Sunday, November 16, 2008

Return of the Pig
Stuff incident experienced at 16:29 on November 16th. Posted in Igor’s stuff at 18:17.
Tags: bagged, beef, ginger pig, leaving present, meat, poke, steak, steaks
Return of the Pig
One of my leaving presents from POKE was a huge bag of extremely good steak. Fillet, ribeye, T-bone, sirloin, and one of the biggest rump steaks I've seen, matured for 45 days. Not content with that, amongst other things (including a monster Friday night out) they also very generously indulged me with the gift of a day's beef butchery course at the Ginger Pig in Victoria Park. To say I'm eagerly awaiting it doesn't really begin to encapsulate my feelings about it - mild trepidation mixed with delight and excitement would go some of the way. In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy these pre-cut steaks enormously. Thanks, Pokers!

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Leaving home
Stuff incident experienced at 16:29 on October 24th. Posted in Igor’s stuff at 20:56.
Tags: gone, home, leaving, leaving home, left, poke
Leaving home
On Friday, I left POKE, a very tough call after more than three and half amazing years. I’ve spent time this weekend realising quite how much of my emotional and mental energy had been invested in the place and its inhabitants, and how great a proportion of my life it had come to encompass. For me that can only have happened by dint of what is not only an unusually creative and genuinely inspiring environment and culture, but also by virtue of the remarkably warm and vibrant group of people without whom that environment wouldn’t, and couldn’t, exist.

As with any investment, there have been downs as well as ups, but the overall trend has been a marked increase in the capital of my life experience. Change is always good; I’m excited and enthusiastic about the future; and while past performance is no guarantee of what that future holds, I know that the experiences I’ve gained, the lessons I’ve learned, and the important friends I’ve made in my time at POKE Towers will help me to embrace it with open arms.

Thanks, POKE, and thanks, Pokers.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

POKE “most respected”
Stuff incident experienced at 12:34 on September 25th. Posted in Igor’s stuff at 14:59. 3 comments.
Tags: agency, media, new, new media, new media age, peer, peers, poke, survey, vote
POKE “most respected”
Here at POKE we’re not generally ones to blow our own trumpets – not really flexible enough – but this is worth a mention. Having been tech director here for more than three years, I’ve seen a fair few awards come through the studio, and have been involved with a fair few of the projects involved; this, however, is a bit different. Rather than a paid–for industry love–in with associated award ceremony, booze–up and the rest, this is part of a survey conducted amongst POKE’s peers by New Media Age. While we came out 44th of the top 100 overall (not bad in itself considering our turnover and size), we were voted “most respected by other agencies”. That’s a little bit of warm glow right there, now isn’t it? Thanks folks.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Balloonacy
Stuff incident experienced at 01:42 on June 26th. Posted in Igor’s stuff at 10:19.
Tags: balloon race, balloonacy, balloons, code, geek, orange, poke
Balloonacy
After an intense last 10 days’ sprint spent finishing and polishing, we launched Balloonacy on Tuesday 24th with a grand total of over 30,000 balloons and 840 sites signed up and accepted into the race. Seems to be going really well; people are playing and writing nice things about it, the system’s holding up (captain), the client’s happy and, in short, we’ve made animal-shaped balloons float across Internet. Which is nice.

Friday, June 6, 2008

Play Balloonacy
Scribbled to Igor’s scrawls at 13:08
Tags: balloonacy, balloonrace, balloons, code, geek, orange, poke

Hot on the heels of Spot the Bull comes POKE’s next big campaign for Orange, Balloonacy. It’s a balloon race across Internet. No, really. It’s in its sign–up phase at the moment; the race itself starts on June 23rd.


You can launch a balloon or sign your site up to be part of the map, and if your balloon gets the furthest you can win a holiday in Ibiza.

It’s the biggest project we’ve built using our home–grown, bare–bones, remote–MVC framework, “Death Star”, and the first in which we’ve integrated it with AS3.

A lot of POKErs have been involved in this, including Iain who came up with the idea in the first place. Design is by Marc, Nicky and Dickon. In the client-side tech team, we have extreme Flash & pattern action by Dezza, with code & Papervision help from Gabes, and lovely Flash 9 sheen from POKE’s very own Caroline B. Stepping back from the Flash, we have front-end build and Death Star CMS delights from Greg; JS integration wizardry and Death Star coding from Mattias; Death Star coding, AMF services and database tomfoolery by Nilesh; system & platform architecture and team leading by mine own evil hand. Project managed by Mike who’s done his damnedest to keep us all sane. Ish.

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Spot the bull
Stuff incident experienced at 23:29 on June 2nd. Posted in Igor’s stuff at 23:26. 1 comment.
Tags: bull, derek, poke, spot the bull, website, winston
Spot the bull
We made a new version of Spot the Bull, this year with streaming live video of Winston, apparently son of Derek, in his field. Knotty did the hard stuff. Nice one, Knotty.

Friday, November 9, 2007

I work with this
Stuff incident experienced at 00:00. Posted in Igor’s stuff at 18:46.
Tags: alex, poke, work
I work with this
This is the Alex. This sits at the desk immediately to my left. Sometimes it uses the mental Japanese keyboard device to make insane noises shout at my head, and sometimes it makes them shout at other people. Today the Alex took the bonsai xmas lights from my now-deceased mini-tree, wrapped them round its head, and directed the bonkophone into the world at large. It didn't even seem to care particularly whether anyone was watching, but rather just did this for its own inscrutable ends. It is a wrong one, it is broken; it doesn't work properly any more. Perhaps it'll be fixed by Monday.

Sunday, April 15, 2007

CR Blog » Blog Archive » Next Stop, Accounts
Bookmarked on del.icio.us at 11:26.
Tags: office, quinn
Article about POKE office

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Teleshop - Guns for sale
Bookmarked on del.icio.us at 13:56.
Tags: poke