Archive for category General Design

One of the hottest (you will groan at that in a bit) fashions and trends at the moment is the racing bike and ‘fixie’ bike scene with every hipster worth his skinny jeans riding around on the coolest new fixed gear bike or retro bike they have saved from the scrapyard.

This advert from Neil Pryde Bikes is possibly one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a while! The bike is so hot it is literally ON FIRE!

Do you know how many times I wake up in the morning, go downstairs put some toast in and then feel an immense disappointment every time it pops up and I have the same boring old plain toast?

Well erm never actually because it’s not something that’s really crossed my mind… Until today that is! It would seem that for some reason people like to burn images onto their toast and their are quite a few toasters that allow these people to decorate their bread in a variety of different ways.

You can get a skull and crossbones with the “Sweet Toast Of Mine”

How about a VW logo from a toaster that is actually shaped like one of the company’s well known vans. It is surely every VW fans dream and amazingly these are official VW products that were given away by a Volkswagen garage in Japan to the first 5000 customers who brought their used vans in for a service and inspection!

But the ultimate has to be the “Scan Toaster” by Electrolux which will actually toast an image or text onto the bread via a whole load of individually heatable modules inside the clamshell design. It only does one piece at a time but how cool is that?!

So the new University term is well under way and I can only dream of going back to 3 hour days and endless hours of GMTV but sadly my time as a student has been over for quite a while and it would seem that I should have waited to go to uni until now if this BBC news story is true!

It says that student accommodation is increasingly becoming more and more luxurious with flat screen TV’s, super fast internet access and a room key that doubles as a cash card! A new building at the Spitalfields complex is being built in one of the trendiest parts of London and is known as Nido and it will house 1,204 of the best off students. It offers hassle free and hi-tech living in what will be the worlds tallest student accommodation building and will be in walking distance from a whole host of universities, bars and shopping centres.

Rent for one of the studios is £330, which to be honest doesn’t sound too bad for the centre of London. I used to pay about £260 for a shared house in the student part of Cardiff but prices do rise and a twin apartment can cost over £10,000 annually. The Nido building is aimed at students who have a big savings account or who have parents that are able to support their kids through university with more money than most. London attracts a lot of foreign students and post graduate students who can afford a bit more and they do not want to live in the normal, budget housing.

I say if you have the money hanging around in your current account it would be way better spent on some really rather nice accommodation rather than just an extra night out every week. But what do you think? Would you prefer to have the nice accommodation or would you like the feeling of community in normal halls, where everyone shares a bathroom and kitchen?