Back into things after two weeks away. Solid seemed successful, and I came away with a fair few new thoughts. I’m also hoping to have a But the focus for Week 86 was pinning down work for the summer.

That’s edging closer, but it meant a week of meetings, planning, and getting the house in order.

The meetings were diverse and interesting – focusing on software implementation work and IOT-type work – and a few threads coming in via email mean that plans for the next few months are slowly firming up (albeit not final, if you’re thinking of getting in touch). I always find this tense – it’s the moments before an aircraft comes into land, as it were – and it also makes having several potential plans harder as they all begin to demand more emotional energy. Soon, possibility should resolve into certainty, and we’ll go from there.

I also spent a short while putting some finishing touches to Housedon, which should be launching very soon.

Really, though, a quiet week of preparation and thinking whilst my bodyclock returns to BST.

No work this week: on holiday, in the rolling hills of North California. It was excellent.

I’m writing this from the US, where I’ve been in San Francisco for Solid.

My talk – A Lamppost Is A Thing Too was a revision of the talk I gave at FutureEverything. However, I expanded a section at the end about what civic connected objects could be and showed Columba, a prototype of a connected wayfinding device for hire bikes.

I’m hoping to get a version of the text online in the next week or two, as I don’t think I’m going to be delivering that talk in that precise form again.

Otherwise, I’ve been bathing in sessions and catching up with old friends – as well as lots of new faces I’ve met at the conference. As ever with these events, the value emerges a bit later. I go to conferences to have new thoughts, not to remember what other people tell me. There’s been some really strong sessions, especially on Thursday (the second day) – and a lovely time talking to Richard Isaacs of Fisk about organs and organbuilding.

The only other frustrating news this week is that it looks like Bardon had fallen through. A shame; it would have been an interesting project, but this is all part of planning, and the pipeline should take account of it. So it’s worth mentioning I’m definitely available for work from early June; if you’ve got a project that might suit (keywords: web applications, ‘creative technology’, interaction design, connected objects) do get in touch.

And now, the out-of-office is on, and I’m on vacation for Week 85. Back shortly.

Today, I showed Columba at Solid: a wayfinding device for hire bikes that always points to the nearest empty docking station.

It’s an exploration into how the internet, when placed into civic objects and devices, might improve or alter them. In this case: how the bike changes when it becomes a service avatar. The data that represents the state of docking stations is already available; how does using that service change when that data manifests on the bike itself?

There’s lots more about Columba on its project page – video, and a more detailed explanation of the project. Although it’s very much a physical sketch at the moment, it’s a concept I want to keep thinking about, and I’m hoping I’ll find avenues to do so.

Find out more about Columba on its dedicated project page.

Busy, busy, lemon busy. Week 83 has involved many spinning plates, several planes coming into land, and a fair few mixed metaphors.

First: writing a talk for Solid. This is going to be a bit of a rejig of my FutureEverything talk, with a fair bit of new material about a new project I’ll be announcing at the conference. I think it’s in a good place, but it took the first couple of days this week to get there – building slides, writing text, re-editing films.

I managed to fit in a small amount of maintenance work on Housedon, which should be ready to launch at the beginning of June.

Wednesday, I spent some time helping Spitalfields Music – on whose Programme Advisory Committee I sit – with some audio production work.

I spent many free minutes this week putting the finishing touches to the content for the overhaul of this website which is now live – and which you’re looking at! In particular, wrapping up all the content for the Projects section of the site, that will act as an ongoing portfolio. It’s not comprehensive yet, but it’s at least live – and there’ll be something new here next Wednesday.

And finally, a meeting at the end of the week that ought to set up some work for June – a data-structuring project called Bardon.

Very busy, squeezing in all the finishing touches to many projects prior to being in the US next week. I’m going to be in San Francisco from the 20th May, and at Solid for both Wednesday and Thursday. Do say hello if you’re there. For now, I’m taking Hutton to show some friends and peers, and then having a well-deserved drink before the travel and speaking ahead.

Week 82: continued work on Hutton, amidst a bout of illness.

Hutton is taking shape. I put together a short, sixty-second film explaining it this week, which is one of the last components of it prior to decloaking it as part of my talk at Solid. That also meant testing the it out in anger – Hutton is an object – as part of the filming.

It’s definitely functional, and using it has given me some insight into changes that I’d make in future versions. It’s also highlighted some of the compromises in this current version, which is very much an early piece of work, and the compromises were so that I could get it into my hand. It’s enough to understand the problem, confirm my suspicions; it is, after all, an exploration. Still, I was a bit frustrated by some of its jankiness, but right now, that’s not its purpose: its purpose is understanding and communication, and I have to remember that when I’m criticising myself.

I also continued to work on rebuilding and enhancing this website, and that’s almost ready to go. A lot of content work, and some minor WordPress fiddles. Hopefully, I’ll deploy that in Week 83.

A few meetings, along with a few days of illness, and that was a full lid for week 82. Week 83 will consist of writing my talk for Solid, along with some other tidbits, and I’ll be in San Francisco from the 19th May for a bit if you’d like to meet up.

I’m also looking for work opportunities from June, so if any of the work described on the site – software development, IOT prototyping, interaction design, thinking hard about strange problems – feels like a fit, do get in touch.

Not much to write about this week, but will do anyway.

First, more pushing onwards with Hutton: thinking about filming, working out what I need to bring this phase of the project into land in the next week or so. That included a little planning, testing some filming rigs, and getting ready to shoot next week.

I also started work on overhauling this website. The simple list of posts has been useful, but I’d like to be able to show off projects better now I have a decent number to talk about. And I’ve got time in my schedule. So I spent a few days noodling in Sketch, before cranking out some responsive templates and a pile of WordPress code to handle the display of projects.

I also, most importantly, started overhauling the content. The new site has been definitely designed around the content I’m likely to display, and getting it written (not to mention gathering together media) is probably going to be at least as time-consuming as everything technical.

Still, by the end of the week, the code was 90% done and the content about halfway. Should be on course to launching things in the next week or so.

An interview I did with Glen Martin for O’Reilly went live on the O’Reilly website; I think it captures some of the thinking and discussions Pan, Gyorgyi and I had around Hello Lamp Post whilst we were building it. The interview went up prior to Solid, which I’ll be at in two weeks’ time.

And, with a frustrating chunk of admin to fill out time, that was the week. Hutton is in an interesting place right now, and it might have a life beyond this very first prototype; I’ve chatted it over with several peers and friends and they’ve all provided useful insight. So we’ll see where that goes. But for now, the next thing – and the goal for Week 82 – is filming and documenting it.

Big leaps forward for Hutton this week.

Firstly, built the final hardware prototype – a custom shield to sit atop the Electric Imp shield, and the appropriate cabling to make it easy to assemble/disassemble. Then, after a trip Maplin and some wandering around hardware stores, acquiring the components for the housing and spending an afternoon in the workshop, drilling, nibbling and filing the housing for the project. By the end of Thursday, it was all boxed up, running off a battery and 3G, and it even appears to be able to be mounted where I hoped it would.

So that’s most of the build for Hutton done. In week 81, I’m going to work on documenting it and preparing the short film about it.

A few more sketches on Wingreen appear to be taking that to an interesting place. I’m going to have to park it soon, but there’s one more thing I’d like to try before I do.

Also, small pieces of maintenance on previous projects for clients – fixing mapping solutions now that Cloudmade is turning down free projects, and dealing with some bugs in Dundry that reared their head as the client started poking it again.

The pace of self-initiated work is proving a little challenging: maintaining momentum when I’m the client, and not feeling guilty that I’m not doing work for a client, is sometimes tough. It’s important to remind myself that the self-initiated work is an important component of my career, and that it’s not “clientless” work – it’s just that I’m the client and there are no invoices. On the flipside, when it’s going well, it’s very satisfying, and I’m looking forward to working out how to present it.

Another week of beavering away at Hutton: deploying code onto a VPS, getting PostGIS up and running on my server. Spending quite a bit of time in the shell bumping things into life.

The good news is that lots of the projects on the VPS are now ticking away nicely, after a few days wrestling packages and crontabs into shape, so that’s good. And it looks like Hutton’s server and web components are good to go: enough to prototype and test with, for certain, and to build the hardware backend on.

I spent Monday in Brighton whilst the folks at Lighthouse used the Literary Operator for a photoshoot. That gave me time to catch up with some friends and colleagues, and also think hard about the problems in Hutton away from London.

I also spent some time sketching in code on a selection of work I’m calling Wingreen. This is entirely a visual piece of art, displayed and manipulated in software. Each sketch takes me around an hour, because the platform isn’t quite my natural medium. Each sketch also is telling me that there’s something interesting here, but I haven’t quite cracked it yet, so I’m going to keep iterating. Good to take some time to make something that’s purpose is being aesthetically satisfying.

A week focused on self-initiated projects, then – what I call ‘personal projects’ that are actually part of my working practice, rather than just Stuff For Me. I hope to be able to show Hutton soon, and Wingreen eventually.

A short week, too, because of Easter. Where possible, I try to stick to taking Bank Holidays: I may be freelance, but it suits everybody else in my life, and (as Michael Lopp has pointed out), time off is important to one’s working practice, not just to one’s energy reserves. So a slightly shorter week 79 – and a shorter week 80 to come next week, too.

Most of the week was taken up with a workshop at the National Maritime Museum facilitated by Caper, exploring ideas for digital interactions around their Great Map. Three days of “marker fumes and coffee”, and lots of ideas and concept to show the curators and museum staff at the end. Caper assembled a great team, and it was a fun three days; really hope the museum felt so too.

I wrapped up a rough edit of the podcast I’d been producing on Monday, and otherwise, spent the rest of the week focusing on a few personal projects: fettling my VPS and upgrading it (finally) to Ruby 1.9.x, in preparation for fixing the ghost*-apps that are in need of maintenance following changes to Foursquare’s API. Not exciting work, but very satisfying to spend a day in the shell getting things just so.

(The server languished on an old version of Ruby because it primarily just runs Twitter bots; most of my Ruby webapps are all on Heroku, but that’s changing for a few, and so I want to get my house in order).

I spent Monday and Tuesday in Manchester, where I was speaking at FutureEverything. The talk seemed to go well, and the rest of the conference was very good indeed: lots of great talks and great people all in one space. I got home late, and quite tired, on Tuesday, but it had been a great couple of days.

After FutureEverything, it was a relatively quiet week.

I spent Wednesday afternoon helping a music charity I work with a little learning how to podcast. Or rather: helping them set things up so they could. That meant running over how to capture live recordings, setting up a Dropbox workflow where I could help them edit things, how to publish to WordPress, and how we could post content to iTunes as well. I’m going to continue this as a small side-project over the next few months, helping them with production and the technical aspects of publishing, but we covered a lot of ground and they were enthusiastic.

Friday was spent mentoring at the ODI’s Open Data in Practice course. This was my third ODIP course, and as ever, it was great to help the delegates bring some of the ideas to life on the final day, as well as to help them with their understanding of and ideas around Open Data.

Week 77 brought a very hectic March to an end. April should be more peaceful: a couple of workshops, but time also to take some personal days, and focus on the project where I’m the client that have been neglected. I’m looking forward to those.

A quick reminder – I’m in Manchester for the next two days for FutureEverything. I’m speaking on Tuesday as part of a session called The New Shape of Things, along with Dan Williams and Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino. It should be a great panel – and, from the looks of the rest of the conference, a great two days.

If you want to get in touch, do say hello if you see me!

Most of the week was spent working on the talk for FutureEverything: writing, a bit of research, a bit of continuing to tinker with electronics (a project called Hutton). The electronics are part of a prototype that’s important to the talk – a demonstration of a conceit. It’s not going to be complete before the conference, but worth continuing to push on with: having at least some work to talk about in a space feels important, so I continue to hack on things. And perhaps I can hint at some work in progress.

Otherwise, a few quick meetings, some work getting Hello Lamp Post ready for Designs of the Year, and my last few days of code on Contributoria.

And, on Tuesday night, PAN, Gyorgyi and I all descended on the Design Museum for the Designs of the Year nominees’ party. As previously mentioned, it’s a great honour for Hello Lamp Post to be nominated. It’s on display there for the next few months, along with the rest of the nominees, so do check it out!

In one sense, a straightforward week: entirely spent on Contributoria.

In other senses, more complex: I’m wrapping up my time on Contributoria, and thinking about what’s coming next. That’s increasingly looking like working on a few personal projects – various things have fallen over, thanks to changes in the Foursquare API; various things need pushing forward to the next phase, and dedicated time would be good.

Adding to the complexity is dealing with clients, which is always – for good or ill – the complicated part of business. In this case, the thing I’m finding hard is working out how to say ‘yes’ and how to say ‘no’ – especially to good projects I’m interested in but can’t, currently, see a way to take on.

This is all much harder than sitting down and writing code or sketching or building circuits, and it takes its toll from time to time. This is why downtime – be it for projects, or for rest – is important, especially if the business is to be successful and sustainable. Monday, then, was spent wrapping up a long weekend away, looking at the sea and striding over hills. A space to empty my head, consider what might be coming, work out how to do some things, and how to say others.

And if that all sounds a bit honest: well, weeknotes tend to go better when (within reason) I say what’s in my head.

I also spent some time on Friday on the phone to Kars. We occasionally have catch-up calls with one another. Nothing formal; just some time spent talking to one another about our practice, how work is, seeing what small business in Europe looks like from different angles. It’s always interesting to hear what Hubbub is up to, and it’s a useful perspective on my own work – and much appreciated!

Next week: wrapping up a few things, and preparing for FutureEverything.

A fairly focused week. First, two days of workshopping and sketching on Botley, the goal of which was to narrow down which of a variety of prototypes the team would be taking forward. Intensive, and the kind of days fuelled by coffee and marker pens that leave you reeling a little by the time they’re done. But: good work done, good decisions made.

Then, the rest of the week on Haddington/Contributoria: primarily setting up some loose project management, and writing a lot of documentation. This is my last month on Contributoria, and I want to get a lot of things in place so that it’s easy for other developers to dive into the project.

Not much more to report, really: a lot of running around and typing. Next week is a bit more settled – at least, on the running around front; the typing is a bit of a constant.

A busy week – not in the sense of absolute volume, but certainly in terms of the number of different things I was working on.

On Friday I was in Coventry for the Random String symposium. I think the talk went down alright, and I had a lot of interesting conversations with artists and practitioners. I’ll try to get it online soon: it’s a talk called Technology as an Artist’s Material, and it takes a slightly different slant on some of the ‘materials’ based talks I’ve done in a while.

Quite a bit of the week was spent working on that. However, I also fitted in a day of meetings for Haddington/Contributoria, about how we were going to get to 1.0, planning the next few months work, and seeing what else was on the horizon. Good to have the whole team in the same place, it always leads to strong conversations.

I also spent a day on Seager, making the website for the connected-object degrade gracefully from Websockets to AJAX-based long polling when Websockets weren’t available. It’s easy to do this when you’re testing if the browser supports Websockets. The more important use case, though, is when a browser supports websockets but (for whatever reason) they’re not being transmitted correctly – for instance, if an HTTP proxy is blocking them. It was a reasonably day of fine-grained code and testing, but the end result was not just the correct, seamless functionality; it was also better-abstracted code that more clearly expressed all of the site’s functionality. Very worthwhile.

A busy week. Week 74 is more focused, and less dependent on the muse sticking around long enough to write 30 minutes of flowing lecture. Onwards!

Quickly, because I’m between talks – I thought it’d be worth collating a list of projects mentioned in my talk at Random String, just in case you were in the audience and missed them (credited when not mine):

• Richard Hamilton – Five Tyres

• Spirits Melted Into Air

• ghostcar

• Rachel Whiteread – Monument

• Jack Schulze & Timo Arnall – Immaterials: The Ghost In The Field

• Julian Oliver – Transparency Grenade

  • The Literary Operator

  and, as a bonus, because I had to cut it from the talk but it’s a remarkable work:

• Caleb Larsen – A Tool To Deceive And Slaughter

Full talk perhaps online soon – when I get a minute!