Idea IS the format

Currently in LA with Emma and Ruby. We had a great flight over – Ruby kipped and fed and kipped and fed the whole way.

Along the way we flew over Greenland, and saw some of the most incredible views I’ve ever seen from an aircraft. It was quite disconcerting to think that landscape so beautiful, on that scale, could be under threat from such a transient and ridiculous thing as humanity.

I didn’t think to try and take a photo, but I did take this shortly before we landed:

Looks like Smallville on a Saturday night, right? That there is actually Las Vegas; that concentration of light and colour and lurid largesse under seige from the flawless emptiness of the Nevada desert.

We stole a few hours sleep once we’d checked in, but we’re awake now, waiting for the sun to start rising. Between unfamiliar environs, jet lag, green tea and Orbital – Live at Glastonbury: 1994-2004 it feels a bit like the good ol’ days.

Now all I have to do is play my caffeine right all the way through to the espresso martini firing me up for tonight’s dinner engagement, at the end of what looks like being a day and a half.

Literally.

Another night of less than five hours sleep. Normally I can take one or two in my stride, but it feels like I’ve been doing them back to back for at least a couple of weeks, and it’s definitely starting to take its toll.

The rididulous thing is, it’s not even because of Ruby. She sleeps WAAAAAY better than I do; she’s sleeping as well as you could hope for a newborn. The problem is fitting in all the other stuff. As well as working through a full roster of existing work we’re pitching for multiple campaigns through Q1 and Q2 ‘08.

Now’s the time to get the work in, if you want a nice busy summer. You can’t just sit around until spring has sprung before you start asking after the tentpoles, not any more. Not when a stand-out online campaign needs to run for 2-3 months, rather than the traditional 2-3 weeks.

On top of the work, I’ve got a wife, two kids, a garden and a blog to look after. Or thereabouts. The reality is that Ems pretty much looks after me; she was back on her feet within about 15 minutes of Ruby’s arrival, but that’s just the way she’s made. Lola is increasingly learning to look after herself (She just marched into the room wearing a pair of knickers back to front and proudly announced that “Lola makin’ pants”). And my dad’s brought some much needed backbone to the garden, as you’ll see from the latest installment (below).

So, in amongst it all, I’m just about finding the time. It makes me realise that in this day and age, more than ever, time is of the essence. But that’s for another time. For now it’s just a case of don’t worry, don’t hurry, and don’t forget to smell the flowers.

Update (08.01.08) – Several people have commented to me about the music on this. It’s No Surprises, taken from the album Rockabye Baby! Lullaby Renditions of Radiohead.

I googled for it in order to give you the link and discovered a whole page of different albums of a similar ilk, with lullaby covers of bands including Metallica, Nine Inch Nails and The Ramones.

Seems to me the least I can do is plug them thus, given that I shameless stripped out the DRM from the version I bought on iTunes, then infringed the associated copyright with gay abandon.

Update (10.01.08) – You can download this by right-clicking on this link and saving it to your desktop.

Presenting the second of our festive features:

Woke up this morning and decided to can my plans to buy myself a PS3, in favour of a Mini DV cam two thirds of the price. Lola and I went up to Angel first thing, and eighteen hours later here we have our first production, cut using Windows Movie Maker, and posted to a cool little video hosting site called Vimeo.

Ems’ birthday. Lovely trip to our favourite cinema – the Genesis, on Mile End Road – to watch THE DARJEELING LIMITED. We make it out to the cinema so rarely these days, it was a real treat to watch such a delicate and entertaining movie.

I took this photo at Mile End tube waiting for the train down to Stepney Green. I used to take mobile phone pics on the tube every day, when we first set up Ploggle, sometimes just to check that it was working properly – you’ll find a hundreds of them at underground.ploggle.com.

Ems took the picture below on Saturday before the baby shower. Lola was having a spot of lunch with her cousin Amelie at ‘Lola’s table’. I’m posting it in the hope that I’ll look at it a bit more often. When you see kids this happy, all your troubles turn to dust.

About two hours ago Ems and I discovered that my laptop is bluetooth enabled. We’ve since dumped about 300 photos onto it, almost every one of which is of our Lola, dating since her first birthday (you can see her complete history, from bump onwards, here).

Watching back through the pictures, with some sweet sounds on iTunes and the slideshow feature gliding through chronologically, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. It wasn’t just the pictures where she stopped and smiled, it was all those ‘bad’ photos in between, the flurries of colour, the flashes of happiness, the whirling inquisition binding it together into a year in the life of…

I think that’s part of the reason, when Tommy and I set up Ploggle, I was so obsessed with the cameraphone angle, albeit at the expense of steering our venture to commercial success. I love the narratives cameraphones explore, going places you wouldn’t necessarily think to take a regular camera.

I decided to pick one photo and post it here. One that you won’t find on LightJunior, or TravelLight. It was taken today, just as Ems embarks on maternity leave for the second time, and can spend an afternoon with Lola sweeping up leaves in the back yard. As it came up she apologised. “They’re all fuzzy, she just kept moving.”

Sounds like a pretty good design for life. Stay fuzzy. Just keep moving.

Just back from three weeks in Thailand with Ems and Lola. Thought I’d post this pic, since it pretty much sums up the trip, much of which was spent in a bungalow on Koh Samui getting to know a kid who’s just starting to learn how to talk to the world, and is generally captivated by what it has to say back.

You can see the rest of our pics from the trip on Travel Light.