nuzzaci - an online journal

After 5 years in London. I’m leaving. I’m leaving POKE. I’m leaving London. I’m leaving England. I’m not leaving Europe, though.

Willow and I have had thoughts for quite some time about “going somewhere else for a while“. I, being half Swedish half Italian; living in England, have had the fortune of working and living in an unfamiliar culture and therefor find a lot of insight and enjoyment in the smaller things. Willow, on the other hand, is half English half American living and working in England.

When we’ve discussed about potential destinations we have loosely talked about New York, San Francisco, Vancouver, Oslo, Zürich and Genéve. The tricky bit has been work and languages. I speak three languages (Swedish, Italian and English) and Willow speaks two (English and French). We agreed that for both of us to learn a new language would be too much of an undertaking. I think the strongest contender was Vancouver.

But then I suggested Willow should apply to a masters at Konstfack in Stockholm, Sweden… and she got in!

The program, titled Experience Design, is a interdisciplinary course over two years.
Sounds amazing and i’m jealous.

So, in August, Willow and I are moving to Stockholm.

We still haven’t found a place to stay. So anything is of interest. We are probably looking for something in the outskirts, but that’s cycling distance to Sodermalm. Preferable a part of a villa with a garden for the cat and parking for the car we are planning to buy and drive over.

I am also in need of a job. So again, anything is of interest. I am looking for opportunities to work with creative people on challenging projects. I am open to all possibilities, that require an experienced online / new media person. This includes, digital agencies, freelance, client-side and advertising agencies.

Willow will probably be up for some freelance between all the studies as well, so please have a look at our portfolios, Willows on doublevay.com
and mine on portfolio.nuzzaci.com.

I’m really exited about all this. It definitely spiced up 2008.

Obviously i’m extremely sad about leaving all my friends and POKE behind. 5 years is a long time. You don’t stay in one place for 5 years unless you really like it.

I know from experience that it’s hard (or even impossible) to keep in touch when your living far apart, let alone in another country. It’s true you know — long distance relationships never really work out. My friends in Sweden know that. So does my ex-girlfriend. But with some people there has grown a special bond, and i’m sure that when i’m over in the UK, we will pick up where we left off as if I’d never even left. My friends in Sweden know that. Not sure my ex-girlfriend does, though. ;)

Cranks is a coverband formed by 5 employees at POKE; Igor Clark, Mattias Gunneras, Dom Baker, David Kelly and I. Two weeks ago we had our first official gig.

The name of the band comes from the term used to describe crying and wanking simultaneously - Crank. Someone suggested it as the band name, we accepted it and then Simon Cook, aka made-in-england.org got to work and did us an ingenius logotype and other graphical assets.

I have been in various band formations playing various genres and styles, but this one is my first coverband and the first band where what we have in common is not a similar taste in music, but our professions. So, naturally, we’ve had very heated discussions about what to play and what not to play. What’s good and what’s not good. But after a few weeks we were finding a common ground and we managed to get together a set list of 16 songs we all liked and enjoyed playing.

Our first appearance went down well. We managed to get a slot on the last ever Club Pub that was held at On The Rocks. The theme was, appropriately — ROCK!

Photograph captured by Jaypeg

Many of our co-workers weren’t sure what to expect from Cranks, which I think worked in our favour, since we basically took them by surprise and rocked their socks off. And they liked it (without socks), which was brilliant.

Photograph captured by Greg Reed

I’ve done a fair amount of concerts in my days, most of them I can’t really remember. This one will definitely be one that I do remember. Mainly because of the ROCKING audience!

People who have seen me play live knows that i’m a bit of a different person when i’m on stage… or, it’s more like most people don’t expect me to behave the way I do on stage based on my personality off stage.

Nothing I do on stage is done intentionally. So it’s always fun to see all the photos afterwards. Apparently, judging by the photos, this time around I screamed a lot.

Photograph captured by Marc Davies

Below are some links to blog posts and flickr sets and tags documenting the last ever club pub and the first ever public appearance by Cranks.

• Nicky Gibsons blog, Monter-Munch.com
• POKE blog
• Greg Reed
• Marc Davies
• Jeypeg
• Ian Applegate
• Andrew Zolty
• the ‘clubpub’ tag

The other day I wrote this little javascript that I thought I would share with the rest of the internet. It’s a simple function that replaces submit buttons with a anchor element, which sequently can turned into an image with css.

I haven’t tested the script in all browsers and different environments. So please be cautious and post a comment if you run into any problems.

Get it here: http://dev.nuzzaci.com/javascript/submit/. The downloadable file includes examples and versions to use with jQuery or MooTools.

I’m personally not involved in this one, but many of my friends and co-workers are working their asses off to make this project happen.

The lead flash developer on the project, Derek ‘Dezza’ McKenna, told me at lunch time that this will be the last ever project where he incorporates a countdown on the pre-launch website - a countdown that simultaneously reminds him every time he looks at the site how the deadline is creeping closer and closer and closer….
tick tock tick tock.

playballoonacy.com will be special.

Finally: Willow and I manage to take some photos of our newly renovated flat. Most of you probably don’t know the difference between the “old” and the “new” flat, but you can get some ideas by compearing the The Big Makeover flickr set with the Eastside Academy set or by browsing the flat tag.

In short, it’s a new kitchen in a new place, old kitchen turned into storage/laundry/larder room, new stairs up to the mezzanine, new mezzanine railing and new mezzanine carpet and a completely newly refurbish bathroom.

I had plans on writing a really detailed entry about everything, since a lot of things (if not all) went down a slightly different path than planed. But i’ve decided to keep it short.

All this work was only possible thanks to my amazing dad. He came up to London in February and, believe it or not, we were done in about 4 weeks. The old man is in better shape than I am. That’s the difference when you’ve been working with your hands all your life instead of sitting in front of a computer.

I went over to Oslo on the May bank holiday weekend to attend Espen Dietrichson’s gallery opening at UKS entitled Sketches for a Mechanical Sunrise. Espen is probably the only one I know who’s working in the creative field but is not doing it commercially, so I find it extremely interesting and fascinating to talk to him about how he approaches his work and his industry and to draw parallels to what I do and the web industry. Make sure you visit his website, espendietrichson.com and have a look at his sculptures. They are stunning.

It was my first time to Oslo, and over our short stay (Friday to Sunday) it left a very good impression. Besides the gallery opening, we had dinner at Ekeberg Restauranten, visited the new Opera house and the Vigeland Sculpture Park. The restaurant had a great location. But, unfortunately, that was about it. The food was pricy and average. The Opera house is impressive (above photograph). Unfortunately you have limited access inside the building. The Vigeland Sculpture Park was beautiful and Gustav Vigeland’s sculptures gave it a unique shade of weirdness (below photograph).

Two weeks ago Willow and I flew down to Taranto, Italy, to attend my cuisine, Benedetta, and her fiancé’s, Angelo, wedding. (above illustration is an illustration of Benedetta and Angelo. It was illustrated by Willow and was part of the wedding gift.)

It was really nice. I don’t meet up with my italian side that often any more — when I was younger I stayed down there every summer for a few weeks, now that i’m older I manage to get a few days every other year — so when I’m down there it is extra special. They are all so lovely.

Due to the lack of time spent in Italy, my Italian isn’t really up to scratch. Normally it takes me a few days to get into it, so these short weekends aren’t long enough for my brain to re-adjust. Being Swedish and having an English girlfriend doesn’t make it any easier. My brain kind of spazzes out from time to time (excuses excuses excuses).

I also experienced my longest and largest dinner up to date. I think it was about 9 courses; over 6 hours!! It truly was something special. A funny anecdote from the dinner was when they told me during the starter that I shouldn’t eat too much since much more awaits on ‘il secondo piano’; which means ‘on the second floor’. Now I thought that ‘il secondo piano’ was a metaphor for going ‘to the next level’, so I was a bit amused when we were asked to actually go up to the second floor to continue the meal! Another funny anecdote: when we got home from this marathon of a dinner, Rita, my aunt, sat the table and started to bring out more food! Yeah It took me and Willow a few days in London before we had fully digested all the goodness.

As usual, during weddings, “wedding-talks” starts. And the big family question already on the same evening was: who’s next? Personally I feel no pressure (being the youngest and all) and am putting my money on Lucilla (Benedetta’s little sister).

Anyway. Just wanted to do a short digital congratulation to A and B!!

Through POKE I was given the lovely opportunity to work with the great people at Ottolenghi and help them to design and build their new website. When working for a medium-sized company such as POKE (approx. 50ppl), where larger clients take up the majority of studio time, these kind of smaller/independent clients and projects come as a long awaited breeze of fresh air on a hot summers day.

A few words on the design:

Working with the Ottolenghi brand was difficult — or maybe ‘challenging’ is the correct phrase. They are very minimalistic but still carry a personality. So the difficulty / challenge was to keep it very slimmed-down but still engaging.

The above screen is of the current homepage.

The design is based around a simple 8 column grid (show / hide grid). I decided to left align the page to give use of the browser edge for a “full bleed” photographic treatment. Another repeating photographic treatment is the overlaying and slightly anti-top-aligned treatment that can be seen on all top level pages (except the blog) and on recipes where images are in portrait instead of horizontal format.

A few words on the build:

I also did the front end build of the site, while the back-end was delivered by Nilesh Ashra. It was my first project using the jQuery javascript library and the first project i’ve been involved with that uses the “Death Star”, which is a Model-View-Controller approached PHP framework developed by Igor Clark and Nilesh.

If I knew what I know now, I would probably have used the MooTools 1.2 (currently in beta) javascript framework instead of jQuery 1.2.3. Not because jQuery didn’t get the job done or was hard to work with; at the time I hadn’t tried either of them, or given jQuery a chance. Since then I have worked on another project and given MooTools a chance and it turns out that MooTool suits me a bit better.

Working with Nilesh and the “Death Star” framework worked out great. It made me hungry for more Model-View-Controller approached PHP and I am now looking into what codeigniter can do to please that part of my brain.

So, wrapping up,

I’m pleased with the result and the project was a real pleasure to work on. No other client has offered me such good meeting snacks and lunches as Ottolenghi.

One of the few downsides about working on this project was that it kept me constantly hungry. I thought that working on the GoodFood website last year had made me immune to fooling my body that the glycogen level of the liver has fallen and activating the hunger feeling by looking at food photos on screen.

Thankfully, in a few weeks, their new cookbook will be out (which I have flipped through and can confirm looks amazing) so that Willow and I can cook all the dishes I have been drooling at for the last couple of months.

My new threadless t-shirt submission is up. It’s a present for someone, so click the link and give it your best vote. And if you’re so inclined, pass it on to your friends too.

Follow this link to vote on Willow’s nice t-shirt.

Almost back to back to my post about a USB MixTape Stick, here’s a post on online mixtapes. Recently two websites have reached the echo chamber known as the blogosphere; Mixwit.com and Muxtape.com. I don’t like many things about Mixwit (if any), but the simplicity of Muxtape struck a chord.

My first compilation, titled, ‘nuzzaci’s small compilation of compelling cover songs’, is a set of 12 cover songs from various artists. Listen to it on nuzzaci.muxtape.com. The playlist is:

1. Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy - The World’s Greatest
2. Florence and the Machine (featuring Kid Harpoon) - I’m Goin’ Down
3. Mat Weddle - Hey Ya
4. Ben Gibbard - Complicated
5. Sinead O’Connor - All Apologies
6. Streets, The - Your Song
7. Sick Anchors, The - Whole Again
8. John Mayer - Kid A
9. Nick Cave - Disco 2000
10. Zwan - The Number of the Beast
11. Iron & Wine - Such Great Heights
12. Beck - True Love Will Find You in the End