Comments for johnfitzgeralddesign

Comment on My ten favourite pieces of product design #4: le creuset casserole by simon gray

simon gray — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 13:45:49 +0000

i love our le creuset tagine pot; cast iron bottom with conical ceramic top, & believe it or not if you’re making traditional morrocan lamb tagine it really does seem to make a difference done in this rather than in a standard casserole pot. it also has an advantage that you can use it on the stove top as well as in the oven - last night’s tea was goulash cooked in that way.

when we moved to the boat quite a lot of kitchen equipment had to be sacrificed, but there was no way we were going to get rid of this !

Comment on First world results on a third world budget | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited by simon gray

simon gray — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 11:52:12 +0000

what doesn’t help is whenever government / the nhs *does* try to move into the realm of sickness prevention, whether through advice campaigns, legislation, or whatever, cries of ‘nanny state’ are all too often heard !

Comment on Tired but nearly home by johnfitzgeralddesign

johnfitzgeralddesign — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 14:55:18 +0000

Hi Lorelei,

The Quakers in Vienna are located in the office of Konfliktkultur, on Stadiongasse. More information here:

http://www.emes.quaker.eu.org/meetings/index.html?yearlymeeting=2

Comment on Tired but nearly home by lorelei dowling

lorelei dowling — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 05:26:30 +0000

I would like to know where to find the quaker group here in vienna.there is a group in the UN but one has to be a member of the UN

Comment on Enjoying exams… by simon gray

simon gray — Thu, 31 May 2007 16:08:00 +0000

i remember two interviews i've had which were thoroughly enjoyable, even though on both occasions i didn't get what the interview was for!

the first one was about 10 years ago, when i was interviewing for music pgce at homerton college, cambridge - rather than entirely individual interviews it was more like the apprentice, where we spent the whole day there, having to work as a team on a class music project & take part in a discussion about educational philosophy with each other, as well as the short individual chats. by the end of the day we were all in agreement that we all thoroughly enjoyed the experience, & it was worth the day out of our lives just for having done it.

the second particularly enjoyable interview was the bbc one (for assistant content producer for the telly portals) i had last october - the exercises were some quite fun image editing, text editing, & programme blurb writing tests, & the whole interview part was a much more relaxed affair than previous job (especially bbc) interviews i've had. it at least made up for me not getting it finding out later than nobody else had got it from that and two later recruitment processes !

Comment on To code or not to code… by simon gray

simon gray — Thu, 31 May 2007 15:59:00 +0000

for maximum actual showcasing of your design skills it’d be best to have all the layout done using css rather than tables anyway, which would tend in the direction of hand-coding - because the current version of dreamweaver’s css support is best described as ‘better than previous versions’ !

Westciv do quite a good css editor which is at least a start if plunging right in to handcoding is too much, & there’s even a version for the mac…

Comment on Essay plan 1 / Rousseau by simon gray

simon gray — Thu, 17 May 2007 13:24:00 +0000

it’s obviously not in the same league as rousseau, but have you seen the alfred hitchcock film ‘rope’ which touches on these issues?

Comment on Sergio’s sutainability maxim by simon gray

simon gray — Thu, 17 May 2007 13:20:00 +0000

a couple of things which have been coming to me as ‘problems’ with the sustainability / climate change campaigning have been the ‘but there’s no point in us doing anything because what about china’ issue, & also the general problem of there being a certain level of… sanctimoniousness amongst some of the loudest campaigners - that they give an impression of seeing themselves as perfect examples of the sustainable living, whilst the rest of us are just willfully raping the planet.

what’s occurred to me as a solution to the first problem is trying to encourage a level of altruism in making sustainable choices, which works just as well on the personal level as it does on the international level - yes, the developing world does have an entitlement to the best standard of living, which will inevitably involve more co2 than we’ld really want, so how about the developed world doing more of its share of the work so the developing world doesn’t have to? Not everybody can realistically travel to work by bus, train, or cycle - so how about those who live on the bus route which goes past both their homes & their places of work with a 20 minute journey between them, using the bus so those who don’t don’t have to?

the other problem could be handled by campaigners being as willing to own up to their own personal failings as much as their achievements - i’m trying to encourage a blog climate change chain of action for that kind of thing to at least happen in the blogosphere !

Comment on Climbing in’t Lakes… by simon gray

simon gray — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 13:11:00 +0000

i’m still quite pleased with myself after the weekend in aviemore at how well i managed to be able to keep up with a bunch of people considerably fitter than me - especially on the sunday bike !

Comment on Dr No says yes by simon gray

simon gray — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 13:41:00 +0000

What I found especially interesting & pleasing was the news that the two parties were actually able to come to an (apparently) amicable agreement on which MLAs were going to have which cabinet portfolios purely through a process of apparently reasonable discussion together in a closed session - and include one republican politician who one would previously have thought Ian Paisley would have especially refused to even be in the same country as, let alone the same government as - rather than needing to force members on each other using the DeHonte mechanism.