Manufacturing guy-at-large.

test footnote

Added on by Spencer Wright.

this is an example footnote post.1 it's just here to show how footnotes should display.

i wonder what else this looks like.

does it look like something you would want to read? something interesting, engaging, and informative? something not-too-lorem-ipsum?2

what about blockquotes?

One of our first observations was that many meetings weren’t working as well as they should. A well-run meeting is a great thing; it empowers people to make decisions, solve problems, and share information. But badly-run meetings are a demoralizing waste of time. We didn’t want our employees to waste either time or energy, so we gathered input and made some recommendations to help make meetings more effective.

i also like the idea of explaining complicated ideas3 inline. does that work?

One of the most famous opening lines is the one from Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities.

  1. As you can see, this will show a classy popup next to your footnote, cool eh?↩

  2. You know, Lorem Ipsum. Fucking wiki that shit.↩

  3. what, do you need me to explain *everything?*.↩

  4. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." More quotes on wikiquote.↩

triboro

Added on by Spencer Wright.

you can call it whatever you want, but it'll always be triboro to me. 

three cool things about randall's island: 

  • it forms one landmass with ward's island, to which it was joined by landfill in the 1930s. by - who else - Robert Moses' Parks Department.
  • pedestrian/cyclist entry by the southern section of the triboro bridge is pretty dramatic while staying mostly on a human scale.  the majority of the span has a handrail but no guard, so you get an unobstructed view of randall's island to the west, astoria to the east, and hell's gate to the north.
  • the island is *hopping* on a saturday in early june, and it's really nice there.   the breeze off the east river is delicious, and the reggaeton is charming, and anyway you're there with friends and a football and cheap beer, so who's complaining.

first reaction: McKinsey Global Institute's Distruptive Technologies report, May 2013

Added on by Spencer Wright.

it's taking a few days to get through, but last month's MGI report on disruptive technologies (n.b., i'm as sick of the term "disruptive" as you are, but will leave it to someone else to come up with something better) is an interesting and thought provoking read.  i won't go into all the details, but a few standout points are worth mentioning.  [note: you can find the report, and follow along with me, here.] 

the ranking.  let's face it: this is why i'm reading the thing.  mckinsey set out to determine which technologies are likely to have the greatest economic impact between now and 2025, a subject which impacts me not only as a long-term consumer and member of society, but also as a guy-who-claims-to-be-shifting-careers (n.b. the number of levels on which you could read this are...more than one).  now, just because MGI decided that the mobile internet is likely to have the greatest impact doesn't mean i'm about to spend the next twelve years working on MQTT (or peddling cell phones, for that matter).  but all things being equal, i want to be in a field that, 1. i can make an impact in; 2. i can leverage my ability to learn to provide high economic value for myself and the organizations i work with; 3. is compelling from a "we're-changing-the-world (in a good way)" perspective; etc.  and to the extent that mckinsey's ranking captures at least some of these factors, i was excited to see what they had to say. 

a few notes on the entries themselves:

  • as MGI notes midway through the executive summary: "The link between hype and potential is not clear."  noted. 
  • yeah, 3d printing is on there.  at 9th place, leading up the list's long tail.  
  • basically, computers rock.  by my count, the top six entries amount to "machines taking shit over."
  • whatever you think about fracking, it's a big business opportunity for the next year or two. 
  • solar/wind/waves are cool, but energy storage - on both a small (e.g. hybrid car batteries) and large (smart energy grids, with the ability to transport and store large amounts of energy efficiently)  - is cooler.
  • graphene, man.  and, like, nanotubes.

it's also worth giving a huge shout-out to the Internet of Things, which is projected to have an impact larger than the bottom five contestants combined.  it also has the potential to combine with a number of other items on the list, multiplying the impact:

We see that certain emerging technologies could be used in combination, reinforcing each other and potentially driving far greater impact...It is possible that the first commercially available nano-electromechanical machines (NEMS), molecule-sized machines, could be used to create very advanced sensors for wearable mobile Internet devices or Internet of Things applications.
the top of the list ends up being a list of the technologies that are the most general purpose, and thus have the most immediate day-to-day impact on consumers.   the effect is largely positive - a feeling which i share myself (are you fucking *kidding* me you're not excited for google glass?!??).

Many of the technologies on our list have the potential to deliver the lion’s share of their value to consumers, even while providing producers with sufficient profits to encourage technology adoption and production. Technologies like next- generation genomics and advanced robotics could deliver major health benefits, not all of which may be usable by health-care payers and providers, many of whom face growing pressure to help improve patient outcomes while also reducing health-care costs. Many technologies will also play out in fiercely competitive consumer markets—particularly on the Internet, where earlier McKinsey research has shown consumers capture the majority of the economic surplus created. Mobile Internet, cloud, and the Internet of Things are prime examples. Also, as technologies are commercialized and come into widespread use, competition tends to shift value to consumers. 

but on the labor side, the situation is quite different.   as Thomas Friedman wrote in late april, "this huge expansion in an individual’s ability to do all these things comes with one big difference: more now rests on you."  MGI writes:

The nature of work will change, and millions of people will require new skills.  It is not surprising that new technologies make certain forms of human labor unnecessary or economically uncompetitive and create demand for new skills. This has been a repeated phenomenon since the Industrial Revolution: the mechanical loom marginalized home weaving while creating jobs for mill workers. However, the extent to which today’s emerging technologies could affect the nature of work is striking. Automated knowledge work tools will almost certainly extend the powers of many types of workers and help drive top-line improvements with innovations and better decision making, but they could also automate some jobs entirely. Advanced robotics could make more manual tasks subject to automation, including in services where automation has had less impact until now. Business leaders and policy makers will need to find ways to realize the benefits of these technologies while creating new, innovative ways of working and providing new skills to the workforce.

and later: 

One clear message: the nature of work is changing. Technologies such as advanced robots and knowledge work automation tools move companies further to a future of leaner, more productive operations, but also far more technologically advanced operations. The need for high-level technical skills will only grow, even on the assembly line. Companies will need to find ways to get the workforce they need, by engaging with policy makers and their communities to shape secondary and tertiary education and by investing in talent development and training; the half-life of skills is shrinking, and companies may need to get back into the training business to keep their corporate skills fresh.

as is my wont, my tendency is to read the paper from the perspective of the oft-mentioned "business leader."  it strikes me that the advice MGI gives business leaders is the advice we should all take, albeit to varying scales (emphasis and comments below are mine):

As these disruptive technologies continue to evolve and play out, it will be up to business leaders, entrepreneurs, policy makers, and citizens to maximize their opportunities while dealing with the challenges. Business leaders need to be on the winning side of these changes. [snw: yeah... individuals too.] They can do that by being the early adopters or innovators or by turning a disruptive threat into an opportunity. The first step is for leaders to invest in their own technology knowledge. Technology is no longer down the hall or simply a budget line; it is the enabler of virtually any strategy, whether by providing the big data analytics that reveal ways to reach new customer groups, or the Internet of Things connections that enable a whole new profit center in after-sale support. Top leaders need to know what technologies can do and how to bend it to their strategic goals. Leaders cannot wait until technologies are fully baked to think about how they will work for—or against— them. And sometimes companies will need to disrupt their own business models before a rival or a new competitor does it for them.

ultimately, it is up to each individual to decide he own path through a shifting landscape.  but the opportunity is out there, and it can only be realized on the individual level if the individual decides to act as his own business leader, his own policy maker:

Policy makers can find ways to turn the disruptions into positive change; they can encourage development of the technologies that are most relevant to their economies...The challenge for policy makers—and for citizens—is enormous. It is a good time for policy makers [snw: and individuals!] to review how they address technology issues and develop a systematic approach; technology stops for no one, and governments [snw: again: and individuals!] cannot afford to be passive or reactive.

from Quora

Added on by Spencer Wright.

this evening, someone named Wen shi Di asked me to answer his question on Quora.  i did, and i enjoyed doing so very much.  my answer is reposted below.

 

 

If one of the key tenets of 3D Printing is "If you can imagine it, you can print it," then will cultures where imagination and critical thinking are discouraged, suffer a disadvantage in technolgy adoption?

It's true, the ability to create complex structures - negative draft angles, interlocking parts, voids, etc. - is much touted in the current press surrounding 3D printing.  And for some physical product designers (jewelers come to mind), that ability is already having a significant impact on the creative range of printed product.  3D printing frees the designer from manufacturing constraints, and designers that are able to discard those shackles will likely see some creative benefit.

I see a few caveats to this, though, which dilute the net effect significantly.

1. I would question whether "unimaginative" cultures actually produce less creative content than liberal ones.  For instance, the electronic music movement allowed for the democratization of music in many ways.  Did that discourage the creative output of countries like Japan and Germany?  

(It's worth noting here that I'm not even sure how to determine a consensus on which cultures discourage imagination or critical thinking.  But compare the number of google results for "germany imaginative" (6.3M), "japan imaginative" (5.4M), and "america imaginative" (11.6M).  Similarly: "germany creative" (289M); "japan creative" (310M); "america creative" (608M).  Of course, "america" is a bit vague, but "USA imaginative" gets 7.7M and "USA creative" gets 458M, so I think it's safe to say that the English-speaking internet, as crawled by Google, thinks that the US is more creative and imaginative than Germany and Japan.)

2. It remains to be seen whether 3D printing becomes a large scale means of production unto itself, as opposed to a prototyping tool for injection-molded and machined parts.  For most consumers, 3D printed objects aren't yet at the quality where they're desirable as home objects.  Unless FDM machines improve part quality by an order of magnitude (let's be honest: fused deposition parts look and feel like crap), I doubt they'll ever produce objects that consumers want to be touching or seeing.  Even SLA parts lack the strength and weight of most popular injection molded parts (n.b., this is all coming from someone who refuses to put even an injection molded plastic or CNCd aluminum case on his iPhone, so take my comments on user experience with a grain of salt).  It's possible that SLS, if production costs can be reduced, could make consumer-ready product in the future, and who knows what other technology is nearby - or what the consumers of the future will regard as "consumer-ready."  But as it stands, even the most creative designers are still largely constrained to designing for traditional manufacturing methods, if they want their designs to be produced and distributed with traditional supply channels and to a consumer base that's accustomed to the look and feel of traditionally manufactured parts.

3. Even if the designers in "unimaginative" cultures like Germany and Japan fail to fully utilize the creative freedom allowed by 3D printing, and even if 3D printing does transition into being a source of large numbers of consumer and industrial goods, that doesn't necessarily mean that Germany and Japan will be left at a disadvantage with regard to technology adoption.  If SLA and SLS really do take off, there will be more than enough opportunity to go around.  Every industry that deals with physical goods will be affected on a massive level, and the inability to think in terms of objects that are solid and have positive draft angles likely won't make a whit of a difference.  Because regardless of how much the 3D printed jewelry of today resembles sea sponges, 3D printing needs to (and certainly will) be used for many more traditional uses for the technology to really take off.

 

my workspace, recently

Added on by Spencer Wright.

1. one's primary focus is to understand, and then achieve, what is important to himself.

2. what is important to me is, to a significant extent, my career. 

3. most nights, i find it of great importance that i spend a few hours focusing on my career. 

4. sometimes, when one is focusing on one's career at night, one needs a drink. 

5. white wine is nice in the summer, even if all you've got is a whiskey glass. 

6. mic6 tooling plate makes for a pretty nice coaster.   also it's useful when you're measuring things.

7. seltzer with a little orange flower water and a slice of lemon is also pretty refreshing. 

8. folks who do 3d design and *don't* use a 3d mouse are crazy. 

9. moisturizer is important. 

10. things that smell a nice way are nice.  my candle kinda sucks but it works in a pinch. 

1. thumbtacks are cool.  i got some aluminum ones that i like, and i like using them. 

2. cork is cool.  i got some raw cork bark when i was in portugal a few years ago, and i like it. 

3. managing a tackboard is weird.  also, tacks aren't a great way to hang coiled-up iphone cables, but they work in a pinch. 

4. spare buttons are totally inconvenient to keep.  so you're at your desk and you just pin them to your tackboard. 

5. i've gotten two tickets on my bicycle in the past 6 weeks. 

6. books are dying. 

7. books are kinda nice. 

8. if you're going to make a book, make it specific to paper.  paper is a great medium to display high resolution data, which makes it great for graphics, layout, texture, etc.  it's not particularly great for words. 

9. whatever.  i have a couple of books in my place now. i rarely look at them.   i did just get the 2012 Feltron Report, which is really beautiful and which i'm super excited about.

10. i live on top of a loud, bright corner.  which has its pluses and its minuses. 

11. curtains are effective but the means for procuring and installing them are inconvenient, and the design options that are available are limited. 

12. linen is available by the yard for pretty cheap.  and it lets a nice amount of light in. 

13. the street is still loud and bright, but if you want to live with perfect environmental control, you can totally just find a cave and move there. 

charlie o'donnell on careers

Added on by Spencer Wright.

this afternoon i attended a talk about career paths.  it was given at General Assembly  by Charlie O'Donnell, of Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, an early seed venture capital fund.  i found it highly engaging - O'Donnell really pumped me up for a full three hours - and i wanted to put my thoughts in writing here.

O'Donnell's basic message - which i won't, of cours, do justice here - was one that you can't help but encounter these days.  first, figure out what you want to do; make it fairly specific.  next, become an expert in it.  and create content, All. The. Time.  put yourself out there however you can, and the thing you want will end up coming to you.

O'Donnell approaches the subject in a way that is less self-help than The Landmark Forum, less doe-eyed than Malcolm Gladwell, and less gushy than Gary Vaynerchuk.  and moreover, i tend to be a defender (albeit a sometimes hesitant one) of all of those.  The Forum, despite its cultishness, is at the least a great source of perspective on how fucked up *everyone* is; better yet, i found it to be a powerful, if somewhat troubling, experience.  the worst thing i can say about Gladwell is that he makes obvious-and-yet-totally-bizarre arguments about how putting in five years of full-time work (or, if you prefer, 416 straight days) on a subject will make anyone into an expert; on the other hand, he also pointed your truly towards Harvard's highly disturbing Project Implicit, which has done a lot to inform my idea of my own racial impartiality.  and Vaynerchuk, in spite (or because) of his ebullience, makes a good case for pushing lo-fi content for the sake of pushing content.

O'Donnell comes from a totally different place than the sources above, and gives totally practical advice.  like any reasonable person, he's short on promises: he states at the beginning that he's good at getting someone a job a year from now, as opposed to a week from now.  he goes on to recommend a diversion from the standard "paint the world with your resume" model, advocating instead that you reverse engineer your career.  this basically involves writing a list of job requirements for the position you want, and then getting them done.  which, when you consider (as O'Donnell says) that most young companies use "x years experience required" as a proxy for some number of job skills, isn't at all an impossible task.

like Vaynerchuk (and basically anyone with a head on their shoulders), O'Donnell insists that driven people should create content incessantly: 

i've been blogging for nine years now, and nine years from now, you will wish you had a nine-year old blog. 

he also talks convincingly about taking on consultation work in lieu of full-time employment (debunking, in the process, the notion that consultants must be more expert than employees; after all, consider whether companies should be committing long term to non-experts without trying them out on a limited basis first), and about productizing your contract work.  offering an hourly rate - however modest - to a company with limited resources is like offering to blow a hole - however modest - in the hull of a seaworthy boat (his analogy).  instead, he suggests that consultants work on a per-project basis, and structure those projects in such a way that the results - and expenditures - can be easily quantified.

O'Donnell also has interesting ideas about skating where the puck is going.  he notes that if your goal is to be, for example, a top tier UX designer, then you'll always be behind the curve if all you do is learn what the top tier UX designers know.  he argues instead that one should aim to learn what questions the top tier UX designers are asking, as that will provide real insight into the direction that the industry is headed, and will present real opportunities in one's career.

lastly, O'Donnell touched on something that i'm aware i haven't fully grasped how to display in my own career search: the ability to adapt to a shifting landscape.  growing companies need people who are able to grow, learn, and sometimes pivot, and it's important that individuals find ways to express that i am somebody who will have future knowledge.  i think this cannot be understated: knowing what's best suited for today's marketplace is great for today, but i want to be someone who is great for always.  when i consider career opportunities, i am looking for fields where the ability to learn is a key requirement; i must, in turn, find ways to express my ability to learn new things.

 

my own enthusiasm for the think market (i.e. the marketplace of ideas, books, and speakers ranging from self-help to self-empowerment to bizdev to behavioral economics) is, i would say, higher than most of my demographic.  regardless, i will gladly pay my $34 to spend a couple hours on a friday afternoon listening to a VC talk about how to get the job you want.  part of this has to do with my own place at the moment (viz., i don't have a full time job), but mostly i think it's just my disposition.  i like thinking strategy, and i like thinking self determination, and i like thinking that the only obstacle between where i am and where i can be is myself, and i like finding ways to make myself a non-obstacle.

since i stopped working on bicycle frames, i've learned a lot about what it is i want out of my career.  i like working with systems, and the bicycle world lacks the kinds of standardization that really excites me; it's very ad hoc.  i enjoy home design and architectural ergonomics, but the construction world is highly disorganized, and i have had a difficult time fitting into the contractor/tradesman structure.

when people ask what i have been (this is after they've asked what i do, to which i have taken to replying with "yeah, exactly"), i tell them that i've been an industrial/physical product designer (the phrase "robot doors" often pops up as well, but that's a different conversation).  when they ask what i want to do, i talk about the internet of things, home automation, and consumer electronics.  but the fact is that i'm figuring it out.  i genuinely enjoy learning, and i like keeping myself somewhere over my head (...that feeling of being good at what you do, but not being quite good enough, but knowing that you could be...).  i like being an early adopter, and i like having (and expressing) my somewhat-original opinions about what the world will be like.  and i want to be able to shape that.  having a vision of your world, and having the tools to make that vision come to life - at least a little bit - is a powerful and fulfilling experience.  

the hard part is knowing what my world will be.  when i was in college, my world was the campus cycling community.  i was plugged into it, and i had a real ability to shape it - and also, inevitably, to be shaped by it.  after i graduated, my world was a fifty year old building, and i shaped the hell out of it.  but so did my plumber, and his team of slackers who would show up late and spout off racist slurs at work - but who i was deeply dependent on for all of two years, an arrangement which is still troubling to recall.  when i was building bicycle frames, my world was smaller yet; my business was an extension of myself, and it suffered with my inability to engage with the broader community, which i felt increasingly detached from.  the chance to shape one's world comes with the danger that one's world begins to look like oneself, and when i shut down TCD, i began to finally process that lesson. 

of course, one doesn't always have that chance.  most recently, my work at RWD allowed me the chance to shape a project with totally new and powerful tools, but my ability to use those tools as i would prefer was limited by my position, and by the structure of the project.  i recognize now that i navigated my place there in ways that i would not repeat; at the same time, the project that i was shaping was troubled in ways that i could never hope to change, regardless of my tactics and abilities.  in the end, it became evident to me that no amount of sticking with my job would get me any closer to the career i wanted.  and i left. 

pivoting is tricky.  especially if all you know is that the path you're on isn't the right one. 

 

my path will play itself out, and i continue to not be overly worried about it - aside from staying in on a friday to bill for some freelance work, research a dozen topics, sift through my Pocket queue, and turn out some lo-fi content.  if anyone has any thoughts to share, i'm all ears.

 

modeling

Added on by Spencer Wright.

recently. 

​my notebooks get the most minute-to-minute use when i'm modeling.  they're one of my primary tools during the process - to sketch ideas, add up figures, note relationships, etc.

​the Public Radio is coming along.  the pot is a little tricky to fit in the enclosure, but i think we can make it work, and the speaker and battery will be fine regardless.  i have half a mind to switch over to a Weck jar, as the lid is slightly larger, but it lacks the brand name recognition that Ball jars are so good for.

what it's like to cook with me

Added on by Spencer Wright.

man, i *fuck* with cooking.

in business, my experience has tended towards large projects - endeavors that span years, where progress from week to week can, at times, be hard to distinguish.  i find these to be highly rewarding.  one begins with a mental construct which is necessarily incomplete, and which develops in ways that are impossible to predict.  in ways, this is psychologically challenging; my concept of myself has been deeply entwined with the projects i've been involved in, and the inevitable fact that i will be proven so deeply *wrong* about what i'm working for is troubling.  but the experience is also exciting.  moments come in which one feels he has a complete - fleeting, but complete - view of what he's doing.  it's an exhilarating feeling.

times are, from time to time, that once i get home i want nothing to do with managing any project (read: sitcoms are kinda awesome).  but more frequently, i find myself craving something that i can experiment with in a low-stakes setting.  

as a result, i tend to go a bit overboard.  i will go against specific orders to keep shit simple.  i'll make noodles-and-butter into a dish with a dozen ingredients.  i become a parody of myself at the grocery store; i fiend for complexity:

me: shit, fiddlehead ferns are in season. 

companion: what are fiddlehead ferns? 

me: uh, i mean, i think they're just fern heads.  they grow wild... i think they're good.  i've never had them. 

companion: how do you cook them? 

me: i don't really know. [grabs bag, reaches for ferns] 

companion: wait-

me: no, this'll be good.  i've always wanted to cook fiddlehead ferns. 

companion: but-

me: [tosses bag of ferns into basket] oh, they have ramps too... 

companion: wait - uh, what are ramps?

me: i think they're like garlic. [grabs ramps] i've never had them. 

etc.

it's kind of the best.   cooking is fun.

thoughts on standards, revisited

Added on by Spencer Wright.

late last year, i posted some thoughts on technical drawing standards on my now mothballed business' blog.  they were an attempt to clarify some things i had been thinking of over the past year or so, and they remain a useful starting point for my own style guide.

i'm now in the position of revisiting many of these items, and will be writing more of my thoughts in the coming weeks.  in the meantime, i'm reposting my initial thoughts here.  some of them are now more fully developed, and some have been partially discarded.  regardless, i continue to welcome any comments. 

 

 

I've been spending some time organizing myself and my designs, and am working on creating standards for myself.  A few ideas I've had are below, in no particular order.

  • When producing documentation, adopt and use standards that are optimized for digital, not physical, reproduction. 
  • Minimize printing whenever possible. When choosing paper sizes, prefer ISO to Architectural, and Architectural to ANSI. (Do so in spite the fact that, at least in North America, this ranking is... inconvenient.)
  • Prefer decimal inch or metric dimensions to fractional inches, which round inaccurately, produce inconvenient decimals at small resolutions, and encourage draftsmen to use decimal equivalents with unnecessarily high precision standards.
  • Use single spaces between sentences. (This will take some getting used to; the double slap of the spacebar has been drilled into me from years of practice.)
  • Track revisions.
  • Name all dimensions. Name key features.
  • Produce and maintain job books which refer directly to named features and dimensions and explain fit and function of all important design elements.
  • Choose cross-platform standards, assuming they don't hurt too much.
  • Have fun, etc.

As always, your feedback is encouraged.  I'd be interested in hearing other peoples' experience with and philosophies on standards and documentation aesthetics.

Spencer

specialists & teams

Added on by Spencer Wright.
Slazinger claims to have learned from history that most people cannot open their minds to new ideas unless a mind-opening teams with a peculiar membership goes to work on them. Otherwise, life will go on exactly as before, no matter how painful, unrealistic, unjust, ludicrous, or downright dumb that life may be.
The team must consist of three sorts of specialists, he says. Otherwise the revolution, whether in politics or the arts or the sciences or whatever, is sure to fail.
The rarest of these specialists, he says, is an authentic genius -- a person capable of having seemingly good ideas not in general circulation. "A genius working alone," he says, "is invariably ignored as a lunatic."
The second sort of specialist is a lot easier to find: a highly intelligent citizen in good standing in his or her community, who understands and admires the fresh ideas of the genius, and who testifies that the genius is far from mad. "A person like this working alone," says Slazinger, "can only yearn loud for changes, but fail to say what their shapes should be."
The third sort of specialist is a person who can explain everything, no matter how complicated, to the satisfaction of most people, no matter how stupid or pigheaded they may be. "He will say almost anything in order to be interesting and exciting," says Slazinger. "Working alone, depending solely on his own shallow ideas, he would be regarded as being as full of shit as a Christmas turkey."
Slazinger, high as a kite, says that every successful revolution, including Abstract Expressionism, the one I took part in, had that cast of characters at the top -- Pollock being the genius in our case, Lenin being the one in Russia's, Christ being the one in Christianity's.
He says that if you can't get a cast like that together, you can forget changing anything in a great big way.

 -Kurt Vonnegut, Bluebeard (emphasis mine).  Via @kottke.

andon cords

Added on by Spencer Wright.
...It is epitomized in the paradoxical Toyota proverb, “Stop production so that production never has to stop.” The key to the andon cord is that it brings work to a stop as soon as an uncorrectable quality problem surfaces—which forces it to be investigated. This is one of the most important discoveries of the lean manufacturing movement: you cannot trade quality for time. If you are causing (or missing) quality problems now, the resulting defects will slow you down later. Defects cause a lot of rework, low morale, and customer complaints, all of which slow progress and eat away at valuable resources.

 -Eric Ries, The Lean Startup (emphasis mine)

workday

Added on by Spencer Wright.

good workday today with zach.  lotta progress, lotta dogs.  my surface creation skills are pushing up.   progress below, shown chronologically.  

​what my shit looked like last night.

​sometimes, dogs just follow the team around.

​sometimes, dogs just hang out.

​sometimes, dogs are like "what's up??!??!!"

​fucked with the ring a bunch, and added the battery, but a bunch of the work happened on the "ball" logo, which has been a real challenge to nail down.  it still isn't perfect, and i needed to mess with the shape of the jar to get the logo where it is now, but i did get rid of a bunch of the workarounds that i implemented yesterday, and the overall model is pretty damn good.

​...aaaand, zach's got the start of a layout going.  pretty cool.

mornings

Added on by Spencer Wright.

libo and i are currently the epitome of a-guy-and-his-dog-who-hustle-hard-but-ultimately-work-at-home.

modeling

Added on by Spencer Wright.

today.  modeling surfaces (i.e. shapes that can't be simply extruded) is fun. 

also: nonstandard thread pitches.  totally.