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Blog posts tagged as 'weeknotes'

Week 432

An incredibly terse set of weeknotes, as we’re all busy bees this week. In no particular order (actually its the order we sat round the table):

JS – Chaco
KS – Prep for MW’s return
NL & ASJ – Sockets
MC – Sinawava
DB & TH – Chaco
PG – Various LP Publications
DF – Chaco
NU – Chaco
LM – Animations; More 2D than 3D
DW – Cloudy Wireframes
AJ – Exhibitions & Sinawava
HR – Backdated company admin
FL – Zendesk & gathering LPs from the globe
JM – Sinawava wireframes
AH – Devkits & supply chain

We also have a new Laser Cutter, and for the most part it’s going to be cutting things.

Week 431

“I don’t know why I find pictures of robots so exciting, but I do” – is a conversation I can hear going on right now. This week the studio is excited about film special effects and Grand Theft Auto 5. I am trying not to get sucked into a conversation about Breaking Bad. Don’t tell me.

What else is going on? Well, roughly this:

Little Printer
ASJ / NL: New Little Printer back end stuff, fixing bugs, finishing web sockets and generally making everything better.
AJ: Getting a stand ready for Future Fest
AB: Getting ready to go to xoxo in Portland. (Are you going too? Make sure you look after Alice and say hello. She has Little Printer badges.)
DW: IA, planning and writing.

Chaco
DF / DB / JS / NU / TH are all working on this. There’s a lot going on and it’s looking really nice. (I can say that without boasting as it’s nothing to do with me.) MC is overseeing things from one side, and DF has the other side covered.

Sinawava
AJ / JM are working hard on various aspects of this. Laurence is still with us too – “working on cloth and hair simulation”. This is something that surprised all of us. MC is overseeing things here too.

Devboards
AH is working on these – he’s also giving a talk at the V&A.

Pretending to be Matt and Helen
MW and HR are both away this week. We have JS covering in their absence and he seems to be doing quite well. We’ll never tell him though, it just goes to his head. KS is also working on this, doing a sterling job of email wrangling, so that MW doesn’t drown on his return.

Onwards!

Week 429

Another four day week for #429 as we were all off yesterday enjoying the sunny Bank Holiday Monday. The 429 is a bus that goes from Crockenhill to my home town of Dartford, or the other way, of course. It’s also the model number of a rare Ford Mustang variant named the Boss 429, which is one of the better looking muscle cars. Oh, and a Bell 429 Helicopter, which is less interesting.

Work themes this week: Chaco, Siniwava, Little Printer, Lawyers, insurance.

Music themes this week: A lot of people are going to see a lot of bands (with guitars) that I’ve never heard of. Adam’s going to see a band I’ve never heard of here, which looks pretty good.

New trends this week: Fraser’s been walking around with half a stamp stuck to his elbow. Bold, take note.

People not in the office at the time of writing this blog post: Kari, Nick, Phil.

Two main work streams this week that don’t involve lawyers or insurance consolidation. Denise, Alice, Adam, Fraser, Alex (me), and Andy are working on Little Printer / BERG Cloud things including: servers, hardware, social media, customer service, hackdays, design. Jack, Neil, Andy, Dan and Mark are working on various aspects of Chaco, whilst Joe, Charlie (remotely), Laurence (remotely), Saar (remotely) and me (Alex) are working on bits of Siniwava. Helen is keeping the office running perfectly and making sure we all get paid, as usual.

We haven’t had that much music on in the office lately, but I’ve been digging through past FACT Magazine Mixes for some background music. If you like that kind of thing, you might also enjoy MJ Cole’s Panoramic EP, which is brilliant.

Bye!

Week 425

‘Tis the season for summer holiday, and we are operating with a skeleton crew this week.

Mark, Denise, Joe, Andy and Neil are all enjoying some well-deserved holiday. Matt is sorting a house move. Jack isn’t on holiday, but he isn’t here either due to the fact that he is Stateside for Chaco purposes. We’re wishing him “Happy birthday!” from afar today.

Which leaves the other seven of us plus the delightful contractors (namely Charlie, Saar and our long-term buddies Fraser and Phil W) who are gracing us with their presence these days.

Nick, Charlie, Saar and Alex all have a hand in Sinawava this week. At the moment, it seems to be a lot of iPhone and Bluetooth and getting graphics to work right. We had a lovely message of appreciation from the client on that project at the end of last week, and the recognition of the incredible work that our crew has been doing was gratifying, to say the least.

Alice, Alex, Adam, Phil G, Phil W and Nick are doing their regular superb work on various bits of BERG Cloud and Little Printer. Phil W is revising screens on the dev board in order to provide physical things with their own BERG Cloud address. Alice is working on messaging and developer relations and doing some general needed maintenance on the site. Adam is keeping an eye on everything as more Little Printers come online to make sure that nothing falls over. Nick is implementing updates to make it possible for Little Printer to upload as much data as it downloads. Alex is doing some design around messaging and is helping with a bit of ad hoc packaging design. He’s also been playing a bit with a brand new A1 printer that was just randomly given to us. (Right place at the right time, that.)

More Little Printers arriving in people’s homes means lots more questions about what Little Printer can and can’t do and why it’s not doing what its owner expected it to do. Sometimes that’s because of misplaced expectations. Sometimes it’s a matter of wishful thinking and we agree that yes, it would be great if Little Printer could do that and it may well be able to do that someday, but in the meantime, look at the awesome things it does RIGHT NOW! And every now and then it’s because there’s actually a technical glitch (often to do with connecting to the owner’s internet router) and we do the best we can remotely to troubleshoot and try to get the Little Printer and his/her owner humming along together as quickly as possible. That’s what Fraser and I have mostly been doing. Fraser is also busily keeping the BERG Cloud blog updated with fresh content. (That’s me practicing lingo for my next career as a social media consultant. Seriously, though, it’s good. You should read that blog too.)

Last but most definitely not least, Helen is heroically defending us from suppliers whose customer service – to put it mildly – leaves something to be desired. At least we’re learning a good lesson in what not to do when you’re providing customer service. She’s also doing her usual bang-up job of making sure that all the pounds and pence are accounted for and slotted in exactly where they should go.

We’re having the first proper grey, rainy day that we’ve had in weeks, but in lieu of sunshine, we all had free cake. Which was nice.

I think that’s it from our little corner of Shoreditch. Have a good week wherever you are!

 

 

 

 

Week 424

This week you find us in a hot and humid London. Rumours of thunder and lightening abound, and as ever with the weather around the city, there’s disagreement as to whether we really had a storm last night or some people just have an overactive imagination. Last time I checked it was raining frogs – it’s not my fault people were too busy with ‘computers’ to see it for themselves.

There’s a lot of people in the studio this week, all hands on deck on the following projects:

Sinawava: Charlie / Mark / Joe / Laurence / Nick / Saar / Alex

Chaco: Daniel / Neil / Jack

Customer Service: Fraser / Kari / Helen

Little Printer: Phil G / Alice / Adam / Denise / Nick

Finance: Helen / Matt

Fulfilment: Helen / Andy / Matt

Birthday: Andy

Keen eyed readers will spot a few people working on multiple projects, dashing from one to the other like the kids that used to appear in both sides of those long, long school photos. I’d better go before one whizzes past and all the papers on my desk swirl off into the middle distance.

Week 424, we are in you.

Week 422

It’s week 422.

The year 422 BC was known as the “Year of the Tribunate of Capitolinus, Mugillanus and Merenda”, a year in which the Spartans routed the Athenians in the Battle of Amphipolis. Back in London, in 2013 (known as the “Year After the Year of the London Olympics”), bus 422 transports travellers between North Greenwich and Bexleyheath, a journey you can experience for yourself, somewhat rapidly, in this phantom ride video:

Obviously, the bus itself is invisible but, for your education and entertainment, here are plenty of photos of various bus 422s.

Meanwhile, back in the air-conditioned BERG studio, there is a lot of building, testing, reinstalling, organising and learning going on.

Mr Cridge is juggling two “incredibly interesting” Chaco projects and celebrating the approval of the third part of the third phase of Sinawava. He will also be reformatting his Samsung Android telephone in an effort to regain some virtual space. We wish him well.

Mr Ludlam is doing some BERG Cloud bridge socket work, continuing the development of dev board firmware, and writing a blog post about last weekend’s Maker Faire, which excited and impressed all who attended.

Mr Lewry is, as ever, elbow-deep in Zendesk, calmly fielding excited queries about the increasingly-imminent deliveries of the next batch of Little Printers. He is also doing his ongoing, and excellent, “bloggy, tweety stuff”.

Ms Rogers is preparing administrative details for the next Little Printer production run, testing a “dashboard thing”, and battling the ever-present demons of accounting. Godspeed, Ms Rogers!

Ms Bartlett is working on exciting things to do with Little Printer messaging, and anticipating some secret work that will arrive any day now. She is also eating biscuits, even, it has been noted, before elevenses. The author was warned from divulging this revelation, so let us keep it between ourselves.

Mr Usher is filling more #FLOCK clock houses with the magical “bits” which imbue the mechanical birds with avian life, and also doing remarkably clever things with dev boards.

Mr Jarvis is, like Ms Bartlett, working on new Little Printer messaging tools, plus continuing to learn the many secrets of Processing, and also bringing home the Little Printer that was working so hard at the Designs of the Year exhibition.

Mr Huntington is continuing his intricate work with the dev board, and folding up things he learned while at Fabrica into “useful stuff”. He will also be reinstalling Mac OS X in an effort to conjure new life into his computer.

Mr Johnson has his ever-typing hands full with web sockets, “exciting new features” for Little Printer, and behind-the-scenes #FLOCK work, all before, in a well-deserved break, seeing ‘Tristan & Yseult’.

Mr Webb is “going to meetings and parties this week”, plus a panel discussion at Creative Bytes, and an internet of things event with the BBC. He will be having some respite from this socialising by getting to grips with the mysterious workings of an Arduino.

Ms Wilton is, among her always-admired graphical and linguistic duties, attempting to conquer another of Adobe’s fearsome beasts, After Effects, because “apparently animated GIFs don’t cut it anymore”. We await her cursing with covered ears.

Your author, Mr Gyford, is currently immersing himself gently in Ruby on Rails in order to enable the creation of more, almost mythical, “exciting new features” for Little Printer.

Outside of the studio – indeed, outside of this kingdom – Messrs Malia and Schulze, along with the nimble-fingered fellows of Luckybite, are orchestrating further workshops at Fabrica, photos of which are appearing at an impressive rate in the Instagram feed of said institution’s Mr Hill.

And that is all the news we have for you. We thank you for reading this bulletin for week 422, the HTTP Status Code representing “Unprocessable Entity”. May your entities, dear reader, remain fully processed.

Week 421

THIS WEEK AT BERG

Joe, Jack, a long lost Timo, and a very special guest are working on a top secret Chaco project.

Sinawava is now ‘Awesome and happening’.

Matt has a bazillion meetings to attend, is helping at Bethnal Green ventures and is speaking at an IOT gig in Greenwich.

Alice is reworking some BERG Cloud functionality and meeting up with a friend of BERG about a very cool use for Little Printer,

Alex is continuing to get to grips with the basics of processing and wangling some bits for the next run of Little Printers.

Denise is doing some copy bits and bobs as well as working on some very exciting new BERG Cloud features with Alex and Alice.

Andy is finishing off hardware for Fabrica, reviewing his learning from last week’s trip to Italy and speaking at a hardware startup in Brighton.

Neil’s finishing off #flock, making some dev boards and helping with Chaco when needed.

Mark is working on Sinawava, chatting with Chaco and selling Little Printers.

I am finishing off the year end accounts, finalising details for fulfilment and organising the next production run.

Phil is doing his own thing.

Kari is shipping out paper and ensuring all the pre-orders are up to date and as they should be.

Fraser is blogging, tweeting, packing, chasing, emailing, selling and Zendesking.

And last but not least, Nick is working with Andy and Adam on the dev boards, doing some bridge server business, performing dev board investigations and going to the Mini Maker Faire with Matt, Alice and Adam on Saturday. They’d love to see you there.

Week 420

We’ve all been so busy that Week 419 has been lost to history. No one knows what happened then or if it even existed, much like the money in those similarly numbered scams.

It’s now week 420.

Mark is getting addicted to the Cryptic Crossword as well as doing some more wrangling for Sinawava, which Joe and Laurence are doing a lot of drawing and other work for.

Kari has been tackling ZenDesk enquiries, sending paper off to hungry LPs and a multitude of other things.

Matt Webb is as always having meetings and also in Cambridge today for an IoT meetup.

Jack is also in Cambridge as well as doing some fun looking R&D with Joe and Luckybite crew.

Phil is cranking out more publications including one for Eventbrite and making it easy for others to make charts on LP.

Helen has been busy with fulfilment for the 2nd run of LPs and dealing with end of year.

Neil is hard at work assembling the remaining #FLOCKs as pictured here:

birds and stepper assemblies for #FLOCK

Andy has been in Italy at Fabrica for the first Sandbox workshop and learning to make Limoncello which I hope makes it back here.

I’ve been getting the supporting web side of the BERG Cloud developer tools to a point where they can be used in the Sandbox.

Nick has been testing the tools out by building a small project as well as spending some time on some iOS app work.

Alice is continuing to improve on Remote and LP deliveries both visibly and in many hidden but important details.

Fraser is blogging and talking and communicating in various mediums.

And finally Alex and Denise have decided to become developers as well as designers and are doing some work with Processing, Alex has also found time to make a couple of very fun publications for children.

Friday links

TINY VERSIONS OF YOU

BRILLIANT TURNTABLE BASED AUDIO VISUAL EXPERIENCES

Social Satan from Sculpture on Vimeo.

TOM ARMITAGE AND FRIENDS DOING GREAT WORK

AN EXCELLENT ROBOT ARM

A SMART CLOCK

NEIL USHER HASN’T SEEN MARY POPPINS

KANYE WEST’S NEW ALBUM

3D MAPPING THE KNOWN UNIVERSE

Cosmography of the Local Universe (FullHD version) from Daniel Pomarède on Vimeo.

HAVE A WONDERFUL WEEKEND!

Week 418

Week 418 is muggy. This new office doesn’t have working air con, and so everyone looks a bit shiny like they could do with patting down with some kitchen towel or one of those talcum-laced anti-shine papers that they sell in Boots. Everyone, that is, except Andy Huntington whose complexion is mysteriously matte. Maybe he has a secret stash somewhere in the crowded shelves of his workshop.

This week Denise has gone to Sweden to speak at Creative Summit. I hope she’s having a good time and has figured out how to pronounce Å and Ä.

Helen is on a holiday, she’s in Tunisia. The studio hasn’t quite fallen to pieces in her absence, but I did just have to read a HMRC PDF about VAT so let’s just say I’m excited for her to return next week.

This week, along with his usual responsibilities of making up creative new nicknames for people in the studio and trying to cuddle-monster Mark Cridge and Tom Taylor, Jack is in meetings and doing a lot of R&D.

Adam is back from France, and this week is working on the dev board site for BERGCloud. The first prototype dev boards arrived last week. They have this brilliant map of Old St on the back of them.

Dev Boards for Fabrica

Dev Boards for Fabrica

This week Neil is soldering components onto these using our brand new soldering oven.

Phil G is working on new publications, earlier today he and Alex finished off a new one for kids, you can check it out here. Alex has also been putting the final touches to the new design for the BERGCloud remote site, which we launched yesterday.

Joe is working on Sinawava with Laurence.

Kari is calendar wrangling and doing admin.

Fraser revealed to us at all hands that the spoonerism for his name is almost “Lazer Fury” and I was laughing too much at that to write down what he said his tasks were for this week. I can only imagine that they are writing the newsletter and responding to suport requests as usual.

Nick is helping Phil W, Adam and Joe on their respective pieces of work.

Mark is responding to emails.

Matt Webb is listening to me complain about VAT, writing emails and having meetings.

Andy is keeping an eye on the Little Printer second run assembly, helping Neil to assemble the dev boards, planning for the BERGCloud sandbox at fabrica and getting #Flocks up and running.

I am writing weeknotes, shipping the new remote design and fixing any bugs, boggling about Android Chrome’s weirdness around -webkit-overflow-scrolling: touch and grumbling about VAT.

Onwards.

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