Fire and Ice

I live in Milton Keynes . For a while, I also lived in Walt Disney World (yeah, really ). I know these places inside out, backwards and forwards and can therefore say with some authority that they are twin towns . Let me present some evidence: Milton Keynes was officially designated a new town in January of 1967, placed in the middle of England and with lofty ideals of modernist town planning in mind. A month later, a press conference was held in Winter Park, Florida that would announce to the world the creation of an “Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow” in central Florida. In this conference the now-famous film of Walt describing his beloved Epcot was first shown publically. As both towns were being built – out of nothing – more similarities emerged. Both towns have their fair share of manmade lakes and parks, as well as roads and other infrastructure required. New technologies were extensively used in the construction and both are glowing examples of the New Urbanism move...

Every week, on a Thursday, I get home and have a surprise waiting for me. It is a box of lovely organic veggies and it gets delivered while I’m at work. So I get home and it’s almost as if someone gave me a lovely gift. I take my box inside and almost can’t wait to see what we got this week: lately it’s been yummy courgettes, sweet carrots, fantastic pumpkins and the best sweetcorn I’ve ever had. Sometimes I even get a vegetable I can’t identify and I have to use the included leaflets to learn what it is, how I store it and what to do with it. It is all terribly exciting. The organic veggie box schem e is one of my weekly thrills, not the least because of the element of surprise. I have little choice of what goes in the box, other than basic decisions (what size? All veggies? Some veggies, some fruit? etc) the whole experience is one where I have very little control. And I wouldn’t want to change that. I have noticed that there seems to be a rise in the amoun...

(A few years ago I was in a design team and, as a part of it, I had to write articles regularly. I saved all the articles I wrote then and never added them to my blog... until now! Here is the first one of those - enjoy) Happy New Year scrappers! I hope your holidays were filled with great times, memorable moments and great gifts. Now that it is all over (at least for another year) many of us find that the finances are a bit tight. To help us all along, I’ve compiled this short list of tips that can help us all save a bit of money while still enabling us to create memorable pages. 1. Use what you have I know that a lot of scrappers have huge stashes so what best way to save money but to actually USE what you have already? You may not remember exactly what you own, so spend some time organizing your stash and you may find that you have quite a few things you’d forgotten about. Try to create pages using only what you have – think of it as a design challenge and you may ...

I don’t often intersect my blog and my work so allow me the indulgence – because it really is worth it! There is a great new course at the OU that is so good not only am I considering signing up myself but I think everyone that likes design, creativity or thinking in new ways should. Really. I don’t think the OU has ever offered such a cool course and I just want to shout it to the world! The course is U101 Design Thinking and starts in February. It is a Level 1 course (60 points) and looks like seriously good fun, as well as fascinating and engaging. From my point of view, the best part of the course is the course materials offered. If you are at all familiar with the OU you will know that the courses are conducted over distance (“supported open learning” in OU parlance) and all materials are included. For most courses this means a good supply of books, CDs, DVDs and even quirkier things like lab supplies. However, no other course has course materials like U101. They must be seen to ...

(This is probably going to be the longest-ever blog series in ANYTHING at the rate I’m writing it!) As we travel around the virtual World Showcase we have already stopped in Italy , Japan and France . Today it is the turn of Norway – one of the newest pavilions and one that inexplicably hosts Princesses these days. Norway is probably one of the most unusual countries for the average US tourist. It doesn’t have the heavy cultural weight of somewhere like China , isn’t accessible to them like Mexico or Canada and doesn’t have the effect on the imagination of France or Italy . It probably doesn’t figure on most US citizens’ “must visit” list and they probably know very little about it. I must admit I was the same. I knew nearly nothing about Norway other than it was probably very cold, it was somewhere up north and had Vikings in its history. I could probably only name Leif Ericsson but no other famous Norwegians. I had no idea about the culture, industry,...