Ghosts & Shadows – She Makes War Music, ramblings and recommendations

2012 2/52 – Five Things I Liked This Week – Feat Chris T-T, Arctic Hooping & Bike Doctor

Click to see the rest of this week's photos

1) Chris T-T - "Binker" - the video!

I don't know how I missed this on Twitter last week but I only just stumbled across this gorgeous film. Chris' 2011 Edinburgh Festival show "Disobedience: Chris T-T Sings A.A. Milne" was one of the musical highlights of the year for me, a heartwarming tearjerker delivered with purity and passion, so I was very pleased when he released the songs as an album - listen here, you'll love it.

The video was directed by John Panton and is a really lovely accompaniment to the music.

2) Maybe She's Born With It...Nah, It's Probably Photoshop

This superb spoof ad by Jesse Rosten highlights the unrealistic beauty standards foisted on us by pointless gossip magazines and companies who work hard to make us feel insecure then try to sell us stuff and manages to be geeky, informative and pretty funny to boot. Brilliant work!

Fotoshop by Adobé from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

3) Hula hooping in the Arctic Circle - in shiny silver trousers

Matthias Elliott, real life Arctic scientist and hula hoop performer, gives us a tour of his exploration vessel and shows off some very neat moves against some seriously breathtaking scenery. Note the bare arms in the outdoors scenes (it's nigh on impossible to hoop properly with sleeves on) - major kudos for your dedication, Matthias!

4) "Hello Giggles"

I have a brand new TV series addiction - "New Girl" - and came across "Hello Giggles" because the marvellous Zooey Deschanel is one of the co-founders and bloggers. It's cute in a non-nauseating way, lighthearted and fun but with some really interesting content, and this post "On Making New Girlfriends" by Danielle Hampton stuck out for me this week because I can very much relate to how hard it can be to make proper new friends of any gender when you're past your school/college/university days.

Their Illustrated Tweet Of The Day series by Maritza Lugo is also pretty fabulous.

5) Bike Doctor

My first bicycle trip of the year was thoroughly unsuccessful. Skimming through the back streets of Brixton in a sneaky attempt to avoid the crazy traffic my bike and I lost a battle with a pothole and the front tyre was kaput. I had to dash to a meeting so wrapped my beloved silver steed with locks (3, yup) and got the bus. On my way to collect it this afternoon I realised I was pretty rusty in the inner tube replacement department and quickly searched the Android Market for help.

Bike Doctor to the rescue!

The app is available for iPhone and Android and you either select your repair from a list of categories - general / brakes / wheels / crankset etc - or by tapping a location on a drawing of a bicycle, and you get step by step instructions for your chosen repair with really good accompanying photos. I found it immensely helpful - I wasn't doing anything particularly difficult but Bike Doctor showed me the quickest, safest and easiest way. I even learned how to use a tyre lever properly for the first time! Unfortunately I misread one of the instructions, which was totally my fault and made the whole process take longer, but I'll definitely be looking through the list of tutorials to see if I can use any more.

OVER TO YOU, DEAR READER - what floated your boat this week?