See if your brain is as old as your body.

Since the game is in Japanese, read the following English instructions:

1. Touch ’start’
2. Wait for 3, 2, 1.
3. Memorize the number’s position on the screen, then click the circle
from the SMALLEST number to the BIGGEST number.
4. At the end of game, the computer will tell you the age of your brain.

Now, after you’ve struggled with that for a while to get your score somewhere close to your own age, check out these guys..

Manchester’s Museum of Science and Industry is saying its farewells to Body Worlds 4. As a final marketing push, the museum came to Access and asked for a closing message to be emblazoned across the side of an ad van.

With football fever in the air, it seemed only right that Gunther’s plastinated sportsmen should take centre stage.

The van will be driving around the entire Northwest region over the next week 

They think it’s all over… it is on the 17th of August.

Skipping around the TV channels the other night I came across “Polish Radio London 24″. I wasn’t specifically looking to ‘watch’ a radio station, as I think it’s an odd thing to do, never mind the extra energy consumption used in running it through the TV (carbon footprint, rising energy costs and all that). Anyway, I gave it at least 10 minutes as I was intrigued by the description - “A compilation of the best rock tunes to come out of Poland in the last twenty years”.

I questioned whether a station could fill 24 hours with famous Polish rock tunes from the last 20 years, but then they probably follow the same formula as many other niche channels, repeating the programming on a rolling basis. (I’m sure the Polish Rock Music +1 channel will follow soon just in case you miss anything). Sadly, the music wasn’t Polish or even rock - just a mix of Euro trash house - so I switched over.

Back in 2005 the BBC asked “Do we need any more digital TV channels?” Personally I think I’m missing “UKTV Food, excluding celebrities pretending to be chefs, or anything with Ainsley Harriot, Anthony Worrell Thompson or Gary Rhodes 24 +1” channel.

What would your TV channel be?

It’s been three years in the planning, six months in the deliberating, over 4,000 music tracks reviewed, sixteen table plans torn up and eleven venue endured Ruth’s meticulously planned plan (as only you clients would understand!), but Ruth & Graham finally tied the knot last weekend and a great time was had by all - as you can see. The Belle Epoque in Knutsford was a fitting location for the event, providing excellent food, service and backdrop for the entire day.

Love was certainly in the air as we mixed with staff from the the aforementioned and our rather larger rival, BJL - now you don’t often see that on a Saturday night in Knutsford!

They’re off on honeymoon now, so we get a (small) breathing space before the net big events at Access - our first baby, our first batch of eggs and talk about the next wedding!!!

Anyhow, best of luck to the happy couple (’you’ll need it Pal’ as John was heard telling Graham on one of his many fatherly chats) and get back to work soon!

Last week I blogged about our Chip Shop nominations. I know we’re all especially happy that our Body Worlds lift idea made the grade, but it got me thinking.

What else could you do with a lift?

These are just a few I found on the net…

Wow, after complaining so much about blogging, this is my third post in a row. I’m becoming even more nerdy. Ah well.

I thought I’d bring up the subject of good typography practice, particularly in headlines. Too often now we seen overly long headlines and worse still all in capital letters.

It’s much easier to read a short headline in lowercase or even sentence case than it is ALL IN CAPITALS.

Did you know the brain registers lower case type much quicker than it does capitals? Did you know that the letters don’t even have to be in the same order?

As long as the first and last characters are correct your brain can still quickly decipher the text.

Here’s a good example:

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

You shouldn’t create headlines all in capitals, and worse still, whole paragraphs in capitals; it just registers on the brain as rectangles and makes it that much more difficult to read.

Here’s an interesting little game/test. Apparently this is was devised to test job applicants in Japan. It seems to be a variation on the old Chicken, Fox and bag of grain puzzle.

You have to get the people from one side of the river to the other using the raft. Only the Mum, Dad and Policeman can operate the raft. The Dad cannot be left alone with any of the girls. The Mum cannot be left alone with any of the boys. The thief can be left alone or has to be in the presence of the policeman, but cannot be left alone with anyone else.

To start just click the image above, then the big round button.

I’ve been after getting some chickens for ages. My original ‘green’ and ethical intention was to make my own chicken coop from recycled wooden pallets and to get some ex-battery hens. After weeks of deliberation and attempting to design a coop in Cinema 4D, I realised that I was deluding myself with my carpentry skills, plus the lady from the battery hen rescue place said there were no birds available until August.

So, this weekend I bought a chicken coop and bought two lovely new Bantam hens.

After the easy to assemble flat pack coop has built it was a fairly simple matter to clip the chickens wings (totally painless, just trimming some feathers) and let them explore their new home.

The chickens love scratching around under the conifers at the back of the garden. Infact, I had to lop off quite a few lower branches as we just couldn’t see the chickens as they spend almost all their time under the trees, eating bugs and worms.

One of the chickens used the nesting box and layed our first egg.

Not a massive egg as the chickens are still ‘pullets’ (under one year old), but as they grow older the eggs will get larger. Felix had this one fried with some chips.

We’ve not really named the chickens yet, although the name ‘nugget’ is a favourite for one of them. Other possible names are ‘dipper’ ‘gravy’ and ‘chicken in a basket’. If I get another three ex-battery hens I’ll probably call those ‘Kay’, ‘Eff’ & ‘Cee’. The coop is large enough for about 8. They don’t need that much room inside and they like to huddle close together on the perches.

If I had £333,333.34 for every nomination Access received at this year’s Chip Shop, I’d be a millionaire!

That’s right, we’re up for three awards.

Further to this statement on How Do

“Last week the Bishop of Manchester, the Rt Revd Nigel McCulloch, also asked MOSI and Body Worlds 4 to donate money to an ad campaign countering any adverse effect the show might have on people who otherwise may have been tempted to become organ donors”

we decided to write our own ads promoting organ donation. Two executions of the resulting campaign are in the running for ‘Best Charity Ad’.

Staying with the Body Worlds theme, our third nomination is for an ambient idea we just weren’t allowed to run.

The award ceremony takes place on August 21st in Edinburgh.

Fingers crossed.

The BBC reported tonight that Mozilla are attempting to break a record for the most downloads over a 24 hour period when Firefox 3 goes on general release today (17th June). Intending to download FF3, I did the honourable thing and followed the link from the BBC News article to the spreadfirefox.com website only to be greeted by a Drupal developer’s nightmare. An ‘Unable to connect to database server’ error.

It looks like the Marketing ploy for drawing attention to the Firefox site has been a little bit too much for the poor web server to cope with causing a database crash. This proves even some of the big guys (who have probably planned this for months) suffer technical glitches sometimes.

I just hope that they get this back up and running soon because it’s not the best advert for Firefox or Drupal and I’m still quite eager to have a bash with FF3.