This week in Romain Numerals is DX. It is also the Phone Area Code prefix for the East Bay area in California. Hello Alameda County readers! 510 is also a friend of the prime numbers. It is the sum of eight consecutive primes (47 + 53 + 59 + 61 + 67 + 71 + 73 + 79), the sum of ten consecutive primes (31 + 37 + 41 + 43 + 47 + 53 + 59 + 61 + 67 + 71) and the sum of twelve consecutive primes (19 + 23 + 29 + 31 + 37 + 41 + 43 + 47 + 53 + 59 + 61 + 67).
On Monday, we had a meeting about our Top Secrete project. It is very, very close to becoming public. It will be great when that happens we we can talk about our involvement and all the steps to get from nothing to today.
On Tuesday our Quarterly Newsletter was sent out. Each time we send it, we get a few more unsubscribers. This could be newsletter fatigue or just lack of interest. It hurts at first, but now we’ve realised that the people who are left are more and more likely the ‘true fans’.
You can read all the previous newsletters in the archive. The most recent one touched on Calendaring, Frankenstein, Megalodon Sharks and more.
We put a lot of effort into each newsletter, but it is a bit like sending something into the void and no one replies. But when you talk to people, they do mention they read the newsletter more than the blog! So there is hope that it is useful and fulfilling a unique role.
Wednesday and Thursday was spent onsite with a customer. We’re continuing to do some pair programming. Mostly importing different data sources into Google’s BigQuery, then merging various datasets together. There are some new features they are looking to implement, so it was a great feeling to be able to quickly create some tables of real data and replay that data with some augmented values and see how things progress over time. It is a very simple simulation. Once we can get the values correct with past data, we have a good foundation to actually implement these new features. (A bit cryptic, but it was really useful)
Friday was mostly meetings and internal tasks. The first meeting was about a now a 2 year old self-initiated project. We’ve been trying to get this started with a UK partner, but for various reasons it hasn’t come together. No one’s giving-up on it. After a small reset, this meeting was about getting the collaboration going again. The second meeting was another very old project around mapping. We helped a friend get some map data online, then attached a database to it for more easy editing and management. Now, they are revisiting it and we did a bit of explanation and training. The rest of the day was finishing a few proposals and planning for the next few weeks.
Invoices & Proposals
We’re near the end of the month. We have one outstanding invoice, but they always pay before the month is up. What it does mean is we need a month extra in the bank since payroll is due before the invoice is paid.
Another project, for the Australian Plumber Company, is just about wrapping-up and we’ll send off an invoice for that soon. We have one proposal to send off, for a project to replace the finishing project. We’ve already had meetings and started the project. The proposal is more of a formality and better agree on workload and deadlines.