Track my progress as I grow a moustache for the men’s health charity. Current votes are for a Zapatta style caterpillar under my nose. Here’s how it is progressing on day 3.

Growth after 3 days

Nice article that condenses Ed Catmull’s original. It sounds simple.

The company I’m working for is based on software development and is growing a games team. The interesting thing is that pairing of developers and an agile approach already exists. They seem reticent to create hierarchies and instead of appointing leads in the games team they want to keep a flat structure. I started researching how to carry out peer reviews for a creative team of games producers, designers and animators (the Flash developers should be included – but that’s another story).

I was taken back to when I set-up a company (Preloaded -digital media studio, 2000) my idea was that it should be a collective. With a small core of people 3-5 but drawing on much wider network of people with a variety of skills that we could draw on as and when projects required them. We started out this way, we hired desks in someone else’s offices – it was the only way we could pragmatically build the company. The collective network seemed to wither and fade as we became busier and fell into copying the same structure as everyone else.

It feels like a new opportunity for evaluating ways of working has been thrust upon me and I’m keen to see where we end-up.

This morning I look K baby to a special screening for ‘mothers and babies’ at the Ritzy cinema in Brixton, SW London. It’s callled a screaming, you can guess why.

It was pretty busy, mostly white middle class couples with young babies. Anyway me and my girl K roll into the foyer, we check K’s ride into the buggy park and entered the cinema. K’s eyes sparkled a lovely big grin spread across her boat and she wiggled. It was dark, she pivoted round the stare and smile at the lights on the ceiling. Then the big screen, lots of others of K’s kind, the occasional grizzle, screech. K grinned and squealed for the first 30 minutes. Did some sitting and watching then grinched herself to sleep in my arms- lovely.

The film Paul was quite entertaining too, quite silly and funny at times.

All buy myself
Buying everything on eBay

…don’t wanna be…

I’ll buy myself
Advert for yourself on eBay

Thought of a horrific scene for a horror movie.

A man sits in his comfortable settee at home. It’s dark outside, early evening in winter, raining. Inside the room is warm. The man is bottle feeding a 6 month old baby. The baby is drinking her milk and looking around fascinated by the world around her. When she turns to far the teat of the bottle leaves her mouth. The man looks into the babies eyes smiles and cajoles here back to drinking. Still hungry the baby turns back and finds the teat and begins sucking again. After 30 seconds baby turns away from the teat again. The man googoos and encourages the baby to carry on drinking. But the baby just stares in one direction – over the mans shoulder. She smiles and wiggles her feet. The man “Come on silly beasty, back to your bottle”. The baby continues to stare over the his shoulder. Her smile folds into a frown. The man “What is it…” he turns to follow her gaze.
Cut to wide shot of the something dark menacing and dangerous and terrible.

TACK, TACK, TACK. The sound came hacking through my breakfast. Someone was tapping very hard on the glass of our front door. On opening the door was a Royal Mail driver holding out a parcel. I asked him if he could knock on the wood not the glass. “It’s always something with you people. Get a bell or a knocker” I replied that we were thinking of this, but until then could he knock on the wood of the door. “Get a bell or a knocker”. Less of a conversation more two monologues. I pressed my point and asked if he was going to stop tapping on the glass as it was damaging it. While walking away I was told once more to invest in specific door enhancements. I closed the door, annoyed. I grabbed a pen nipped back out into the street and took a note of the reg of the Royal Mail van.

The next day I had call from my wife who was at home with the baby. She was upset. A supervisor had called round and was telling her to get a bell or knocker and that the driver had reported that I had be aggressive. The supervisor kept repeating that we needed to get a bell.

On returning home I intended to now put in a complaint about Royal Mail supervisors intimidating my wife, but was swept away from the task by baby amongst other things.

A few days later – I was working from home – a knock at the door. A different man is holding a parcel for us. I take the parcel say thanks and am about to close the door when he introduces himself by name and says he called round and spoke to my wife about getting a bell. I told him how she had felt about the previous exchange. He apologies, it seemed genuine. He then asked if I was going to get a bell or knocker. I pointed out that it was not the place of the Royal Mail to tell me what to put on my front door, that we had been living here for years and had many parcels delivered and everyone else either rattled the letter box or knocked on the wood. I added that we were thinking of getting a knocker when we found one that suited the door and the house. In midst conversation the driver avoiding eye contact with me walked up to the supervisor and asked loudly “Are they getting a bell?” and walked away.

I was then told that the driver had put in a complaint against me for being aggressive. I suggested that he had merely anticipated that I was going to complain and got in first. I told the Super that I was impressed that so much effort was being put in with all these visits, when normally if you complain to Royal Mail it seems to be totally ignored. He said the issue is mostly with people complaining about drivers not knocking and leaving cards. I assured him that I had no issue or complaint with the driver. And asked how he’d take it if someone came to his home and tried to tell him what to have on his front door. He gave me a couple of phone numbers if I had a problems and his name.

I returned to my morning feeling several degrees hotter than I had before.

Met a chatty guy on a night bus who gave me a Cornish pasty. He’d been serving wine at a wedding and had a bag full of bottles wine and 9 Cornish pasties, it was quite tasty. He fell asleep and we woke him up in time for his stop.