Congratulations to the three of you from all at Slightly Different! Well done.

[* To make the headline really work, Alan would also have needed to be the midwife as well, but we don't think he'd look good in one of those midwife outfits.]

Amidst much talk of “Double Bogeys”, “Eagles” and despairing cries of “Where did that tree come from?”, the Slightly Different team achieved a commendable 8^th place, receiving a trophy for the best score on the back nine.

“It was a game of two halves, and the team looked and played like the champions that they have often described themselves as. The wind was in their hair, and they addressed the ball sternly, with passion and determination in every shot.” So said a non-golfing spectator, watching from the sidelines as the team kicked off on the first tee.

Another spokesman was overheard to say “If this were a different course, and they were three different golfers, their performance would be worthy of televising.” High praise indeed.

The event raised in excess of £3600 which was split between the Cornwall Blind Association, Marie Curie Cancer Care, and a number of local Rotary sponsored charities, and everyone had an enjoyable time so it was a good result all round.

We would like to congratulate the Slightly Different team – Mervyn Spencer (Non-Executive Director, Slightly Different), Julien Payne (Managing Director, Titleworth Healthcare Group) and Steve Edwards (IT Manager, Business Link) – for braving the weather and helping to make the day a huge success.

1. World Economy – The economy will continue to falter with commodities being stockpiled by wealthy nations causing prices to rise exponentially. China refuses to trade with anyone else, requiring its natural resources for its own wellbeing and the West is forced to initiate compulsory purchase measures from its own citizens. The price of gold reaches record highs.

2. Oil – A new oilfield will be found in Antarctica large enough to sustain the world for another 100 years. This will cause a major problem with environmentalists who will seek to stop oil exploration, but a new world oil committee will force through a bill allowing slant oil drilling to take place in approved areas only in order to bolster a faltering global economy. China will be excluded from this agreement until it agrees to join the world oil committee.

3. Middle East – Regime change in Syria causes a ripple effect throughout the Middle East, with US commercial interests further reducing in the region. Saudi Arabia reduces its diplomatic connections with the US. Iran is found guilty of repeated incursions into neighbouring countries and global sanctions are imposed against them with stiff penalties for any countries that breach sanctions. US and UK stealth operations within Iran are exposed when a drone spyplane is captured. Million Person March 2 happens simultaneously in London, Paris, and Washington.

4. Far East – Kim Jong Un, the new leader of North Korea, signs partnership agreement with South Korea, in exchange for open borders and increased trade opportunities with the West. Japan opposes this move. A new leader is elected in Japan. An earthquake in the Phillipines creates a new island with unusual plants.

5. Olympics – Britain wins more gold medals in the Olympics than ever before. The US win most medals, although France also does surprisingly well. A new 100m world record is set by Usain Bolt with a superhuman time of 9.39 seconds, prompting a scandal where unbelievers declare that the time is impossible to be set by a human being and eliciting an investigation where Usain Bolt is cleared of any wrongdoing. The opening ceremony is marred by anti-Government protests.

6. Space – Definitive evidence that there was once life on Mars is uncovered, prompting questions about its origin which would only be plausible if the life came from another planet outside our solar system. This prompts renewed international fervour in space exploration. An amateur astronomer receives a faint electronic signal from outer space. A second attempt to position a Chinese satellite in space fails, and foul play is suspected. The first commercial voyages around the moon are advertised.

7. Entertainment – A new television sensation is broadcast simultaneously in multiple countries where one person stands a chance to win £1m per year for life. The largest television audience in history watches the weekly show. Holographic televisions are demonstrated for the first time by Google. A reality show public voting scandal causes several shows to be taken off air.

8. Business – Commercial sponsorship of the military is made possible, with corporate webcams attached to each soldier in the field broadcasting live images of combat situations. The gambling industry capitalises on this. Walmart announces record profits and moves into the pharmaceutical business by buying a major drugs company in the US, selling off a number of retail assets in the process. The first commercial advertisement appears in space that is visible with the naked eye by the world’s population. Global trading tax incentives are increased, prompting a surge in globalisation and expansion into different countries by SMEs. A new invention promises to revolutionise the way we work. Recycling becomes the new boom industry.

9. Internet – A new battle between Facebook and Google causes Google to lose stock value when Microsoft buys Facebook and launches a credible service. Yahoo forms a partnership with Baidu, but rapidly fades into the background, with Baidu reaching market dominance within the first year. Google is hacked and its latest search ranking algorithm is stolen and released on the Internet. Twitter is taken over by the US Government in a secret deal worth several billion dollars.

10. Technology – A computer is taught how to create its own code to solve problems. The first domestic robots are released at an affordable level to the general public capable of domestic chores, and with various modular upgrades for different activities. A new electric car is released commercially by Google that can drive itself. Evidence comes to light that the first self aware computer has evolved. Will Smith buys a dog.

That’s about it. Any of this stuff could happen, and it might be interesting to look back in a year’s time and see how I did. I’ve been kind of generous to myself though, as some of it will probably happen, but if any men in black are reading this, I don’t know which parts!

Happy New Year to you all. May all your hopes and dreams come true, and may good things happen to you all. Above all, keep smiling.

1) No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.

2) There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since Santa doesn’t (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total – 378 million according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that’s 91.8 million homes. One presumes there’s at least one good child in each.

3) Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc.

This means that Santa’s sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man- made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second – a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.

4) The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that “flying reindeer” (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload – not even counting the weight of the sleigh – to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison – this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.

Now, there are two para 5s depending on the age of the person reading this. If you’re sensitive and under 10 years old, you can stop reading now. Alternatively you can read both and make your own mind up whether you prefer the Stamford University version or the Slightly Different version. As with all science, it’s only a theory.

5) 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance – this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecraft re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force. In conclusion – If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he’s dead now.

Or the Slightly Different version:

5) 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance – this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecraft re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. Rudolph, the lead reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Any normal reindeer would burst into flame almost instantaneously, but because Rudolph is a magic reindeer he can cope with the heat, and this protects all the other reindeer from getting their fur singed. And that’s why Rudolph’s nose glows red.

There, that’s much better. Have a great Christmas everyone!

Clearly some sort of Customer Relationship Management system would be needed that was powerful enough to record 200 million individuals. If each person’s record only contained their name and contact details that would be a lot of information, and it would need to be highly secure to avoid the potential of data being compromised. Being enterprise level, a high speed network would need to be installed, and we would suggest that Rackspace with their fanatical levels of support would be a good partner for the managed server infrastructure, obviously using their new cloud based service.

That’s only part of the back office picture though. Some sort of boarding card system would need to be utilised using mobile technology so that the host of angels could visit people in their own homes and give people their rapture pass. This check in data would then need to feed back to the central booking system, and this would need to be linked to the check in desks at the Pearly Gates terminal.

QR codes would be useful here, so people could be processed quickly, virgins allocated to the right people, etc. and these codes could contain enough information to correctly identify everyone instantly. Indeed, these could be monitored using an intelligent CCTV based remote scanning system if people were asked to visibly wear a trade show style badge upon their arrival.

So that’s everyone issued with a pass, and the secure systems in place to administer their arrival and check in. So far so good. But how would the event be promoted?

It would seem that the words of Harold Camping made the headlines, but as everyone knows, today’s news is tomorrow’s chip paper. (The current generation probably don’t know this – Ed). What this campaign needs is a high quality website to promote the right message and present a positive call to action, probably with a signup box for those wishing to be raptured. A site with high load tolerance would be needed, so stress testing would be critical, it would need to be multi-lingual, and also the site would need to be compliant with W3C standards, making it fully accessible to all people no matter what technology they were using it on. [NB - This would of course mean that it would have to be compliant with Internet Explorer 6, although this may be a step too far. As a side benefit of the Rapture, not being able to access the Rapture website could be a good reason for those still using this browser to upgrade. We think Firefox would be a good choice.]

We would suggest an email campaign to highlight to the world that the end was nigh. If everyone in the world received an email we could track open rates, bounces, etc. quite easily and we’d know if the message got through or not. Rather than a tramp declaring the message on sandwich boards in the street, we could design something that was high quality to draw attention to the call to action, perhaps including the symbols of all worldly religions to promote the partnership aspect of the event. Given that we’d need to distribute several billion emails I am sure that we could negotiate a very low rate per email using our Marion email system.

Then we’d also need a marketing campaign on top of this, and due to the short notice of this announcement, we’d probably go for something like a social media campaign targetting all the platforms including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, to reach the maximum number of people, encouraging them all to share the message with their friends. Perhaps an incentive scheme could be run along the lines of ‘sign up to the Rapture campaign and win Rapture points’ with more Rapture points giving the person a greater chance of being selected as one of the Chosen Few. Indeed, Harold Camping has probably got quite a few Rapture points by now so he’s pretty much sorted come the day of the races, unless he gets penalised for leading us all up the garden path.

Then perhaps some print advertising wouldn’t go amiss, with shop window displays themed for the end of days (last minute sales, etc.); print based advertising in a variety of international, national and regional publications; a television campaign (we reckon Denzel Washington would be a good lead for this on the basis that Morgan Freeman is getting on a bit now, although this might be a little controversial so we’d put it to the vote on the website); a radio campaign (who more appropriate than Brian Blessed); sponsorship of events leading up to the big day; and merchandising being a big revenue earner along the same lines as the Royal Wedding.

All told, this would need a major campaign for such a major event. That’s why we were a bit sceptical when it was just announced by one man in California, although to be fair it was picked up by the global media. I for one like the entrepreneurial spirit of the guy who set up Eternal Earthbound Pets contracting to look after the pets of those who were Raptured for a fee of $135. The BBC stated in a recent article that he had 250 people sign up, and the owner’s comment to the Wall Street Journal about this was “They’ll be disappointed twice. Once because they weren’t raptured and again because I don’t do refunds.”

While this is clearly taking advantage of the situation, I wonder who made the most money out of this entire escapade in the first place. Or perhaps taking the whole thing with a pinch of salt is why we’re all still here. Cometh the day, we’d like to think that we’d be the agency of choice to spread the word. If we receive a sign, we’ll be sure to tell all our clients first. Be Slightly Different.

At Slightly Different we like to take some time to send our staff out into the world – to experience fresh air and sunshine, so they don’t forget what it looks like. Luckily for us we got the perfect opportunity a few weeks ago…

At Wild Futures, they're completely bananas about monkeys

Wild Futures, a monkey sanctuary not too far away from our Cornwall office, had their annual ‘Adopters Day’ at the end of June and kindly invited us to go along to check it out. This special event is an opportunity for all the adopters to have a private tour around the sanctuary, to see how their monkeys are doing whilst also finding out the news and having a fun day out.

With advice against “going bananas” or “monkeying around” from the guys in the office, Kes and I were set free to go and look at some real life monkeys and bring some tips back for our resident code-monkeys.

The day started early, for a Saturday at least, with me picking Kes up at half 9 for our drive across into the unknown. Thanks to the awkward roads in Cornwall it took nearly an hour and a half to travel the 50 miles or so to get to our destination. To confuse our sense of internal navigation – the roads actually took us closer to the wrong side of the county before we could turn off the main road and drive back down to get where we wanted to be. Along the way we found ourselves passing through a place called “No Man’s Land”, the irony perhaps being that there was actually a decent sized community living there. I’m pretty sure I saw a house for sale there as well… Guess you can’t take yourself too seriously when you live in No Man’s Land.

Our trip took us past No Man's Land. I didn't get a picture of me and the sign enjoying the day together though, as Kes was too distraught at my blatant show of amateur photography to join me outside of the car.

After taking only two wrong turns, we arrived perfectly on time in the car park. It was at this point that I chose to get lost, ambling around looking for any kind of heads up. After someone kindly pointed out the big (read: huge, blatantly obvious) sign telling us the right way, we ambled down the hill only to find ourselves in an entirely different world, full of tall trees, bird song and even the occasional monkey scaling a nearby branch. Cornwall certainly has trees, and I can generally hear a bird song or two, but the monkeys were something new. If ever we were in doubt about what we would find, it was about to become abundantly clear.

The first port of call was a presentation on who the monkeys were, which seemed to be a good place to learn all about the monkeys we could see clambering around outside. They went through the various histories of each monkey, how they ended up living at the sanctuary, and what they got up to now that they were there. Some of the monkeys had sadder histories than others, but all in all they were doing well now they were in a nice, safe environment.

I like to think that they print words on the wrapper so that the monkeys have something to read when all the people leave.

In amongst all the background information about each of them, one of the things that I noted was that each of the male monkeys was a complete and utter ladies-man. Or is that lady-monkey’s man-monkey? Either way, in each group within the sanctuary there were love triangles and even love squares all over the place. It was like watching an episode of All My Monkeys, or The Monkeys and The Restless… Anyone? Moving on.

Several of the monkeys had ended up with diabetes through being fed ice creams and chocolate bars by their previous owners. To help this, the keepers give them a healthy diet of various fruits and nuts and other things that monkeys would normally eat in the wild. Later in the day kids helped the keepers to make these little food parcels to feed to the monkeys, and we got to watch them scamper around their cages and clambering upside down to retrieve these little wrappers of joy.

This struck me as a pretty good tip to bring back to the office, and whilst we could probably skip bringing children in to make food packages for us, it might be a nice idea to have a fruit bowl to keep us all healthy. I suspect that I might get lynched if I tried to take the biscuit barrel away however, so I might keep this on the down-low…

All of the monkeys got treats, but this one seemed to think that it would get more if it pretended we weren't actually there. Turns out capuchin's really are as devious as the movies say they are. Although, thankfully, this one wasn't a pirate.

Afterwards we took a meandering tour around the enclosures, meeting the various monkeys and talking to a couple of the keepers about the individual monkeys and their habits. Kes took the role of the paparazzi, taking hundreds of pictures of various different monkeys jumping around in the branches, eating food and coming to say hello to the crowds. That was probably more of a courtesy on their part, knowing that they would get a treat from the keepers by doing so, but it was nice to see them up close nonetheless, and we got some pretty good pictures of them at the same time.

All in all it was a good adventure, the air was fresh, the sun was bright and my arms got a healthy tan. We got to go on an exciting trip and even saw some monkeys at the same time, what more can you ask of a Saturday?

I made sure to stop and take a picture of the No Man’s Land sign on the way back, despite Kes rolling his eyes. It seemed like a good way to end a Slightly Different day out.

Some Brilliance in terms of viral marketing!

How to Give Cat a Pill…

1. Pick up cat and cradle it in the crook of your left arm as if holding a baby.  Position right fore finger and thumb on either side of cat’s mouth and gently apply pressure to cheeks while holding pill in right hand.  As cat opens mouth, pop pill into mouth.   Allow cat to close mouth and swallow.

2.  Retrieve pill from floor and cat from behind sofa. Cradle cat in left arm and repeat process.

3.  Retrieve cat from bedroom, and throw soggy pill away.

4.  Take new pill from foil wrap, cradle cat in left arm, holding rear paws tightly with left hand.  Force jaws open and push pill to back of mouth with right forefinger.   Hold mouth shut for a count of ten.

5.  Retrieve pill from goldfish bowl and cat from top of wardrobe.   Call spouse in from the garden.

6.  Kneel on floor with cat wedged firmly between knees, hold front and rear paws.   Ignore low growls emitted by cat.  Get spouse to hold head firmly with one hand while forcing wooden ruler into mouth.  Drop pill down ruler and rub cat’s throat vigorously.

7.  Retrieve cat from curtain rail.   Get another pill from foil wrap.  Make note to buy new ruler and repair curtains.  Carefully sweep shattered figurines and vases from hearth and set to one side for gluing later.

8.  Wrap cat in large towel and get spouse to lie on cat with head just visible from below armpit.  Put pill in end of drinking straw, force mouth open with pencil and blow down drinking straw

9.  Check label to make sure pill not harmful to humans and drink one beer to take taste away.  Apply band-aid to spouse’s forearm and remove blood from carpet with cold water and soap.

10.  Retrieve cat from neighbor’s shed.   Get another pill.  Open another beer.  Place cat in cupboard, and close door onto neck, to leave head showing.  Force mouth open with dessert spoon.  Flick pill down throat with elastic band.

11.  Fetch screwdriver from garage and put cupboard door back on hinges.   Drink beer. Fetch bottle of scotch. Pour shot, drink.   Apply cold compress to cheek and check records for date of last tetanus shot.  Apply whiskey compress to cheek to disinfect.  Toss back another shot.  Throw tee-shirt away and fetch new one from bedroom.

12.  Call fire department to retrieve the damn cat from the top of the tree across the road.  Apologize to neighbor who crashed into fence while swerving to avoid cat.   Take last pill from foil wrap.

13.  Using heavy-duty pruning gloves from shed, tie the little *&#%^’s front paws to rear paws with garden twine and bind tightly to leg of dining table.  Push pill into mouth followed by large piece of filet steak.  Be rough about it.  Hold head vertically and pour two pints of water down throat to wash pill down.

14.  Consume remainder of scotch.  Get spouse to drive you to the emergency room.  Sit quietly while doctor stitches fingers and forearm and removes pill remnants from right eye.  Call furniture shop on way home to order new table.

15.  Arrange for SPCA to collect mutant cat from hell and call local pet shop to see if they have any hamsters.

How To Give A Dog A Pill…

1.  Wrap it in cheese.

2.  Toss it in the air.

——-

This is Brilliant, funny and a bit creepy–

YOU MUST PUT YOUR FINGER ON THE DOT!

Courtesy of our friend Katie Atkins:

It’s not often that something puts a smile on your face here in the big city, unless of course it involves someone with rather ‘edgy’ fashion sense or a victim of the closing tube door. We’re used to seeing a whole cacophony of posters and billboards plastered on every wall, not to mention the next auditionee’s of Britains Got Talent testing their musical merit around each corner, but during January this year it was a pleasant surprise for me to be greeted by several pieces of moving image while waiting for my tube. Normally such things catch my attention but quickly dissipate as a brand or product is forced into view. This however was different, as there was no brand and no product.

The brainchild of a Moving Image  graduate from the London College of Communication, Jo Kotas, ‘Smile for London’ is an initiative aimed at making the pain of the morning commute that little bit less painful. Developers, Meme Partnership, have invited creative folk to get involved and create an entire collection of film, art and animation to inspire the masses across CBSO screens in selected tube stations across London. “We want to celebrate the creative talents of our city and at the same time lift the spirits of London’s commuters,” say Jo Kotas and Alex Stevens, co-founders of the Smile for London project. “Our ambition is for the project to gain real momentum and become a permanent London fixture.”

Interestingly, CBS outdoor recently conducted research to support the effectiveness of tube advertising, claiming “The London commuter feels that there is too much advertising on TV and on the Internet but welcomes the advertising on Buses and the Tube, more so than any other media.” (read more here) This suggests nothing but success for the ambitious project. More so, with work from Aardman Animation, Light Surgeons, Jon Burgerman, and acting talent from the likes of Keira Knightly being silently beamed to dreary audiences each morning, the mood is sure to be lifted and the initiative to live up to its name.

Smile for London ran throughout January, but here’s hoping that it becomes a regular occurance! A full list of artists and selected stations can be downloaded here.

Now all we need is free popcorn and Monday mornings will be a rather enjoyable experience!

Carl Warner modestly just has the word photographer on his website, but take a look at the website and you’ll see that this doesn’t describe his work in any way. An apparent master of understatement, one aspect of his work is to create landscapes from food and then film them.

I won’t do his work justice by describing it as, in this case, the visuals really do say it all.

Visit www.carlwarner.com, and see what you think.

 This month we’ve been looking at Christmas funnies to keep you amused over the break. The first is the PNC Christmas Price Index which is very well done, showing the cost of the 12 Days of Christmas. Apparently, to buy all the items on the list will cost you 9.2% more than it did last year.www.pncchristmaspriceindex.com

 Here’s one for the Ladies! Throw Rocks at Boys from David and Goliath fame:

 And here’s one for the boys….

 This ones for the little people (aged 0-100), it’s fantastic! send a personalised video message from Santa, he looks a bit creepy in this picture but check it out, it’s lovely! My niece was gobsmacked!

Mark Burvill of Antifuzz genius, has a knack of keeping it simple and making you laugh, it’s all a bit silly but.. its quite addictive:

The Make your own Bush speech using simple words game!

And who could forget the old favourite… Christmas with the Sproutifart family..

Some more links to games if that lot isn’t enough:

Bit short, but still kind of fun.

Snowball Shoot Santa

http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/fun-with-english/santa-snowball-shoot

 This one’s more entertaining

http://www.christmasgamesonline.info/Christmas_Cannon.htm

 Kind of a fun ‘adventure’ to get your present

http://www.dinosaurdesign.com/Overtime.swf

Stella Artois produce another outstanding Christmas advert:

And Finally… some secret recording down at the local discoteque has revealed how our development team chose to relax…. avert your eyes if you are easily offended..

Merry Christmas to you all!