Food

McDonald’s English pub burger

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I spotted this on one of the food blogs I read. Was wryly amused at US McDonald’s interpretation of Britishness:

The burger is described as a 1/3lb Angus Beef Burger with hickory-smoked bacon, white cheddar, American cheese, steak sauce, Dijon mustard, grilled onions.

The blogger adds:

I also got a kick out of the placemat advertisement for it, which gives a one-paragraph description of the burger including popular English buzz words like “fancy”, “smashing”, and “gobsmacked.” For the average McDonald’s customer, who may not be cultured enough to know these terms, McDonald’s provides a handy glossary at the bottom of the placemat

The whole thing reminds me of that episode of Friends where Ross puts on a fake British accent to cope with his nervousness with teaching a new class. It’s a slightly ludicrous interpretation of Britishness, both from a gustatory (I had to look this one up, does it make sense?) and linguistic perspective.

"Angus" burger suggests Scottish to me, "hickory-smoked" bacon sounds American ("thick-cut back bacon" might be more British), steak sauce is a straight out mystery – try relish or mayo, or if you’re going for a gastropub, hit up the aioli. White cheddar – ok, but American cheese? Seriously, the clue’s in the name on that one, guys. Also with the Dijon mustard – a little Francais in there, but English mustard might have more kick than you’d like, and grilled onions – maybe. I think the English would prefer a sweet, crisp slice of red onion.

There you go, McDs – I’ve just refined your "English pub burger". You want your 1/3rd lb British beef burger to be topped with thick-cut back bacon, white cheddar, relish and aioli, a dab of English mustard and a slice of crisp red onion. And a slightly limp lettuce leaf, probably, if we’re going for something resembling authenticity. I’m not sure I can be bothered to help you with the marketing because the laughably cheesey interpretations of "British English" will probably work on the ignorant and amuse the informed. So it might actually work.

I’ll take my payment in breakfast.

Armand David: Britishness consultant to American mega-corporates.

Books, Television

Post modern post-modernism

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tyrion-lannister
I’m experiencing two different timelines for Game of Thrones at the moment – the TV’s first season / first book, in the early days of the War of Kings – and the latest book, A Dance with Dragons, as I read through it on Kindle. It’s a bit surreal; as ever, I am enjoying both, although a point Amanda made to me rings through – the number of characters Martin creates in depth in the books is very hard to keep track of, and I’m struggling to remember who all the random Mereen are around Danaerys at the moment. Will need to find a quick-ref summary.

Scalzi has a fun analysis on why this book has taken so long for George R R Martin to write – at over 400,000 words, in essence, it is the length of four or five lesser books, which a man might have churned out at a rate of one a year. So he’s basically written 4 regular sized books, or two jumbo sized fantasy epics, in one. Sterling effort, my good man, sterling effort.

Comics

The Walking Dead graphic novel–light bedtime reading

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Walking Dead compendium vol 1The Walking Dead compendium arrived yesterday – a chunky tome, as you can see. On reflection, it perhaps wasn’t the best choice for bedtime reading – it’s both scary and hard to put down – but I think on the whole, that’s a better option than trying to lug it on the commute.

So far, I’m more or less caught up with the first season of the AMC drama. It’s amazing how the TV show has borrowed from the visual stylings of the graphic novel in such incredible detail, and yet picked its own plot points to expand upon and create for the purposes of a televisual interpretation.

Patrick tells me that they’re struggling to get the second season made, as managing zombie mayhem at that scale is just expensive by way of SFX and make-up. I hope it does get through.

General update

New philosophy of life

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Taking a second to pause this weekend, it occurred to me that much of the last 9 months have happened in a hurry – and I’m therefore doing exactly what I swore I wouldn’t do, which is rush through my enjoyment of my family.

It’s a consequence of a low level of stress and a high level of busy – you inevitably end up filling your time with to-do lists and rarely, on that to-do list – is the action – enjoy life.

I’m going to try to temper this a bit in the months ahead – slowing everything down to a more pleasurable pace – so that I can get the most of out it and it can get the most out of me. Precision and purpose, not mania and mayhem. New day, new mantra.

Business, Media & Marketing

NoTW, responsible journalism and business journalism in China

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Frontline ClubI’m not really writing about NoTW and NewsInt here, but rather using the case of their recent downfall to segway to a different story – that of Public Business Media, my friend Damian’s NFP charity aimed at supporting investigative journalism. I’ve written about it before.

I’m sure we’d all like to believe that what happened at NoTW was the result of a few, rogue, irresponsible journalists calling out for a no-stones-unturned investigation, no matter the cost. Practical experience tells me that most people are simply ignorant of the techniques and tools of their trade, and therefore aren’t so much lacking a moral compass as they are unable to read one.

Public Business Media is hoping to fund an open approach to investigative journalism that will see the transparent publication of data and the education and upskilling of journalists to do this job. It’s a job that needs to be done to ensure we have a responsible, educated voice in the media looking into the thousands of business issues that touch our lives on a daily basis.

The charity’s hosting a fundraiser and public launch tomorrow night. Go along, you know you want to.

Business, Television

Nice guys finish last. And also first – the Apprentice 2011 finale

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apprentice2011
I wasn’t expecting that (ref finale of BBC Apprentice 2011). But then, I wasn’t expecting Helen to go off the rails with a totally nonsensical business model on the basis of absolutely no previous experience. For Susan to be stupidly naive, borderline illegal – well, that was predictable. For Jim to be 100% bullshit – again, predictable.

That the single least successful person in the process to make it to the final eventually became the winner kind of nullifies the entire purpose of the process, no? Tom’s 11th hour revelation on how he got his previous product into Walmart must have had a big impact on Alan hiring him for his guts as he’d been as meek as Susan most of the way through the process. Lord Sugar clearly had, however, a soft spot for Tom the whole way through the project. And we liked him too, and were chuffed for him when he won through.

But perhaps the process was never about being the best business person – after all, Helen was unquestionably the best at doing "business" in the process – but perhaps it was about not contributing to stupidity and making your presence felt on collaborative group projects to demonstrate your role within the teams. As the roles filtered down at the end – Alan had a choice between the inventor, the operations person, the sales and marketing douche and the sparky, driven nit-wit with no clear discernible skills. Left with that choice, as a successful, excellent operations person yourself – there really is only one choice, irrespective of their performance in the final task.

Tom and Helen both did badly on the final task. Tom’s business plan was riddled with errors, didn’t mention his major margin product in it, he didn’t fight the case for workplace need before Lord Sugar (every large business’ health & safety requirements is having people fill out workplace health assessments these days), and was generally an affable twit. Helen’s idea was chronically bad; a re-hashed version of a concierge service wrapped in some nonsense about lifting Britain through recovery whilst really being contingent on a ‘recovered’ Britain in which idiots with too much money and too little time would outsource administrative trivia to an army of virtual assistants. My single biggest question about the Apprentice – were they allowed to use the Internet / computers? Surely a spreadsheet and a web-browse could have wheedled out 90% of the idiocy encountered across the course of the series.

The Apprentice process is exactly what it claims to be; it’s about finding the best business partner for Lord Sugar. It’s not about finding the best business person or entrepreneur in Britain – Lord Sugar already has one of those – himself.

For us? Adieu to Apprentice 2011 – it was fantastically entertaining television – and here’s to the next thing.

Internet, Technology

Chuck Norris is the Internet – Cleverbot.com AI

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cleverbotI’m always curious about attempts to challenge the Turing Test, in which machines convince humans they’re human through intelligent interaction. I remember using an ancient text-to-speech programme that attempted this – Dr Sbaitso – extremely badly in the early 90s.

I’d love a world in which there were useful simulacra of humans able to support humanity in its day-to-day dealings (Skynet, natch), but have never yet come across a useful implementation of this technology.

Of of my many blog subscriptions pointed me to Cleverbot.com, an “AI” simulator whose intelligence is predicated on human knowledge available on the Internet. The bot warns you that its insights are based on what people say and think around the Internet and therefore might potentially be offensive.

It took me three questions to get to a Chuck Norris reference. I reckon five questions in I’d be onto Nyan cats and Dogforts.

To the creators of Cleverbot: if you were going to pick a compendium of human knowledge, as wonderful as the Internet is, you might need to sling in some algorithms that limit the frequency with which people mention Chuck Norris, pirates and ninjas, hipster (and other) kitties, things-made-of-bacon-that-normally-aren’t, and a thousand other memetic ideas. Despite the fact that people talk about these things at extreme length with surprising regularity online, they don’t in real life and therefore Mr Turing and his test will remain undefeated.

Unless, of course, that’s the whole idea. Imitate and Internet Savant and people won’t know the difference. It could be inspired!

Film

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, part 2

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Watch Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 Online FreeClear of the worst of my head-cold, Amanda and I headed out to see HP7pt2 this weekend. Thanks to the able-bodied baby-sitting of Uncle BIL, we were able to sit out way through the 130-minute epic finale to the series with little interruption.

It was, as the previous films have been, pretty entertaining. Of course it lacks the full breadth, depth and nuances of the book, but it does well on other things. Visually stunning battlegrounds, Star-Wars-scale confrontation between good and evil, character development (even for Malfoy!), good performances (the kids have literally grown up and gotten better at acting, well done them) and the usually high standards of production.

One thing to note, if you’re off to see it, when you get to the epilogue – look at what happens to Ron compared to Harry and Hermione. If that isn’t a prejudice in action, I don’t know what is.

Technology

Acer Iconia two screened laptop

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Dual touch ScreenI had a go on an Acer Iconia twin screened laptop whilst ambling through an HMV the other day, and it inspired me to make this comment – this should be in contention for one of the worst pieces of computer design ever. Admittedly I played with it for all of three minutes so take my comments with a pinch of salt, but, in brief: it’s just terrible.

It’s not that there’s anything inherently wrong with the stylings or construction of the device itself – it looked and felt sturdy. But a screen as an input device and a second screen as a screen? What were they thinking?

Here’s a few reasons why this concept will suck totally for a while.

  1. Battery life must be terrible. Laptopmag worked it out at around 2.5 hours but I’m dubious – given that my 7 hour rated Macbook Air gets 3.5 hours the way I use it I can’t see anything like this working for anyone for any period of time.
  2. It’s big, heavy and too bulky for any normal work surface, at home or in the office – unless maybe you’re a designer.
  3. The form factor and the OS make no sense. I’ve commented before about Windows 7 and touch – not there yet. But even if it did (as Windows 8 looks to do), what, would you occasionally hold this thing like a giant book? Stretch it flat and look at it sideways? What? Why? How?

It’s too expensive a novelty. People, if you’re trying to beat out Apple the iPad you’ve got to try harder and come up with better ideas than expensive novelty props.

Software, Technology

iPhone app to find nearest pool table #apprequest

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moment of impact

I was wandering Islington two weekends ago trying to find somewhere to play pool after discovering that the Elbow Room there has closed down, and despite the abundance of useful data on sites like Beerintheevening.com, no-one seems to have mashed up an app that tells you where the nearest pool table is. C’mon, devs and/or marketing folk for beer companies – that’s a free idea for you. Build it, give it away, and people will use it and buy your beer.

I promise.

Armand David's personal weblog: dadhood, technology, running, media, food, stuff and nonsense.