Regardless, below are my top 10 lists of 2007. You know the ones – they proclaim to contain the best 10-or-so of something from the 12 months that have just passed? Come, soak up the nostalgia:

• The Best 19 Movies You Didn’t See in 2007 – Looking for the best independent films of 2007 that didn’t make it big? Well then, this is the list for you. A great list to accompany this is /film‘s ingeniously compiled 25 Definitive Movies of 2007. A ‘glass-is-half-empty’ kinda person? Well how about the 9 Worst Movies of 2007?
• Top 10 Food and Drink Hacks – I love this stuff. While it’s got nothing to do with 2007, it’s got everything to do with making your life just that little bit easier. This is the reason why I once read Lifehacker religiously: reading this list makes me want to resubscribe to their RSS feed. In fact, I will.
  
• Top 10 Viral Videos of 2007 – Watching these videos you may laugh (Don’t Tase Me vs. MC Hammer), stare in amazement/puzzlement (Daft Hands/Prison Inmates Performing ‘Thriller’), or simply cringe and wonder how it all went so wrong (Miss South Carolina Teen USA). The list could be refined though: where’s Chocolate Rain, Dan le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip and the Finger Painting Turtle-Kid?
• 10 of the Most Interesting and Entertaining Images of 2007 – The top 10 viral images of 2007. That means, that if you have an email address, you’ve undoubtedly seen these 10 times already.
  
• 7 Things We Should Pretend Never Happened – I knew I was going to agree with most of this list as soon as I read the headline for item number one: Huddled Masses Lining Up for Bullsh!t.
  
• D!ckheads of the Year – Like Ronseal, this list does exactly what it says on the tin. Erik Prince of Blackwater, College Republicans, Congressional Democrats and – of course – George Bush… all nominated by Rolling Stone for the honour of being ‘D!ckhead of the Year’.
• Top 10 Astronomy Pictures – I’ve never been a huge astronomy fan. Yeah, the Universe is fascinating and full of mystery; but there’s something inherently unknowable about it that – for some reason – distracts me from its splendour. Nonetheless, these images are truly captivating.
• Top 10 Most Pirated Movies and TV Shows of 2007 – Bored and trying to think of something to download and watch? I’m not as that’s illegal, but if I were (hypothetically speaking, of course) I would go here to see what films and TV shows were downloaded the most last year.
• Top 10 New Organisms of 2007 – From the Ashera GD hypo-allergenic cat to super CO2-absorbing trees, it’s been an interesting year in genetic engineering and Wired does the this round-up for us. If genetic engineering isn’t your scientific tipple, why not have a look at their Top 10 Scientific Breakthroughs of 2007 instead?
  
• Best ‘Professional’ Photographs of 2007 – There’s UNICEF’s Photo of the Year, National Geographic News’ Top Ten Photos, and The Press Photographer’s Year Awards (my personal favourite, yet also the one with the worst website). Of course, it’s not just professionals who take captivating photographs, and so PhotoCompetitions.com has the definitive list of amateur and professional photography competition for your perusal.

As a bonus, have the following too:

• My favourite round-up of interesting links from the past year: Jason Kottke’s Best Links of 2007
• The best ‘personal’ round-up of the past year: The Girl in the Cafe’s The Year That Passed
• The best post detailing the biggest news stories of 2007: (cough-plug-cough) My Top 10 News Stories of 2007.
• Update (16th Jan) – The best single post of the entire year? It has to be Carl’s Why I moved from Boston to Nashville or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Writing Everything in Snowclones – you had me at ‘sliced lolcats’.
  

That’s what I thought before I visited Dublin’s Urban Outfitters store and came across the Chop2Pot designed by Joseph Joseph and invented by Mark Sanders of MAS Design. This ingenious reinvention of a household staple was simple but effective – allow a rigid board to bend into a tapering shape to direct chopped food into a pan.

While it’s very easy to use (you just squeeze the handle), there are things you need to take into consideration. A small quibble of mine is that plastic just isn’t as hygienic as wood, but I suppose that’s the compromise you have to make, as you can’t make one of these out of wood, can you? But how about the longevity of the board? The continual bending of the plastic hinge will eventually cause it to break, meaning you’ll have to go out and buy another one, even if the board was still ‘usable’ in its ‘complete’ state. Regarding bacteria and discolouration? I currently replace my plastic chopping boards every year or so as with the variety of foods I use it for it gets discoloured quickly, becomes ‘messy’ due to the countless grooves cut into it, and builds up a cavalry of bacteria – the Chop2Pot will almost certainly be no exception.

But then again, it comes with a three year guarantee and costs only £10 ($20.10 haha!), so if it breaks you get your money back, and when it becomes too unhygienic or grooved to use (or too smelly if you’re a student) you can afford to throw it away and get another.

I won’t be getting one though, as a good quality butcher’s block – for three times the price – will, with proper care, last a lifetime. Plus, let’s face it: it’ll look a lot better in your kitchen.

Just like all the items on Don Norman’s ‘In Praise of Good Design’ page, the Chop2Pot is a mundane, commonplace commodity that’s been improved. “Hurrah for those who look at old things in a new light.” Indeed.

My favourite breakfasts have, for a long time, been a combination of fresh fruit, frozen berries, yoghurt and something like natural peanut butter or honey which adds a bit of sweetness. Stick all of this in a blender and you’ve got yourself a ‘smoothie’ that’s healthy, fast and above all else, really tasty – a godsend of a combination when you’ve only got a few minutes in the mornings for breakfast. It’s easy to see why smoothies have become a multi-million pound industry in the last couple of years.

However I’ve been without a blender for about 6 months now and as a consequence my breakfasts have been quite boring (and my soups thin). At one point I did experiment with a homemade muesli/porridge creation but, whilst tasty, it just took too long to make – it was soon confined to the recipe book in my head. Tonight I am determined to fall asleep as the proud owner of a new blender.

What’s this got to do with niche blogs and websites? Well you see, I’m one of those people who will do their research on all prospective purchases – no matter how mundane the product – and these little recesses of the Internet are invaluable when it comes to this. Here, people who know what they’re talking about discuss and compare products on the features that actually matter and make choosing a reliable product that you have no idea about a breeze.

Much to my dismay I cannot find a blender-dedicated website, and I am very upset. Is there a make of blender that is far superior? Are there any features I should avoid or demand for my blender? What’s the minimum price I should spend on a blender to guarantee a fair degree of quality? Maybe buying it today is a bit ambitious after all.

This is my call to all blender-enthusiasts and all others who have a niche website inside of them: find an outlet for your knowledge online… we’re waiting for you.

Ingredients (per person) (Photo 1)

• One large leek
• One small (or 1/2 large) onion
• One small sweet potato (can use normal potatoes, obviously)
• One cup (250ml – just under half a pint) vegetable stock
• Olive Oil
• Salt and pepper (and spice if required) for seasoning

Prepare the leek. Remove the outermost layer and cut off the majority of the green leaves, leaving just a hint of green on the main leek body. Retain the leaves for the stock and wash them thoroughly along with the main leek body.
Slice the leek. (Photo 2)

Slice the onion. (Photo 3)

Fry the onion and leek on a low heat along with a tablespoon or two of Olive Oil, a pinch of salt and a lot of pepper. Do not let any of it burn as it will totally destroy the flavour. (Photo 4)

Dice the sweet potato into small pieces and boil for 10 minutes on a medium-high heat. Don’t worry about it going soft and mushy; this is fine. In fact, it’s desired… soft, but still retaining its shape. As a guide, I used half the potato you can see in the first photo. (Photo 5)

Prepare your vegetable stock. (Photo 6)

After 10 minutes or so your leek and onion should be soft and the sweet potato should be boiled well. Drain the sweet potato and add to the leek and onion. Stir well, adding more seasoning if required (I usually add a bit of extra pepper).

Add the stock to the pan containing the onion, leek and sweet potato, and stir. You may optionally add the retained leek leaves to add flavour, but do not stir them in. (Photo 7)

Cover and simmer for 20 minutes on a low heat.

Enjoy, with bread (some people add an optional spice/herb or add some extra pepper before eating. I had some chilli ready but decided against it). (Photo 8)

Why am I telling you this? For 8 pence less I could have bought the regular pack that had, maybe, 5 more tomatoes in. These cheaper tomatoes were a less vibrant red and were obviously not as juicy. That wasn’t why.

The reason was a simple one: this packet was produced from completely biodegradable and compostable organic materials. The paper label with the barcode and nutritional information, the biodegradable polymer wrap and the container itself all would degrade on your household compost heap. As they are made from organic materials too, that means that there would be no net gain in emissions when the gases created during decomposition are released.

I then read the following; an excerpt from the front page of the Financial Times:

Tesco will become the world’s first supermarket chain to assign a “carbon label” to every product on its shelves. The UK’s biggest chain said it would make the labels by measuring the amount of carbon dioxide emitted during the production, transportation and consumption of the 70,000 products it sells. “The market is ready… We have to make sustainability a significant, mainstream driver of consumption,” Sir Terry Leahy, chief executive, said last night.

Coming from a company that takes £1 of every £8 spent in the whole UK retail sector, this is promising news. Or so you would think. As the Guardian puts it:

The company sells more DVDs than HMV, more shampoo than Boots, and its £4 jeans outsell Levis, Wrangler and Gap put together.

These are the figures Tesco wants us to remember, but there are other, less palatable statistics. For every £1 spent on bananas at Tesco, for instance, only 1p goes back to the plantation growers in developing countries – far less than they need to feed their families. Indeed, the company makes a profit of £1m per week purely from the sale of bananas – enough to employ 30,000 plantation workers full-time and pay them a proper wage.

Indeed, the globalisation of food production – buying it from the cheapest source rather than the closest – has been taken to ridiculous extremes. In a typical year, 126m litres of milk are imported into Britain while 270m are exported.

It continues this furore into the classic ‘food miles’ argument quoting statistics from the lobbying group Sustain. They estimate that the average UK Sunday lunch travels 26,234 miles.

It also states the statistic that an average of one sixth of the money spent in Tesco goes on packaging. In fact, “only 26 per cent of the cost is accounted for by food; the rest is packaging, processing, transport, store overheads, advertising and the mark-up”.

It’s a good start Tesco, but there’s still a hell of a lot more that you need to do.

FT: Tesco to ‘carbon label’ its products | Guardian: Why supermarkets are getting bigger and bigger

So, I may be what a lot of people call pedantic and slightly obsessive compulsive. No matter how much truth lies in this it is definitely true that I like to organise things, for better or for worse – and usually the latter, which annoys me! This blog acts as a great place to organise thoughts and construct plans. That’s why, this New Year I am going to use this blog as a regular place to organise and discuss my various plans.

So what are my ‘non-resolutions’ for 2007 then? They can easily be categorised into four broad categories: Food/Health, Work, Hobbies/Travel and Money.

Food/Health: I need to start a proper diet. Not diet in the 21st Century meaning of the word but in the actual dictionary definition of the word: a diet as an eating regimen. One that is healthier than my current one and that is more enjoyable. I’m talking more eastern fresh food and less western modified products; fish; prepared lunches; a lot less junk food and more experimental, colourful and flavourful cooking.
‘Menus’ would be a good idea too as with forward planning I can buy nicer, fresher, cheaper food from local markets rather than plastic-laden, reformed goods from supermarkets.
Playing sport regularly would be good too as my once weekly Squash sessions are turning into once monthly.

Work: A third of my life is spent at work: 8 hours a day, sat in the office, writing code and not progressing – just earning. Investing in myself is key to progressing whilst also earning. Building my work-life reputation and increasing my future worth will in turn further my prospects and undoubtedly make this third of my life more interesting and, dare I say it, fun! Courses, certifications and training will all help me to obtain this, as will offering myself up for opportunities that arise in work and at home. Also, enthusiastically working on projects outside of my day-to-day employment can’t fail but help.
As well as working, a further third on my life is spent sleeping. This leaves, after preparing for and commuting to work and preparing and eating meals, around 6 hours. I plan on rising earlier in the mornings and getting into work at a more respectable time, allowing myself to get home from work much earlier and hence reducing my travel time considerably (no rush-hour to contend with) leaving myself with more time at home during more sociable hours.

Hobbies/Travel: I want to learn to take much better photographs than I currently do, make good progress on my personal projects and travel more: all whilst still being able to sit down, watch a film and have a drink.
A big one though is that I want to make the Internet profitable for myself. How? I’m not quite sure yet, but I do know that I do not want to do it with auction websites and in an ideal world I would like to think that it could open up some doors for myself and possibly lead to another income stream.
Writing for an average of 30 minutes a day would also be nice but is ambitious. It’s not something I’m going to do straight away and give-up on within a few weeks, but rather something I want to work towards. Undoubtedly blog based, I hope this will be a method for me to improve my style and content here.

Money: The ‘big gun’ of my New Years plan and something that I won’t discuss here right now to avert a fully blown (and boring) essay.

I’ve given myself a fair bit to do here and the hardest part is going to be how to start and how to continue. I’ve come up with a simple, two step process for hopefully completing all my objectives or, at least, realising that it was futile: progressive goals and ‘freeware’ testing.

Progressive: These goals are the ones that I neither plan on or hope to achieve immediately and hope to achieve in the long run by working towards a goal slowly. These include writing; photography; project work; exercise; and my work plans.

Tests: You can download ‘freeware’ programs from the Internet to use for a 30 day trial period. When these 30 days have passed and if the program is something you cannot use or can do without you delete it and do not use it again. However, if you realise after this period that it makes your life easier, better, or is something that you cannot now live without you purchase the program and make it part of your life. This is what I plan on doing with a few of my objectives: testing them for a month and seeing if it was worth it or whether the goal was futile.
If after this month trial something has made my life better or I want to continue it, it will be a lot easier to continue as I would have already been doing it for a month. If I want to quit: I will.
The foundation of this test is: if something is difficult I can continue doing it with ease for a month (“I don’t like getting up every day at 7am but I’ll continue for a month and then give up.””) but when that month passes I may be used to it and it’ll be easier to continue (“I hated getting up before but now I’m used to it.”). Whereas if something was not enjoyable or not as expected I’ll simply quit (“I ate fish at least twice a week but didn’t enjoy it so now I’ll stop.”). This will be a better method for my diet, early rising and some of my money plans.

How are you planning on sticking to your resolutions or plans?

The last 6 months or so have been psychologically and financially significant for me; I’ve started, for the first time in my life, to mange my finances properly, set targets in my work and home life, eat more sensibly and healthier whilst being more socially aware. These things weren’t accidental: I worked towards them gradually, and I’m still a long way off perfecting them.

Whilst this gives me clarity and a target I want to achieve in the relatively near future, it’s also very confusing: I now know what I want but I don’t necessarily know how I’m going to achieve it or how long it will take.

• I’m managing my finances; but why? It’s not just to ensure that I’m not an identity theft victim (1 in 10 in the UK are!) or to ensure I’m not spending too much money on unnecessary alcohol, snacks and food: I want to increase my wealth by spending more economically. How can I measure my success at this, and how can I even start?
• I’ve set targets at work so that I can become more successful at what I do. What exactly is being successful at what I do? What exactly is desirable – what will make me more employable?
• At home I want to practice and get better at my hobbies. I want to learn to take much better photographs than I currently do. I want to make good progress on my projects whilst still being able to sit down, watch a film and have a drink.

How can I train, holiday and eat better food whilst not spending so much money? How can all the above tie-in with me being more environmental and socially conscious?

There’s a way… but I’m currently trying to find it. I’ll let you know what I find before the New Year.

I recommend having a read of it, whether you agree with their sentiment or not, as the information provided is pretty useful. Just substitute ‘America’ for ‘Britain’ as we’re not far behind. Contents include:

The one that struck me the most and left a lasting impression was the last page of the magazine, comparing how different countries consume food. It shows four pictures, each of a family with a week’s worth of food:

Cuchumatán, Guatemala

California, USA

Beijing, China

Kouakourou, Mali

Don’t just look at the foods, their apparent quality and packaging – take note of the number who must share this food.

Well, this lunch-time I’m off to the market to get some shopping. I suggest you do the same.

I’m not going to digress into anti-globalisation rhetoric or argue a case for resisting multi-national corporations. After all, I’m an advocate – realising that they have their problems like all other ideologies but they’re a necessity in this world we live in. Neither am I particularly anti-Starbucks – after all, you don’t build up a global empire with a business plan that doesn’t appeal to anyone. Plus, Starbucks is a long way from the worst corporate neighbour, with an environmental mission statement, progressive labour benefits and a host of cooperative charitable activities – whether they stick to them or not. It’s not my place to play with facts and hearsay.

What I do have a problem with though is unethical predatory business practices where free enterprise is overshadowed by unfair competition and Starbucks taking the successful elements from coffee shop culture and mass-producing it for each of its venues.

Quirky and eccentric local hotspots are replaced with generic, uninteresting coffee shops with no character – apart from the ‘art’ that is hung on the walls… produced by the marketing team and available to buy.

Instead of unique or unusual coffee blends we now have the Frappuccino®. Omitted are the diverse musical tastes of the clientele or staff played through the store, and instead we’re offered a branded CD that wouldn’t be unsuitable as an ‘easy-listening’ background piece at your next pseudo-intellectual (read: pretentious) dinner party.

It’s not all bad though – here in Cardiff there are only 4 (now 5) Starbucks in the entire city and maybe an extra 10 or so other coffee shops that are chain-owned. In the 5-mile radius around Cambridge Circus in London there are 165 Starbucks – click here and see how many are in your area? Can you beat that?

(Want my opinion and not just my observations though? I believe Starbucks sell fake corporate and ecological responsibility as a way to rid itself of its 1999 WTO image as the evil face of globalisation and I would walk twice the distance to get a cup of coffee somewhere else – even though it isn’t all that bad!)