Jonny
QUUAAAAAID!!!
If you’re a fan of the film Total Recall, Arnold’s futuristic action romp on mars, things just got a bit closer to reality with SpaceX’s announcement of their plan to blast off and establish a permanent colony on the red planet. Central to the proposal would be the most powerful rocket ever to fly, using 42 engines it could lift up to 300 tonnes into orbit, over twice the payload of the most powerful rocket to date the Saturn IV. SpaceX’s evil genius CEO is hoping to have a million strong population by the end of the century. I’m not hoping for but would definitely like to see some space battles with our future Martian enemies.
Charlotte
Tea
Here at the SteadyGo office, tea is a big deal. We consume copious amount of the lovely warm light brown liquid on a daily basis – averaging around 4 cups a day per staff member. For the tea maker this can become quite a task, having to memorise how everyone likes their tea is very important. Who likes sugar? Who likes it strong? Who likes it in a certain mug? You start to really think (or I do anyway while I’m waiting for the teabag to perfectly brew with the water) about what your ‘tea style’ says about you, so here are my thoughts…
The strong one: You’re reliable, responsible and serious. Strong tea usually lasts longer so I reckon you’re a natural problem solver and you like to ponder and plough through workloads.
The weak one: I reckon you’re really laid back and thoughtful. In my opinion a weak tea is criminal!
The sugary one: You love a laugh and are a friendly fella.
The fruity one: I reckon you’re a sensitive soul, a mixture of emotions with a hint of passion thrown in.
The green one: The healthy one, which we all know tastes like ass. You’re probably a bit of a show off and an attention seeker, on the plus side you’re more likely to have a banging body.
Decaf – I’m not even entertaining this as a tea option. What’s the point?
Paul
Tickets, please
Nothing fills me with more joy than when one of my favorite bands announce that they’ll be taking to the road. 2016, so far, has been pretty good for these kind of announcements. Yet despite this there was still one announcement I had been eagerly awaiting and this week it finally came. Wednesday morning saw tickets released for Iron Maiden’s UK run of their Aztec themed ‘Book of Souls’ tour. As soon as the dates were announced, the Leeds date was circled with a big red pen and the tickets purchased. I was fortunate enough to see them headline Download Festival this year on the same tour and it was probably the best live show I have seen a band put on. So as a child excitedly awaits Christmas, the countdown has now started for 7pm May 11th 2017.
Photo credit: http://ironmaiden.com/gallery
Will
SoundCloud Go or Spotify
Other than YouTube, SoundCloud has been my way of listening to and finding new music. A few days ago I tried to play songs from an up and coming artist only to find restricted 30 second previews. If I wanted to listen to the full songs, I had to purchase a SoundCloud Go account.
The paid subscription service that is SoundCloud Go has come as a way of rivaling companies like Spotify and Apple Music. The change compares to Spotify’s paid service as it allows you to have access to the music libraries without having internet access and listen without advertisements.
The main reason I prefer SoundCloud to Spotify is being able to find new artists and huge amounts of remixes and original songs that anyone can upload. The fact Spotify tends not to have lesser known artists is why it didn’t appeal to me enough to upgrade.
I’ll more than likely upgrade to one of the two, so its whether or not I accept that Spotify will have far fewer songs but a better quality of service and extra features and rely on Discover Weekly to find music or do I upgrade to SoundCloud Go in order to listen to the songs I used to for free previously but do so offline as well?
Sam
Cake
This week I had a piece of cake as big as my head.
I couldn’t even finish it.
That’s not like me. I’m a huge fan of sweet things – cakes, biscuits, chocolate (all three rolled together in some way if possible), usually with a coffee on the side. Regular readers of our blog will know that I had a piece of flapjack a few months ago that I felt compelled to write about, but this piece of cake was something else.
Originally I intended to sit with a coffee and do a bit of work, but as I ordered the coffee something caught my eye. Sitting there on the counter, about the width and height of a beer barrel, was a chocolate and peanut butter cake (I knew that’s what it was as there was a sign next to it). I was in no way hungry – I’d not long since had my lunch, but I thought “sod it, it’s nearly winter, I need fattening up” and I ordered a slice.
I cannot explain how big the slice I got served was. I don’t even think slice is the right word. ‘Block’ maybe. Anyway, it was bloody lovely but, try as I might (and I did try… for an hour), I just couldn’t finish it and I had to leave some.
I can’t stop thinking about it.
I wonder if they’ve thrown it away yet.
J.D
Plants
I have an intense, some would even say passionate love for the colour green. Plants are green, therefore I love plants. Aside from enabling us to be alive on this planet, they generally look pretty cool. Forrest and jungles look amazing so why not have that inside? This is not a new concept I’m suggesting here. People have been putting plants indoors since… I’m not entirely sure. Definitely at least the Roman times as I’ve seen a few plants knocking around in the background of indoor scenes in films such as Spartacus and Gladiator and they are both certain to be 100% historically accurate…
We have a few plants in the SteadyGo office but we need more in my opinion. Lots more. If it were up to me we would have to hack our way to our desks with machetes on a morning while some kind of exotic bird calls out from an unspecified part of the office and a monkey swings by on a vine. No spiders though, they can all just fu…erm, go away.
You have to look after the plants though, but sometimes they just wither and die anyway or in the case of development director Jonny Sedman’s Aloe Vera plant, become so corrupted and diseased that they literally fall apart in your hands when trying to water them. I’d never seen that happen before.
Our office cleaner brought us an Orchid which is a strange plant, it doesn’t appear to have any soil in the pot. Is that normal?
The reception plant is the most impressive though, it’s a gloriously tropical beauty which looks like it will eventually encase the neon sign in a leafy embrace. I’m just hoping it’s not a Triffid.
Also this week a big thanks goes out to Jake, who has designed and built my new website which you can have a look at by following the links in Jakes blog post below.
Jake
Busy bee
After spending a lot of my time crafting and perfecting the new commercial section of a website for an estate agency in the Isle of Man, learning the basics of Visual Studio and redesigning one of my fellow employees websites (Futureabstract.co.uk if you’re interested in abstract art you should definitely check it out), the time has come where one of our internal projects that has been in the pipeline for several months finally comes on to my desk.
Yes I have been tasked with creating the new SteadyGo app: Brewlette, a fantastically logical idea for an office with problems making brews. Initially I was drafted in as the new brew maker but after a while they realised I didn’t want to make brews as much as the rest of them! So here I am now, creating the new app which will take out all of the troubles of deciding whose brew round it is. Like a game of roulette everyone who wants a brew will go on the app and metaphorically put their names in the hat. The app then randomly picks a steadygoer out of the metaphorical hat and assigns them to make the next brew round. When I first heard about this idea during my interview for the job I was amazed by how simple and creative it was. It is one thing the shows what a creative team we are and I am delighted to be the one working on it till its end! (Even if it will take up my whole apprenticeship to complete).
After doing a bit of research I found that the best way for me to get started on this challenge is to use Apache Cordova, a JavaScript based framework that allows you to create native style apps using only the very familiar HTML, CSS and JavaScript which I’m not too familiar with, however this will be a great opportunity to learn it! Cordova also allows you to take advantage of web based technologies such as HTML 5 and Bootstrap which is a huge lifesaver in terms of styling the thing! As the project goes on I will be sure to update you on my progress and any new knowledge I’ve picked up along the way. Also a polite reminder go check out JD’s new website at www.futureabstract.co.uk it would be greatly appreciated.
Tom
Opportunist Advertising
I am sure that everyone else was as personally affected by the end of an era recently as I was. This era was, obviously, the glorious reign of Brangelina who are unfortunately currently filling for divorce, reminding us once again that Gods suffer the same fate as humans.
A Norwegian airline company took advantage of this tragedy in an amazing way to promote cheap airline flights.
Opportunist marketing can be fantastic if done right and can be an brilliant method of cheap, effective advertising.
James
Penguins and Guinea Pigs
Because I’m a massive geek, much of my week has been spent obsessing over Google’s Penguin update, which they announced last Friday, which turns the much-discussed “Penguin updates” into a real-time feature… Oh dear… You’re already bored. I can see your eyes have glazed over…
Basically this news makes life easier for SEO practitioners; in the past new clients would come to us because their last agency did lots of spammy, black-hat things, which led to a ranking penalty… But even once you’ve fixed everything that can be fixed, Google often refuses to let the site recover until the next penguin update, which could be a long, painful wait!
Now Penguin should run in real time. Hooray! And, if Google’s “granular” language can be believed, spammy techniques are more likely to be ignored, rather than punished, by the algorithm from now on.
But manual penalties are still a thing, so don’t be tempted to delve into the black hat box of tricks assuming that you’re safe – you’re not.
In other news, for those of you who read last week’s sad update, last night my girlfriend brought two guinea pigs home. They’re named Steve and Colin. Pictures will follow once they’re settled in and have stopped hiding.
This weeks music pick – CONCEPT NEUF
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