Blog posts from 2012

It’s week 370. The eye of the storm. We have a week with fewer deadlines than we’ve become used to, but we can see more on the horizon. An opportunity to perhaps prepare and regroup, but also to attack the things that are important, have been at the back of our minds, but aren’t directly deadline driven. This is good. Structural plussing.

Most of our client work seems to be in this middle stage, phases have ended, time to think about the next phase for each. Thoughts, proposals, flights, meetings and workshops.

This is also where Little Printer is. In this post-hackday world we are now in, we are buoyed by the relief that the fundamentals have worked, and the beauty of the things made. Our foundations have been proved, and we can continue building upwards. Phew and wahoo!

In celebration, we have been getting deep into re-working a lot of BERG Cloud’s internals, rethinking how every component works, and how they work together with the new knowledge we have from the last year of work.

There is also the online shop being built, hardware moving around the world, being tested and debugged, printers primed, plastics perfected and finances prepared.

Regroup, prepare and onwards.

3, 6, 9
The goose drank wine
The monkey chew tobacco on the streetcar line
The line broke, the monkey got choked
And they all went to heaven in a little rowboat

—-

Aside from all that, week 369 is shaping up nicely. We’ve almost got a full house and we’ve just about recovered from a very productive Hack Day at the weekend.

Like everyone this week, I’m pretty busy, so here’s a lightning fast tour round the studio in the time it takes a kettle to boil:

Helen is knee deep in VAT returns, travel planning and finance.

Joe is working with Eddie on Lamotte, video prototyping, gesticulating wildly, and looking forward to presenting a finished piece of work on Friday.

Alex is dealing with print. He’s getting samples and talking to suppliers about things for Little Printer, while also working with Timo, who’s in the UK for a few days. Together they’re working on the photography for the updated BERG Cloud site, and it’s going to look rather nice. Timo is also working on a proposal document, and generally catching up with what’s been going on in his absence.

James is refactoring. Anything, everything. If you put it down for long enough, he’ll refactor it. This is a good thing.

Nick is looking at database models, and processing some of the excellent feedback from Hack Day. (And Alice, is taking a few days off after doing brilliant job of organising it.)

Andy is working on more CAD models and taking care of the larger Little Printer supply chain. He’s juggling about 10 things at once, but still managing to do it with a smile. This could be due to the fact there are biscuits left over from Hack Day.

Vanessa is busy writing documentation, and Simon is keeping everyone under control, juggling projects both present and future.

Matt W is working with Helen on some of the financial aspects of the business, dealing with client contracts and looking at some of the internal BERG processes, with Matt Jones and Jack

Matt Jones is working with Jack and I on Ouray, and like Joe and Eddie, we’re also aiming for a finished piece of work for Friday.

Which means I’d better get on with it.

As Little Printer gets closer to launch, we’re figuring out how to best work with publishers — not just creating the simplest possible way to get content on LP, but also how to share design tips and work closely to invent the handiest, most delightful publications.

So to learn, we asked a couple dozen of our smartest – and most forgiving – friends to the BERG studio for a practice Little Printer Hack Day. (A Hack Day is a day spent with a load of people all coding side-by-side to make and show off neat ideas.)

It was hugely energising. Lots of pizza, beer, and demos of the publications everyone made.

Alice organised, and did a fantastic job! It was fun, super creative, and we received incredibly valuable feedback and ideas on the technical method of integrating with Little Printer, and more generally on the usage and service.

I got my hands dirty too, and I’ve not coded for ages. The publication I made wasn’t as pretty as the other dozen or so demos, but hey it’s me writing this blog post so I get to show what I made:

Alice has a write-up of Little Printer Hack Day — go read it!

And just to say: Now we have a better idea what we’re doing, we’re keen on having more events like this soon. Thank you Alice, and thank you everyone who was able to come!

It’s customary to say ‘thank God it’s Friday’, but I’m not religious, so instead, ‘Thank the internet for Friday links!’

This week’s line-up features an abundance of robots, flying things, invisible stuff and bears, so if you like flying robot stuff (and bears), you’re in for a treat.

ROBOT STUFF

• Asimo vs Big Dog
• Robot grabbing

FLYING STUFF

• Human powered flight
• Dragons
• Drones as pets
• Quadrotor dancing (FLYING ROBOT STUFF)

INVISIBLE STUFF

• Bikes
• Tube stations
• Skateboards
• Sporty data viz

BEARS

• bear71 
• Baby bear in garage

Happy weekend-ing all.

OK, so I’m still relatively new to week notes (and all this number stuff), so, unlike other folk in the studio, I find the number thing quite interesting, which, is rather annoying, as 368 is bit rubbish. That said, it is a song by Jamie T and a bus route that goes past my old hangout in Chadwell Heath. Do with that what you will.

This week in the studio, things are hotting up. Somewhat because Alice is in shorts, but mainly due to the impending launch of Little Printer, and a whole host of other exciting projects. This is what we’re all up to:

Alice is finishing phase one of our shop which is looking lovely, and more importantly, works. She is also spending time prepping for Saturday’s ‘practice hack day’ which looks to be lots of fun.

Nick is dealing with some firmware and coding, and working with Andy to finish tweaking boards. Andy is also ‘looking at plastics’. I imagine this means he’s at the checkout at Tesco watching people struggle to open the bags, but there’s no way he’d be watching the bags and not eating the food, so one can presume it is to do with Little Printer.

Simon continues to watch over everyone’s activities, ensuring things run smoothly whilst helping Jack finish an epic Silverton proposal. He is also shaping Phase II of Sinawava and reading through lots of legal stuff.

Matt Jones is back in the studio and reacclimatising to life outside a yurt . Conversation on Monday was particularly difficult but now he’s back in the swing of things and using this period of adjustment to get down to writing ‘proposals and things’.

Jack is here, there and everywhere. Where is he? No one knows. We do know however that he is making an important decision today. He is also doing a little bit on Ouray, helping Matt Jones ‘back into the dough like a fine yeast’ and taking some time out with Matt Webb to discuss BERG plans.

Apart from chats with Jack, Matt Webb is out and about at various talks / meetings, and is hoping to spend what little free time he has running through some company admin.

James is refactoring server database structures amongst other things, which, makes a lot of sense if you know what’s going on, but is too complex for me to explain in week notes.

As is the way of Denise, she is being a helper and a guider, and doing a little bit of lots of things, most notably helping Alex with Little Printer stuff and continuing her super cute work on Ouray.

Alex is continuing his Little Printer marathon this week by arranging photoshoots, working on instruction manuals, sticky labels, and an array of UI bits.

Aside from the regulars, we have the continued pleasure of Eddie Shannon and Phil Gyford’s company, with them working on Lamotte and Antero respectively. Eddie has been whittling down a mass of exciting concepts to around 10/11 ‘super solid ones’, aided by Joe who is also doing some video prototyping. Phil is being his usual fantastic self and ‘glueing together stuff from last week’.

I am elbow deep in spreadsheets, working on budgets and end of month/year things. I am also helping Alice with the weekend’s activities and writing week notes on Tuesday. 

Under normal circumstances, weeknotes are written up promptly, at the point where we’re poised and ready to throw ourselves enthusiastically into the work at hand. Sometimes there’s so much underbrush to hack your way through that you end up giving a more retrospective view, and right now the studio has that “jungle” feel.

Matt Webb has been touring the globe with Little Printer, giving people a glimpse of the near-final product.

Joe arrived back triumphant in the office after an extremely well recieved presentation of his recent labours on Sinewava. Although I can’t go into specifics, the work is beautiful and inspiring, and embodies exactly what BERG is about. We’re incredibly proud of the whole team that were involved.

Joe is also working with Eddy on the early design phase of work on Lamotte, and next week will see the first designs being built out into working prototypes.

James has been working on our machinery that brings Little Printer to life, refactoring old code and sketching in new connections. Alice is applying her considerable talent to intricate HTML templating work, bespoke code designed to wow audiences shown LP, and organising our developer “materiel”. Alex is working on various aspects of the ever-so-soon-now launch, in addition to the content that MW has been touring with.

Denise and Alex were busy designing and preparing the content of Matt’s demos and other Little Printer artifacts that are part of the Out Of Box Experience.

Andy and I have been down in amongst the wires, oscilloscopes and bench power supplies in order to conquer invisible gremlins that are manifesting in our circuit boards. Andy also returned from his trip to China last week bearing strange exotic foods, and a beautiful set of injection mouldings that capture how the molten plastic flows inside its steel cavity.

Jack, Vanessa and Simon are all working on bringing in fresh work to the studio, and beyond that I can’t add much until the potential becomes more definite.

Phil Gyford and James King are currently in our studio, working on Antero, and have linked to form a Design Voltron of epic proportions. It’s in the early stages of development, but they will be showing off their work at our Friday Demos gathering, and I can’t wait to see how it’s taking shape.

Lastly but not least, Matt Jones is currently off the grid, having a very well deserved break from all his recent efforts.

Dear diary,

Today is Monday. Imagine that! I am starting Friday links a full four days before they are due. This is in part because Friday links have been coming at weird times lately and I’m keen to demonstrate that some people still uphold the Fridayness of Friday links, but also on-timeness is in my nature. A very dear friend once told me I was his ‘on time’ friend. Not exactly the highest of compliments, but I can’t argue with the truthfulness of the statement. I’m rarely late.

Today Helen sent a link to PointerPointer. I’d like to know how they made this. Pattern matching to find things that look like pointing? I really hope it’s that. Write in if you know the answer to the usual address!

http://www.pointerpointer.com/

Tuesday’s link is this: http://www.core77.com/blog/transportation/formula_one_car_cutaway_22600.asp

Alex writes:

Interesting engineering decisions like having the fuel tank in 3 sections so that when it depletes it doesn’t slosh about around corners and disrupt the centre of gravity.

On Thursday from the depths of scandoland, Timo sent us this lovely piece of work:

THE MARMALADE Identity from schoenheitsfarm production on Vimeo.

And today Denise linked to the Little Bits Beta, an “open source library of electronic modules that snap together with magnets.” https://community.littlebits.cc/bits

Every time we do our all hands I try and rush us past the bit where we talk about the significance of the number associated with the week. Personally I find it boring. You can all go look at the Wikipedia page for 366 if you like, but since I am in the driving seat this week and I’m feeling scrappy, I’m not going to tell you anything about it.

This week sees the start of a new project, Antero. We have pulled in two superstars to help with it, James King and Phil Gyford. Phil is the reason I have a “Phil 4-eva” sticker on my laptop, I’m very excited to have the BRIG crossword team back together. James, I would say, is in my top 5 all time favourite Jameses. He is surprisingly tall, but has the approachability of a regular height person.

This week Simon is managing the certification for Little Printer, lots of pulling together of technical documents for submission to the Department of Safety First (I made that name up). He is also running planning meetings and chasing parts of the Little Printer component supply chain that are moving a little slowly for our liking.

Nick, CTO to the stars, has been at the front line of weird antenna problems, right down there in the hex dumps with Phil mining for bugs and frying them with his tremendous brain. It’s tough work and I feel for them, but they seem to have found a fix for last week’s problems and came in this week with the gusto of people who know they’re unstoppable.

James King is doing sketching on Antero. I don’t know if anyone has told him about Friday Demos yet, but I am hoping to see some of his work then. He is currently sat in Matt Jones’ chair whilst Jones takes a well earned holiday.

Alex is finishing some graphics for the Bridge. He’s waiting for some new sneakers in the post that he stayed up until midnight to order, I’m quite excited about seeing them. This week he is also helping me with the shop, cutting up assets for me to drop in to various parts of Shopify.

I am writing week notes. HIYAAA! Also chipping away at the shop from which you will be able to buy Little Printer, and putting the documentation for the Publications API in to a sensible and beautiful format.

Helen is doing ‘P11D’ forms. I have no idea what those are. I could google it, but I’m actually not sure it would aid my understanding. She is also putting together the annual return and, ominously, “making sure money comes in on time”.

Denise is working on Ouray. I can see her screen from my desk, there is some extreme cuteness going on for this project. She is also keeping her hand in Little Printer work, slinging out assets like a boss.

James Darling is working on what he describes as “either too secret or too obscure” for week notes.

Joe is wrapping up Sinawava and getting a haircut. Shepherding all the pieces of a project that started in the week I last wrote week notes is no mean feat.

Eddie Shannon continues to work with us on research for Lamotte. He was out last week, but now he’s back and aggressively making tea for everyone in the studio.

Jack is working with Denise on Ouray, watching over the finer points of Little Printer design, and sketching on Vallecito.

Absent form the studio this week are Matt Jones, Matt Webb and Andy. Jones is in a yurt (we think). Webb is in California for Foocamp and a holiday. Andy is in Shenzen visiting the factories making the Little Printer / Bridge casing. He’s also possibly eaten chicken feet.

From Alex, the new XBox SmartGlass, the context-sensitive second screen app for iPhone / Windows Phone / Android.

‘… the brilliance of SmartGlass isn’t just that it’s capable, it’s that the experience always configures itself passively. “Entertainment is there for people to relax,” maintains Whitten. So SmartGlass isn’t filled with menus and app icons; instead, it just auto-propagates content to correlate with anything on the 360.’

James shared a link to dancer.js – a javascript API which provides real-time audio frequency data, allowing the browser to map it to any arbitrary visualisation. It’s pretty impressive (and unsurprisingly processor-intensive).

Joe shared some incredible photos taken from the International Space Station with a 10-15 minute exposure.

Finally, from Jack – a look at the WiiU Panorama View

With the Diamond Jubilee festivities on Monday and Tuesday of this week, it’s a short week here in the studio. Double-concentrated!

Matt Jones is about to go on a well-earned holiday and has been rounding off work on Sinawava with Joe, as well as overseeing the beginning of a couple of new Uinta projects Ouray and Lamotte (part 2).

Matt Webb is also away next week and is taking Little Printer away on a short roadtrip.

Jack has split his time between writing up a new proposal for Silverton and work on Ouray. Last week he made a chocolate and avocado cake which was outstanding and I secretly hope another materialises in the studio soon.

Vanessa is working on a couple of proposals for potential upcoming projects.

Denise has been working on Ouray and continuing with Little Printer publications.

Andy has been managing the detailed production of electronics and is about to go and oversee the very final modifications to our Little Printer housings and dealing with the final parts of the puzzle – assembly, which is edging nearer.

James is working on Little Printer publication deliveries and configuration, adding some slightly more advanced functionality here.

Alice continues to do a sterling job building the shop with help from Alex, who having expertly managed the production design and delivery is now turning his keen eye to some of the finer details of design work of Little Printer, in-package and beyond.

Joe has been overseeing the last stages of Sinawava and beginning Lamotte with Eddie.

Nick and Phil have been closing down last bits of low-level code to do with our Bridge, including tweaking the user experience and fixing a couple of low-level issues.

Helen has been helping get new projects up and running, managing the financials around other projects ending, arranging travel and generally excelling at a host of other things which keep everything running smoothly.