Items tagged with 'Madness'

Regular blog readers will have noticed we were recently tinkering in our fridge, installing a PS Eye disguised as a carton of Orange juice; as you do.

The setup, known as Fridge Cam, is part of our new Intranet, providing snaps of fridge pickers, for no particular reason, to our Intranet homepage. The PS Eye is hooked up to an old laptop sat on top of the fridge. Software running on the laptop is activated by movement - so every time someone opens the fridge door, it saves a photo every second for ten seconds to its hard drive. An Apache web server with a simple PHP scripts then serves out the photos and a JSON feed to our Intranet… It’s already snapped about 5000 photos.

Let’s take a look at some of the pics that have been snapped so far…

Read more

John Beech is back at Mm towers today, after making the heartbreaking decision to postpone his trip. Over the last two weeks he had kayaked Nearly 300 miles, and as we followed him on his journey hearing about massive waves, blisters, whales, storms etc, both us at Mm and John’s family became increasingly worried about John’s safety.

We talked with him and together decided that it would be best to put the trip on hold, so that he could be better prepared to try it again next year.  Here’s John… 

Hello everyone!
It’s me John(ee) I’m back! Surprise: I’m back in Mm towers instead of being half way around the country. I got pretty far,  Nearly 300 miles far, but had to postpone my little adventure. Fear not it shall continue next year.

I decided to stop for safety reasons… along with my dad and friends, we had worked out that if I had continued at my current rate I would’ve reached Scotland when it looked a bit like this…

Eventually I had to admit that I should place my trip on hold for now, a hard decision and a sad one too, but one that is for the best. I will start again next year, this time earlier in the year, and with the help of my dad and his “real” boat tagging along for support which means I’ll be able to go faster and longer each day!! WIN!!

All the support I received on my trip has been amazing, and It’s hard not to feel like I am letting people down by deciding to stop for now - However,  this is just a small pause until I’m ready to go forth once more, and all the money donated to the cause will be stored in a bank account ready to start the fund again next year, with a bit of interest thrown in.  I’m hoping all your support can be stored for a year too!

Here’s hoping you all still want to follow my exploits next time, thank you all so much for everything - it’s been a learning experience for sure.
John(ee)

It’s been a very tough choice to make, but we are really rather happy that he is now safe.  We will jump on the thank you wagon with John and thank all of you for your support - you are all awesome people. You deserve medals. We’ll be pestering you again when he embarks once more upon his quest!

John Beech, one of our designers, is going on a two month long adventure. He’s going to Kayak around England, Scotland and Wales (yes he’s skipping Northern Ireland) in the name of charity. He’s going to be raising money for Games Aid - a UK charity that represents the games industry - and we would very much like you to sponsor him! Go on!

SPONSOR JOHN!

Hey everyone, my name is John, and I’m planning a likkle sailboat trip around the UK. It’s a bit like when you go to the beach for the day, but bigger. 2450 miles bigger! My mission should I choose to accept it (wait! I have already accepted it?!) is to Kayak around the country in a bit of plastic shaped like a toy boat, with nothing but my ‘massive arms’ , a paddle, and a power kite to carry me the distance.

I will be setting of from Guildford town centre on August the 8th, outside the Media Molecule Studio where I work as a games designer, and kayaking through London to the sea . From here I will paddle myself like crazy in an anticlockwise direction around the uk before finally heading back down through London and finishing back in Guildford. This should take about 2 months (the current world record for such an attempt) unless:
A) I die
B) I die
C) someone steals my kayak

Read more about John’s crazy mission, pledge some cash and track John’s whereabouts over on this special page we made for him.  Whether you sponsor John or not, why not wish him Bon Voyage via his twitter account, and keep him sane on his trip!

We’ll be sending John off on his journey this coming Monday, and will update you on his progress. Good luck John!