Tuesday, at £5 App, Glenn gave his personal view of the history of his company: The idea, name, table football, money, cake and the culture. The most interesting parts for me were his description of using scale to escape the for hire rollercoster (if you’re working as an agency), the importance of having a shared set of values, and using money as a tool.
Interesting stuff. It’ll take a while for it to sink in for me, but as Ribot caught the talk on video (part 1) (and part 2) you can judge for yourself.
[Disclaimer: Glenn is Jane‘s employer]
We all love TED, and have all probably lost days digging through the video archive. So hurrah for the feed they set up a while back allowing me to just get a constant update of TED videos.
I was going to write a quick pipe to filter out the old stuff and just take 2007 onwards. But I first thought I’d have a look at some of the olders stuff and…oh my gosh, its wonderful.
For example, take a look at Nicholas Negroponte talking about input devices (amongst other things) in 1984. The striking thing, aside from the use of laser discs, is how he describes touch input, including the rolling behaviour for fine input which we now see in the iPhone. And remember the talk was given 23 years before the iPhone was in stores.
(Perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised, as that’s what the kind of thing he was paid to think about, and the kind of thinking that a year later lead to the opening of the Media lab.)
So I won’t be filtering out the older TED talks. I’ll watch it all, which, now I think about it, is what I knew I’d end up doing anyway.
I’ve mentioned I’ve been working out of the Werks. Well… it’s been a month now [over a month, but this blog post has been sitting around whilst I was away] and in that time I’ve visited the Werks ten times or so. I’m not sure exactly how often, but long enough and frequently enough for the coffee shop to know what my order is.
Unexpectedly I’ve ended up having about three times the number of meetings I’d normally have—the good kind of meeting, mind you. That’s down to being able to say “just drop by” rather than having to actually arrange anything. An example: Danny popping round the other day and we had the space to spread out his Post-Its® and discuss a bunch of ideas.
I get the sense that there’s a good chance of chance happenings happening—especially once more of the space is used. I’d expect more people to be showing up once we’re out of the dismal months.
A few times I find it better to work from the home office, for instance if I need the printer, make tricky phone calls, or just absolutely need guaranteed quiet. But mostly I’ve noticed that I may be getting more done when I do go to the Werks. As odd as it might seem, having to plan the day around what you need (that file? that external drive?) and then having to head out, seems to set the tone for the day. Prevents thrashing. Create focus. Something like that.
For a while I’ve been meaning to record an entire lift run at a ski resort.
On a trip to Sierra Nevada last March, Jane decided to make the recording — presumably because she was bored of me mentioning it and forgetting to
do it.
Unfortunately she picked the longest lift run at the resort. The original video
sequence was a finger chilling 10min 11sec, but you’ll be glad to know it’s been sped up here to just 2:10. There’s no sound on this clip, in case you were wondering if your sound was turned all the way down.
The only feature of interest here is that there’s a radio telescope
at the top of a hill. When riding with that in the background, you half
expect James Bond bad guys with automatic weapons to start chasing you on skidoos. Well, I do.
The Communal Bin Consultation has started in the little bit of Brighton we live in. Potentially a good idea, but I think one to reject. If you’re not sure if you’re affected take a look at the map of the proposed and existing bin locations (PDF).
We’re told: “The containers will be emptied regularly to prevent them from overflowing. Where we currently have bins we do not have any problems.” Ah come off it… no problems at all? I’ve seen over-flowing bins, and a good percentage of the one’s I’ve seen are broken (as in the photo above).
But anyway… a dull topic… and one that’s been discussed for a while, and rejected by many. It’s just one of the usual issues.
BTW: there’s a surprising number of photos of Brighton bins knocking around.
This is a test movie I put together so I could discover how to use the 16:9 setting on the camera, to see how to edit with 16:9, and how to export it. I also wanted to see how I’d get on hand-holding the camera on a cycle.
It turned out to be a great lesson, but unfortunately a terrible piece of video. Sorry about that. Here’s what I’ve learned…
In the first half of the film I was cycling with the camera resting on the handlebars, using my right hand to press the camera onto the handle bars. This is bad for two reason: first, I couldn’t signal in traffic to turn right; second, the vibrations from the road through the camera has crippling effects on the recording.
Later I was cycling essentially one handed, which produced smoother film. It also allowed me to try out changing the filming angle.
Other stuff: cycling against a strong wind, while filming, resulting in me wheezing. Combined with the occasional loud sniff makes for some horrible sound. Gah. But it was a good exercise for me in blending and offsetting the sound from different clips—more so later in the sequence than earlier. Oh, and I learned that I need to oil my cycle: some of the squeaks and rattling sounds are embarrassing 🙂
But that aside the 16:9 part kind of works. I had to jump through a few hoops to export the movie into iDVD. Although the 16:9 export from FCE has the right aspect ratio in QuickTime player, it imports to iDVD as 3:4. I don’t have QuickTime Pro, so I couldn’t use the official Apple workaround for this, or Anamorphicizer, so to get round it I had to pull the movie into iMovie08 and then export from that. It works.
Initially I was deeply unhappy with the output, especially when viewed on TV. Then I found the “Deinterlace Source Video” checkbox in the size option box from “File/Export QuickTime Conversion…” (which is where I also picked “PAL 720×576 16:9” for the dimensions). Lots of jaggies in the original, all gone when deinterlaced.
The version here is a result of exporting from iMovie08 using the “Share/Export Movie” menu, and picking the “medium” format.
Duration: 4min 19sec
Camera: Sony DCR-PC4E (MiniDV)
Recorded: 13 Jan 2008
Editing software: Final Cut Express HD 3.5
Today is my third day, or part day, working out of The Werks.
I’m used to spending most of my week working in my own space, to shouting down the phone as loud as I like, laughing out-loud in video chats, playing music, or having complete silence… all that stuff. So why am I trying out a more open space?
The short answer is, I don’t know. The longer answer is that I have a hunch that there’s something special about a bunch of people in a room. Serendipity is the word I’m looking for and it’s a good match to The Werks: “Werkshop is a new concept which aims to provide a supportive environment for new ideas.”
So it’s going to take me a while to adjust, which is why I’m determined to make the effort to get down to The Werks as regularly as I can in January. Only then will I be in a position to judge the merits of being out there…. although, in part, it depends on who else shows up.
In terms of facilities, I can’t see anything missing: internet, electricity, lighting, desks, chairs, coffee, water, doors, windows, cycle parking… it’s all there, it’s been thought about, it all works, it’s all good. It’s not the centre of Brighton, but actually the location is great.
It’s exactly the kind of space a few of us have been talking about for a while, so I’m delighted it exists and is working so well.
Each Friday in January is open to anyone. I thought the first one worked out really well: I certainly enjoyed it. Look for the event on Upcoming and try it out.
A brilliant weekend. First, we find huge parsnips:
Second, Neela and Ash visit Brighton (which is superb in itself) we end up at Bill’s where we find huge cake:
Hurrah.