Workspaces - 396 — Matt Webb

Good morning! Welcome to another Saturday edition of Workspaces!

It snowed again yesterday and it has me wanting to build out a new cozy workspace.

If you could add one new item to your setup tomorrow, what would it be? 🧐

Who knows.... maybe we could turn it into a giveaway.

WORKSPACE TOUR

Matt Webb is the founder of Acts Not Facts, a vehicle for product invention.

Through that, he is also the inventor of Poem/1, an AI clock rhyming clock. How does it work? It tells the time with a brand new poem every minute, composed by ChatGPT. It’s sometimes profound, and sometimes weird, and very occasionally it fibs about what the actual time is to make a rhyme work... It has a cute e-paper screen.

So far it's been featured in Fast Company, Forbes, Ars Technica, The Verge, Bloomberg, the New York Times and more.

You can back the kickstarter here. It's pretty neat!

Twitter (X) → twitter.com/genmon
Threads → threads.net/@genmon
Instagram → instagram.com/genmon
LinkedIn → linkedin.com/in/genmon

Workspace Items: Desk

Mac mini M1

MacBook Air M2 13” — this is the best laptop Apple have made since the 12” aluminium Powerbook

I don’t have a KVM switch — I use the machines simultaneously using Apple’s Universal Control it is a robust as hell. I forget there are two computers there

Ring light because of the pandemic

Aranet4 CO2 monitor — if I forget to open a window and it gets about 800ppm I get nervous. Above 1000ppm and I start getting stupider

Cricket ball as fidget device

On the top shelves are Wisden cricket almanacs and a piece of metal I use to burn incense which is a part of the Concorde fuselage, a project that my parents were attached to

Workspace Items: Shelves

The book situation is out of control. Visible sections are cybernetics/computing history, history, mythology, and design. Psychology and animals are off to the side

In the middle: I leave this camera set up to snap any good poems from the Poem/1 technical prototype. Camera is a Sony NEX-5N. It’s old but there’s nothing like it for size, just perfect in the hand and pocket

HomePod mini, the only smart speaker with an open mic in the house

“Twinkly” brand Christmas lights. The app uses computer vision to place the RGB LEDs in 3D space, then you can run animated patterns over them

Many ornaments and bits and bobs! There’s an old FM3 Buddha Machine, archive boxes for issues of JBIS (Journal of the British Planetary Society, which I throughly recommend) and an original LOT 2046 tattoo machine (as-yet unused…)

The cushion on the arm chair is in the new Elizabeth line moquette

Full workspace tour →

Q&A

What was the most challenging aspect of getting Poem/1 on Kickstarter?

I could say it’s the number of skills involved. I’m grateful that London has such an awesome hardware scene and I get to collaborate with folks like Approach Studio and Tom Armitage.

I could say that it’s the number of moving parts and that every part brings a new constraint: firmware, servers, component cost and availability, shape and size, power, markets and margins, the economics of sustainability, the right partners…

But really the most challenging aspect is attachment. My studio is Acts Not Facts and though I hope to grow it, it’s just begun. And bringing connected hardware into the world as a one person studio is very unlikely. It’s a long process, you can’t push it. You chip forward, chip forward, chip forward. Maybe it’ll work, maybe it won’t. In any long project, you develop emotional attachment. You want it. Yet at any given moment, it probably won’t happen.

How do you maintain looseness in the face of that want and fear? How do you keep soft hands and an open ear to possibilities and suggestions? It’s hard!

So it sounds counterintuitive but I worked hard to cultivate high passion, low attachment and sense of humour during the development of Poem/1. I think that comes across in the Kickstarter campaign! And if the campaign succeeds (I hope it does) I will be able to relax a little because the path forward will be clear.

Full interview →

Thanks for reading!

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Workspaces - 396 — Matt Webb

WORKSPACE TOUR

Workspace Items: Desk

Workspace Items: Shelves

Q&A

What was the most challenging aspect of getting Poem/1 on Kickstarter?

Thanks for reading!

Older messages

394 — Sean Woolsey

395 — Housseynou Fall

393 — Luca Defreitas-Hansen

392 — Laura Piñeiro Atienza

391 — Kimmy Bartle Koh

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