Back in Brum

I've just finished moving all of my stuff back from Reading to Birmingham, via a large van hired especially for the occasion and I've come to a very definite conclusion.

I Have Far Too Much Crap

Some of the stuff I moved back from Reading to Birmingham hadn't actually gotten unpacked during the entire year I lived there (though, when I saw it again, it looked quite cool, so I didn't throw it away...whoops). On top of this unwillingness to dispose of anything I own, I've also spent the year getting paid and accumulating a vast range of things I don't really need but would quite like.

Clothes were the worst. It was estimated at one point that the amount of cardboard box space taken to pack my clothes would barely have sufficed for one girl's shoe collection. Nightmare. It probably doesn't help that I probably have more Microsoft branded clothes than the average person has clothes...anyone want a really cool t-shirt for Christmas?

Now then, time to unpack all of my very heavy stuff from the van, and then try to fit it all into a room that's a fair bit smaller than the one it wouldn't all fit into in Reading. See you in another two days...

Two new graphs

I've discovered that Twitter is actually a great way to get a feed of updated content from a few sites I'm into, and is something I'll check a lot more often than the latest RSS reader to have taken my fancy. Pity there's not a lot of folks who publish their RSS out to tweets with TinyURLs.

One site that does however, is my beloved GraphJam ("Pop culture for people in cubicles") - and after a downhill slope from them, I've come across these two that I really love.

The first is just another simple song-based graph, which I find oddly compelling. Possibly just because I love the song:



The second however, is an absolute masterpiece. It's quite a badly drawn representation of one of my favourite illusions, but you get the idea.


_{Title: Multivariate increase of MC Escher's popularity}

The most amusing part of this however, is to be found in the comments section:

NangyCat
June 23rd, 2008 at 11:32 am

"I do not get.
MC Esher … rapper?"

I love the internet. You can subscribe to GraphJam's Feed yourself, or if you're feeling particularly trendy, you can have your own RSS syndicated out to tweets with TwitterFeed.

Enjoy :)

Google Calendar

Stalking me online has always been easy enough, but actually being able to follow me around the streets, take photos of me eating sandwiches and other such fun activities has always been an issue. I've been working hard to rectify this, and have finally gotten around to setting up a Google Calendar.

A (disturbing) number of you have already noticed the mini-view of the calendar a fair bit down the increasingly large right hand side of this blog, or you can just skip directly to my calendar through your favourites or similar.

There's even an RSS feed of my calendar which you can subscribe to, so that you're notified of any new events I add as soon as I add them, if you're feeling in a particularly hardcore mood.

I've started putting in my expected location for the coming weeks too, so you can find out what city I'll be in, and invite me to cool parties once you know :)

MySong

Will recently turned me on to a little research project by the name of MySong.

This is a little program which takes in vocal melodies, and automagically provides some backing for them. I've seen a couple of things which can do the same for a midi input, but nothing yet which can tolerate the variance of a vocal input.

It must be especially interesting given that it'll have to withstand its target audience - non-musicians. These folks probably won't have much knowledge of classical scales and the like, so could be all over the place with their melodies.



The video and other stuff they've got up on their site so far looks pretty good, and the software should be fun to play with for people who can actually sing. That doesn't include me I'm afraid.

Also, having looked into doing something similar for my final year project - I can tell you that the science behind this isn't exactly nice. Clever chaps eh? One to keep your ears on anyhow.

Week's drinking in Newquay

A couple of weeks ago I headed off to Newquay for Summer Break, hosted by the events company Outgoing.

For the uninitiated; Summer Break is a week long beach party for > 5,000 students. A couple of large holiday parks with tents and caravans are booked out and a horde of students descends upon the frightened local residents of Newquay.


_{With so many people around, it was easy to make friends}

The days are spent on the beach - with plenty of organised entertainment there (blindfold sack racing and the bikini contest stand out as a couple of highlights). The nights are spent in one of the handful of local clubs taken over by Summer Break, with a few big name DJ acts providing the music and a lot of very drunken students providing the atmosphere.


_{The nights out were themed. I believe this one was 'drunk student' night}

I've been busy since getting back, and have neglected to blog about the various fun and events that I did recollect, and as such have only hazy memories of the entire gig even existing. So, you'll have to make do with the pictures scattered throughout this post and the following excerpts from my Twitter feed at the time.

Off to a good start..
packing - 5.40am start tomorrow :( 11:11 PM June 07, 2008 from web

off to Newquay! 05:55 AM June 08, 2008 from txt

Things seem pleasant and innocent enough
enjoying fire and meat and sunshine 06:18 PM June 08, 2008 from txt


_{Disaster strikes at the launderette}

Some time passes, alcohol is consumed, a Radio 1 DJ turns up
off to the 80's. So drunk 08:34 PM June 08, 2008 from txt

was just kissed by Scott Mills. No tongue... 01:26 AM June 09, 2008 from txt


_{I'm at a beach party. In Newquay. And I still manage to find a cone...}

More innocent fun
beachtime! 11:55 AM June 09, 2008 from txt

volleyball, frisbee, real water. Awesome 04:37 PM June 09, 2008 from txt


_{You'd think I'd be too old for this. You'd be wrong.}

No updates follow for the rest of the 9^th. I wonder why?

A possible explanation
worst hangover ever 09:54 AM June 10, 2008 from txt

no, wait. Just tried walking. Apparently still Very drunk 10:28 AM June 10, 2008 from txt


_{The morning after...}

Anyone know what this was about? Anyone?
Indiana Jones and the temple of MAGIC BUS 12:43 AM June 11, 2008 from txt

We decide to leave the beach and alcohol behind for a bit...
walking through fields, lots of stiles but not a fence in sight 01:43 PM June 11, 2008 from txt

found a gorgeous village with a top-notch local pub. Real food too, rather than BBQ I've been having all week 02:52 PM June 11, 2008 from txt


_{Why were there about 9 stiles, but no fences?}

...we were 50% successful I suppose
we'll never get to the beach if we stop off at every pub. Nice cyders though 03:41 PM June 11, 2008 from txt

a small walking tour of Cornwall's breweries' offerings later, I'm at the beach. Anyone know the formula for drunkenness vs depth of water one should swin in? 04:16 PM June 11, 2008 from txt

This hurt so, so much more than I can describe
waterproof suncream in eye versus water. Currently losing: my eye 06:16 PM June 11, 2008 from txt


_{Students know how to set up drinking games}

I'm guessing this explains the rip I found in my shirt..
Pendulum DJ set was ace. So was window climbing 01:57 AM June 12, 2008 from txt


_{Seriously, students know how to set up drinking games}

I'll never eat trifle again
just remembering the semi-solidified shot cocktail I drank last night makes me feel queasy 09:33 AM June 12, 2008 from txt


_{I will not mix cream-based shots with tequila.
I will not mix cream-based shots with tequila.
I will not mix cream-based shots with tequila.}

The last day dragged on a bit
pub breakfast complete, just 13 hours to kill before coach arrives...somehow. Ideas anyone? 12:14 PM June 12, 2008 from txt

team awesome and friend are acing the pub quiz 10:53 PM June 12, 2008 from txt

I appear to have volunteered to write pub quiz software for a pub in Newquay. Self-five 12:33 AM June 13, 2008 from txt

I wrote him the software a few days later. He now sends me a copy of his pub quiz every week - awesome!

Seriously, I saw the box labelled 'hash browns'. She just hadn't heard of them before
at the worst takeaway ever - the menu bears no relation to the staffs' English vocabulary 12:06 AM June 13, 2008 from txt

THE HASH BROWNS ARE IN THE FREEZES YOU CRAZY TURKISH LADY. I PROMISE THEY'RE REALLY A FOOD. GET MY DAMN HASH BROWNS :( 12:12 AM June 13, 2008 from txt

chips, the poor man's hash brown. I'm crying inside. 12:32 AM June 13, 2008 from txt


_{End of an adventure. Note the lack of hash browns.}

The aftermath
ill :( 06:36 PM June 15, 2008 from web

feel like death...can I take my first day back in the office off sick? Probably not.. 09:36 AM June 16, 2008 from web

it's some combination of a carnivorous diet, alcohol overload and freshers' flu I think 11:43 AM June 16, 2008 from web

The best (worst) sign I've seen in a while

Strolling aimlessly around Reading this weekend I stumbled across the entrance to Thames Water's offices, where I found the following in a fairly prominent position next to the car park:



It's little wonder that I was reading in today's Metro about their hilarious inability to manage bills eh?

Still though, not quite as good as the demand for £90,000,000 that Npower recently sent to a residential customer.

You should go and see Daisy Palmer live. Now.

Last night, the Rising Sun Arts Centre played host to jazz saxophonist Lol Coxhill and a few friends, namely:

Daisy Palmer - Drums
Alexander Hawkins - Piano
Dominic Lash - Bass

I'd gone along because I'd heard great things about Lol Coxhill and wanted to check him out for myself but ended up almost phasing him out and listening to the trio of youngsters providing the backing for most of the set.

Alexander Hawkins led the trio with a mixture of laid back jazz rhythms and sweeping, trilling melodies and solos. The image in my head after listening to him for a while was of a cross somewhere between Duke Ellington and Claude Debussy. A bit too 'show-offy' at times for what I was listening for, but hey - if you can play that well...

Dominic Lash had some great, subtle and well placed improvisations around his driving basslines and really lent to the mood of the piecs - great to listen to. Except now I really want a double bass again...

The highlight of the night for me though was drummer Daisy Palmer. She had such flair and passion through the whole night and played an absolutely wonderful gig. Her technical skill was also great fun to watch - there were times I could hear noises coming from the kit but had no idea how they related to what she was doing with her various limbs.


_{Daisy Palmer, playing with Bizali}

Daisy also plays in a band by the name of Bizali and having listened to some of their stuff on the linked site, I'll certainly find an excuse to go and see one of their gigs sometime soon.

Great gig all around, even if somewhere around 1/4 of the quartet knew what song was playing at any one time :) There's another jazz night at the Rising Sun on the 13th of July - the week before the Real Ale and Jazz Festival. I recommend you check out both.

3G Modem

When BT tried to ruin my life again, I started looking up all the possible ways to get online quickly and cheaply, without a long contract.

Traditional dial-up was one option, but I'd still have needed to wait for BT to re-activate the line there, and I'm not sure I could have coped with the speed. The price is also extortionate, and it's not the easiest service to get hold of.

There were a few other choices too, but I eventually settled on the seemingly 'too-good-to-be-true' offer of one of these new-fangled 3G modems.


_{Looks pretty sexy too}

The device is a USB Modem, as well as being a phone of sorts (you can send text messages to and from it, and it has a standard mobile number), and is capable of around 7MB connections - faster than my wired broadband at home.

The offer of £10 for 1 gigabyte of data on a 'pay as you go' scheme looked great - until you notice that the 'pay as you go' part is actually at £1/MB. If you want the £10/GB then you enter a 30-day contract - and lose any of the data you don't use within those 30 days.

We've got it shared across our home network now, and although there's a fairly alarming upload coming from the corporate stuff installed on my machine, it's all going along quite nicely. I even got the modem for just £50 on a special offer.

It's a good deal, but I'm not sure I'll ever use it enough to justify keeping the modem for myself. The freedom to connect anywhere would be nice, but £1/MB is extortionate and I'll never want to use it often enough to make the £10/1GB deal worthwhile.

OhNoRobot

Picking up on something I've meant to do for about a year now, I've made a brief start on plugging in textual transcriptions of Tie-Dye Heart comics into OhNoRobot

You can see the few I've done so far on Tie-Dye Heart's OhNoRobot. There doesn't appear to be a direct way for you to contribute to transcriptions on the site, but I'll be putting up some buttons on Tie-Dye Heart soon that allow you to transcribe any comic you want for me.

But why?

One easy and obvious reason is so that I can then export the transcriptions and put them on a separate page, with links back to the actual images. This might help me out a bit with the search engine scores, and also help you to find comics by searching for the text within them (rather than trying to remember the obscure name I gave to the comic).

The actual reason I've been keen on this is, however, for blind people with screen readers. I'm after getting the creator of OhNoRobot to open up the site to allow me to automagically add in transcriptions whenever I upload a comic, and then to use those as the <alt> tags of each comic. Accessible humour for all, hurrah!

The creator of the whole scheme, by the way, is Ryan North of Qwantz Dinosaur Comics, who also came up with the whole lists/music meme. His comic, in case you didn't notice, is just the same image every time with different text.

You'd think this would get wearing, and indeed he himself describes it as "seeing how much a man can get away with just because he's tall" - but it's actually utterly compelling, in a bizarre and slightly disturbing way. Check it out ^^

Keeping busy

With only two weeks left in Reading, I've decided to make sure that I get around and enjoy all that the city has to offer - and all that the folks I've met here can give me in the way of interesting company.

According to my Outlook calendar, the next meeting I have to attend is 'Drinks O'Clock', as today's the last time that all of my team is likely to be around in one place before I leave this place for good.

Having run into one of our trendy London colleagues in the office today, we're now off to a members-only cocktail club, The Player - over in Soho, which should be pretty cool. Expect drunken tweets if the night goes as planned.

Tomorrow I'm off to the Jolly Anglers, a lovely canalside pub for a jam night. I'm a bit worried about carrying guitars back next to a river with beer-legs, but I haven't been to a jam night that wasn't jazz-themed for a while. I really hope some 18 year old goth kid turns up wanting to play black metal.

Friday is a birthday party for one of the other interns - not much to say about that one, it'll just be fairly generic and studenty. I'm sure Facebook pictures will fill you in on the details.


_{Lol Coxhill - can't wait}

On Saturday I'm off to see avant-garde saxophonist Lol Coxhill over at the Rising Sun Arts Centre. It's an eclectic venue (in the truest sense of the word), and I've seen some very good gigs there, and some very bad ones too. Hopefully this will be of the former variety, as I've heard very good things about Lol (got to love the name) but never seen him live.

Sunday, therefore, is for Rock Band and sleeping. Exciting times eh?

PRINCESS

As part of my 'teach myself Perl' initiative, I've been knocking together a little game I made up one long car journey by the name of 'PRINCESS'. Just like in those puzzle magazines people used to take on trains before mp3 players and knives became popular, the aim is to get from one word to another, changing one letter at a time.

The twist in PRINCESS, is that you're playing against someone else. You'll be given a starting word (say, 'beat') and each of you will also have a secret target word ('princess' and 'frogs' maybe). You can change one letter at a time each (that is, change an existing letter, add any letter, or remove any letter), but you must make a real word on your go.

You can't use a word that's already been used, and you can pass on your go.

The two player version can be pretty fun (unless you're playing against my computer player, who always wins), as can the single player (I can get from 'beat' to 'princess' in 9 moves, can you beat that?).

I'm currently working on beefing up the speed of the computer player (he currently takes a fair amount of time once we get down to long words, but I suspect this issue may be due to Levenshtein rather than myself). I'll release the code once I'm done there.

The game's pretty fun, but the coolest thing so far has been allowing the computer to pick a random start and target word from the Scrabble 'TWL' dictionary. When it does this, games are often impossible, but I find myself playing again and again just to see random words.

My favourite so far is 'microgrooves'. I have to use that in a game of Scrabble sometime. I'd even get 50 points if I put 'grooves' onto the end of 'micro' for using up my letters ^^

--

An alternative version you can play in the car, by the way, is to pick a random starting move and then simply go around the group changing one thing. The loser is the first person who can't make a word.

No-one can say a word that's been said before, or a derivative of a word that's been said. So, you can't have 'shotguns' or 'shotgunned' if you've already had 'shotgun'. Feel free to argue about multiple meanings all you want for extra entertainment ('page' = piece of paper, 'paged' = received a text message, so it's not a derivative of 'page' - etc).

Ghost is also good fun, and requires nothing other than brains, ears and vocal cords.

I (Still) Hate BT

My first series of 'I Hate BT' posts generated a bunch of comments, and still continues to drive a lot of the traffic that I get to my blog through the search engines. Clearly the customer service hasn't improved, as I recently found out to my detriment.

As I'm moving out of this house soon, I dared to actually ring BT 'customer services' once I could find a number that worked on SayNoTo0870 (awful website, great service). I rang them up and was put through nearly immediately to a friendly, English-speaking girl - despite the fact that all I wanted to do was cancel my contract.

We quickly established that no, I didn't need to transfer it, and definitely couldn't be convinced to keep it, and agreed on the date of July 9th (my birthday, and day my tenancy ends) to cancel the service. The girl was even so kind as to confirm this all over again at the end before wishing me a nice day and hanging up.

Perfect.


_{Perfect? Yeah, right}

A few days later (June 13th), my phone line had been cut off, and my contract with BT cancelled. I rang up to enquire as to why this was, and no-one seemed quite sure. So I asked to have my contract re-instated...but that wasn't possible. I could, however, have my line reactivated - after two working days (ie: June 17th).

This would seem a reasonable solution until you realise that, because BT have a monopoly on the landline network, my Sky Broadband needs to go through my BT line. And, because BT are horrifically inefficient at provisioning lines to broadband providers, it would take 15 days for my Broadband to be back online, after the 4 day wait for my BT line to come back. By this time I'd have moved out..

When I rang BT again to point out the inconvenience of not having the internet at home for 22 days because they screwed up, they didn't seem particularly bothered - even after I explained I worked in IT, and often did so from home. After thirty minutes, they did eventually acquiesce to my requests for compensation though...by offering to credit my account with £1.93.

£1.93, for 22 days without internet at home. It's even more of a slap in the face when you do the maths and work out that's how much I've paid them in advance for the service they cancelled - it's just what they legally owe me, not even compensation.

I'll be going with Virgin's cable offerings next year - it's crazy that I'm having to choose my TV and Broadband provider based on the fact that BT have all of the hardware for landlines, and other companies are forced to go through them to provide a service.

Buzzword Document Generator

Sitting in a meeting a week or so ago, I started noting down some of the more amusing phrases that popped out ('We need to take advantage of Kirsty', 'It's just like pushing drugs' and so on). Once these dried up I instead focused my efforts on a quick and hacky bit of javascript to generate buzzwords. I came up with a little page that generates entire documents/emails that seem to make sense, if only you were slightly better at management.

You can go try my Buzzword Document Generator for yourselves, or just read this particular random generation here. It's not too intelligent, so you might find the odd grammatical mishap, but it should be fairly sturdy. There's a few comedy ones in there too for fun :)

--

The Corporation's synergistic policy superannuates this new generation of compatible and time-phased development effort.

Furthermore, massively underperformant human resources can't possibly matter to an alarming increase in underpromising marketing reach.

The virtual team's innovatory action pack motivates tactics in the area of monitored and compatible business requirements.

Management has therefore decided unfortunately laughable snacks provide a safeguard against the decline of highly-performant integrated systems.

Our parallelised thought pool lamentably lacks tactics in the area of responsive and monitored learning.

Management has therefore decided inestimably boxed-in contributors significantly develop an alarming increase in parallelised business satisfaction.

My next-gen thought pool superannuates skillsets including optimal and time-phased functionality.

This leads to the conclusion that inestimably non-team playing contributors help shape an overreaching strategem in the area of synergetic consumer demand.

Epic eh?

Off to Newquay!

I'm off to Newquay for a week-long beach party over the next week, so there won't be any updates. I'll be tweeting though, if you're still interested in keeping up with me.

Xx

New Hardware!

I've been shopping, on and off, for two months or so to find a proper set of amplification for my beautiful new bass, and I think I've finally arrived at a decision.

I like the Ashdown MAG 600H EvoII head - it's got an awesome range of sounds from deep, low and fuzzy up to a great bright and treble-y tone. It's also got a bunch of cool stuff to play with like a sub-harmonic generator, which reproduces whatever I'm playing an octave lower for bone-crushing depth.

I was tempted by the Ashdown ABM 500 Evo III head, but the kind folks over at Guitarworks have let me play around with both a few times, and I just can't see anything extra in there that I'd ever use.


_{The top bit}

I can fit a lot of noise-making devices with the power the above gives me, but I think that all I need for now should be the Ashdown MAG 410T speakers. It's four 10-inch speakers (100W each) and then a small 10W tweeter for the high notes.


_{And the noisy bit}

Should be pretty leet - going to get it next week :)

Camping with the boys II

Apparently, last year's camping in the Peak District didn't quite involve enough walking up mountains, so last weekend I accompanied Will Thompson, Tim McCormick and 'Terra' Ben Duff up to the Lake District for some walking.

Not having done my homework, I presumed this would be a stroll around some lakes, popping into one of the numerous lakeside pubs every hour or so. Apparently, however, I was mistaken, and the lake district is in fact, full of mountains.

We arrived a bit late on the Friday, so the only walking we got done was on the way to the drinking house. A bottle of wine apiece was followed by some stumbling home - with all of us managing to avoid the nearby river.

On the Saturday, we left early, and I was a bit surprised to see us walking up, and up, and up. Things weren't as flat as expected - and lots of short breaks to have a sit down and audition for various musicals were in order, given my hangover.


_{I don't recall quite what we were pointing at...}

Soon enough we were at the entrance to Striding Edge. No-one had thought to mention to me that we'd be crossing a path of certain death that was a couple of feet wide, with long long drops to either side.


_{Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah}

Upon Striding Edge, I had the choice of either walking directly across the top of the rocks (like the seemingly suicidal chap below) or taking a 'path' of sorts just off to the side in places. Once my fear of heights got the better of me, I took to the path, until it crumbled away from me - fortunately I was holding onto some rocks at the time, but I was still scared out of my skin by the experience.


_{Looks impressive, until you consider that there must have been enough space to the side for a cameraman at this point}

The day before I went walking, someone fell 200ft from Striding Edge, and there were a spate of deaths for walkers scrambling over the ridge earlier this year. Fortunately no-one informed me of this in advance, or I doubt I'd have made it over the top.

Next up it was a run down the side of a slightly less steep mountain (only a 45 degree gradient) to the beautiful lake surrounded upon all sides by the mountains we'd just been walking over, followed by a long (but safe) walk home.


_{Lovely lake}

A gorgeous meal in a surprisingly good restaurant that night was followed by another day's walking on Sunday. We found an interesting looking National Trust path from an ancient guidebook, and then somehow completely lost the path - possibly because it didn't exist any more.

Instead, we climbed up a river for a while (last year, Will climbed down a river) before reaching the amusingly (yet accurately) titled 'Surprise View', and then finally walking at ground level next to a nice lake.


_Surprise!

Last year, we popped off to nearby Bakewell, and bought some Bakewell Tarts from a Bakewell Tart. This year, we headed off to Kendal to buy some Kendal Mint Cake...from Woolworths. It was local produce, but apparently was only sold in high-street chain stores - bizarre.

On the way home, we played GHOST until that got boring, at which point I invented a new game. I've now called that PRINCESS, after a logo I accidentally doodled at a customer meeting when my colleague managed to talk about databases for an hour and a half, leaving me in silence, but I'll blog about that later, when I've finished computerising it.



So, all in all, camping was good fun all around, but I'm definitely in favour of somewhere flatter next year. Any suggestions? It'll have to be near somewhere famous for its confectionary..

So, so close

I've been guilty of neglecting Guitar Hero III for Rock Band recently, but I was just browsing through some pictures on my phone when I was reminded that I've not even managed to complete GH III yet - let alone perfect it. Disgraceful eh?


_{I actually wanted to cry after this}

I'll complete this finger-shredding epic one day...honestly. Just as soon as I beat Run To The Hills and Won't Be Fooled Again on drums on expert on Rock Band.

:(

Fun on the tube

I've been working in London recently, here's a few amusing little titbits:

1. I was sitting in the carriage next to an empty driver's cabin, and looking through the window to see what the exciting life of a tube driver looked like. On the 'emergency pod' was a listing of all emergency equipment stored inside (flares, first aid kit, etc) - and at the bottom of the list on a post-it note was written 'orange Kit-Kat'.

2. Tube Surfing. It's not really relevant to the last couple of days in London, but I've recently been falling in love with an Urban Sport with the unfortunate name of Tube Surfing. Unfortunate, because it's the same name given to another very dangerous sport I just linked to. This one, far more tame, involves getting a bit drunk (or a lot) and then seeing how far you can travel on the tube without holding on or falling over. Central Line West is a nightmare for this.

3. Guards love the feeling of power they get when they can close a station to newcomers because it's too busy. One of them chased someone who sneaked through yesterday to yell at her - and the other hundred or so people 'sneaked' behind him without him noticing. His face when he turned around was priceless.

Edit: 4. Tube Poker. Thanks to Gareth for the link in the comments. This looks like the best game ever.

Back to my meeting now, more fun later.

Xx

Brummie Baywatch

A re-enactment of Baywatch at the 'Floozy in the Jacuzzi' in Birmingham town centre:



With thanks to Terra for the link :)

Google Zurich

From TheCoolHunter (via Dean):

Google Zurich - Anything but neutral
_{Google hire some 'inventive' designers to re-work their Zurich offices. The designers come up with some of the most amazing stuff I've ever seen.}

How unbelievably hot is that? Not a single row of cubicles in sight, nor corporate logos and colours splashed around the place. I'm not entirely sure whether it'd work for everyday jobs - I can't imagine going through the tedium of checking my emails when surrounded by such stuff - I'd probably go and try to invent something instead.



At Microsoft, if I want to be alone with my thoughts, I find the best places either to be a walk around the (lovely) lake, or to jump into a 'syndicate room' - a small box room with an oversized table, no windows, a whiteboard and moderately comfortable chairs. Doesn't quite beat that bathtub does it? ;)

I'm particularly impressed by two facts in this story (as well as the awesome pictures). The first is that the design team were led entirely by the staff who would be using the offices - they were never even given a brief. That's a superb methodology, not just for office design, but for pretty much every problem I can think of, and it says a lot about the Google culture.

Secondly, the whole thing came in at around the same budget as a normal re-fit! Amazing.