Posts made in March, 2010

You may have seen my earlier post about Jamie Oliver winning the TED prize with his campaign to teach every child about food. I’ve just watched the UK campaign, the TV show Ministry of Food (in the UK you can watch it online via that link) and it blew me away. It tells the story of the struggles and successes of how one man went to Rotherham, where hardly anyone cooks, and educated and inspired hundreds if not thousands of people to cook, and to teach others around them. Not to mention transforming a few individuals lives along the way. It’s really quite inspiring to realize that one person can make a difference, especially if we all just do it instead of imagining failure. And it’s great to see a celebrity use their influence as a force for good in the world.

Watching the show you really do get the sense that this is the beginning of a grassroots cultural revolution. People are starting to wake up to how badly we’ve been treating our bodies with the food we eat.

The campaign has already taken root in cities across the UK, with a new food education centre opened in Bradford, and the campaign is starting in Australia too.

If you’re in the USA or Canada be sure to watch Food Revolution, where Jamie goes to the unhealthiest town in America – Huntingdon, West Virginia, and tries to start the revolution there. Trailer above, it starts on ABC next Friday 26th March with a preview this Sunday.

And if you want to get involved, and especially if you can’t or don’t cook, then just watch some of these simple video recipes, try them and most importantly, pass it on.

You can support the campaign here (for Americans) or here (for Brits).

Get involved, and maybe we really can solve the world’s obesity problems, if not for this generation, then at least for our children.

(And I hope I am not being to preachy, but it’s rare that you see something that is so overwhelmingly a good thing. I feel everyone should know about it!)

Update: You can also check out the things we can learn from this from a career perspective in this article.

An excellent 20 minutes short film exploring a future of multiple realities. What if you could no longer tell which reality was real?

If you liked Avatar, Total Recall, The Matrix, Vanilla Sky, Surrogates, or Strange Days, this is well worth a watch.

Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.

Just came across these handy writing tips by Neil Gaiman. The one I’ve quoted above is particularly interesting, I think, because it can apply to both creative writing and software design.

It’s fine and right that readers, or users of software should tell you when there is a problem, and what problem it is that they are experiencing (perhaps how their expectations were not met, or how they felt).

But it’s definitely not alright for them to tell you how to fix it. That is the job of the writer, or the designer. Understand how what you have created is affecting people, and use that knowledge to adapt, tweak and improve so that it affects them in the way you intended, or in a way that doesn’t cause them the same problems.

But never let them tell you exactly how to fix it. Take their input by all means but do not be swayed from doing what you think is right to fix it. You are the creator, you are the designer, and it’s your skills that will make the work a success.