Things in Jars

Simon Madine (thingsinjars)

@thingsinjarsFollow me on Twitter

Hi, I’m Simon Madine and I make digital toys and write guides on web development.

I'm a senior web dev and evangelist for HERE in Berlin.

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  • Unheroes

    Written 25 Feb 2013

    Cartoons,Not Geek

    While tidying up my dropbox, I found a few old 'Unhero' sketches:

    • Cheese Boy
    • Pizza Guy
    • VHS and Beta Boy
    • Johnny Longfinger
    • The Leaf
    • Gingerbreadman

    Also, a master uncriminal:

    • The Chemist

    And the original Angry Robot Zombie:

    • Angry Robot Zombie

    Comments

  • Angler Fish

    Written 28 Jan 2013

    Not Geek,Cartoons

    Angler Fish

    Quick sketch of an Angler Fish I drew last year.

    Comments

  • Explanating Experiment Follow-up

    Written 27 Oct 2012

    Design,Cartoons,Not Geek

    A year ago, I started a little experiment (and not one of my usual web experiments).

    I decided to give away my book, Explanating, for free. The website has links to download the book without charge and also links through to Amazon and Lulu. I asked people to download the free one then, if they enjoyed it, they could come back and buy it.

    Twelve months later, I now have the answer.

    • Free: 315
    • Amazon: 2
    • Lulu: 0

    Erm. Yeah. Not quite as successful as I would have liked. Still, the point was to measure the 'conversion rate'. Admittedly, it's a small sample size but it would appear to be about 0.6%. At this rate, I only need another 97,465,886 people to download the free one and I'll have made £1,000,000! Sweet!

    Comments

  • Homemade Lanyard

    Written 17 Dec 2011

    Not Geek

    I'm currently looking for new earphones as my Klipsch ones finally gave out on me last week. Until I get some (Christmas is coming, after all), I decided to rummage around in my 'retired headphones' box (everyone's got one, no?) and found this:

    • Full Homemade Lanyard
    • Homemade Lanyard

    Back when I was using my second generation iPod nano, I needed something that combined the usefulness of the lanyard attachment but with good quality headphones. As I couldn't find anything, I got a pair of Sennheiser CX300s, an old USB connector cable and a metre of red ribbon and made my own. Once the USB end was cut off, I looped it round and glued it ends together then wrapped the join in plumbers' PTFE tape to seal it. The headphones were wired round, fastened with cable ties and then sewn together with the ribbon to make the neck bit comfortable. The iPod connector has two little clips in it which was plenty to hold the lightweight iPod Nano in place under my t-shirt and on that model, the headphone jack was on the bottom so the whole thing clipped together nicely.

    The sound quality was as good as you'd expect from Sennheisers and I actually surprised myself with the build quality when I had to, yesterday, dismantle them after almost 4 years. Unfortunately, the iPhone 4 is a little bit too chunky to wear under a t-shirt. I got some odd looks when I tried.

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Recent side-projects

  • Open Source Snacks
  • csste.st
  • jHERE Playground
  • CoverMap.me
  • Soundscape
  • Insta-Art

Toys

Find my digital toys at thingsinjars.com/lab.

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    © 2013 Simon Madine