meish dot org: life, unfolding

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This is a blog by Meg Pickard. YMMV.
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All photos » The only place to nap, apparently Someone call the trademark infringement team! How many patterns can one infant wear? High   We went for a long walk. Well, I did the walking; Erin mainly looked after the napping end of things We both need a nap Un entente cordial Work in progress I misread this: interchanged 'monk' and 'child' When you're only a few weeks old, space monkeys on a play gym arch are quite awesome Did my duty. Bit gloomy about the prospective results though, frankly. 

Archive: Graphics

I’m no designer, but occasionally I crank out something in photoshop (usually to illustrate something else)

Phone Hell

Years ago, I had a webcam on this site, which was trained on me during various hours of the day – ah, such heady days of being young(ish), innocent(ish) and not minding sharing your bad hair days with the world.

Anyway, I recently re-discovered a little animation I made with a series of cam images taken while I was on the phone on hold to a call centre somewhere. Thought I’d post it here again.

phonehell.gif

The crappy resolution was the result (I assume) of trying to compress the file so that it downloaded quickly on 56.6kbps. Of course, these days it’d have been a bloat-tastic youtube clip, and bugger the download experience.

My, how times have changed.

*NB, it’s just possible that I might have been hamming it up for the camera. A bit.

Flashback

Autobus Paris, 1979I’ve been randomly finding and hoarding old tourism leaflets and maps etc used as bookmarks and at the bottom of boxes, for a while now.

Often, the most interesting examples are not the truly (properly?) designed objects such as album covers or book jackets, but the ones which have another function – advertising or promotion. Leaflets, adverts, event programmes and map covers seem to be especially revealing, for some reason.

Stately homes flyer, 1975It’s not a real collection or anything, but I find myself drawn to these things, amused and inspired by the design and font treatments they used throughout the 60s, 70s and early 80s. I feel like they should be captured somehow, rather than languishing as drawer-linings until they disintegrate, and so I find myself scanning or photographing them.

Some are shockingly garish, some are classy, some use fonts which have never been seen since: all are very much of their time. A slice of life.

Will the noughties have an equally identifiable design and font style, I wonder?

The first person to mention web 2.0 gradient fill backgrounds will get a withering glare, I expect.

Crappy-Summer-o-matic

A simple flow chart to help you deal with the weather in the UK during the months of May, June, July and August.

crappysummer

Fatal Error

megcrash

I wish such a thing existed.

On Hold

“Sorry, all our operators are busy at present. You are currently held in a queue. Your call is important to us. Please continue to hold. Thank you….Sorry, all our operators are busy at present…”

phonehell.gif

If you’ve ever been on hold to your local council/bank/energy supplier you’ll know this feeling only too well.

Goth

I think I mentioned ages ago about how much of a failure I was at being a goth. Although I went through a phase of wearing long black tassled skirts, dying my hair, clumsily putting on too much black eyeliner and dancing with arms akimbo to All About Eve, I was actually far too healthy-looking to enter into the realms of true gothdom.

Also, my mum wouldn’t let me paint my room black which, on reflection, I have to applaud her for.

And speaking of applause, I have to give some to the person who thought that Winnie the Goth was a good story concept. I always thought Eeyore would have made a much better goth, frankly – he’s got the pointless misery down pat, for starters…

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What’s all this, then?

This is a personal site, created and curated continuously since early 2000 by Meg Pickard, a creative geek, passionate photographer, anthropologist and web experience /community /social media specialist, who works for The Guardian & lives in London, UK.
 
The site includes a blog - a personal and evolving collection of links, opinions, thoughts, ideas, anecdotes and musings - as well as a variety of other projects. It is also a place to aggregate some of the author's distributed web activity, like photos, links and music.
 
More info about this site and its author.

Important note #1

This is a personal site. The contents and opinions contained within don't necessarily reflect those of my employer, family, or cat. They think for themselves (though mostly about tuna, in at least one case), and so do I.

Important note #2

Since the overwhelming majority of content on this site is historical, it should be regarded in light of the context in which it was originally published, and not as indicative or revealing of current perspectives, preferences or experience.

Important note #3

While I work and spend a lot of time thinking and talking about social media, participatory technologies and community development strategies, the vast majority of content on this site is not about that.

This personal site isn't about anything, except the perpetual unfolding of one person's experience, and the perspectives, observations and opinions that involves and inspires.

You still here?

Oh.