily.

If you’re curious — you can substitute milk (or Lactofree, if you’re me) for the cream and it is pretty tasty. I’d recommend using more than one chilli if you’re used to any kind of proper spice (or possibly some chilli powder), and maybe even tinned tomatoes or passata instead of tomato paste if you want to give it a bit more sauce.

Serve with fried roti canai (paratha), bought frozen at the Indian shop down the road. Nom nom nom…

Gardening

One who gardens

Leave a comment

Amanda has been attempting to make our garden feel less like a small square of concrete in Central London and more like the green countryside she grew up in. The result of this is a plethora of beautiful plant pots lining our garden steps and an evening ritual that occasionally includes me heading out with the watering can.

So far, the plants are surviving (thriving, even), and I’ve been recruited into the garden maintenance programme. Amanda does the vast majority of the hard work, but I am now, in some sense, someone who gardens. I visit garden centres and look at plants. I assess shrubs and estimate (with no real knowledge or understanding) their viability in our soil. And I look enviously on at garden gadgets, convinced they’ll make the world a better place (Amanda disagrees).

Flickr photos will follow, but (from memory) we have two lavender plants, some parsley, oregano, mint, roses, fuchsia, sage, thyme and some generically pretty flowers, the names of which I can’t remember. I think Amanda calls them pink flower and yellow flower, and I’m under strict instructions not to use them in any cooking.

Film

French Film

2 Comments

Long time readers will know that whilst I work in the world of technology PR, my brother has a marginally more glamorous career – he’s a movie producer. His next film, French Film, should be out later this year and the website has just gone live here.

Starring Hugh Bonneville (Notting Hill), Anne-Marie Duff, Eric Cantona (Manchester United) and Douglas Henshall (Primeval) amongst others, it is very, very entertaining and I hope you get a chance to see it, join the Facebook group etc. Definitely check out the trailer at the French Film website.

Books, Gaming, Update

Lotsa reading and some Wii

2 Comments

I’m not even going to apologise, this time, for my latest bout of ignoring this blog. It’s been busy. Let’s leave it at that. Slap me in person, if you like.

I’ve spent my down time doing fun things – reading through the back catalogue of Robert Charles Wilson (following the excellent recommendations of Tom and Simon via Twitter), as well as the new Alistair Reynolds, the Sebastian Darke childrens’ books, the new Iain M Banks, and will soon be starting the Mike Carey (of Lucifer and Constantine fame) novels. I’ve got to this place where self-indulgence involves reading mountains of sci-fi and fantasy and its significantly healthier than pigging out on McDonalds so I’m running with it.

Have also been playing more of the new ‘Fire Emblem’ game on Wii than I’d like. This is a mediocre version of the brilliant GBA game that takes absolutely no advantage of the Wii control scheme and seems to have been scripted by a monkey prone to bouts of hysteria. The plot just keeps extending itself in explicable turns in order to cope with the fact that the game needs more missions to have justified its sticker price.

More excitingly, Wii Fit arrived last Monday and I’ve used it about 6 times, gaining some impressive and some not-so-impressive scores. It’s all part of my motivation to get fit, which has also seen me play squash for the first time in four years (admittedly only for 10 minutes, but, y’know…). Wii Fit also entertained about a dozen friends at the first BBQ of the season this weekend (mmm, chickan).

So, I’m busy, and I’m doing interesting things, and if you’d like to know what I’m up to find me on Twitter and Facebook as that’s where my social media output is going for the moment (book reviews on Visual Bookshelf, movie reviews on Flixster, random observations on life on Twitter).

Share and enjoy, people. Share and enjoy.

Personal

Out in Africa

Leave a comment

I’m off on holidays tomorrow – Tunisia – for a much needed break. Will not be very connected for the week, so please do contain your desire to speak to me until the 20th. Expect pictures and anecdotes on my return.

Recommendations on what to do whilst I’m there on a comment / email before 2pm tomorrow please ;-)

Have a good one, all.

Work

Recruiting for Head of SEM

Leave a comment

We’re after a Head of SEM to bolster our Interactive offering. The job spec is as follows:

Brands2Life is one of the UK fastest-growing PR agencies with clients such as Cisco, T-Mobile and Tesco. Our Interactive team has experienced phenomenal growth over the last two years and we are now looking for a Head of SEM to join the team. You must be an expert in organic SEO and have proven experience of implementing PPC/CPA campaigns.

If you have website design and build expertise too then that would be a bonus. You must be a team player as you will be working as part of our client teams designing and implementing integrated campaigns. You will gain all the benefits of working at an agency that has consistently been recognised as a top employer in the PR industry with best-in-class personal training and development packages.

I’m heavily involved in our ‘Interact’ offering so anyone interested, please do contact me direct on armand.david [at] brands2life.com.

Update

A bad time to go quiet

Leave a comment

My blog traffic spiked up in the last few weeks and then… I fell silent. Parents are visiting, job is busy and life has generally been unforgiving. Promise more will follow, erm, in late April, after I get back from the holiday we have planned for Tunisia.

Very exciting!

Hope y’all are well.

Also, my BBQ turned up yesterday. It is a Weber Q220, which I understand are the Mac Daddies of affordable gas BBQs, and I can’t wait to get grilling.