My Kickstarter project is live!

Film about walking 1800 miles across New Zealand

It constantly amazes me how far reaching my blog is, merely hours after asking if anyone had a Kickstarter invite on the blog, Lisa Yao came through with one :) Then a couple of days later the founder & Art Director of Kickstarter Charles Adler, dropped me line saying “DO IT. I absolutely loved your CDT project”.

Well I’ve done it, my project – Film about walking 1800 miles across New Zealand has just launched. We’re trying to raise $5000 and to be honest it feels a bit weird/cheeky raising money for something that I’m clearly going to enjoy doing.. But there is a lot of effort going into what I’m offering as ‘rewards’ i.e. maps & finished DVD, so I’m trying to stay optimistically hopeful that other people will want to get involved.

It isn’t all cash in hand of course, the cost of producing all the rewards and mailing everything out is going to take out a huge chunk. But I’ve got a few fun things in there like drawing peoples names along the way and styling my beard which should be a bit more profitable :)

Ideally I’d like to raise an extra $3500 (you can go over your target) which would pay for a mountain guide to take me to the top of Mt. Cook/Aoraki. It’s definetly beyond what I have the experience to do on my own, but is the highest mountain in New Zealand, has the same name is me and would make a pretty spectacular addition to the film!

IN TRANSIT presents: 16mm

You don’t have to back my project, there’s plenty of other great one’s on there. I’m backing IN TRANSIT presents: 16mm, pictured above. A film by Jonathan Dueck, who’s been busy scratching & painting over old 16mm films. Also James Taylor who wants to make an ‘absurd game of logic’ – The Gentlemen of the South Sandwiche Islands.

Invites
If anyone wants one? I have five, none left sorry.

Tachetags

Tachetags

Movember + Twitter & Hashtags = Tachetags! This was the brainchild of a mate at Blast radius, who got me in as the ‘moustache expert’ to make it happen.

Basically the idea is you upload daily photos of your folical folly to twitter (using twitpic, yfrog or img.ly) and add #tachetag in the text. We’ll pull them all into tachetag.com where you and anyone else can see your progress and, if they like the look of your hirsute heroics, add a donation in your name.

There a few more features in the wings, like being able to post images directly on the site, personal pages with all your photos and hopefully an animated gif of it growing.

Tachetags Website

The Goat Race

Start of goat race

Well the Oxford & Cambridge goat race last Sunday was hilarious :) I wasn’t sure how much of a race it would be, thought they might run off into the crowd for a bit of petting, but when that gate was opened they were off!

Oxford and Cambridge goat race

There was neck and neck racing, overtaking action, it was so quick it was hard to get a photo of it. In the end the little goat Cambridge got to the finish first (I had my money on him too).

Here’s the little winner Cambridge:

Cambridge goat

As an bit of an afterthought I stuck two sock monkey jockies on them. Glad I did, they were funny bouncing along on their backs. Overheard from the audience – “that was probably the funniset thing I’ve ever seen”.

Here’s the much larger, but not quite as quick Oxford:

Oxford Goat

I think maybe he lost because his jockey looks like he’s sleeping on the job  ;)

The goats in their pen

The reason the goats were going for it was so that they could back to their pen and munch on all this hay. It was a great day, not sure how much we raised for the farm, but I’d say there was a least 200 folk there so it must of been a few hundred quid, thanks to all who attended :)

I was impressed with Spitalfields City Farm, can’t believe it’s literally right next to Brick Lane by the Trumen brewery and I’d never seen it before? Lovely to discover a little bit of countryside right in the middle of dirty urban London. You could buy veggies and plants there too, the different kinds of lettuce looked really good.

Oxford & Cambridge Goat Race

Oxford & Cambridge Goat Race

On the same day as the boat race (29th March) London’s going to host a new event – The Oxford & Cambridge Goat Race ;) When Ant, Simeon & Anne told me their idea, I said where the hell are you going to get the goats from?!? Well luckily the nice folks at Spitalfields City Farm (just off Brick Lane) don’t mind us racing a couple of theirs around a field. In return the £3 admission fee will be going toward the up keep of their urban farm project.

THE EVENT:

2 actual real live goats, one representing Oxford and one representing Cambridge, race a tough, meandering course lined with cheering spectators. Then on to the pub for cheap or possibly free (trying to sort out a booze deal now) drinks and music.

AMUSEMENTS:

  • The Official Goat Race Bookie and Sweepstake
  • Enter the Goat Wrestling tournament (I’ve no idea wtf this is)
  • Goatee competition

TIME & PLACE:

Spitalfields City Farm E1, near Brick Lane – map »
Sunday March 29th
Get there 2.30pm
Race 3.30pm
After party from 4.30pm (in the pub)

DRESS CODE:

Strictly: Black Tie, Rowing lycra, boat club jackets and ties, or goat.

ADMISSION:

£3 on the door charge, all proceeds go to a Spitalfields City Farm Charity.

GET INVOLVED:

If you would like to attend, or get involved in any other way (you could turn up with a few metres of bunting at least), head over to the Goat Race Facebook page »

Organised by – Team Magic-Ish (Anne Hopkins, Simeon Rose & Anthony Goh)

This’ll get your eyebrows moving

Cadbury Dairy Milk is going Fairtrade

Cadbury Dairy Milk is going Fairtrade! I’m sure you’re all aware what Fairtrade is about and that’s it’s a good thing. So far I’ve seen it as a bit of a niche, with the odd logo on expensive bags of coffee. So it’s good to hear that Cadbury are annoucing that it’s mega mass market flagship choccy treat is going to be using 100% Fairtrade ingredients (in about 6 months). Find out more on their blog »

“Fair trade means products are purchased directly and at a fair price from small family growers and co-operatives that do not rely on hired or illegal forced labour. Growers receive a minimum guaranteed price that covers real production costs, regardless of how low world market prices fall.”

Cadbury is a big dirty corporate company, but it does seem to have a history of doing nice things,  such as – Back in 1879 Mr. Cadbury didn’t want his chocolate factory workers to live in city slums, so he built it out in the countryside (Bournville) along with a model village which would ‘alleviate the evils of modern more cramped living conditions’ for them to live in. No pubs though, Mr. Cadbury was a Quaker, well you can’t have it all ;)

Cadbury fairtrade blog

How come I know so much about This Cadbury Fairtrade thing? Well I was pulled in at the eleventh hour last week by Hyper to re-design the blog after the client rejected previous work. There wasn’t much time (the announcement date was set in stone) Started on Thursday morning then 27 hours later without rest or sleep the blog was finished. I think Guy Bowden who built it must have been burning the midnight oil over the weekend too.

Anyhow, check out my late-night chocolate & caffeine (I don’t they were Fairtrade) fueled efforts our on the Cadbury Fairtrade blog »

Tough Guy Challenge

Tough Guy

Ican’t beleave this competition has being going on for 24 years and this is the first I’ve heard of it, well no longer – each year a South Perton Farm near Wolverhampton hosts the Tough Guy Challenge and next year I think I’ll go take a look (missed this year, was on the 1st of Feb).

What is it? Well in a nutshell it’s the most demanding one day assault course in the world, they reckon it’s closest rival is the The US Navy S.E.A.L.S. ‘Grinder’ Assault Course. Entry is open to the public to test their physical and metal prowess whilst earning a bit of money for charity.

“the safest most dangerous taste of physical and mental endurance pain in the world”

This year saw 6,000 competitors take on the challenge, overall winner was James Appleton who was overtaking just before the finish by Vito Graffagnino, but Vito was later disqualified for cheating. There was 1 broken neck, a dozen broken or dislocated bones and 600 people struck down with hypothermia!

Via: tw0-headed monster, photos from the Boston Big Picture article.

This book will be famous

This book will be famous, hopefully!

My girlfriend Nicky and Asi have just launched an interesting project – This book will be famous. It’s a kind of pass the parcel/6 degrees of Kevin Bacon type thing, basically you fill up a page with a doodle or something, then sent it to the most famous person you know. Hopefully it’ll be filled up with some fairly interesting stuff, by some fairly impressive people and then they’re going to auction it off to support the NSPCC. Good luck guys, looking forward to see how it pans out.

Pence per Mile Pledge Page

pence per mile pledge pageOn the 1st May Cookie & Paul will start a 3,000 mile walk (see the sidebar). We are doing this to raise funds for The Cystic Fibrosis Trust as we both have friends that suffer from this currently incurable disease. The money raised will help fund research to find a cure. If you wish to sponsor us straight away, you can do so securely here.

But: I think it’s much more sporting to sponsor us by the mile – Remember there’s no guarantee that we’ll make it to the end, so it might not cost you as much as you think! We’ll be tracking our progress and plotting it on this map, so you’ll be able to see exactly how out of pocket you are on a weekly basis. If you want to sponsor us this way leave a comment with your Pence per Mile Pledge in this post and I’ll chase you up when I get back! Your generosity will be greatly appreciated :)