Cool Ideas
Fitting more people in the office…
So that didn’t take long. We’re already wondering how to fit more people in here. I can’t seem to find a way to fit more than 8 people in the “developer area”. This pic illustrates what I think is a BETTER way to fit 8 people there, but it’s still only 8. Overall, we can get 14 people in these offices comfortably. If we nix the lounge, we can add 2 more, which would suck, but it’s doable.
The white band throught the middle of the office is going to be a large whiteboard. We found that the center table just ends up getting cluttered with stuff, so it’s not doing what we intended originally where it would be a collaboration area.
Here’s where we’re at right now…a little messy, but you get the idea of how the space is.
Thoughts?
Digital Welcome Sign
We wanted something cooler than the average “Welcome to our office” sign. Rather than go out and get something lame like a whiteboard, we decided to over-engineer a digital version.
Our first thought, was to link it to an iCal ics file to get it’s data. This way, the administrators have the ability to change it, and it’s “pushed” to the server, which happens to be the computer that this runs off of.
A PHP script re-loads every minute that gets the current data from the file. So if I add a meeting, it’s on the board one minute later. The script posts someone’s name 20min before the meeting starts, and takes it off 10min after the meeting is scheduled to end.
The way we did this is by making the event name the Company that the person is from. That way, we can add 4-5 attendees and have it still show one company logo. If we don’t have their logo in the system, it ignores that part and loads nothing. Here’s an example of what it looks like when “Joe Cool” from Microsoft has a meeting scheduled.
But when there is no meeting scheduled….
It politely tells the managery of solicitors we were seeing “No Solicitors - Seriously, we’re quite busy and nobody wants you here.” No joke…we were seeing 2 a day, and now it’s 1-2 a week. Evidently they can read!
We also added Cleveland Weather, and a running total of transactions we’ve processed this year. It’s fun for the employees to see as we’re walking by, and the clients get a kick out of it too.
Motherboard Wall - Final Phase
SO the installation of this idea was a lot harder than the concept. In Phase I, we started cleaning boards. In Phase II, we cleaned more, and started painting them. Now…we get to see if it was all worth it.
We needed to first replicate the size/shape of the wall on the ground so we could figure out how to lat them all out. Because we had so many different shapes/sizes, it was pretty difficult to NOT get a pattern, and keep it looking random, while having enough space in between to show some green.
First step was to re-create the wall shape on the ground. We don’t have the lounge built yet, so we have plenty of space for this. We used tape on the ground and started placing them. The LCD panel will eventually welcome people to the office.
Next step was getting the boards to ‘float’ off of the wall an inch. For this, I bought 50′ of “Ice Maker” tube for a refrigerator. I cut it into 1″ pieces, and we used that to keep a consistent depth off of the wall. (Pretty smart, eh?)
We realized that the patterning was going to be an issue, so we seperated the boards into different size groups and just started “going for it”. The idea was to keep the top-line of all the boards even, and a consistent 2″ between them. This made it pretty easy to install after we had a plan.
The end result was just about EXACTLY what we were going for. We still need to get in there and finish cutting some of the boards at an angle to fill in those holes. Truthfully, we’ve been pretty busy lately and don’t have time.
Our Custom Doors are done!
This is the cool part. The doors we designed showed up today. When I designed them back in February, we were thinking they’d be pretty cool, but this is miles beyond what we were expecting.
Fred Shafer was able to take a Google SketchUp PDF and create an absolutely awesome door out of a 36″ X 96″ solid-core door. He stained them to match our Ikea desks perfectly. We’re REAL excited to see them installed in a few weeks.
I’ll bet he could get $2,000 a piece for these…
The Motherboard Wall - Phase 2
I decided to lay out all of my motherboards to see if I’ll have enough to complete this project. So I started digging in the box, and lying them on my driveway. There was a mouse living in the box at some point, so I had to hose them all off before I put them through my dishwasher…twice.
Looks like we’ll have plenty after all. I may look for a few more to work with. I’m sure I’ll find a use for extras.
So into the dishwasher the went. Cards up top, boards on the bottom.
After 2 cycles on the “Pots and Pans” setting, I need to put them in the basement on their faces to dry for 2 days before we send them off to get painted. One load did 12 boards, and about 15 cards. I’m thinking in 5-6 more loads I’ll be ready to lay them all out to paint.
So painting isn’t as tough as you’d think….but it takes a long time when you factor the drying-time. I can paint about 12 a day. The Appliance Paint that we’re using is SUPER thick and VERY shinny. So you just need to make sure you get it in all the nooks/crannies, and let it dry for about 12hrs. I’ve been doing 12 a day for about a week now, and I still have a pile left. They DO add up quickly though. Hint: Don’t do them at night…do them in the AM before you leave for work. I did one batch at night, and the dew on them in the AM made for rain-spots on them after they dried inthe afternoon heat.
The Motherboard Wall - Phase 1
Here are a few progress pics of the “Motherboard Wall” we’re doing for our office.
What I’m trying to do is use one of the entry walls as a “feature” as well as an art piece. The idea started a long time ago, and we’ve been trying to collect old motherboards, cards, etc. I posted an ad on Craigslist.com a few months ago, and it ended up netting me about 90 motherboards. PLENTY to do what we’re looking for!
The first step was to clean them all. I started with a scrub-brush, but that didn’t do so well. Then I thought “Wait…I’m never going to USE these again. Let’s throw them in the dishwasher!” So I loaded up a dozen to see how that worked.
…and it worked REAL well. They came out VERY clean, but I needed to dry them a little better. The “Sanitize” setting on my dishwasher didn’t dry them all that well. (But they are sanitized now!)
So I set them all on their tops for a few days to let them drip-dry. I didn’t want to paint them and have water spots under the paint. Not that anyone will notice, but it’ll flake off in time.
Now let’s paint them…
I chose a white “Appliance Paint” because I knew it’d coat real well, stay shinny, and be…well…white. My brother looked at it and said it looked like something from Star Wars. I used a primer on one of them and didn’t prime another. The results were that the non-primed motherboard looked 10X better. The Primer needs to be sanded, and that’s not entirely possible with a motherboard. So it ended up looking “dull” compared to the non-primed one.
We’ll be mounting these about 1″ off of a painted green wall, with LED lights every so often both in front and behind the boards. Should look real cool.
More to come.
Neat Bathroom Sign
We like this for the bathrooms…
…just another random idea, brought to you by your friends at Ikea.
Update: I just realized that the women is significantly taller than the man. I guess that’s how they grow them in Sweden.
More Door Ideas
So I was playing in SketchUp again. Here are a couple other ideas for doors. the glass for #1 is about $60 per door, the glass for #2, #3, #4 is about $10 per door because they are stock sizes.
I kinda like #3?
Update: Turns out the glass I found is only 1/8″ thick, so we’re back to option #1.
Door Issues and Ideas
So I learned yesterday that the doors we ordered were a LOT more than the original quote. It’s a long story, but I was asked if we could find something else. While talking to Fred, we came up with the idea to take solid-core slab doors and mill a window into each one. That’d save us a few bucks on each door, and give us the opportunity to do something real cool with our own design.
I cracked open SketchUp and I was off to the races. Here’s what I came up with.
As it turns out, it’ll work! the Per-Door cost is a bit more, but we save enough on the entry doors to off-set the difference.
Ikea Trip
Anyone that knows me knows that I’m quite impatient.
Angie and I had an afternoon to kill, so we headed out to Ikea in Pittsburgh to look for random ideas for the new space. Since this is a family affair…I figured I’d get her involved. She reluctantly agreed to throw Garrett in the car and trek to Pittsburgh with me. Here’s what we saw.
You’ll notice a lot of green stuff. That’s because we’re finishing up a Re-Branding of SparkBase. More on that later…
