Priest in the Church of England. Father, husband, son. Keen biker.

Author: Matthew Cashmore (Page 10 of 45)

On leaving Lonely Planet

Lonely Planet front doorIt seems only yesterday that I was posting here about my new and very exciting job at Lonely Planet. The Innovation Ecosystem Manager (no, I never stopped having to explain to people what that meant – in the end I went with ‘do cool shit’).

In fact it’s been nearly two years since I left the BBC (kind of) to head to Australia, then head back to the UK and try to broaden the horizons of a company with pretty broad horizons. It felt like the perfect mesh of cool and tech, the chance to explore the world I’d been looking for in combination with the opportunity to do great things with a great company.

Leaving Lonely Planet was not as hard as I expected, mainly because I’d felt for a little while that LP had to concentrate on it’s bottom line during an extremely difficult time and doing outlandish cool stuff – or R&D as I like to call it – was simply not the best thing to be doing. The fact is that’s the right decision – if you are not able to follow through on a project you should have the intellectual honesty (thanks Matt G) to say so. Of course R&D is the very life-blood of any company looking to inhabit the digital sphere, but sometimes, just sometimes, you need to take a step back and make sure what you’re doing day-to-day is the right thing.

Lonely Planet has some inspirational and truly talented people working for it – to call out a few – I’ll start at the top – Matt Goldberg is simply one of the finest people I’ve ever had the pleasure to work for. A keen eye for what really matters and enough ‘down with the kids’ cool to be approachable and engaging – when it comes to learning how to be a Leader, he’s at the top of my list along with Richard Titus and Ashley Highfield.

It’ll also come as no surprise that I hold Ken Hoetmer, Johnny Cussen and Julian Doherty personally responsible for all the greatest things that have come out of LP digital in the recent past – of course there’s a whole army of talented people behind them – but it’s these guys that are forging the path inside the organisation and these guys that are having a real impact on what the traveller gets when they engage with LP digitally – and bluntly – that’s all that really matters.

Finally I have to mention Vivek Wagle and Venessa Peach – both of them struggle with technology that feels as if it’s actively trying to stop you doing your job rather than helping you – to maintain an editorial digital presence that both inspires and engages – without them (and their cool teams – Andy, Lewti, Ali & Tom Hall I’m looking at you) – lonelyplanet.com would be a much poorer place.

So what now? Well as of about a month ago I’m the new Digital Director at Hachette UK – they’re a pretty big publishing company you may have heard of 😉 At some point down the line I’ll post more on my day-to-day role here, but for now – it’s a heady mix of new product development, and operational management – and what an exciting time to be at the very heart of publishing!

Breakfast Mess

This is a very simple breakfast – it looks a mess – and frankly it is, but it’s full of slow-release energy and sets you up for the day. It’s also worth pointing out that I rather made a hash of this recipe. It should have been an omelette with a little sausage, bacon and black pudding – instead it’s more a massive pile of meat with a little egg.


Watch this video on Youtube.

Ingredients:

  • Sausage
  • Bacon
  • Black Pudding
  • Eggs
  • What-ever you have to hand

Method:

Add a little olive oil to your pan and get nice and hot – throw in your cut up sausages and brown off, lower the heat and allow to cook for a few minutes while you prepare the bacon, black pudding and eggs. Cut the bacon into thin strips and add to the pan – chunk up the black pudding and add just before you pour in the scrambled eggs. Now mix – keep the heat high and keep the mixture moving in the pan. Once it’s all kinda brown… pour it out on your breakfast bread.

I should ascribe this recipe to Les @ Traveldri-plus – but I can’t because I’ve fouled it up so badly – so I’ll come back to his recipe at a later date and do it properly.

Hire this guy

Phil Harper Facebook Advert - click to visit his siteBeing advertised at in facebook is a pain in the ass – the ads are never relevant and regardless of how much time I spend clicking the little crosses and telling facebook I’m not interested in free holidays to spain…. I still get adverts selling me free holidays to spain.

For the first time ever today I got a good ad – very nicley done by a chap called Phil Harper. I’m posting the ad here along with a link to his CV because, whilst not exactly original, he’s making a damn good effort and his CV looks impressive. So… those of you out there in a position to hire this guy – have a read of his CV and drop him a note.

Smart guy. Oh, and his stance that ‘the Daily Mail newspaper is a joke’ – really only adds to his employability.

If people you know read it, inform them of their mistake. Kindly let them know that although it looks like a newspaper, it is in fact a desperate imperialistic rag not even good enough to wipe the arse of its own demi-godess Margaret Thatcher.

Take note

I occasionally drop in great marketing ideas here – normally that’s a particularly well executed TV spot – but on this occasion it’s a piece of packaging. It doesn’t take a great deal of explanation, mainly because it’s been everywhere in the last couple of days – and that’s rather the point.

Panasonic have driven massive, free advertising and that elusive ‘buzz’ around a pretty ordinary product through the simple application of packaging design. In this case there’s no clever narrative, no clever social media viral idea, just simple, effective packaging – of course the fall-out is that these photos have gone a little viral and created a buzz amongst the easily excited amongst us…. but the beautiful side-effect is that these will fly off the shelves when they’re stood next to  a plain ordinary pack of Sony buds. Genius.

View the pics of the new earphones packaging below, or read about them via 2modern Design Talk (via Lovely Package) Designers are Scholz & Friends.

Flat Bread on-the-road

Last weekend Stace and I headed out to Wales to ‘rough it’ in the middle of nowhere. In the end we managed to get ourselves invited onto a farm (okay it’s not the middle of the forrest) and then into the farm’s barn – which turned out to have beds and a little kitchen – the kindness of strangers is a wonderful thing.

Whilst there we recored two videos, the first (below) was a simple introduction to a camp kitchen and a very quick and dirty recipe for bread on-the-road. To make the bread you just need flour and water – from there on out it’s all about the kneading and squashing – and avoiding the biggest mistake when it comes to bread – too much water. The second was a breakfast mess.

Take two large spoons of flour per person and then dribble in a very small amount of water (you can always add more later if needed) – use your fingers to mash the flour and water together and as the consistency thickens (it will feel quite dry) start to use your fist to drive the mixture together. Slowly it will turn to dough and you’ll be able to put out a little flour on a flat surface and knead the bread into a rough flat shape.

At this point you can add fruit or pretty much anything you like – I prefer to leave my bread plain and add a little jam as a special treat. To cook the bread just heat a pan and dribble in a tiny amount of oil – give it a good spread around the pan and add the bread. As it cooks you’ll notice small air bubbles appear, this is a good indication that it’s cooking well and you’ve not left it too thick. Seeing it’s ready is pretty easy – slightly burnt bits are an added bonus – but make sure you turn it over regularly.

Watch the video on YouTube, or embedded below. A special post on camp kitchens will be coming soon along with a further video with a breakfast recipe suitable for kings!

An introduction to keeping chickens (for the total novice)

Hello home!It’s odd, you would have thought that there would be an easy to find, easy to digest introduction to keeping chickens somewhere on the net – and perhaps there is – but frankly, I can’t find it. So here, in a slight change of direction for this motorbike and travel blog, is a short introduction to what you need to know in order to keep chickens. No complicated feeding patterns, no brain-dump of house building materials and no overly long political statements!

Is it difficult?
No. Really, you just need a house, some food and a little time.

What do I need?
A house for them to live in, food, water, and a safe place for them to wander in.

What kind of house?
Sophie on guard dutyAnything, turns out all chickens really need is a perch, a nesting box, and somewhere safe to wander. There are loads and loads of sites and companies out there offering many different designs and solutions for housing our feathered friends. There’s a list of useful links below you may want to try. We went to the local feed store (Widmer Feeds & Country Store) who were very helpful and put together a package with everything we needed for about £250.

What do I need on day one?

Food is really complicated right?
No, not at all. To start out all you need to do is feed your wonderful new friends layers pellets. There are hundreds of options for these, but again your local store can recommend something, or just pick them up at your local pet superstore – they all carry this stuff now. Also provide them with a little grit – most important. Other than that it’s all personal preference and you’ll figure it out as you go – there are many schools of thought on chicken feed – so just get yourself going with the most basic and then work it out for yourself.

Looking outside

What happens when they arrive?
If like us you opted for a simple starter solution from your local country store or from someone like Omlet then you’ll have everything you need on hand. Get the bedding into the coup, set up the water drinker and the feeder, and then quietly put your birds in their new home.  Keep the feeder in the perch / nesting area for a few days so they have a reason to go back in there and don’t let them out of their run for the first five days.


At dawn open the poop door (that’s the door from the nesting area to the run) and at dusk make sure they’ve gone to bed (they generally take themselves) and shut the door. That’s really about it. Chickens bought ‘at point of lay’ wont actually produce eggs for a good few weeks so don’t expect miracles.

What then?
In the first few days just get used to having them around, and them having you around – handle them, talk to them, go about your business in the way you always did. Don’t let them get used to an non-normal routine from you.

Useful links
I’ll add to this list over time but these shops and websites are a good starting point.

Are you some kind of chicken expert?
No, I bought our chickens last week, they arrived on Saturday – I know absolutely nothing – all of this information has been gleaned from several books, many magazines and a whole bunch of websites – it’s the simple starter information in one place – for me, as much as anyone else.

This is the first of what will form a series of posts talking about chickens and the reality of keeping them – what you really need to know – rather than a complicated debate about feeders and housing.

Millets, I’d avoid buying online

Millets seem to have a new (outsourced?) warehouse team – this warehouse team don’t seem to be able to understand what you should do when shipping glass lamps. What would you do? Put it in a small box filled with those nice foam pellets? Maybe you should put it in a large box with all your other items, but wrap them in bubble wrap or cardboard to stop them bouncing around?

That would of course be beyond the staff at Millets Online – here’s how my lamp turned up this morning.

The box with all that nice wrapping
Millets Packing - or lack of packing

The pristine lantern box that made a funny sound when I lifted it
Broken Lamp

And finally the expected result
Broken lense

Lesson of this story? If you’re looking for simple camping gear… avoid Millets. Oh, and even though I paid extra for ‘next day delivery’ it took two days to arrive – I’ve had an email to apologise and give me a 20% discount on my next order (that actually hasn’t turned up – they’re posting it to me – an online shop is posting me a paper voucher with a code that I can use online – go figure)…. um… there wont be a next order.

Powering on

There’s no doubt the modern traveller carries more gizmos and gadgets than the first Apollo missions. That of course brings it’s own problems; how on earth do you keep everything charged and running?

I’ve riden all over the world on the motorbike, but I’ve managed to keep my cameras, laptop and other electronic paraphernalia running. You can carry a mass of chargers and international plugs, or you can buy a handy combined international plug with a series of USB cables – there are lots of options out there. If like me you don’t know where your next electric socket will come from you need the broadest range of options – something to plug in, something to charge off 12v, something that will charge from a solar panel (usefully). That really only leaves one option – the range of gear from a UK company called Power Traveller.

Power Traveller in action

I’ve mentioned these guys on my blog before – in fact they’re top of my 5 things I always pack list – but it’s worth re-visiting the range and why they work for me.

The first item I bought was the Power Monkey Explorer. It’s a small device capable of charging cameras, phones and other low power devices. It’s perfect for keeping my iPhone and Cannon Exilim fully charged. It comes with a solar panel that worked really well in Morocco and less well in Russia.  It’s designed so you can plug your phone in and still hold it to your ear, with the charger sitting in the palm of your hand. It’s rugged and mine has been through the works and still powers along well. It charges from my 12v socket on the bike, via a wall socket or via it’s solar panel.

Power Traveller in actionThe second device I had from them was the Mini Gorilla. This unit will charge devices requiring up to 19v – which means I can charge my MacBook and my Canon HD Camcorder. It will re-charge from the very large and very efficient solar panel that is also available, or from a socket in the wall. Practically I find that a full charge of the Mini Gorilla will give the MacBook an empty to half-full charge (about 2 hours worth of use) and will recharge the camcorder from empty to full three times. It’s also perfect for charging the Panasonic G1 DSLR and my Sony Radio Mics as it has a full 12v output, which combined with off the shelf chargers makes it incredibly flexible.

As if that wasn’t enough I got caught out last week when friends came to stay at the house. Having misplaced my standard airbed pump I was left with my 12v version… I just plugged it into the mini gorilla and it powered the pump and blew up the bed!

I’m quite excited by some new products coming out of Power Traveller – including the new Silverback Gorilla – full 240v AC supply from a unit that will fit comfortably in my motorbike pannier. Genius.

You can read more tips from me and others at Lonely Planet in the new book ‘Lonely Planet’s Best Ever Travel Tips‘. </end plug>

« Older posts Newer posts »