iPresents - Books and Media

Moleskine City Notebooks - London

2006-10-16T22:24:00.000+01:00

My passion for Moleskine, just keeps growing. They have now introduced a collection of Moleskine City Notebooks, to help anyone with a taste for travel.

The guide book that you write yourself

Instead of buying a normal city guidebook, you can now get one, that is much more personal. With the usual Moleskine attributes of blank pages to fill, you also get some city maps to draw and mark to plan a trip to say, London or Amsterdam, Barcelona, Dublin, Lisbon, Madrid, Milan, Paris, Rome and Vienna.

Map of city—for tracing your itinerary.
Blank pages—For your notes and thoughts.
12 Tabs—So everything that matters most is at your fingertips.

Highly addictive and a lot of fun

Moleskine and Travel Links

Moleskine Music NoteBook

2006-07-11T12:13:00.000+01:00

For Musical Notes

The Moleskine Music NoteBook is a relatively recent addition to the Moleskine range. Described as "The Moleskine notebook for musicians & sound designers, for jotting down harmonies and melodies" this pocket sized book is filled with blank musical staffs and staves, ready for your next masterpiece. The lack of physical space may make you look elsewhere if you were scoring for an orchestra, but for guitarists and other musicians, this lack of size makes them extremely useful and valuable.

Moleskine Resources

John Peel Margrave of the Marshes

2006-01-10T06:31:00.000Z

Kick off

Who would you vote for best Britain? Churchill, Elizabeth I, Nelson, Lennon? I think John Peel should be up their with the greats. Margrave of the Marshes is like one of John's loves; football, a game of two halves. The first half kicks off with John's unique voice, full of his characteristic humour. John tells the story of his life from his school days to Radio 1 with a lot of fun but also with some amazingly frank admissions. He doesn't pull any punches, not even with his friends and family. Detailing National Service to Elvis to the Beatles and a great, almost mindless love for Liverpool FC. One thing that was surprising to me was the time he spent in Texas. Bolstered by the British Invasion, he managed to persuade the local radio station to include him as their Beatles expert - to them he could have been one. He tells his life story with all of the dry wit that you might expect, and I loved every word. Absolutely wonderful and very inspiring.

The Second Half

Then John dies in October 2004, even this didn't stop the completion of his book though. A couple of pages into the second half, my despair soon turned to elation. Well, not really, but Sheila Ravenscroft, his wife, has taken the ball from John and scored a most amazing and tearful goal. It is quite clear that Sheila knew him best, so I am sure that this book is even better than it would have been, had it not been for John's demise. Well, no, that's bollocks. The book is complete, Yin and Yang are in perfect harmony and Sheila certainly balanced the book well. This can not have been easy for her or her family, but she did it, and I am sure John would be very proud of her.

Fades in nicely...

If you are a music fan, this book is essential. It is an incredible journal of an extraordinary man. Someone, who devoted his life to unsigned artists. He was the God of the Demo Tape. I found this very inspiring. I even redesigned the alternative music section of MacIDOL as a shrine to this spirit.

Teenage Kicks

Reading this book has changed the way I even listen to music. I am a lot less "critical", and am more like a teenager now, which is after all when most people first get really excited about music. This is when music is everything, bigger than religion and an escape from homework and revision. Ever fallen in love with someone?

Buy John Peel Margrave of the Marshes from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk

It's all gone pete tong

2005-11-21T10:03:00.000Z

I saw this film in my local supermarket, I took one look at Paul Kaye's wonderful smile and I knew I had to get this film. Paul (Dennis Pennis) Kaye was made to play this part. He is fantastic as Frankie Wilde the deaf DJ. Set on location in some of Ibiza's world famous clubs, like Pacha, Manumission and DC10 it captures the real spirit of the club scene, which seems to have escaped the Ibiza Uncovered series. It tells the story of Frankie who is one of the top DJ's on the island. He seems to have it all, beautiful pad, wife and a coke addiction that would put Kate Moss to shame. Everything is sweet until it goes pete tong when Frankie starts losing his hearing.

Could you speak up

To lose one's hearing must be a challenge for anyone, but what if your life was music? OK Beethoven lost his audio and it didn't seem to do him any harm. Yet Beethoven didn't beat mix on Technics 1200's in front of ten thousand manic clubbers. I suffer from Tinnitus which is a constant ringing in the ears. I got this from playing in bands and my fondness for standing in-front of the bass bins when I go clubbing. I can really relate to Frankie's hearing loss, I can't think of anything worse for any musician or DJ to go through.

House of Fun

Despite the sad subject matter, this British movie is great fun. Paul Kaye is fabulous as house DJ Frankie. He should have won an Oscar for this role. If you like dark comedy you will love this film. It is full of wild and dark humour and I don't think anybody could have played Frankie better than Mr. Kaye

It's all gone pete tong

The film had me in tears of joy and pain in equal measures. It is a high B.P.M film, full of some very moving sequences and Frankie's desperation is portrayed equally well as the lighter moments. It all comes to a head in the self-imposed cushioned room which Frankie bounced off to try and cure his demons - very powerful and very real. For me, this is one of the best British films I have ever seen. Wonderfully moving and equally funny.

Buy the It's all gone pete tong from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk

Little Britain Series One DVD

2005-09-23T11:10:00.000+01:00

One of the funniest TV programmes for a long time. Little Britain Series One put new TV channel BBC3 firmly on the map. This hilarious creation of Matt Lucas and David Walliams started life on radio before it sledgehammered it's way on to TV.

Tom Baker Narrates

Tom "Dr Who" Baker gets the show on the road in his own inimitable way: "Britain, Britain, Britain, land of technological achievement. We've had running water for over ten years, an underground tunnel that links us to Peru, and we invented the cat." Then we are introduced to some of the finest comedy sketches since Benny Hill. Characters like chav teen Vicky "Yeh but no but" Pollard, Emily "I am a real ladyyyyy" Howard, Daffyd the Gay and grumpy Andy and helper Lou.

This 2 disc DVD set is a classic collection of British comedy, featuring the original pilot show, the complete first series, deleted scenes, Jonathan Ross interview, and a Best of Rock Profiles in which Walliams and Lucas impersonate rock stars.

Buy the Little Britain Series One from here:

Be sure to check out the Little Britain Talking Dolls - Vicky, Daffyd, Lou and Andy.

Bulletproof Web Design

2005-09-07T14:29:00.000+01:00

I first got introduced to Dan Cederholm's writing by buying his "Web Standards Solutions" book. I only had to read a couple of pages and I was hooked. It is one of my all-time favourite web design books. Clearly showing you how to create useful web standard driven CSS. So when I first heard about "Bulletproof Web Design" from Dan's excellent SimpleBits site. I couldn't wait to get my paws on it.

Bulletproof CSS

I am slowly learning new CSS tricks and techniques and this book is already part of my armoury for building fast-loading, easy to maintain web sites using web standards. If you do not know what web standards are, buy a copy of "Designing with Web Standards" by Jeffrey Zeldman. If you are already up to speed, then this book may be of interest. It is a full colour book, containing 270 pages of tried and tested CSS and markup techniques.

A slow start

Chapter 1 deals with sizing text with keywords and percentages. It was a little dull, but extremely useful. As Dan points out in the chapter's conclusion. "And here's some good news: this initial chapter is probably the least interesting of the entire book but very necessary in order to set a solid - no, flexible - foundation for the examples that follow." Ok it maybe a little dull, but for me the examples in this first chapter justify the cost of the book alone.

Flexible web design techniques

Through the use of glorious colour. Dan walks you through scalable navigation, Expandable Rows, Creative Floating, Indestructible Boxes, No-image browsing, Convertible Tables, Fluid Layouts and the last chapter puts it all together to build a flexible, bulletproof design. This is a very practical book, demonstrating real-world supple techniques that will encourage you to develop flexible and bulletproof web designs. Each chapter starts with "A Common Approach" - showing how a particular technique may have been done prior to this book and builds to show you a better, more elastic CSS techniques that are better semantically and for the users that browse your websites.

Buy Bulletproof Web Design from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk

Moleskine Notebooks

2005-09-02T13:13:00.000+01:00

Moleskine notebooks are simple black notebooks, but with some features that make them the notebook of choice for anybody who likes to use paper instead of PDA's or computers to record their thoughts and ideas. I love my computer and iPod, but nothing has surpassed the ease of use and incredible archival qualities of paper. Using paper you can permanently archive your thoughts. Computers are not so permanent. A hard disk crash could lose it all. Regular backups can help. But in 20 years will you still be using the same operating system? No such grief with paper. If stored properly it will last thousands of years. (Pencil being the preferred medium, as graphite will not fade like ink can.)

Why Moleskine?

Moleskine notebooks are based on a design of notebook used by some of Europe's most notable intellectuals, writers and artists. Van Gogh, Hemingway and Chatwin all used the original Moleskine notebook. The modern Moleskine uses a synthetic 'Mole Skin' cover. (No moles are harmed!). The cover is held together by an elastic enclosure, which keeps the pages clean and tidy. Opening up you find an attached fabric bookmark, which is useful for quick access. On the inside back-cover there is a expandable pocket - great for receipts and clippings. The notebook has pocket-friendly rounded corners and is available in two sizes, for pocket use or your desk. It is this unique combination of features that makes the Moleskine special. It's history is just a bonus. It really is a very practical and useful notebook. It's quality acid free paper will preserve notes, sketches and words a lot longer than any other medium available.

Moleskine Models

There are many different varieties of Moleskine available. Most shops only keep one or two types. MojoLondon were the original online Moleskine shop and they keep them all in-stock. From Moleskine Sketch Books to Music Books or the useful Memo Pockets. I use an Moleskine address book to remember passwords and log-in details, and from a security point of view, someone would have to break-in and steal it, there is no way someone could hack it! I use Moleskine Ruled Notebooks for lectures and for snippets of code. My wife uses the Moleskine sketch book for drawings and pictures.

Buy Moleskine Notebooks, find out more about Moleskine.