Random Etc. Notes to self. Work, play, and the rest.
Stamen ‘07
Eric just posted a review of what we got up to at Stamen in 2007. My second Thanksgiving at the end of November 2007 marked the end of my first year in San Francisco; 2 months after that it still feels new, fresh and exciting.
The variety of projects and clients at Stamen over the last year or so has been extremely satisfying. I probably won't get a chance to write them up thoroughly for myself, but I'm proud to have had a hand (large or small) in all the projects Eric wrote up (and several more besides!).
Here's to 2008!
Uniqlock and Californian Quakes
In a recent post about Google's Authentic Voice Problem, Nat Torkington documented the "time-honored marketing blog post formula":
- Find something topical.
- Identify the shiznit you wish to pimp.
- Find a line (however tenuous) between the two and the post just writes itself!
Something Topical.
There was a small but significant earthquake just outside Oakland last week. Lots of people were woken up by it. Dentures and tea-cups rattled throughout the bay area. Amazingly, around 6,000 people had reported it on the USGS's site by 10am in the morning. Go people!
Some Shiznit to Pimp.
I've been looking for an excuse to post about Uniqlo's clock website, featuring Japanese dancers on a one second timer, it's completely hypnotic (and yes the dancers are cute, I know that too). Now you can get your own for your blog, and share it with the world. 6,000 people have shared it so far.
The Line.
At Stamen we make beautiful interactive maps, native to the web. Imagine if the production qualities of the Uniqlo clock were brought to data as important as people's accounts of how an earthquake felt to them. That's the kind of work I aspire to, and I think that's where we're heading. What other tenuous lines should I be drawing in order to articulate this, I wonder?
Stamen is hiring a designer
Stamen, the company I work for in San Francisco, is hiring a designer.
If you're "someone who is a designer first and foremost, a coder a distant second, and who's interested in where these areas interleave" then please read the post on our site and consider getting in touch. I can't recommend us highly enough.
Neologism of the Day: Overflowded
I joined up with many British ex-pats at Adaptive Path yesterday evening for Schulze & Webb's The Hills Are Alive With The Sound Of Interaction Design. Suffice to say, the talk was excellent and thoroughly enjoyable.
In the Q&A session at the end I was delighted to hear a slip of the tongue from one questioner*, asking about Continuous Partial Attention: he wondered whether there wasn't a risk of being overflowded with information. OVERFLOWDED? That's lovely!
Coming a close second for me, but first for Yoz, was uncertainun. It was a good word day.
Update: It was Reto Laemmler of Xcellery, who writes "I'm not a Poet or Writer and rather a Swiss guy who hasn't mastered English very well yet." No matter! I hope the road to mastering English is paved with words like overflowded.
This is what it looks like when I’m doing the washing up.
This is what it looks like when I'm doing the washing up., originally uploaded by Just_Tom.
This marks the end of my third week in San Francisco. No news is good news - it's all going swimmingly.
I'll be in Dallas from Tuesday for two weeks, not sure how well my internet connectivity will fare, but I hope to post a little bit about my first month in the US. In the meantime, "happy holidays" and all that.
Consolidation and Relocation: Leaving London for San Francisco
A couple of months ago I withdrew from my doctorate programme at UCL and shortly afterwards I handed in my notice at work. That could be interpreted as quite a miserable state of affairs, but it's far from it!
I'm going to San Francisco to work with Stamen Design, who I've admired for some time (especially for their cabspotting and digg labs projects). Thanks to them (and our lawyer) I now have a visa and I leave London next week. I've booked a one-way flight, which feels strange but somehow liberating at the same time.
More thoughts on this after the jump. (more...)
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