Week #689
We’ve been working on an internal project this week. We’ve teamed-up with some old co-workers and went deep, fast on this little app. Given our years of expertise and 3 attempts and this sort of game, we’ve got a wealth of knowledge of what works and what doesn’t. Our goal is to get a working prototype, a slide deck, then shop it around a bit.
On Wednesday, we crammed in several meetings before our time off. It was good to collect information and set some realistic goals and deadlines so we could hit the ground running when we’re back.
Thursday was a public holiday in Iceland. It is the First Day of Summer. It seems an ironically early date for summer in Iceland, but when you remember that the year is only split into two seasons; winter and summer, not the four that more mid-latitude countries have, it makes sense. We took the opportunity to close-up the office until week #691 and use this and the May 1st bank holidays to travel.
Week #690
This week was spent traveling and client work was put on hold. We did get to see and interact with a bunch of interesting exhibitions and technologies. For instance, RFID/NFC cards that were used to access doors, activate drinking fountains, access tickets and a login token to continue your progress from station to station. Lot of ideas are rattling around. This simple, cheap, unique identifier tokens are a great alternative to requiring a smart phone.
We played with an exhibition that 3D scans your LEGO creation, then injects it into a top-down driving video games. It was a lot of fun to watch and see. Designing a physical museum piece that will be used by lots and lots of people repeatedly is harder than doing it in software! Physical things wear down and break, digital bits are more resilient and easier to change.
Week #691
This week we’re back in the office picking-up on client tasks right where we left-off. We have around 10 projects on the go at the moment. Each is in various forms of “completion”. Our spring surveys are wrapped-up, we just need to do some final reporting of the data. Some new projects have been prototyped, others are still drafts. Others are longer and will be ongoing for awhile.
On Monday, we had a meeting with an Australian company about some data conversion. They use a proprietary legacy system from their supplier, but want to get their monthly P&L into Fathom to do better reporting. We’re tasked with a ‘data bridge’ to aid in the conversions when there is no easy API integration. On Friday, we got the green-light to start building. This is a small-ish project to build, but will take awhile to get the edge-cases worked out.
On Wednesday, we closed another project with a company in Miami, Florida USA. We are starting with a prototype. They have a design partner lined-up which will give great feedback. Our task is to get the backend web service setup, the SwiftUI iOS app and the corresponding APIs. Someone else will be working on the Android version, based on our code.
Through-out the week, we continue to work on our internal project with some old co-workers. It is really taking shape and we managed to pitch it a bit more internally. That amounted to a few long conversations and yet another idea! (The domain has already been registered!)
Bric-à-brac
Since our last update, we were listening to a podcast interview with Ben Willbond. He’s probably best known for acting in the UK TV series Ghosts or Horrible Histories. In the interview, there was a throw-away comment about the Edinburgh Fringe festival where he and Arn Widdowson appeared as a French rap, pop and rock parody duo, Priorité à Gauche. That would normally not be anything special, except that back in 02003, we saw them perform at the Edinburgh Fringe! (Although at the time, it was probably Justin McCarron instead of Ben Willbond) It was a VERY memorable show we still think about today!