Content good enough to eat should be managed properly

Content Management System Cake, originally uploaded by Tim Tim Tim.

In trying to document here all the various technology/craft related nuggets of productivity i have been responsible for over the years I have decided to release the Content Management System cake based on a custom build I was involved with at AOL. There are plenty of geeky impressive cakes around, and this one is certainly not one of them, but I did spend a while putting this together a couple of years ago. I am probably most proud of using skittles in the top right-hand corner as colour-picker icons. It was the inspiration behind the whole thing really.

I wasn’t sure about actually baking the cakes themselves that make up the finished product, since I wanted everyone to actually eat it. I used blocks of iced madeira cake from Tesco and then added the various sugary accoutrements.

I am planning on making an executive dashboard later this year and hoping it will be a little more impressive than this. Its quite difficult to fill a cake of this size with useful content when all you have to contend with is chocolate drops, sugar twirls and the odd cola bottle.

     

IMGP1224, originally uploaded by Tim Tim Tim.

Last year, Clarkson and I embarked on a cake making competition. Needless to say, she won, but here are our two entries: a cake version of my cardboard car made by Clarkson and the Millennium Dome/Canary Wharf at night made by me.

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Its Valentines day, and time for a strange construction for Clarkson. This time I tried to think of the things that are important to her. Tea came top, but then I already built the teacup last year, next was her Aga Little Wenlock woodburner. This seemed like an excellent thing to build, although I needed some kind of Gimmick. For example, the teacup was about 100 times the normal size and contained 100 teabags. For this project I got electricals involved.

 

IMGP2961, originally uploaded by Tim Tim Tim.

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IMGP1902, originally uploaded by Tim Tim Tim.

It was a complicated project, much like all of these sort of constructions. It was not entirely obvious from the beginning how to go about making the spherical shape of a teacup. I knew I couldn’t just use cardboard or paper because it would need to hold about 1500 teabags.

The basic premise was for it to be like a kind of tea cup themed lucky dip, where presents would sit within the cup surrounded by cheap Tesco Value teabags. I did extensive research on tea-bags and regardless of any Buy One Get One Free offers, the Value tea-bags won on price every time. I suspect not on taste. Read more…

DSC00658, originally uploaded by Tim Tim Tim.

Inspired by “The Science of Sleep”, we convered my car in cardboard, drew odd slogans and ventured into the city to catch the sights.

It took about 3 hours to completely cover the car, and was quite a gruelling process, since we had to cut sections the same shape as parts of the body work, stick it with masking tape to the car itself, and then a mixture of masking and parcel tape to the other cardboard around it. I never envisaged having lots of white bits all over it holding it all together, but the final product did look quite funny. It was important that everything was taped down securely as we didnt want any air to get under the cardboard and rip it off if we went a little too fast or the wind caught it. Read more…

As a precursor to my London-based craft afternoon, I played a game of snout or escalator. It is very easy to play. All you need is a load of random pictures. Some of snouts, some of escalators but preferably plenty that are neither. The trick is to get people to try and apply some kind of reasoning to their decision about whether the picture depicts a snout or an escalator. Without them even knowing it they have been creative.

I was initially a bit worried that no-one would want to play, but pleased when they did. It just goes to show you can come up with any old rubbish these days, and if presented professionally, with a serious learning point of some kind behind it all, people will lap it up. Great.