Monster Swell

Last week we got the DSL at home to work (in two tries). It feels good to have that after something of a month of bureaucracy and false starts to deal with.

Last week was a week in Amsterdam (and what a week it was!).

In 2011:

In the beginning of the week I spotted an interesting dataset on Sargasso, requested to play with it and got the following visual published the next day (our write-up).

Some remaindered weeknotes that have been the casualty of an international move.

Another week and another change at the office. One thing that does define the Open Coop is that everything is in a constant state of flux adding jitter so none of us remain stuck in a local optimum. The global optimum we are shooting for in and around our location in North is rather ridiculous but best not shared in public.

I had a great time last week working at the Makers Loft in Kreuzberg while our friends of Gidsy were out and about in San Francisco.

It has become even easier to find your way to our office in the Coop. Just follow the green yellow line.

Going on with Apps voor Nederland and culiacan (which is almost done by now). Also did a brief intermediate scripting and rendering moving text for a TA theater piece.

Apps voor Nederland continues apace as it keeps on doing.

This was a short week. Work on Apps voor Nederland and then off to Playful.

Running dreadfully behind with these weeknotes so this would have to be a short one.

Ik was twee weken geleden op een bijeenkomst van de STT over serious games en ik was een beetje teleurgesteld dat de enige kritische reflectie op het onderwerp van de dag —kansen in serious games en gamification— kwam van super-filosoof Jos de Mul. Hoe goed zijn kritiek dan ook was, kritiek van een filosoof is te gemakkelijk weg te wuiven door mensen uit de praktijk. Nederland blijf een land van handelaars en nering is hier de makkelijkste manier om de handen op elkaar te krijgen.

On Monday I let go a bunch of stalling side projects which were not going anywhere.

Another long form weeknote, history recapping brought by the fantastic Memolane service which aggregates my various media chronologically so I can quickly write this overview.

A new experiment, extended weeknotes combined with assorted reading and outtakes. I think this may be more fun for me to write and more fun for you to read.

A bunch of work on finalizing Code 4, work on culiacan continues steadily nearing a launch sometime soon, and kicking off ideation and sketches for tlalnepantla.

Monday I went off exploring a fort for an upcoming Hack de Overheid event. The industrial scenery and weather at the sea locks of IJmuiden was positively apocalyptic that day.

Last week a bunch of visual progress was made on culiacán. Expect an August release on that.

Last Monday I paid an information architecture house call at a friend at one of the beleaguered (a somewhat redundant word when discussing print publications here) Dutch weeklies. Looking forward to advice taken to heart and maybe some online Dutch media that I can consume with pleasure.

Monday I spent all day planning the Statlas release and encountered some showstoppers still. That night I went to Utrecht for This Happened.

We zijn al een tijdje bezig met Statlas en het is de hoogste tijd dat een eerste versie het daglicht ziet om te laten zien wat voor iets tofs we hebben gemaakt en te horen wat jullie ervan vinden. Dus voor jullie ogen: Statlas

Monday I did some support and then went off to the UvA to present on data journalism together with Stef.

The week was mostly spent doing stuff for either Statlas or for another project on the essence of architecture.

Belayed notes for the week before last but right now I’m bored out of my skull so it’s as good a time as any other.

A massively busy week this last, and going on a probably well deserved surfing trip to Bilbao next week so expect things to quiet down a bit here.

Things are speeding up and these are taking too much time so I won’t know if I can keep it up. Still I think there is a lot of value in creating an archive of our work. And I think these have netted the most consistently positive response compared to other blogposts here.

Is it Wednesday already? We’re a bit in a production down cycle, but you wouldn’t notice for the lack of administrativa that needs dealing with.

A busy week, maguro got completely finished and delivered to client. Culiacan managed to overcome the horrible Media Temple hurdle.

Two years after I harrangued the Dutch national railways on radio about their closed data policy and debunked all their arguments why they would not open up this data.

The weekly bit of media consisted of a brief Radio 1 excerpt about the issue of new anti-piracy legislation. This is of course futile and I did my best to explain such in a couple of minutes and a blogpost.

It looks like the past period of turbulent ascent is over and the plane is going to be level for a bit. That does not mean that there isn’t an awful lot of awesome stuff on deck waiting to be published nor that there aren’t a bunch of new prospects on the horizon. More on those in due time.

Last week Monday we saw the final work presentations at the Willem de Kooning Academy. It was a great experience and I was really blown away by the breadth of some of the work presented. Nevertheless it remains a challenge to fit a full data visualization curriculum within the course of 4 weeks. Given the time we had I am very proud of the progress made.

A busy and monotonous week with deadlines for many long running projects.

Maguro got its next test and nicely stood up to everything thrown at it.

Busily so briefly.

Drive by-ing these notes twothree four days late. Yeah, these are those kind of weeks.

Work # Made a lot of progress on Statlas during the course of the week. The domain should be live this week and we should see tangible results this month.

A different format for these weeknotes:

Got some reinforcements at the office: