Thursday 7th August, 2014
by Chris Roos
Show and Tell 4
We hosted our fourth Show and Tell event last night. Seven of us sat around the projector and four folks talked about things they’re working on.
Ben showed us how he’s using WebGL to render 3D dolls in the browser. It all looks very impressive even if I don’t really understand how it works. It was really interesting to hear about the creative workarounds Ben’s had to employ to get around some of the limitations of iOS 8’s WebGL support.
Ben also talked about making a jukebox for his kids and sister-in-law. Ben started out using a Raspberry Pi for the first one, before moving to an Arduino for the second in an attempt to have it battery powered. I love these projects and think it’s great that Ben’s able to make these really personal gifts.
Paul demonstrated how easy it is to use AngularJS to create a pretty impressive interactive organisation chart. I’ve been aware of Angular for a while but have never quite got around to having a play. Having now seen how easy it is to get started removes one of my concerns of trying to pick up something new.
Amy gave us an overview of the Minimum Viable Book project she’s working on with Emily. They’ve done a great job of collating their research and have recently made an alpha version available. They’re hoping to collect feedback on the content they’ve chosen to help direct them in future.
James finished up by giving a quick demo of our FreeAgent Transaction Explainer Chrome Extension, and by talking about some early work we’ve been doing to automate more of our bank admin. We’ve started exploring the idea of automatically downloading the regular invoices we receive (e.g. GitHub), and were really interested in whether people had any other creative ideas about how to make our lives easier.
We managed to wrap up at around 8:30 and moved to the pub to continue the discussion.
Want to get involved?
If this sounds like the sort of thing you’re interested in, then please do get in touch. We’re keen to keep these fairly small but would also like them to be open to other people.
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