Woden's Child

Lucky Strike Slogan "It's Toasted"

2009-10-15T00:28:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I watched episode 1 of "Mad Men", the TV series about 1960's advertising agency in New York, recommended to me heesco. Working in advertising, what I found fascinating about the episode was their fictional story of how Lucky Strike came up with the "It's Toasted" slogan. This inspired me to find out more about the actual origins of the phrase.

And here's what I found on Time.com, an article from 1938:

But the most interesting irrelevancy of the trial was the following story about the origin of the Lucky Strike slogan: "My father [Percival S. Hill, whom George succeeded in 1925] was anxious to put out the brand of Lucky Strike cigarets, and I was not willing to put it out because I was sales manager and responsible to him for the success or failure of it, and I didn't have a reason for it. I went over to the factory one day . . . and when I got within three blocks of the factory it was very apparent to me the delicious odor and aroma of the tobacco as it passed through the toasting machines. ... I said to my father, 'There is something to that process and I cannot express it.' He says, 'What do you mean?' I said, 'He cooks it, cooks the tobacco.' My father says, 'That doesn't mean anything, he cooks the tobacco, that doesn't mean anything; there is no sense in that.' . . . A man by the name of Gerson Brown came in the room at that same time and father turned to this fellow and he says, 'Gerson, what do you have that is appetizing to which heat has been applied?' And Brown says, 'I always have toast in the morning.' My father says, 'That is it—It is toasted.' And my father created the phrase that way."[Source]

So there you have it. What's also to be noted is that all tobacco manufacturers use the toasting method in processing their tobacco. Lucky Strike claimed it first and claimed to be the best at it. Here's another 1938 article (advertorial?) on the Lucky Strike process by a journalist.

Nina Simone Live: Ain't Got No / I've Got Life

2008-09-11T00:30:00.000-07:00

Nina Simone in concert at the 1969 Harlem Music Festival.
Performing "Ain't Got No / I've Got Life". Amazing performer, great voice and a great song.

Singapore Flyer

2008-08-19T01:00:00.000-07:00

So on Saturday, I had the opportunity to ride the Singapore Flyer. The ride lasts around 30 minutes. Here's some info. Having left my small Canon digi at home, I was left with my Sony Ericsson's 2mp camera and its panoramic-photo stitching feature. Here's the result:

The Wiki article (excerpts below) says it's the largest Ferris Wheel in the world. While the Wiki articles says the rotation direction of the Flyer was changed upon the advice of Feng Shui masters, the marcom manager of the Flyer gave us a more logical explanation. You see the central area of Singapore such as the CBD on descent, which leaves the best part for the latter half rather than an anticlimatic 15 mins of descent.

Reaching 42 stories high, the Flyer comprises a 150 m (492 ft) diameter wheel, built over a three-story terminal building, giving it a total height of 165 m (541 ft). This exceeds the Star of Nanchang by 5 m (16 ft) and the London Eye by 30 m (98 ft). Each of the 28 air-conditioned capsules are capable of holding 28 passengers each, and a complete rotation of the wheel takes approximately 30 minutes. Initially rotating in an anticlockwise direction when viewed from Marina Centre, its direction was changed on 4 August 2008 under the advise of Feng shui masters.
Source

Here's a better photo, I couldn't be bothered to photoshop them for sharpness and colour balancing, opting more for the low-fi, lomo-like randomness of the originals from my cameraphone.

Blogging and 30 Day Challenge

2008-08-18T23:57:00.000-07:00

As I have been blogging on Mongolia on my Asian Gypsy blog, I felt I needed somewhere else to dump my non-Mongolia related thoughts. So here's Woden's Child (I was born on a Wednesday evening).

What else. Asian Gypsy is becoming more and more like a political / social commentary blog for me, though I never intended it to be so focused. But that is ok. Focus is good. Finding that blog niche is good.

Speaking of which, I have been meaning to take up the 30 Day Challenge, but never seem to get around to it. It's a pretty awesome online marketing challenge created by an Australian and a couple of other guys to run a free 30-day online course / challenge, during which the attendees will receive daily updates and tasks from the 30 Day Challenge people in the forms of podcasts & vodcasts and email updates. The idea is to make 10 dollars in the 30 days of the challenge without spending a dime. A good place to learn about the basics of online marketing, blogging and various useful online marketing tools.

One of their earlier pre-season vodcasts focused on Flock, the Mozilla-based browser geared towards social networking and blogging. I experimented with Flock when it first came out and then uninstalled it, seeing as it seemed nothing more than a slightly more multimedia-focused (they have an embedded flickr browser etc) version of Firefox. Having said that, after the post from 30-day challenge folks, I decided to try it out again. They've improved the browser significantly. The engine is based on the Firefox 3 engine, with intuitive interface. They also have some in-browser toolbars which allow you to log in to your Facebook, Youtube accounts etc. Pretty useful stuff. I noticed though that the current version of Flock has yet to be modified to support the new Facebook interface.