131 is a palindrome, it can be read the same forwards as backwards. We’re big into palindromes here, so much so that we always try to schedule our posting at a palindromic time; 12:21, 13:31, 14:41, 15:51. Sometimes it doesn’t work, but we do our best.
131 is also an interesting mathematical number, but I’ll spare you the exact details.
Summer seems to have come and gone here in Reykjavik, Iceland. The week has been overcast and cloudy.
It is friday, which means it is also @baconfriday. This is a project we’ve been part of for over five years now, posting a single bacon link every friday. There is an endless supply of interesting bacon related web pages and projects.
This week has seen ongoing development for Vísar’s reporting and analytics software. We’ve sent out 2 or 3 proposals and been given a few opportunities to write some articles for magazines. There was a UIE dress rehearsal on Thursday prepping for next weeks online seminar Data Visualizations that Pack a Punch, and we had a photographer in on Friday to take some photos of the office for an upcoming magazine feature article.
Project Helgafell had some movement forward. As a proof-of-concept and as a way to ditch having to build an admin while the tool is evolving, we’ve implemented everything to run from an excel spreadsheet. While not ideal, it has advantages. People know how to work spreadsheets and it creates a clear line of where our work starts and their work ends. If this project goes well, this will eventually fade away, but for now that’s the way it’s going to have to be. From a programming perspective, reading and writing spreadsheets is trivial, but for non-technical folks it might as well be magic.
There has also been some movement and plans for two other side-projects. One inspired by Candy Chang‘s work and some of our staff’s real-life experiences around renting in Iceland. We’ll see where that develops and if it is useful for us, it will probably be useful for others too. The other project is also paper-based which we’re aiming for an October 1st launch, not much more to say right now about that one.
Bric-à-brac
We have a bread maker here in the office. The dream was to arrive to work with a beautiful, fresh loaf of bread waiting for us. So far we didn’t have great success with the first 2-3 loaves. We chalked that up to doing everything by eye. So the most recent loaf we followed the instructions. It came out worse that the others, so we’re back to our system.
One of the hobbies we love here at the office is kite flying, specifically KAP (Kite Aerial Photography). A link to this beautiful kite design crossed our paths this week. It is an amazing kite made to look like an old tall ship.
On August 16th, 1977 Elvis Presley past away. We’re remembering him today with Peanut Butter Banana Sandwiches in the office.