Categories
Accessories Cufflinks Highly Recommended

Your child’s handprint impression on your cufflinks

 

I’ve been having a browse around for some really good cufflinks in our continuing Cufflinks series. I came across this ones recently and was thoroughly surprised and delighted. At first, I thought they were simply featuring standard handprints meant to remind you of your children. However when I visited the Gift Wrapped & Gorgeous website, I found that they’re entirely custom!

That’s right! You can get your child’s handprint impression on some cufflinks! As you can see on the image above, each cufflink has the child’s name and their handprint. If you’ve two children, you can opt for one imprint on each cufflink (more expensive) or you can simply opt for the default — the same imprint on both.

The cufflinks are Silver (plated, I assume?) and of course, there’s a bit of homework involved: Rebecca from Handprintz will send you a “non messy” (good) kit to easily take the handprint. Return that to her and she’ll produce the resulting cufflinks.

I absolutely love it!

You should allow 28 days for the whole process — that’s understandable.

I reckon this is one of those gifts that’s nigh on 100% perfect for a wife to give her husband [partner/etc] because it’s the sort of thing that can be done during the day when they’re at work — so it’s a real, super surprise. On the other hand, it’s something that you can instigate directly.

I would imagine that these are both eye catching and touching — suitable to accompany a high-powered pinstripe in the Square Mile or during a relaxed weekend.

The total cost all-in? £130.

Visit the Gift Wrapped & Gorgeous website’s Handprintz entry for more information and ordering details.

Categories
Technology

Bring on CES: LG’s largest OLED TV is just 4mm thick

Next week is CES week — and that means that almost every single consumer technology giant you can think of will be showing off their latest devices and services. I can’t wait to see what they’ve got for us.

Meantime, if you’ve been in the market for a TV, you might give some thought to LG’s all new OLED TV. It’s the largest of it’s type — 55 inches — and is a ridiculously amazing 4mm thick. Simply fantastic.

What’s interesting here is that the picture quality is technically impossible to achieve with other technologies. So, depending on your viewpoint, your current TV is now a pile of smoking dung. Here’s what LG’s blog has to report:

Such color capabilities are technically impossible with LED and LCD display panels. And at 1,000 times faster than LED/LCD displays, LG’s OLED TV shows crystal clear motion without any blurring or bleeding.

I like this phrase, too:

…And at only 4 mm thin and a mere 7.5 kg, LG’€™s OLED TV practically blends into the wall

Yes please.

You can read all about the TV in a little more detail here. It’s due to be launched formally next week. In terms of costs, The Telegraph’s Matt Warman points out that previous OLED TVs from Sony have retailed for around £2k (and that was for an 11″ version!) so set your price expectations to medium-high.

How much would you pay for something like this? 55″ and more or less completely flat? £3,000? £5,000?

That said, I don’t think this will be in the B&O @80k territory. (See my Bang & Olufsen post).

Categories
Travel

Do you buy a First Class rail ticket? Or just standard?

Now and again I am required to commute back and forth into the city for extended periods of time. For instance the projects I’m working on need me to be in Richmond-Upon-Thames daily. Our recent house move made the commute rather simple: 30-odd minutes on a train that typically 90% full.

On the way back in the evenings at peak time I don’t usually get a seat until a few stops have come and gone. This is entirely doable. And it’s all standard class.

A couple of chaps I know don’t stand for this. They always travel first class. There’s certainly a cost differential, but in the fullness of time and on the basis that you can (in many respects) offset the expense against tax if you’re a contractor, these chaps think it’s a good deal — they always get a seat.

I’ve no trouble with paying for first class. If I’m traveling on a long train journey — to Newcastle, Manchester or somewhere, I always book ahead and always select first class.

But day-to-day? I’m not sure if I see the value for a 30-minute journey.

The one guy I know who always travels first class explains to me that he simply doesn’t want any hassle at all. He likes the idea of never, ever having to stand. He regularly reads and sometimes does the crossword and occasionally he’ll use his laptop. However the value for him is the more or less permanent service level: A seat is virtually guaranteed. (On his line, I should point out). He also travels about an hour each way.

I’m typing this on my MacBook Air on one of the seats in the ‘quiet carriage’ on the South West Train service from Reading and I have to accept that I’m reasonably content. This morning I’m not traveling at peak time either so it’s nice and easy for me to use the laptop. At peak times it might be a little more difficult.

In terms of cost for me, the standard return journey is £14.40. First class is £24.40. An extra tenner.

And what do you get?

On this train line, you just get a dedicated seating area and, I imagine, less turnover of passengers so there’s less disruption if you’re trying to work.

I’m not sold on the value, I don’t think.

[And then my train stops at Staines and fills up with what feels like 100 chattering school children everywhere!]

What’s your view — if you commute, do you do standard or first class and what’s the cost difference?

Categories
Chocolate Gifts

Montezuma’s Grand Collection: An ideal gift

Until my good friend presented us with some Montezuma chocolates when he and his girlfriend popped over a few weeks ago, I’d never heard of the brand before.

My wife knows it well though — and, after consulting the website, it seems it’s me who’s rather out of date: They’ve got quite a few stores across the South of England.

I’m pretty particular about my chocolate (especially truffles). Either I want some overtly commercial Galaxy or Cadbury’s, or I want some proper chocolate. I can’t stand the stuff that pretends it’s good but is actually utter tripe. I remember buying some Champagne Truffles from a reasonably well known high street brand and not bothering finishing them as they were so rubbish.

Montezumas is fantastic. I found them fresh, stimulating and thoroughly wholesome. They’re big, you see — and that’s what you want in a truffle — a good big size with excellent flavours. The Grand Collection that my friend selected contained a brilliant array of different types. I even enjoyed the dark chocolate and coffee ones (I am, by default, a milk chocolate only chap). And that, dear reader, is saying something. Normally I avoid those ones like the plague because they’re usually rather poorly done — but the Montezuma ones were excellent.

So, if you find yourself looking for a decent gift that will work for any occasion, head over to Montezumas and take a special look at their Grand Collection.

(You can, of course, order online from their site.)

Categories
Observations

Pointy work shoes: The abomination fit only for the junior account executive

I’ve long held the view that proper work shoes — those that go nicely with a smart suit — do not turn up off the floor at the front, nor should they be pointy.

If they’re pointy then your feet will only fit into the main forward section, leaving the rest of the front to turn upwards. It looks shocking.

Hardly a day goes by when I don’t see somebody wearing these kind of shoes.

There’s nothing wrong with doing so. It just doesn’t strike me as professional. Using the traditional footwear of Court Jesters and Santa’s elves is not professional.

It really does wind me up to see them.

I’m guilty of this though. I hate to admit it. A while ago my wife made me buy some utterly shit £300 pair of “smart shoes” (to wear at the weekends). I ended up with this shocker of a pair that she thought looked cool. Me? Well I felt like a fraud, even at weekends. And I was slipping all over the place in them. I was wound up even more given the fact these shoes were piss-poor quality. Made for a tenner and branded at £300. They started to come apart after a few months.

I shouldn’t argue. I hadn’t been organised enough to go to Trickers and sort out some better casual ones so I ended up in Selfridges browsing these abominations.

Casual footwear is, I suppose, ok, when it comes to Court Jester pointy-turn-up-at-the-front shoes. But in a business context? It’s the equivalent of arriving at a meeting in a £75,000 sooped-up 1987 Ford Fiesta: Certainly expensive but fundamentally at the bottom of the rung in quality terms.

My preferred choice for footwear is Trickers — but I’ve had reasonable experiences with stuff from Churchs (is it Churches? Church’s?).

Where do you get your shoes from? And please, dear reader, tell me you don’t own a pair of pointy-lift-off-the-front shoes?

[Photo from Office.co.uk]

Categories
Observations

Exams: What are you telling your children given the recent scandal?

I was struck by this opinion post on The Telegraph this evening. The author, Martin Stephen, was High Master of St Pauls (School) from 2004 to 2011 and knows a thing or two about education.

His main contention is that the scandal which alleges that teachers have been able to — in effect — buy the contents of upcoming exams in order to better their students’ results. Martin then goes on to point out that this is hardly reassuring for today’s youngsters. Not at all.

Back in my day — I’m 34, so my ‘day’ was around 1995-ish — I studied hard for my GCSE exams. If memory serves me right, I was the second year that went through the new fangled GCSEs as apposed to what was known as ‘O Levels’. Even then, I remember reading about exams getting easier. Since then it’s been a perennial favourite of the media every exam season — the usual suspects trot out declaring that things are getting far too easy. Then, to make matters worse, some of the donkey questions are then included.

I remember experiencing utter blind panic during my GCSE Mathematics exam. You’re constantly reminded that if you start the wrong exam paper, tough. You can’t go back. You can’t change half-way through the exam and so on. So I checked-and-re-checked my paper before I began. I was absolutely horrified to find a question at the end of the paper that read like this:

“Jack is wondering how much paint he will need in order to cover the bottom of his swimming pool. The pool is 6m long and 2m wide. What is the total area in metres Jack will paint?”

Something like that.

I immediately turned to the front of the exam paper to check I was working on the right one. How could a stupid question like this get into the paper?

I wasted 10 flipping minutes on that one, sweating — I do mean full-on-palm-sweating style panic.

6 times 2.
2 times 6.
12.

Surely it’s not that simple?

I remember remarking that, yes, I suppose it is important that you do actually confirm that anyone doing a mathematics GCSE should be able to calculate ‘area’ correctly — but, seriously — does the task need to be that simple? Surely finding the area should have been included in a larger more complicated task. Surely finding the area is a given — if you got through X years of decent education, this should be, well, assumed.

I ended up actually drawing out a 6×2 grid and counting the flipping squares on the back of a spare piece of paper to check I wasn’t missing something, I was that worried about misinterpretation.

I’m happy to say that things worked out. One of the rather stimulating geeky things about a mathematics exam is that you can more or less work out your score there-and-then. For instance, if you’re one of the lucky chaps who happens to know that length by width equals area, you’re good. Job done. That’s a win. And if you can go through your paper evaluating each answer in this way, you can work out your rough score.

So I was proud of my results. In total I think I got 6x As and 5x Bs.

I was especially proud of my two A grades for English Language and English Literature. Genius. The virtues of a Scottish (i.e. proper) education, I remember telling myself. When I moved from Scotland to England at age 9 I was astonished that my peers couldn’t write properly. We was. You is. I are going this way. That sort of thing.

I could spell, too. The rest of the class had been brought up with the it will come philosophy. In Scotland, you got a big red pen through the misspellings. There were serious spelling tests every week.

And when it came to maths, I remember people staring at me in awe for the first few weeks when I was able to — magically, as far as my peers were concerned — produce multiplication answers in my head. I was ace at 6 times table. I had everything below that automatically locked and loaded. I was nifty with most of the 7 and 8 times tables. And I just had to think for a few moments about 9, 10, 11 and 12. My peers all used calculators.

So where did this leave me? Well I was hugely unimpressed when one peer at GCSE level got an A*. They were introduced in my GCSE year: One better than A. The student couldn’t spell to save her life. I mean, seriously. She couldn’t spell the word Catholic. Or Protestant. The teacher used to keep the words on the board during history lessons so this student would stop asking how to spell it. Her written prose looked and read like that of a 7 year old. She was not deficient in any way. She was highly skilled and intelligent to speak with. Just not when it came to writing.

How did she get an A*?

Because the examiners were told to avoid punishing students for actually getting things wrong. If you knew what the student meant, that was fine. Petty things like spolling, gramma and punkty-ashin were deemed petty. So no wonder my peer got upgraded.

Me? As far as the examiners were concerned, I delivered a pedestrian performance. I did give some thought to sticking in a catalogue of stupid grammatical errors when it came to my A Level English exam.

So I was flipping annoyed with my ‘A’.

I didn’t really want to be measured against that scale. If I look back and carefully parse my experiences and reactions, I think I was rather embarrassed at the A grade in both English subjects. Because this was telling prospective employers that I was almost good. Not quite brilliant. Not quite capable.

You might argue that the introduction of A* was the beginning of the end in terms of standards. Grade inflation and so on.

Have exams been getting easier?

Well, I suppose you have to look at school league tables. Those were established to help give parents and idea what to expect in terms of a service level. If 70% of children leave a school with grades A-C in English, that’s probably good, right? But a school where 95% leave with an A-C grade in English, that’s even better, right? So goes the logic with league tables.

So Head Teachers and local authorities naturally need to make sure their statistics look good.

So there’s pressure on teachers to deliver a service level measured by exam performance.

And those teachers naturally will naturally seek to deliver as many students into the top mark brackets as is possible.

And an exam board — a commercial entity, wanting to flog exam ‘services’ to schools — has a serious interest in keeping the attention of teachers.

You might say that the whole system is self-fulfilling. It’s in everyone’s interests to see grades go up. Questions need to get easier to keep everyone happy. Or, as the Telegraph has pointed out, teachers need to get access to rather accurate ‘pointers’ to help them coach their students to the necessary service level.

So if, almost 20 years ago, I was feeling a bit shortchanged with my A grades, goodness knows how students are feeling nowadays. I remember getting rather annoyed by the constant media buzz about ‘exams getting easier’ back then because I’d put a ton of work into my results. A serious amount of effort! The last thing I wanted was this effort degraded.

When it comes to quality, then, what is the way forward?

If we assume for a moment that the practice of allowing teachers to pay to attend exam briefing days where they’re more or less hinted in the precise direction of exam content, what does this mean for the current generation of students? Or the students entering high school education next year?

GCSEs are still very much an important reckoner in society. Although I do wonder how employers feel about them nowadays.

How valuable are they, really?

And what’s the solution? Given our son is 18 months old right now, it’s quite far from my immediate concerns but soon I’m going to have to give it all some thought.

I’ve heard of some friends with older children who’ve either exclusively focused on International Baccalaureate and dumped GCSEs entirely or done a mix of GCSEs, AS Level and IB — dumping A Levels too. Who knows?

I’d very much appreciate the perspective of parents reading, especially those with children facing (or about to face) this exam issue. Are you concerned by today’s revelations? And from a quality perspective, what’s your view? Keep chugging away with GCSEs and A Levels? Has anything really changed?

Categories
Cufflinks

Cufflinks: Veni Vidi Vici from Dominic Walmsley

Right then welcome to the first in my series on Cufflinks.

I’m a big fan of Cufflinks — I think they complete the ensemble. Rarely will you see me without cufflinks. However I have to say I’m not much of a fan of silly ones. Homer Simpson, you know, that sort of thing. My preference is something a little more refined. Anyway standby for a regular post highlighting a pair of cufflinks that’s caught my attention recently.

The first entry in the series is from the jewellers, Dominic Walmsley. Dominic’s celebrity clients tend to be of the more intellectual types and include Antony Horovitz, Helen Mirren, and Coffie Annan however Kylie was featured in Hello wearing one of his diamond shoe pendants.

These caught my eye: Veni, Vidi, Vici (as pictured above)

There’s something about the succinct statement that appeals — it’s especially fitting if you’re complimenting them with a super-sharp suit. It was supposedly made by Caesar regarding his short war with Pharnaces II of Pontus in the city of Zela in Turkey: I came, I saw, I conquered.

Love it.

And you can have that phrase immortalised on your wrists thanks to Dominic Walmsley. You can order online or pick them up in his Sevenoaks store.

They’re silver sterling and priced at £75. They’re also available in Gold.

Categories
Gifts

The Bluebeard’s Revenge gift pack: Perfect for Christmas at £16.99

I just caught this on Amazon and thought it might be useful for anyone who’s been reading my The Bluebeard’s Revenge shaving posts. The gift set
represents rather fantastic value as you get the shaving cream, post shave balm, a shaving brush and the rather scary Scimitar razor all for £16.99. That’s not only a rather attractively priced deal but I reckon it’s a present that’ll work for almost any chap!

Good deal!

Categories
Grooming

7 days later: The Bluebeard’s Revenge shaving cream is working brilliantly!

So I’ve been shaving with The Bluebeard’s Revenge shaving kit for about a week now. The team there very helpfully sent me over both the ‘luxury shaving cream’ and the ‘post shaving balm’. (Read my original post on this subject).

The kit also included a funky shaving brush which I’ve been using to apply the cream.

Apart from being a luxurious experience, the major concept behind The Bluebeard’s Revenge product range is helping you seriously reduce the ‘desperate-dan’ look by 5pm. Here’s the science bit:

Designed by a real life Blue Beard who was bored to death with being a Desperate Dan look-alike, the flagship product in The Bluebeards Revenge™ range is a paraben free, premium quality shaving cream with added ingredients to specifically combat tough stubble. It has been formulated to our unique specification in one of the UK’s premier male cosmetics laboratories who are renowned experts in the field of shaving cream.

Decelerine™ contains a mixture of active ingredients that delay hair growth, reducing the frequency of shaving and depilation and at the same time providing a recovering effect on the skin.

I have to report that one week on, I’m feeling good. My skin is surprisingly soft after the shave and for most of the day — but what’s more interesting and a touch exciting, I have to say, is that my ‘beard’ (i.e. growth by say 7pm) appears to be a lot softer than I would have otherwise expected. I think the Decelerine is working! At least, it feels this way.

By way of balance I should point out that my shaving regime is slightly different than two weeks ago. Previously, I was simply using Gillette’s latest and greatest foam (PowerProExcelPlus Mach 9++ or something) along with an equally expensive Gillette blade. I’m still using the Gillette blade but I’m now applying The Bluebeard’s Revenge shaving cream with the brush and then using the post shave balm. I have not yet plucked up the courage to consider trying The Bluebeard’s Revenge Scimitar shaver.

I recognise that it’s all very much subjective however I reckon my shaving experience has improved 100% over the old regime. I do genuinely feel better in the morning and throughout the day as a result. As for the expense, well, The Bluebeard’s Revenge shaving cream and post shave balm each retail at £9.99 vs the old Gillette Shaving Foam at £4.09 (current price from Boots). So you could certainly argue that the cost for this experience is significantly higher. I’d estimate that the cream and the balm will last a lot more than the Gillette stuff, if only because I don’t feel I need to use so much of The Bluebeard’s Revenge product.

You can order direct from The Bluebeard’s Revenge website or pick their products up from Amazon. If you’re an Amazon Prime customer, delivery is free:

Thank you to the team at The Bluebeard’s Revenge for the opportunity to trial their products!

Categories
Home Observations

Your pad definitely needs a bespoke Rousseau DJ Booth

I know quite a lot of readers are into music — and large subset are serious enough that they’ve got a few turntables, some excellent speakers and a host of super-DJ-class equipment to make the experience (for them) and their audiences phenomenal.

There is, however, nothing worse than going round to someone’s pad and finding their DJ ‘stuff’ (the decks, the speakers) jumbled all over the place, with wires strung everywhere and a 15-minute wait before anything will actually work. Your MacBook plugged into a 10-year old PC speaker does not count as a sound control system.

If you’re into music — especially DJing — you need a proper system. The Rousseau DJ Booth is probably what you’re after. It’s bespoke, too. There’s a standard design that you can augment to your heart’s content. By default, it’s configured as a sleek, stylish gun-metal booth. It’ll be ready to take some Pioneer CDJ 2000 decks along with an MJ 800 mixer. You’ll probably want at least one MacBook to help out so, by default, the booth is fitted with a laptop stand. Support for some rather funky looking Genelec speakers (pictured) is also included, but of course, you can specify your precise requirements. One key point is that the whole desk runs from one plug-point. I like that. No need to mess around with multiple cables.

This Rousseau DJ Desk will look rather fantastic in any location, but if you’ve got a bit of space in your basement or — as per the picture above — you’ve got a nice open-plan living area, that’ll be ideal! It might also be appropriate for some funky office entertainment space as well.

Now. Let’s get to the costs: The basic bespoke configuration retails at £6,450 — however this excludes any equipment that you’d like built-in (e.g. the Pioneer CDJ). So depending on what you’re looking for, you’ll need to factor that into the total cost. And make sure it’s a decent MacBook Pro as well. The last thing you need is to get one of these super DJ Booths and then stick an old MacBook from 2007 on it.

Right then — there’s a lot more information on this post at the Rousseau site. Here’s some more imagery: