Category: Highlights

A few years ago, before the Covid-19 pandemic, some old uni mates and I decided to go curling.

There was no particular reason to be honest. We just thought it would be a laugh – and we were right.

In fact, we loved it so much, we decided that we wanted to go curling again. However, unfortunately we ran into a problem.

During the Covid 19 pandemic our nearest curling rink, in Royal Tunbridge Wells, shut down. As in forever. It’s not opening up again.

That meant that the only dedicated curling rink left in England was in Preston, and with the greatest of respect to the people of Preston we weren’t really that bothered.

So, instead we decided to challenge a team from the most successful winter olympic nation of all time – Norway.

CurlForNorway.com

Having decided to take on the Norwegians, we ran into our second problem:

As soon as they found out that we weren’t very good, none of the Norwegian curling teams we contacted were interested in playing us.

But, once again, we had a cunning plan up our sleeves. I built a website – curlfornorway.com – and ran a series of Instagram adverts in the Oslo area, challenging literally any Norwegian person to sign up and take us on in a curling match.

Amazingly, it worked, and within the space of week we’d arranged a match against four of Norway’s finest amateur curlers, and one very special guest.

Keep your eyes peeled for the full film, which is coming out Autumn 2023, to find out how we did.

At Jellyfish we use a rewards platform called Bonusly. To cut a long story short, when your colleagues do good stuff you can send them Bonusly points; and they can turn those points into fun things like vouchers.

The thing is, it’s great when you do receive points, but the only people who really find out are you and the person who sent you them.

To rectify that, I built this robot. Every time I receive some Bonusly it now makes a very loud announcement to the entire office.

I’ve always wanted to be able to do something on the internet, and for it to make something happen in the real world, so this was a very cool thing to be able to put together.

Where to watch

• TikTok
• Instagram
• LinkedIn

Update: You can now read about Liz Truss The Game in The Metro.

Whether you support the Conservatives, or you don’t support the Conservatives, or even if you’re not really sure; there’s no getting around the fact that Liz Truss wasn’t the best prime minister.

It’s hard to think of a national leader who’s caused more chaos in such a short period of time.

The headline act, of course, was her taking a wrecking ball to the British economy with her infamous ‘mini-budget’; but it barely seemed like a day went by without some sort of misstep or controversy arising out of 10 Downing Street.

Part 1: TikTok

The more I thought about it, the more it felt like she was playing some sort of video game. It was like a bizarre Grand Theft Auto mission, except the goal was bringing down the government, rather than driving haphazardly into innocent members of the public.

So, I decided to bring that vision to life.

The video raced to almost a million views, and there were enough people in the comments asking me to actually make the game that I decided to give it a go.

Part 2: The Game

A week or so later, LizTrussGame.com was born.

You are the Prime Minister, and your challenge is to try and remain in office for longer than 45 days – the record for the shortest-ever stint in 10 Downing Street set by Liz.

By issuing laws, and responding to some extraordinary political goings-on in Westminster, you can boost your confidence rating and save yourself from the sack. Or at the very least you can try.

I had loads of fun making this, and had heaps of comments from people who enjoyed playing the game.

If you’ve had a chance to give it a go I’d love to hear how you got on.

The Technical Bit

A few years ago I taught myself to build websites, and this is one of the biggest projects I’ve taken on so far.

I designed and coded everything myself, building the site in Node.js/Express, using a MySql database. It was also the first time I’ve used Sass for a project, and I cannot believe I hadn’t tried it before.

The content was also written by me; but of course it was (mostly) inspired by real-world events.

As a few people noticed on TikTok, I made the original video in Adobe After Effects.

A few months ago I deleted my Facebook account. In doing so, I inadvertently severed my only means of communication with my Australian friend Ian.

Having realised my mistake I took the only option available, and flew to Australia to try and find him.

I gave myself two weeks to track Ian down, in a country of 26 million people and a landmass almost the size of the whole of Europe. To be honest, it was a completely stupid idea.

However, remarkably, it actually did work.

Against all the odds, and with the help of a few media appearances, I was able to track Ian down in a little under 8 days.

If you’d like to see how it happened my daily video diary is on TikTok, and a feature length edit of the trip is now available on YouTube. I’m not sure whether this is the sort of thing you’re supposed to admit to on the internet, but I did let out a little tear when it was finished.

Obviously, with my work hat on, it was a really cool exercise in viral marketing; with the campaign to find Ian reaching over 10 million people both in the UK and Australia.

I was also very flattered to be asked to visit some friends’ workplaces to give a talk on how the Ianvestigation came together.

If you’ve got any questions, or want to find out more about this week of absolute nonsense, please feel free to get in touch.

Media Appearances

• The Project (Network 10, Australia)
• Today Extra (Nine Network, Australia)
• The Christian O’Connell Show (Gold 104.3, Australia)
• Chrissie, Sam and Browny (Nova 100, Australia)
• Radio 1 Breakfast (BBC Radio 1, UK)
• Metro.co.uk (UK)
• 9Now (nine.com.au, Australia)