Unexpected visitors

The Critter came in this afternoon from her trip to take care of the chickens.  

"There are two birds out there that look like young turkeys or maybe those guinea things we used to have."  

Huh? We had a couple of guinea hens about four or five years ago. They lasted about three weeks before they wandered off into the woods and hadn't been seen since 

I went and took a look.  

Sure enough. There were two guinea fowl stopping by for a visit.   I love the clucking chirp they make as they bob through the grass picking out bugs. They have a bare head and an almost prehistorically ugly look to them that I find fascinating to watch. 

I've no idea where they could've come from. The only other guy I know who has guineas lives on the other side of town, about 5 or 6 miles away.  

It's not possible that ours survived this long. They wouldn't let me get too close, but, I know ours didn't have the white splash on their breasts that one of these had.

They hung out for a while, visiting with the chickens behind their fence, who really didn't know what to make of these strange looking birds.  The two were still in our yard when the sun went down, wandering around and searching out whatever ticks or bugs they could find. 

I don't expect we'll see them again, but it was nice to have these two stop by.  

Another #MAKE Friday

To follow on to our last MAKE project, we got interested in what other metrics we could display in creative ways. Again, we went to look at some less traditional measurements at my company, that reinforced or highlight the company values. It's interesting to display revenue or shipments. But we have plenty of ways to do that already with intelligent and mobile dashboards, etc. 

Our head of HR suggested that we pick up the hours of volunteer time our colleagues contribute: as a standard policy, everybody at my company gets a paid day a year to volunteer at whatever charitable organization or institute is meaningful to them. It's one of my favorite benefits (obviously. Twice.) But the reality is that not enough people actually remember to do it.  

If we make the metric more visible, would we see that change?

I have to think so. The pages printed has gone down since we deployed the cube. I think we can have an even greater effect on this fantastic benefit as well. 

What I really wanted to create was a split-flap display - like you would see in old train stations. The clatter and the action of the split-flap is just fantastic. It draws you in, and strikes a chord with me because of the audible reinforcement of seeing the information change. Unfortunately, everyone has ripped those things out some years ago to switch to digital screens (yawn), and they're nigh-impossible to find. (although I did find one or two examples of building them entirely from scratch. But even I'm not that ambitious).   Sure, you can fake it on a big screen, but that just didn't tug on my creative urges enough. 

So we kicked this idea around for a while with the team, looking for an alternative idea that blended that tactile attraction, but was simple enough to do in the spare time of the few of us who were working on it. 

One of the programmers on my team had a couple of old, cheap Android-based tablets. he made one of them into a single digit flipper and showed it to me. Voila.  

Let's just pile up a bunch of individual screens to do the trick, create a web service to change each counter, and nest the whole thing in something that 'softened' the digital aspect of the display. We bought a few more old tablets, and I took one of the leftover rafters from our 300 year old farmhouse that had been taken out and saved in my barn to create a cradle.  We spray painted the non-screen parts of the tablet a uniform matte black to further take away the digital reminders (no buttons or logos needed), and a colleague from my team and I set it up in the hallway of the main office without telling anyone what it was. 

We let it sit there for a week or so, displaying a number (267), smiling enigmatically when people asked about it.  Our CEO was giving some partners from another company a tour - even with all of the art and scientific instrumentation surrounding it, this stood out enough for them to ask about it. 

It wasn't labeled. It was just a set of numbers. It made people ask. 

That's exactly what we wanted.  

After about ten days, we released another video - I wrote the script, but yet another one of our team voiced it. Again, I think this said it better.  

The flip counter meter we created with some re-purposed android tablets and a little creative app writing.

This one was a great collaboration amongst my team. It was fun to see how into it different people got, and certainly met the objective of both producing something that combined utility, creativity and artfulness, and of getting the team inspired to innovate and think differently.

We've got another project on the design board that'll combine a couple of the best parts of each of these.  

More fun to come!  

Morning routines

I have a summer morning routine. 

I get up a little before 6, shower, and dress for work. I walk down stairs and step over the Saint Bernard, who usually sleeps on the stairway landing. She might thump her tail a couple of times to acknowledge my presence, but rarely gets up until the rest of the family arises sometime later.

I throw my L.L. Bean boots on, and walk out to water the pigs and check their food and give them a scratch. I usually give them a small bucket of raw peanuts for a good morning treat. They love them, and happily munch away. 

 I throw a cabbage or some scrap greens & weeds out to the chickens. They are up with the dawn and usually greet me with curious clucks and squawks.

After I talk to the hens for a few minutes, I'll walk through one of the garden beds to see how things are fairing. 

This morning, I noticed my squash have a riot of blossoms under those big, itchy leaves. 

I have 3 different kinds of squash planted in this raised bed - the near rows are zucchini, and the back two rows are an acorn and hubbard squash. I always end up planting 2 or 3 more plants than I really should, forgetting how aggressively these things grow. But who cares. The chickens will eat anything we don't, and I always give in to the temptation to pinch off some of the blossoms as they show up to stuff and fry and eat. One of my favorite treats, and a rarity unless you grow your own squash, as the blossoms wilt so quickly. 

Then I change out of my Bean boots and into my dress shoes, grab two Diet Cokes and head out into the morning traffic and throw on whatever podcast I am listening to on the radio, and am at peace with the world.