There’s a farmer’s market just down the road from me every Saturday. I go there to pick up food for the week. It’s a bit pricier than Tesco’s but a lot of the stuff’s better quality, and even when it isn’t I don’t mind paying a premium to buy food that’s locally-grown. It seems more than a bit ridiculous that food that was grown locally and driven 10 miles to market costs less than stuff flown in...

Got a bit of data for you. Good marketers test. You know this. They’ll try out lots of different approaches to see what works. In terms of e-mail marketing, this means splitting your list into random segments of equal-ish size, sending slightly different e-mails to each and tracking click data. From the results, you can tell which variation works best. There’s a neat little statistical tool called a T-test you can use to judge the...

You’ve probably had this kind of conversation in the past… An idle comment to a mate suddenly sends you down the rabbit hole, and what you thought was going to be a one-liner on the way home is still being debated three hours and three pints later. I had one of those a couple of days ago, inspired by one of the car-ad billboards (I honestly forget which one, they’re all so interchangeable) and it basically came down to this:...

A friend of mine (@randomnine, indie coder extraordinaire, part-time musician and constructor of intricate and mutated boardgames) just tweeted this: “Easily the most emotionally powerful video I’ve seen all year, and it’s… an ad spot. Amazing.” The ad in question is Channel 4′s Paralympics spot. I can’t embed it due to copyright restrictions on the soundtrack, but you can take a look here: Channel 4...

Despite the fact that it’s far too hot, I love this time of year. Because it’s gooseberry season. Gooseberries are one of the last truly seasonal foods. They’re only available for a few weeks every year, so I’m forced to stockpile. Forced to, y’hear? Generally I try to eat a pretty balanced diet. It’s part of my endless desire to optimise everything. But for these few weeks, 95% of what I eat will be...

Have you heard Muse’s Olympic anthem yet? I did, yesterday. In case you’ve missed it, here it is… but beware. Listen to the pundits, and you’ll be worried that pressing the play button will cause your computer to explode like an amp turned up to 111. To be honest, it was all a bit underwhelming. It’s not a bad song. In fact, it’s pretty good. Definitely wipes the floor with the usual Erasure-based rubbish...