James Box and James Bates were back in the office after their two-week project in Copenhagen. As it’s the first time they’d been in since the holidays, a lot of Christmas catching up occurred. The guys had their final presentation in Copenhagen on Wednesday, so spent the start of the week prepping for the big event. We’re really excited about this project so are keeping our fingers crossed that we get the green light to go ahead.

Sadly we had a bit of a crisis in the office on Monday and Tuesday when the Fontdeck CDN went down and we were inundated with service calls. As soon as OnmiTI fixed one issue, another one cropped up so Andy Parker had a few days of fire fighting on his hands. That guy definitely deserves a beer or two for all his hard work this week. Tech support is a thankless task so it’s a shame he was on point when it happened. Fortunately he was able to let of a bit of steam at the twice-monthly Street Fighter tournament over the road at Sticky Mikes Frog Bar, although the word on the street says he got his ass handed to him on a plate.

On Thursday a group of us went a BBC Connected Studio event on the future of News, something that’s close to our hearts thanks in part to our work with Channel 4. I’m still on the fence about these Connected Studios, as I understand the logic but worry about the cost to the industry. So we’ll see what the guys thing when they get back to the office.

Jeremy is doing his usual thing of bobbing around the world. Tel Aviv is the current rumour going around the office.

I myself got back from a week long trip to San Francisco on Sunday (hard life huh?) so spent the first few days self medicating with Darjeeling tea to prevent the fog of jet-lag. I popped up to London on Wednesday for a mix of client meetings and industry schmoozing and am currently writing this on a train back up to the big smoke for another client presentation. Ant has been out of the office for most of the week, so I presume he’s been doing the same.

On the subject of Ant, he’s in the process of writing a couple of big (and exciting) proposals, so has co-opted some of the design team to help with the task. So they are busy demonstrating our design skills while avoiding the dreaded rocks of spec work.

In other studio news, we have a few new guests renting desk space on the mezzanine floor. Our wonderful intern Victor has moved back in for a month, with Aral Balkan in tow, as they plan to take over the mobile world.

We also had a catch-up with our Mac developer to review the progress he’s been making on Silverback and to walk him through the proposed new UI. So are super excited by what we have planned for Silverback 3. So stay tuned.