inspiration Archives - LunarLincoln

Feb

2016 State of the Union

CLIENTS, CREW MEMBERS, FRIENDS, FAMILY, AND FELLOW AMERICANS: WELCOME TO LUNARLINCOLN’S STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS (2016 edition).

If year one was a quiet tiny team of two, and year two was a crazy rollercoaster of growth, year three was a lot of figuring out the finer points of business and moving onward and upward. What comes after the giant hurdles? The answer is hundreds of tiny hurdles. (And overcoming those tiny hurdles is surprisingly painful – similar to stomping on Lego’s in the dark – who knew?). But now that we’ve stomped all those hurdles and arrived here at 2017, I have to admit looking around that we did a pretty awesome job. We built so many new things this year, in so many different areas. We got smarter, we got stronger, and we even made a teeny bit of money in the process.

But I digress, let’s get down to our favorite thing every. single. year. The Work!

The Work

We added several new and diverse clients: Bkon, Camping with Dogs, GoNoodle, HealthHere, Lasso, TReAD Lab, Pacecoach, Oak Hill School, Revl, Subpac, Synchronous Health, Tandum, and VDCI …whew I think that’s it. (Totally didn’t realize it was this many clients, holy crap you guys!)

With these guys (and gals) we got to work on all sorts of new things:

ResearchKit apps (tap for that dopamine..keep tapping…keep tapping)
Conversational Bots (hello Karla)
iBeacons and the Physical Web (beer + beacons!)
Customizable characters (my favorite is the cheeto fingers one)
Video streaming (Peanut Butter in a Cup loudly for the whole office while testing)
Instagram puppies (who have adventures in the great outdoors)
Designing naked medical bodies
Interfaces for running to your favorite jamz (personal running tune preference: Weird Al)
Ticketing, Tune Controls, and Tracking your Videos
Making doctor’s visits pleasant (and efficient!)

Some have shipped and are available for your pocket computer right now. Some were featured and reached #1 app in Apple’s App Store. Some were used at events with tens of thousands of attendees. Some helped people do their jobs better than ever before. Some help you get out there and get moving. Some are still in progress. Some we haven’t even mentioned above because they are too cool and top secret to be hinted at as of yet. We’ve added many of them to our Work page with greater detail, along with our amazing clients saying amazing things about yours truly. Check it out!

The Team

You can’t do the work without the team, and we’ve assembled a stellar team….I would almost say they are rockstar developers…but I won’t because that terminology is stupid. They’re really, really good. We wouldn’t have it any other way.

This year, we had our first interns (MLK class of 15) and we welcomed Cory Wilhite to the crew. There were many Friday lunches, a single ice cream truck quest (found it after weeks of hearing it!), several arguments over code abstraction, and as always: general hijinks.

The Community

We wouldn’t be here without the love and support of the Nashville community, be it developer or mobile dev aficionados. This year we put our money where our mouth was and sponsored several events. Some of which we spoke at and some of which we merely cheerleaded from the audience. Each of these events and groups are great examples of creativity and innovation that is flourishing in Nashville.

The Future

So what’s next? Definitely more of the same and hopefully more of better things. In the meantime we’ll keep building, keep coding, keep working with the community, and we’ll keep checking back with you as the year progresses.

Here’s to LunarLincoln in 2017!

Love and gratitude,

Jennifer, Wiley, Travis, Patrick, and Cory

Dec

Creative Mornings

Everyone has people they enjoy following and reading about online. One of mine is Tina Roth Eisenberg, the creator of Swiss Miss. I love her Friday afternoon listicles of cool things on the internets. (I also love her company Tattly – who doesn’t love temporary tattoos? And these are a biiiiit more refined than those free ones you used to get in packs of FruitStripe gum).

In 2008 Tina Roth Eisenberg started a thing called Creative Mornings – a meet-up for all sorts of creatives. The videos from the speakers looked interesting and I was jealous of stupid New York getting all the cool things, for now I would have to watch from afar. Luckily for me, Alicia Waters started the Nashville chapter in 2014. Woowoo!

In case you didn’t already know, we have such talented people and great public speakers in Nashville y’all! To get started you should watch this session about Beyonce and chicken nuggets. And then, follow @Nashville_CM on twitter to learn when the next session is. Do you have to be a creative? No. You just have to be interested in practically anything – learning, creation, pretty things, being inspired. We all need a little bit of inspiration from time to time.

So come on down, believe in Nashville’s creative community.

LunarLincoln is a sponsor for the December and January sessions. We wrote a little mini-article about ourselves here.

Aug

Poly Poly Poly

So, I have been seeing this style of design for awhile now and have really loved it. It was one of those things where I couldn’t find the right “google-magic” to really know what it was called. “Triangle+abstract+shattered+folded paper+art+design” was just not cutting it.

Luckily, one of my many random “sign up for this stupid newsletter to get this free download” e-blasts was actually useful this week. (And yes, I do read ALL of my e-mail, ALL of the time) It’s called….

LOW POLY. Now. What does low poly look like? Like these excellent examples:

It seems that the programs you use to create these beauties lies more in the realm of video editing. But with the help of this refreshingly, wonderful tutorial (it actually includes all steps, clear, quick commentary, and nice/realistic examples), I am going to make myself a ton of these awesome pointy and colorful things. New art to come!

Jul

“The better we get at getting better, the faster we will get better.” – Engelbert

Have you ever had the battery die in your optical, wireless mouse and not had replacement batteries. Try getting anything done on your computer without a mouse. Pretty impossible eh?

Doug Engelbart, the inventor of the mouse, creator of early GUI elements, pioneer of ARPANET, and 1,000,000 other visionary, smart things you will never achieve died Tuesday.

He was even creating epic, future-predicting, keynote presentations, years before you were born. To steal from NPR, who said it best:

In a video from 1968, Engelbart demonstrated the capabilities of not only the mouse but also of the power of networked computing. Titled “A Research Center for Augmenting Human Intellect,” the presentation gained a more informal name over the years: “The Mother of All Demos“

I can only hope that we have more brilliant, passionate people like this in the future of engineering.