Observe * Reflect * Make For 2-3 hours investment, there is a lot to be gained from the badge. Even for experienced Agile practitioners. The common language and practical application of agile practices would benefit all. https://www.ibm.com/design/thinking/ My top 5 takeaways: 1. WHY, iteratively Asking why three or more times evolves the answer with … Continue reading Design Thinking Practitioner Badge
Last week I volunteered as a mentor for the Code Club Cornwall: Mission to Mars Easter School. It's a great project for teenagers interested in programming, electronics, and computer science. Bert and Ernie, two Arduino-powered robots, offer the participants a chance to program self-driving 'Mars Rovers'. Destined to auto-pilot around the surface of Mars. Functionality … Continue reading #Mission To Mars! Easter School Mentoring with Software Cornwall
With the roof on and better than expected weather in the colder months work carried on outside. Our original plan entailed cladding the first floor in wood. As part of our 'Cornish-New-England' theme. Allowing it to age naturally. In theory, this is low maintenance. In reality, I had visions of having to regularly pressure wash … Continue reading Whether to weatherboard
Massive thanks to Carly and Charlie at Ocean BMW for the loan of their i3. It's fair to say our recently acquired 10-year-old Audi A3 hasn't filled the big hole left by our departing BMW 1 Series. I loved that car way too much. IBM's not so great company car scheme, UK company car tax, and … Continue reading The BMW i3 experiment
Roofing came with a choice to make: To loft space, or not to loft space. More of a debate than it sounds given our open plan living space... Do we sacrifice storage for increased ceiling height? Yes, yes we do. The loft space would have been tiny, costly and hard to access vs. much higher … Continue reading Adding a roof
Getting out of the ground was easier than anticipated. A refreshing and novel change to the stress of getting the land, and issues dealing with planning. Four years of nothing but bills and hassle vs. three weeks from 'waste ground' to foundations. Karma perhaps, or another reason to be grateful for my great-great-grandfather's shrewd investment. … Continue reading Block Work, and creating our heat store
Cornwall's rich mining heritage is one of the reasons we have our land. It is also a cause for concern when it comes to what's hiding underneath. Fears of contaminated soil, mining features, mining spoil, undocumented offshoots of known/unknown mine shafts, and more. What lies beneath? All of the above could negatively impact the chances of getting a mortgage, and easily cost … Continue reading Getting out of the ground
This is draft number 101, and long. My longest blog post to date! It's taken a lot of revisions and thoughts to convey my points in anything other than a very negative manner. Our experience with Cornwall Council's Planning department can be summarised as: stressful, miserable and unprofessional. In this post, I hope to salvage something … Continue reading Planning, fun and games
The forge, fire station, and coach house In the late 19th century, my Great Great Grandfather returned from a cross-Atlantic-adventure. An explosives engineer and miner, he and his brother went to seek their fortunes. The demand and rewards working across the Atlantic were high. He struck gold and returned to Cornwall a wealthy man. On returning to Cornwall, … Continue reading Why the Old Bus Depot?
Intro Who hasn't sat and watched Grand Designs and considered what they'd do differently. How you'd manage a budget differently, or not have put the wall there in the first place. How silly the people were to think it would only cost £XXXXXX to build, and how laugh out loud funny it is when they say they'll … Continue reading Our house build: the Old Bus Depot
Olly Brand 