Tag: a bit of fun

Naughty or Nice


This year, for Christmas, Stuff Club made a Naughty or Nice detector. It works by re-creating the special magical sensors Santa has in his lap which tells him if the children in his groto deserve a lovely gift or a piece of coal. In our version we’ve stripped it down to just a massive over-sized lap (to help create that terror you felt as a child), which deals out a reward or a punishment and sends that result, plus a photo, to naughtyornice.tumblr.com for all to see.

 
This is all made possible by some back-end cleverness by Mattias Gunnerås, some Arduino tinkering by Tracy Tsang, and some wood cutting/screwing and painting by me, Jas, Badger and Martin Rose. It was a bit of a mammoth task as we had to get the whole thing done from scratch over the weekend so we could keep it a surprise from the rest of Poke, but we managed it – well done gang!

 
Here’s some construction photos (have you ever wanted to see under Santa’s trousers?).
naughtyornice

Happy Halloween kids

We didn’t have much time this year for anything too elaborate to decorate the house with for the local Trick or Treaters, so we bunged up a screen and projected Mark Gervais’ excellent Hallowindow animation, put some speakers in the window, stapled up some torn up black sheets around the door and set the smoke machine to ‘auto’. Job Done. Apparently we got over 100 of the little sods turning up, and none of them tried to kill us or burn the house down, which is a sign of gratitude I guess.

Quick Draw Saloon

The Quick Draw Saloon at the last ever V&A Village Fete went down a storm, which had a lot to do with all the work that went it to making and running the thing by the guys and gals of Stuff Club (that, and the fact we were giving out shots of whiskey for 50p a go). I can gladly report that we were thoroughly badly behaved, and successfully encouraged others to do likewise. Some highlights include branding the word ‘LOSER’ over the face of a child, one of punters accidentally fall off the wagon after ten years of not touching a drop of the good stuff and comanding a baying mob to shout out obscene phrases until the wee hours while watching people try to draw naughty things (such as ‘syphilis‘).
Clicky here for more photos.

Quick Draw Saloon – opening night!

quikc-draw-saloon-sign

Tonight it’s the V&A Village Fete grand opening, and us lot at Stuff Club (which is a gang of do-ers at Poke) have built the Quick Draw Saloon. Come along tonight or tomorrow and pit your speed drawing skills against another pen slinger. There’s a prize for the winner, and something else for the looser.

quick-draw-saloon-render

Light Speed to Endor

Finally got round to doing some back-ups at the weekend and found this timelapse video we shot ages ago on a jolly ’round Romford. It’s been on Vimeo for a while but I don’t think we ever blogged it. So now we have – hooray! It’s got my favourite sound effects ever in it (play with headphones on, hit the full-screen button and press your nose to the screen for maximum enjoyment).

TV’s Chris Boardman

boardman
Today, we at Poke bid a fond farewell to TV’s Chris Boardman. During his year break from uni here at Poke we have worked him to within an inch of his life. Which is of course how all student placements should be handled. He’s heading back up north to finish his learnings (see: slacking). We dearly hope he graces our door again, so we can work him even harder. He’s responsible for the speedy development of the interactive map we created for the Design Museum and various other behind the scenes development breakthroughs. We put together this video installation down in the mess hall to honour the chap. See you soon Boarders!