More Guardian Careers blogging

25Nov09

Over the past couple of months, I’ve continued with the careers blogging and have contributed another couple of posts.

Interview advice for dummies
I don’t need to be told to smile during a job interview; why do some career sites assume that we’re all idiots?

Relocation
Many graduates find it necessary to relocate after university, but it’s not always that easy

Once I think of some more things work-related to write about, I’ll be contributing some more.

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Tags: todd nash, guardian careers, careers blog, guardian careers todd nash, relocation after university, interview advice

#FollowJourn – Todd Nash

05Oct09

I was quite chuffed to find that journalism.co.uk had named me as their #FollowJourn for the day, a recommendation of journalists to follow online, with a link to this site in the post. It made my Monday morning in fact.

All in all, the perfect time to have ‘Fo’ shizzle, ma nizzle, it’s Krizzle Akabizzle’ as the headline to my latest blog post then…

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Tags: #followjourn, journalism.co.uk

Fo’ shizzle, ma nizzle, it’s Krizzle Akabizzle

03Oct09

This morning I had the unusual experience of conversing with none other than Kriss Akabusi of Olympic and Record Breakers fame on Twitter. This was particularly pertinent for me, having been the founder of Team Awooga, something that my drinking buddies and I did as a joke on pub crawls, with Akabusi as our hero. I once went out wearing an mask of his face, covering my own. So when I saw he was on Twitter, I just had to share it with him:

http://twitpic.com/k2iqq – Rather excited that @krissakabusi is on Twitter. Once went on a night out in an Akabusi mask…

This was retweeted by a few of my followers, posted again on their own Twitter accounts for you non-converts, and sparked disbelief in one or two before the great man picked it up and RT’d it himself, responding:

RE http://bit.ly/11GsYG @toddnash NOW THAT WHAT I CALL CLASS LOL- YOUR WIT MATCHES YOUR BRAINS CONGRATS ON THE 1ST CLASS HONOURS DEGREE BRO

The conversation continued as follows:

Me:
@krissakabusi Cheers man, the ladies loved that mask – you’re clearly a crowd pleaser!

Kriss:
@toddnash But I bet you scared the children did you perfect that belly rippin laugh too-smell the grease paint..

Me:
@krissakabusi Nahh, just shouted ‘AWOOGA’ at the top of my voice every few minutes. That scared children and adults alike!

Kriss:
@toddnash Yeah that Fash war cry does it every time but those who know the busiman goes awwwllrighhtt know better

@toddnash If you are a record breaker you say awwwlllright but if you are a gladiator it was awwoogga! I know it hard for some people though

Me:
@krissakabusi Haha, damn wrong catchphrase! What an ass. I’m gonna shout ‘awwlllright’ at the top of my voice by way of apology!

Kriss:
@toddnash m8I’m loving your sense of humour bro-you be da man!!!! Awwllllrightt!

So yeah, I’m an idiot. In my defence, the idea first came to mind as a football forum that I used to frequent obsessed slightly over our hero and would constantly use ‘his’ catchphrase ‘Awooga’ as a joke. I just took it at face value, not really remembering that it was actually the Fash that it actually belonged to.

That aside though, Krizzle Akabizzle thinks I’m ‘da man’ (assuming it is actually him, of course – Update: his official website’s Twitter section would suggest that it is)

“I’m loving your sense of humour bro, YOUR WIT MATCHES YOUR BRAINS”

I’m tempted to put that as a testimonial on this here blog!

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Tags: akabusi on twitter, kris akabusi awooga, kris akabusi twitter, kriss akabuse awwwlllright, kriss akabusi, kriss akabusi awooga, kriss akabusi record breakers, team awooga, todd nash kriss akabusi

Lighting up the Guardian Careers blog

03Oct09

I’ve recently started contributing to the relatively new Guardian Careers blog, where I write mostly about the idiotic things that I’ve done in my blissfully short working life thus far and mildly poke fun at those with a more blogworthy career than my own.

The first piece, ‘The art of working from home’, looked at the difficulties of not working in an office environment. It focused largely on my housemate, a freelance filmmaker, who spends many a long day editing video footage from the comfort of our own living room.

Secondly is a piece that went up only yesterday, entitled ‘When job interviews go bad’ is a more self-mocking blogpost in which I share my own interview horror stories and encourage readers to post their own. They havn’t thus far.

I’m hoping that, one day soon, they’re going to let me take part in one of their podcasts. I think I’d be brilliant at it. I wouldn’t say anything useful or actually help anyone in their career, but what I’d lack in knowledge I could make up for with sarcastic remarks! Take a look, leave me a comment and, hopefully, have a little laugh!

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Tags: guardian careers, guardian careers blog, todd nash, Todd Nash guardian, todd nash journalist

A lazy Sunday…

06Sep09

So in my boredom on this sunny Sunday afternoon I decided to take a walk around Bethnal Green. I ended up doing some primitive Parkour around Victoria Park and taking photos of everything I saw with my iPhone.

On climbing by Mile End station, I found some cool graffiti, set near that most beautiful of things; a kebab shop:

I then wandered into the woods and found two mirrored walls, prompting this photo which I can’t quite get my head around considering that I definitely didn’t do it MySpace style:

My favourite photo of the set up next. I love the way the beauty of the sun shining through with the graffiti tucked behind it:

Finally, a nice boat that I wandered past:

This little exercise has really made me crave a digital SLR camera now, so that I can go out and do this kind of thing more often. If you’d like to view the full set from today, here it is on Flickr.

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Tags: canal boat, graffiti on a bridge, pictures of london, regents canal, sun shining on graffiti, sunlit bridge, victoria park

How to play…tube surfing

30Aug09

So you’ve had a few drinks, need to take the tube to your next watering hole, but find London underground journeys a little, well, boring. What you need in your life is tube surfing. The aim: make it from one stop to the next without using anything to lean on. No holding on to help you balance. Surfing stance preferable.

Sounds easy? Well it is actually, until you’ve had a few drinks. And when the punishments for failure result in more drinks, keeping your balance is more difficult than it sounds.

So you throw in some extra rules. When someone shouts “SHARK ATTACK” the idea is to get your feet off the floor as quickly as possible. For ten seconds or so. See below:

Get those feet off the floor

Hopefully you’ll be doing this at an antisocial time of night anyway, so there won’t be too many fellow passengers to piss off, but you’d better bring along some entertainment just in case. If one of you could start serenading the masses while the most drunk of your group takes his shirts off and stumbles around in what could vaguely be called ‘dancing’ that could take the heat off. See below:

A nice tube surfing session

So that’s how you tube surf. Don’t tell them I told you…

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Tags: drinking games tube, drinking tube, london underground games, shark attack, tube surfing, underground drinking games

Posting from the iPhone

11Aug09

So I have recently got myself an iPhone and I’m quite excited about the possibilities of using it As a blogging tool. I downloaded the wordpress application and am using it for this test post. It works quite well actually and the auto change function is a godsend as it saves so much typing time. Anyway I don’t want to write too much, but I want to see how this comes out. Not bad.

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Tags: iphone wordpress app

Ice Age 3 game review for guardian.co.uk

13Jul09

An unashamedly blatant plug for my first piece of published work on guardian.co.uk, a game review for Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. I’m hoping that it will be the first of many.

In the mean time, you can find my Guardian contibutor page here.

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Tags: ice age 3, ice age 3 game, ice age 3 xbox360, todd nash, todd nash article, Todd Nash guardian

Glastonbury 2009: Part two

03Jul09

With nobody that we were particularly bothered about seeing until Spinal Tap at 14:50, we decided to have something of a chill-out morning, sitting around the tent polishing off our extensive food shopping and generally enjoying the sunshine. Finding the queue for the showers to be at least an hour and a half long, we decided to give our bodies as thorough a clean as the teeth cleaning taps would allow. Our plans for a chilled out morning went awry as our neighbours popped over to demand that we go and drink cider with them backstage, which we happily caved in to.

Spinal Tap came on and we had a decent position near the Pyramid Stage, where we watched them turn it up to 11. They were really good fun, the rendition of ‘big bottom’ featuring Jarvis Cocker a high point in their set. Up next was Dizzee Rascal, who must be the only act in Britain that is universally enjoyed by everyone, no matter what kind of music they like. I saw him at Reading Festival a few years back and he was as loved there as he was here. Only back then he didn’t have a weapon like ‘bonkers’ to unleash on an audience ready and waiting to pogo.

Having decided that today would be spent getting completely trashed, as Ross would be driving back Sunday evening and thus unable to drink the next day, we headed back to the VIP bar for more cider and then back to the tent to collect the last of the beer for consumption during Kasabian. As well as cook a gourmet meal of a tin of beans on the barbeque. Yes we took the lids off. Yes we took the labels off. Since you didn’t ask. By the time Kasabian finished their excellent set, we were well on the way to drunksville. Next up were the White Lies in the John Peel tent, whose set we had mostly missed the day before. They were excellent. We met a couple of girls that were just as interested in getting off their faces as we were and we headed back to the bar.

We then went to see The Boss or what was left of his set, at least. I remember almost nothing of his set, although I’m told it was quite long. The rest of the evening was spent wandering around campsites drinking sambuca from a water bottle before heading to a very strange little bar with a rabbit hole inside. The next thing I remember, I was back in my tent.

Sunday, bloody Sunday and my word were we hungover. Not even seeing Carol Vorderman as we loaded up the car with our filthy, stinking clothes could awaken us from our slumber. We decided to take it easy and enjoy a nice cooked breakfast for a change for finally heading out to watch the Yeah Yeah Yeahs who were gloriously mental, with the lead singer wearing a fantastic hat and the bans ending their set by smashing the set up.

Next up were Bat for Lashes, featuring regular guest of my flat Charlotte Hatherley. I only stayed for a couple of songs as I wanted to see ladyhawke as well, but they sounded pretty good and it was cool to see Charlotte doing her thing. Ladyhawke seemed charmingly innocent and pleased to just have the opportunity to entertain us. It helped that she was bloody great as well. We then saw The Wombats before the grand finale of our weekend.

Blur were incredible. I have never enjoyed a set as much as I did theirs in my life. They played hit after hit after hit and absolutely owned the pyramid stage. Damon was electric and didn’t stop running about the place the whole time. The crowd responded brilliantly to every song and, bizarrely, it became something of a singalong performance. When song 2 blared out, it felt as though we would be pogoing to the moon. Tim Jonze at guardian.co.uk says more than I have space for.

It was a superb weekend and my thanks to all involved. I hadn’t been to Glastonbury before, but I’ll definitely be going back again. I leave you with this one photograph, taken on my phone, that sums up my experience better than these hundreds of words ever could.

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Tags: bat for lashes glastonbury, blur glastonbury, bruce springsteen glastonbury, carol vorderman glastonbury, glasto experience, glastonbury 09, glastonbury 2009, kasabian glastonbury, spinal tap glastonbury

Glastonbury 2009: My experience

30Jun09

Having found out that I’d won VIP tickets for the Glastonbury festival on Monday afternoon, I needed to organise myself sharpish and throw some clothes together in time for Wednesday morning. Which, of course, I did on Wednesday morning, dragging bagfulls of clothes, toiletries and sleeping mats down to Reading, via a days work at Kings Place, and onto Glastonbury with my good pal Ross. The plan being to leave around 6pm, we eventually set off at half 9, nipping in to Asda on the way to spend £80 on beer, food, lager, water, cider and disposable barbeques. We arrived at the campsite at 1am, taking a long detour around the South-West due to Ross’ lack of directions or a map to get us there, and pitched up our tent in pitch-black darkness with a can of lager permanently attached to one hand, a look we would become accustomed to over the weekend.

We woke up early on Thursday morning due to the suffocating heat of our very old, not quite waterproof tent. Our weekly shop had us penned into tight sleeping lanes and not all of it had stayed in bags. In fact, I’d already warmed up the croissants for breakfast by virtue of rolling onto them in the middle of the night. Tasty! Observing our surroundings, we decided to meet people by helping them to set up their tents and we did so by rescuing two absolutely useless dames in the form of Ali and Katherine, whose palace of a tent was proving far too complex for them to construct. In a matter of moments (ahem) we had it up and it looked a little something like this:

We spent the rest of the day celebrating this success in the VIP bar with copious amounts of cider, an area that was great for chilling out in over the weekend. It was here that Lip from Shameless came over and greeted us as though in the presence of an old friend, or someone that he wanted to meet at least. This threw us both somewhat, as we recognised him, but couldn’t work out where from. After some small talk, it began to dawn on us the reason that we recognised him and on him that we were in fact, nobodies. Both parties sharpishly headed back to their ciders, before drowning our sorrows in them when we heard the terrible news about Michael Jackson.

Friday marked the start of the music and the continuation of the rain. It had absolutely hammered down on Thursday afternoon with thunderstorms in the evening and we were glad to have bought wellies the day before. We eventually braved it out of our tents and towards the music, where our first band of the festival was The Rakes, whose lead singer professed his pleasure in Michael Jackson’s death, which was met with shock from their crowd. Next up were The Maccabees. Their show provided one of the highlights of my weekend, as the rainclouds cleared and the sun came pouring through, to be met by huge cheers from every single Glastonbury reveller. It helped that the band were bloody brilliant too.

We headed over to the Pyramid stage next for N*E*R*D who had decided that the timeslot didn’t apply to them as despite being last-minute additions, the entire 200,000 people had paid their ‘100 dollars’ to see them. Despite this misguided, arrogant attitute, the crowd got behind them when they were kicked off and it provided a bizarre moment as Pharrell Williams continued to sing defiantly despite the sound having been cut. Due to this, we missed the beginning of the White Lies and didn’t get to experience their set as we would have liked. Following them were the Friendly Fires, who were great and their lead-singer proved to be quite the dancer. He moved the way I do after ten pints of cider in a seedy nightclub. The way I do in my head at least.

We saw Lada Gaga’s toned backside stride around the stage with her fire-starting nipples before heading back to the bar to stock up on the alcohol in preparation for bloc party, who I am a massive fan of and they surpassed all expectations with a great set. Heading back to the campsite tired, drunk and happy we lit a campfire, which Ross passed out in front of while I sang very loudly and out-of-tune all the songs I had heard that day.

Part Two here

All of my Glastonbury photos can be found here.

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Tags: bloc party glastonbury, glasto experience, glastonbury 09, glastonbury camping, glastonbury experience, jacko glastonbury, lady gaga glastonbury, michael jackson death glastonbury, nerd cut off, nerd glastonbury, VIP glas, VIP glastonbury