Busy, busy week! My head has melted.
Coronavirus
As part of my work for Resolve to Save Lives, which includes Prevent Epidemics, I’ve been working on Coronavirus related projects this week. As well as creating infographics on how to how limit contact and spread, Brian Suda (my Oxvik partner) and I setup a Coronavirus update page for the Prevent Epidemics website. It takes the existing site functionality, and shows how many international inbound flights there are from countries with confirmed cases, and how prepared they are for dealing with epidemics (called the ‘ReadyScore’).
Birding
My binoculars are finally back from being repaired at the Swarovski HQ in Austria! I’ve really missed them, my knackered old bins are no where near as good.
I’ve also given up on my smartphone on the end of a scope hack that I’ve been using to get reference photos. Instead, I’ve picked up a secondhand Nikon P900, a ‘superzoom bridge camera’ (between a compact camera and an SLR) which although heavier, is giving me much better results. I can leave it on ‘birdwatching mode’ and snap away. The photos themselves dont have the quality of a decent SLR, but it costs a tiny fraction of what an SLR body would cost, let alone the telephoto lens. It has an 83x optical zoom, and is definitely good enough as reference images for illustrating from. The photo of a female Pochard above is a good example!
Bombay Bicycle Club
We went to see Bombay Bicycle Club again on Friday, this time in Birmingham, and it was one of the best gigs in a long time. Seeing them live is really incomparable with their recorded material, and the audience was really up for it. When they announced ‘this is out last song’, a booming voice behind me bellowed “Bollocks is it!”.
Rissington Podcast
John and I released another epsiode of Rissington, and we’ll be recording the next one on Monday. We’ve had fun resurrecting the old podcast, but we also want to try and mess around with the format. Instead of the (open source) font and UX technique of the week followed by questions, we’ll just tackle one topic. Inspired by a Brendan Dawes tweet, we’ve chosen socks, and are looking for any sock-related anecdotes, so let us know if you have any. We may try something else entirely for the podcast after that…