Here's an old - for want of a better word - poem. It was jotted down in a notebook in 1994 when I was at university in Derby. Out drinking last night, it popped back into my head, so I gave it a drawing and whacked it on the website. I call it North Pole. Take that, Tennyson! Who's the best poet from Lincolnshire now, eh?
15 December 2008 - Scared snow
Just like de Wonderboom, I was lucky enough to get a photograph showing details one doesn't normally see with the naked eye on a snowy day in Brooklyn: Scared snow.
06 December 2008 - Pigeon
For some reason, I forgot to mention this here, but I've doing a weekly comic strip called Pigeon over at top German website, Spreeblick.com. There's a new one online every Monday. And there aren't any pigeons in it. Hope you enjoy.
05 November 2008 - De Wonderboom
There's a magical tree, outside a launderette in Aalst, Belgium. It's de Wonderboom, and I was lucky enough to get a photograph.
02 October 2008 - Hip hip hip hooray
I would say that this is a children's story, but that'd probably be an insult to children. Here's Hip hip hip hooray, a story that's been sitting on my hard drive for seven years needed a bit of an edit and spellcheck. I've done that now. Err, woo.
08 September 2008 - A year of streets
Who'dda thunk it? The A year of streets project is complete. Now that I know that there is a street somewhere in the world named after every date of the year, there's one less thing to keep me awake at night. Thanks so much to everybody who helped this project along the way.
06 September 2008 - Sparrow
Here's a quick little true story, Sparrow.
17 August 2008 - NL & AL
It's been a while. Aside from "blogging" this year, I've not done a huge amount of FFF stuff, because I spent six months travelling around the Americas. The last two-and-a-half months of that was in the United States, where I saw a heck of a lot of baseball. That spurred me on to finish this chart of the history of National and American Leagues. Obviously, if you don't care about baseball, you won't care about what I've done. Such is life, I suppose.
01 May 2008 - The real Paraguay
Whenever I see a border with another country, I'm always a little bit disappointed that the "new" country isn't somehow completely different.
This, my friends, is The real Paraguay; viewed across the Paraná river from Posadas, Misiones, Argentina.
Also added, a couple of Sport charts that I put on the blog recently.
22 April 2008 - A year of streets
As I've been travelling around South America, I've noticed that a lot of streets are named after dates. I've compiled all the ones I've found so far, but I need your help. If you live in, or have visited, a town where a street takes its name from a date, it would be great if you'd let me know at craig AT flipflopflyin DOT com, or leave a comment on the blog post about this subject. It would be great if we could compile a full year's worth of streets.
Related - by nerdiness - here's my thingy regarding Buenos Aires' streets named after countries.
06 April 2008 - Collecting: Argentinian men
I'm in Buenos Aires at the moment, and this afternoon, I visited La Recoleta Cemetery. Beautiful place. I took lots of photos of the relief portraits on the front of some of the tombs. Here they are.
03 April 2008 - Mexipops exhibition
If you've not been reading the blog, then I guess you might think I've dropped off the face of the earth. Not so. I'm currently in South America, having a lovely time. Main reason for this miniature update is to those of you in Mexico City that there's a small exhibition of my work in your lovely city. It's called Mexipops and the venue and flyer for the opening party - err, tonight - is here.
30 December 2007 - Note
You may have noticed there's not been much new stuff over the past few weeks. There's a reason for this. I was busy packing my stuff into storage and leaving Berlin. I'll be spending a good chunk of the first half of 2008 travelling around Latin America. So, I'm not sure how much stuff I will be adding to the site in that time, but I will continuing to do stuff on the blog, if that sort of thing interests you. Happy new year.
15 November 2007 - Baxter's Farm
A wee little story, that is in the Gee Willikers part of the site; where wee little stories live.
01 November 2007 - Ohne Titel
Here's a bunch of drawings that I've done over the last few weeks. They began simply, as quick sketches I did to put on the blog because I had a bit of a creative block. So I just did some drawing. These drawings came out. I quite like them, and I imagine I'll do more of them, so now they have their own section on the site.
The German speakers amongst you will know that Ohne Titel means "untitled". The nature of their original purpose meant that I didn't really want to give them a title. But now Ohne Titel feels, to me, like the title they should have.
And there's also a new Lollipop drawing of Prince.
13 October 2007 - A bit of housekeeping
Oh, you know all those little things you need to do, but keep putting them off, cos they'll only take a few minutes, and you'll get around to them eventually? And then, of course, they all pile up and you spend three-quarters of your day doing them. That's the day I've had; doing updates for the site.
And now I feel good, cos I've updated my portfolio. And I've also done some transferring of stuff. I don't know if you read the blog, but there's occasionally stuff there that I like enough to put on the main site, but they don't fit anywhere, so they go in the G things section. I updated that, too.
And I added a few written bits from the blog to the Gee Willikers section, where written bits live.
And, finally, I added a chart about the orientation of football pitches to the Sport section.
I can go to bed with a sense of accomplishment now. Goodnight.
02 October 2007 - FFF does New York
These FFF does things seem to have changed in style over the last couple of trips I've made. This is mainly because I tend to blog about the trips as they happen. This new thing, FFF does New York, came from wondering how much walking around I do on these trips; how much land is covered on foot. After seeing this site a few days before I went to New York, I decided to keep a mental note of where I walked every day. And it surprised me to see that I didn't really cover much ground. It certainly felt like more.
30 August 2007 - We are Tigers '80
When I was a young boy growing up in sleepy old Lincoln, a gang referred to something that, looking back, seems quite innocent. You'd hear talk occasionally of boys who had flick-knifes, but I doubt many were used. I wasn't in a gang, but if I was, the nascent nerdiness I had back then might have displayed itself by making detailed lists about the history, rules and achievements of the gang. It might, in fact, have looked a bit like this fictional gang, We are Tigers '80.
30 August 2007 - Bored mountains
Here's a drawing I did on the flight home from Paris. I was sat next to a French business man. When I began to write in my notebook, I could feel him reading my innermost thoughts ("check Google for hot Russian 400m runner," etc.). So I stopped writing and decided to give him the freaky-art-student-doodle-show.
This is what came out: Bored mountains.
It's up to you to decide why they are bored. For me, they're at a rock (ha! ha!) festival, waiting for Kilimanjaro to come on stage, who's late cos he's still backstage doing cocaine with K2 and McKinley.
29 August 2007 - Lollipops
For as long as I've been working on them, the characters for the Observer Music Magazine had no unifying title. And in my giddy post-Rock en Seine period, I'm feeling more than a little proud of them, and feel that they shouldn't be hidden away in the portfolio section of the site.
So, I searched my brain long and hard - for at least five minutes, anyway - and decided their big, flat, round heads would benefit from being titled Lollipops. Stupid, I know; but it's the best I could come up with.
Anyway, they now have a section proper on the site, which you can visit, via the magical powers of HTML, by simply clicking here.
28 August 2007 - Rock en Seine exhibition
This last weekend, there was an exhibition of some of my work at the very wonderful Rock en Seine festival in Paris. Here's some photos.
While I'm here, I'd like to say thanks to the French people who've sent kind and flattering emails since the festival. Merci beaucoup.
17 August 2007 - Yet more new Minipops
Some British and American comedians diminutively rendered in popular graphics editor Adobe Photoshop, commonly known around these parts as Minipops.
The American ones: Whoopi Goldberg, Steven Wright, Sam Kinison, and Bill Cosby. The Brits: Harry Hill, Eddie Izzard, Jo Brand, Phill Jupitus, Cannon and Ball, and Roy "Chubby" Brown.
15 August 2007 - Even more new Minipops
Another ten Minipops: American writers Ernest Hemingway, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, and Henry David Thoreau; music-y people Tinariwen, The Knife, and Daniel Johnston; old British TV presenter Dickie Davies; and South American hero, Simón Bolívar.
13 August 2007 - The Americanest Man
Today we have a new Witham and Woodhall attraction at their little amusement park of silly huts: The Americanest Man. He loves his country, and he's got the hair to prove it.
10 August 2007 - Some more new Minipops
You wait ages for a bus, then.... etc.
Here's a couple more handfuls of Minipops: Hot Chip, The Go! Team, Lewis Hamilton, Colonel Gaddafi, Idi Amin, Kim Jong-il, Ayatollah Khomeini, Angela Merkel, Robert Wyatt, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and Dennis Kucinich and his lovely wife, Elizabeth.
10 August 2007 - Some new Minipops
It's been nearly a year since I did any of these puppies, so here's ten new Minipops: Yoko Ono, Ravi Shankar, New Young Pony Club, The Horrors, Gnarls Barkley, Bloc Party, Arctic Monkeys, Amy Winehouse, Max Wall, and Barry Bonds.
31 July 2007 - Helping the wind and rain
Two short films where I give nature a little assistance, called Helping the wind and rain.
29 July 2007 - Die Wunderbäume
Here's a photo series I made over the weekend called die Wunderbäume. All the trees are in and around my local park, Mauerpark.
27 July 2007 - Facial hair pies
Sorting, a) the history of UK and US leaders, and b) current UN member state leaders by their facial hair.
08 July 2007 - Sport
Not much going on these days. Bit of a dry period. So here's another Sport thing: a chart showing the Olympic achievements of the Soviet Union and the post-Soviet nations.
28 May 2007 - FFF does Athens
I went to Athens for the Champions League Final last week. [Insert crying here.] I wrote a lot about it on the blog, so this FFF Does thing is pretty minimal.
03 May 2007 - Sport
A rather prosaic title, I know, but I can't really think of anything better than Sport. Those of you who've looked at the baseball maps and graphics I've previously done will know what to expect here: stats organised in a (hopefully) attractive manner. I've been working on these for a while. There's a bunch more of them that I'll put up soon. Today, there's some charts, graphs, and graphics about athletics, football, basketball, squash, and the most successful sporting cities in North America.
