It is another double-week weeknote. Week #189 has a few interesting facts about it, in binary it is 10111101 which makes it a nice palindrome. It also share’s its name with 189 Phthia, a large rocky main belt asteroid discovered in 1878. Week #190 on the other hand has put us into Q4. It is also a palindrome, when you take into consideration Roman Numerals. It is CXC, which is the same forwards and backwards. It gets even stranger because 190 is the largest number with only distinct prime Roman numeral palindrome factors that are also Roman numeral palindromes. 190 = CXC = II * V * XIX The week also shares its name with 190 Ismeme, a very large main belt asteroid. It is a P-type asteroid which means it could be made-up of more carbon, silicon and even water and ice.
In week #189 we went off to Bifröst University to teach in person, part of a distance learning marketing course. We spent the day with the students going through marketing techniques, but also reviewing their projects and offering feedback. This ties in nicely with a group we are also managing in the University of Reykjavík for marketing managers. This starts in week #191, but there is plenty of preparation and sales work that needs to be done to get people to join the group.
This week also saw the first local Data Visualisation meet-up. We gave a short introduction to our work on responsive chart design we built for Vísar/Skólapúlsinn. After us, QuizUp presented a bit about their wheel of interests that they have been developing.
We have also been slowly making progress on a few bugs and UX issues with the Mosfell project. This is our long running internal project. Our goal is to get it up and running, but too many other projects keep getting in the way.
Week #190 saw the start of the local film festival here in Reykjavik. The documentaries they bring each year are amazing. We’ve already seen The Great Museum, Art and Craft and ThuleTuvalu. All of them are incredible films.
Our lovely side-project Analog.is also got some attention this week with the WIRED Gadget blog. We were one of a few products featured in their September “must haves”. We got about 48h warning, which caused us to finish-up the online store to be ready for the traffic. So we subsequently launched store.analog.is The response so far has been amazing! From a technical stand-point we are using the Stripe payment gateway and BigCartel for the e-commerce store. If you are interested in why we chose those services over others, you can always email, but once things settle down we’ll do a longer write-up.
Week #190 is also the start of Q4, so we have been diligently working on our Q3 newsletter which should go out soon. You should really sign-up for the mailing list if you haven’t already.
In this week we submitted two grant applications. One we are the main applicant to look for some funds to offset a new Analog.is project. The other we are the technical lead for a US customer. Once we know more about the outcomes we can discuss and share the process.
Bric-à-brac
Time-lapse of what could be a new cloud formation. Seeing this, it feels as if you are underneath the water and the clouds are the undersides of waves crashing on the beach.
When on Twitter account of a robot on Mars welcomes another Twitter account of a satellite to Mars, it is a bit of a surreal thing to think about. Rather than National Governments holding press-conferences, quirky marketing people reach out first.