Monster Swell

There are some interesting similarities between a recent proposal commissioned by the French government and the book out by Jaron Lanier just now “Who Owns The Future?”

http://twitter.com/thornet/status/303586923719557122

A bunch of stuff I did last week is summarized nicely at the Hubbub weeknotes. This is going to happen more and more often, so these weeknotes may become at risk. We’ll see what happens.

Besides the immense amount of things we did over at Hubbub last week, I also spent a lot of time doing various other things which sort of amazed me to be honest.

Recovering from flu meant a week of mostly broken days, but still got a lot done and more importantly: got better.

With most of my work focusing at Hubbub these days, the weeknotes over there (the past week) are going to form the meat of my work in the foreseeable future 1. I may need to use these weeknotes as an excuse for long form writing again and blog more here in general on loose ideas.

I got things back running again. Did a bunch of work on TORREON. Most Hubbub stuff is in a weeknote over there now that I am writing now alternating with Kars Alfrink.

Nothing much happened during the Christmas week before, so I decided to skip that note. Most of Berlin shut down into a deep hibernation normally only witnessed in student towns.

Last Monday was the last day in Berlin before the holidays so something of a push here and there to get things to go through. That night we had a vvvv workshop at the studio hosted by Joreg to teach somewhere around eight people the basics of node based graphical environments (the only other one I had used extensively before was Open DX and of course there’s Quartz Composer and Impure Quadrigram).

Last week was a week without travel or deadlines so a lot of stuff that had been lying around for too long got done.

Horribly late but here goes anyway. On Monday I briefly dropped by the Makers Loft and finally managed to see the Third Wave crew again.

At the start of the week I managed to upload a batch of trip pictures (the China section) but after things went quickly downhill.

After some weeks traveling to Beijing and Australia, last week I was back in Europe, touching down in Amsterdam Tuesday morning early. I had a very nice flight in from Sydney with the only annoyance being that my laptop had broken upon arrival there. This made me spend half a day of the two I had there in the Bondi Apple Store trying to figure out what the problem was.

I’m sitting here at Beijing Airport writing these too late weeknotes on their free WiFi 1 which is an oddly implemented but still excellent service.

Last week I built a new version of the Pig Chase client for the final test in the stables (more on which later).

A massively eventful week that for me took place mostly in Amsterdam where I had tons of catching up to do after a holiday absence of I believe over two months. In between moving offices and traveling, work on kohi moved on apace. We may have something usable by a slightly wider audience somewhere in the next week.

I’ll include here Hubbub’s two reasons for celebration which were also reasons for me to celebrate and I’ll add a third in a bit. These really are the weeks when a lot of stuff is happening, being built and delivered. Not that much time for idle talk and reflection, though that too will return.

Last week was rather eventful. I popped over to Praxis to sign my lease there and I was scheduled to present a workshop at Campus Party on a topic near to my heart about which I have presented often already in one form or another: Civic Hacking.

A delayed picture in picture from me presenting in Helsinki:

A busy week after a quiet weekend. Monday evening I attended a preliminary meeting with fellow coaches for the Berlin Python classes. After that I attended the Iron Blogger regular meetup to have beer with my fellow Berlin bloggers. Later that week I also attended the regular Campus Party drinks.

The Willem de Kooning Academy published an ebook that contains the lecture I gave there about digital design and the new aesthetic. I’m quite pleased that little piece of conceptual remix is getting so much airtime.

It took a bit to get going again back from Greece.

The week before last I spent in Athens mostly hanging out, going to the beach and getting some work done.

On Monday I got back into work after the couple of days in Copenhagen. I also discovered that the talk I gave in Rotterdam “Designing in the Face of Defeat” about the New Aesthetic has been recorded and you can watch it above.

I’ve been into something of a speculative realism binge lately reading quite some books and even more blogs from the field of current day philosophy. Last Monday I finished Ian Bogost’s Alien Phenomenology which is highly recommended if you want to read up on object oriented ontology.

A nice and quiet week in which I got a lot of stuff done that needed doing for a while.

Quickly this last week. Work on our own iPhone transit application is progressing nicely. The iPhone has an exquisite palette of operations to work with.

Last week was a week for some work in the Netherlands and some much deserved catchup with friends and colleagues over there.

The Hybrid Talk I gave the week before is up on Soundcloud. You can listen to it here and see if you agree with our ideas about how a client driven organization can operate without being rubbish.

This week was marked by a massive sprint on saba which made me miss this year’s Myfest in Kreuzberg, which is annoying but survivable. I did manage to see Ryoji Ikeda’s Data Anatomy on its last day in Tresor. A visually spectacular but thematically flat affair.

I got a bunch of accessories for the office among which a bike stand:

A long week sprinting on saba. On Monday I got a nice desk chair:

The week before last (I’m running one week behind), was a good weak. Easter Monday was spent cleaning up the house which is now finally fully operational and fit to live in.

Last week was crazy hectic, notwithstanding the fact that I was ill at the same time. Sickness and deadlines are not fun, but thankfully both were survived.

Last week commenced with preparing my presentation for the CrossLab event in Rotterdam. On Tuesday I took the train from Berlin and got there nicely in time.

The week started with development on saba in phonegap. I got that to work with backbone.

Running behind two weeks and off to the Netherlands tomorrow (for a talk at a Crosslab event in the Unie). Oh how time flies! This was a fun week.

Work continues apace. New websites are forthcoming.

Briefly written notes for last week. It was one of the first proper weeks at the office for which I am grateful. German administration remains a challenging affair as my blog post and quoted Times article also testify.

Writing these notes on a Sunday afternoon wit a mug of steaming coffee within reach as they are meant to be written.

We’re seeing this more and more among the edgiest of shops. The Netherlands has already had a massive shift towards freelancers (ZZP’ers). It is only natural that they would band together regularly to accomplish company level work but without the ties and inertia normally associated with employment.

Last week featured some taxes, and a write-up of our gamejam efforts in nrc.ne xt post-published on Bashers: The Making of Nakatomi Rider.