Seven Days: Thirteen Twelve Fifteen

eBay Bingo We spend a lot of time tracking certain categories on eBay (by a lot we mean hours per day). It would not be an exaggeration to...

eBay Bingo

We spend a lot of time tracking certain categories on eBay (by a lot we mean hours per day). It would not be an exaggeration to suggest that we regularly "review" over 3000 auctions per night. All this in the never ending quest for the strange, unusual or inspirational.

This year has definitely been the year of the "barn find" or the "rare" or the even better "rare barn find", let us not forget the "investment opportunity" or perhaps sir would like to bid on this "vintage industrial, beautiful, cupboard of drawers?" (hint just because it wasn't made this year does not make it vintage and whilst beauty is in the eye of the beholder lets be realistic...)

Our hit rate (the number of auctions we actually select and ultimately bid on) is very low, despite 1000s promising that rare, unusual, OOAK (one of a kind!), vintage, interesting, barn found, crafted by Adam himself whilst Eve was out foraging for apples.

"Made in China" rare, barn find, investment opportunity

The reality is there's an almost overwhelming quantity of, let us be polite,  doo doo being pedalled as antique, anitike, anteak, (pick your speeling). Whilst it is and will remain a hugely useful sourcing point there's surely an opportunity out there for either eBay or a competitor to consider the concept of "moderated auctions". The process could be crowd-sourced, we'll not be the only ones regularly scanning and becoming increasingly weary of wading through dross, there'll be crowds (much more on-trend than saying communities) who would be invested in pushing up the quality of the auctions - an endeavour that would help both buyers and sellers.

The Good Fistful of a Few More Dollars

Sergio Leone, Ennio Morricone; 2 names behind 3 films that any person with even an pico-gram of aesthetic appreciation should know and perhaps, just a little, love.

Proper Cinema Poster!

These are the men behind legendary Spaghetti Westerns; A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Sky have recently attempted to attone for a never ending diet of manly men shouting at one another whilst digging gold out of the ground or showing just why the US was a tad tardy at the Kyoto climate conference by screening these wonderful films.

Typical Sergio Leone work - "just" another still...

Why should you watch them and what are they doing on a blog about making, re-using and re-purposing? You should watch them to see almost perfect examples of how image and sound can work together, how an understanding of what to leave out can lead to perfection, how almost every frame can be a picture - most of all you should watch them because they are very good, beautiful to look at at and wonderful to listen to.

A Warm Winter in Paris

Our politicians are busy slapping each other on the back and making bold claims about history defining moments in humankind - this was the week that the Paris climate conference came to an, auspicious?, end with the announcement of a global, historically unprecedented, agreement to do something about this warming thing at some point.

We'd love to be "on message", share the excitement, be invigorated by the rhetoric but even a cursory glance shows this agreement to be a little, shall we say, lacking. Anyone knows that politics is a constantly churning pool, our own country likes nothing more than to appoint ministers of this and that for no more than a year. Most countries have political systems that deal, in the context of global timescales, in the extreme short-terms.

At least the logo is green?

To think that an agreement to do something quite good by around 2050 or possibly 2100 made by a large number of people who, and we can be frank about this, will likely not have any political sway or investment in their promises even within 10 years is actually history defining may be perceived as naive.

This is subject that has been so politicised, so mired in claim and counter claim and, ultimately, so poorly articulated to the likes of us and you that sadly it's distilled down to a simple, yet almost religous argument, about whether we done or it or it's, like, what the Earth does for, like, evah.

Blame doesn't matter, whether it's carbon forced or not doesn't matter. What matters is that we recognise that consuming the way we, as a civilization, currently does is not tenable for the long term future. This doesn't need couching in political rhetoric, complex science or fanatic argument it "just" needs that to be accepted and for us to move forwards with some proper investment and some truly challenging time scales.

What pollution? Those crazy greens!

This is something that requires global agreement because it is the combined strength of the entire world that is required to put the kind of effort into seeking tenable futures for energy generation, food supply, water supply etc that is required.

Remember what the US achieved in less than 10 years when they "raced" the Russians to land a man on the moon? It seems odd that we consider ourselves so much more advanced, progressive, more technologically mature than our 60's ancestors and yet today we applaud a loose agreement to do something in possibly 30 or more years (want to bet the phrase "stretch-goal" was used at some point?).

We're  already trying to do our bit and perhaps that what really needs to happen here; cut out the diversion of political grandstanding, the supertanker inertia of global government and get on with it at an individual level?

Anyway we've contributed enough of our own warming to the planet this week as we've gone back and forth with discussions about this. We are, however, cautiously optimistic; we see serious inroads being made into fusion research, more interest in electric vehicles (who would have guessed the "solution" was to make them very expensive and not mention the other thing, you know, the green thing) and a growing awareness that denuding the land for monoculture to feed an ever increasing "hunger" for meat is perhaps not sustainable.

Simple Solution? People doing it for themselves?

This Week's Obsession: Farrow and Ball Mole's Breath Dead Flat

Yes we know, you can get the same colour for tuppence at the local B&Q and it's better... We'll write a longer section on Farrow and Ball another time but right now we're feeling the love for this colour. It's from the on-trend gray palette, is completely useless if you have children, can't be patched if it marks (you have to repaint the whole section) but none of that matters when you see it for real.

You can see more about the colour by clicking this.... We also strongly recommend their colour chart, yes you have to pay for it (and yes we know that they're normally free down at B&Q); it's worth the cost and a great way to choose colour.

A wheel of colour

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• Seven Days? You What? I mean, pardon?
• These posts give us a chance to recap on the last week at Bokoshoko and give you a glimpse of what's happening. Many of our projects take time to come to fruition or our customers would prefer we did not share so these posts also show we're not just sitting around!