The last few weeks got away from us. From travel and jetlag to workloads and public holidays, our fridays disappeared! Here is a weeknote recap of the last four weeks.
Week #590
This week we published an overview of our backup process. This was both to solicit any feedback, but also let others know where they could strengthen their redundancies.
We dabbled with a new SF Symbols font poster design. Previously, we’ve always laid them out in the order they were available. (Easy to cut and paste) Along the way someone suggested to write a small script to try to use the varying darkness of each icon to as pixels in a larger image. We ran out of time to write the code, but we did manage to rearrange them manually.
Week #591
suda.co.uk turned 20 this week. Way back in 02002 we registered that personal site before heading off to University in Edinburgh Scotland. We’ve kept and used it ever since. How many sites can you name that have been online that long?
This week we took a last minute trip to San Francisco for meetings. We didn’t sign any NDAs (non-disclousure agreements), but it is still best to stay tight-lipped about what went on. We’ve spent several years working to get to this point, no need to spoil it. Needless to say, the meetings went really well. We expect to take atleast one more trip before the end of the year.
We took off from SFO at around 14:00 on Thursday and didn’t arrive in Iceland until 9:30 on Friday. It was around 17-18h door-to-door, over 7 time zones. That ment a lot of Jetlag recovery on Friday and the weekend!
Week #592
Back to hyperion tasks, both backend coding, documentation and meetings. We also made some tweaks to the spin-off web version. The mechanics are mostly the same, but constraints have changed. In doing so, we’re experimenting with changing the rules here and there. The web prototype means it is quick and easy to iterate and see what works.
We sent out the next edition in our monthly newsletter ⪮ Good Morning. It was s01e06 covering mostly light and time. We both send it as an email (you should subscribe to get it delivered to your inbox) and publish it online for anyone to find/read as an archive.
We’re also in the process of sorting out 2FA issues. One service we use has an SMS based 2-factor authentication. We haven’t used it in so long, that the Google Voice number we were using has long since expired. That makes it very difficult to get back into the service. We’re in the long process of recovering the login to either reactive the phone or get into the account to change our phone number and/or temporarily turn off 2Fa.
After last week’s trip, we’re a bit behind on invoicing (mostly calculating the trip expenses) and paying bills. We’re also going round and round with the accountants for our taxes, both for last year’s SLF, EHF and our personal. There are four accountants in the mix and four entities filing in two different countries! We’re nearly there with all the Icelandic paperwork, just a few hiccups. Then we collect it all and send it to the USA for filing as well.
Week #593
We have sent off our icons to a silk screen company to create some tests for us. They were not happy with some of the fine lines and gaps. They are worried that the ink bleed will muddy the designs and close some of the white-space. We took their suggestions and removed a row and column and tweaked several icons to “open” them up more. These are our first test, so we’ll learn from them and improve as we go. If things go well and the product is well received, expect to see more. We’ve spent a lot of time tweaking these icons and now that we have, we’re going to recoup that effort.
We had a meeting with a friend who works as a gallery curator. We pitched her a seed of an idea to get some feedback. Before approaching anyone and insulting them, or just not understanding their world, we wanted to get a quick sanity check. The feedback was great, we learnt a lot about gallery timelines, pricing, exhibitions, grants and more. Our proposition is a business deal, so now we are going back and looking at the numbers, the possibilities, and organization structures to see if this will work.
Lots of little internal things. We setup BIMI in our DMARC DNS entries so our verified emails will start to show an icon in some mail clients. Still dealing with the accountants over the 02021 taxes. Added the newest US public holiday, Juneteenth, to our calendars.
Fluxcapacitor
13 years ago, we wrote about your Data Shadow. This is the digital exhaust you leave everywhere online. From web site trackers to information to input into web forms or transactions. Maybe no one piece is that interesting, but combined, it can tell a bigger story!
11 years ago, we posted about Accessible Color Swatches. That was the time we were presenting workshops and sessions about data visualisations. As part of that we were conscious of bad color design choices. Finding a good starting pallet of colors that worked well in black and white and for all visual impairments was a challenge!
We can look back 7 years ago this week and we had another quadruple weeknote: Week #224-225-226-227. Pretty much the same complaints, business and swiss-cheese this time of year is no matter the year.