supersonic feet

As I can’t waste my free time on my Xbox for the foreseeable future, I might as well catch up on some stuff I should’ve written about recently…

Goodbye Gottabet, hello bragster

A couple of weeks ago, we relaunched Gottabet as bragster. The result of five weeks’ development (pretty quick for re-branding a whole website!), the site has been re-focussed on the bragging/glory side of things. There were some new features added, a change in the navigation layout and some changes to stuff like browsing bets/dares and member profiles.

There’s still plenty more to come from bragster, with some pretty cool new stuff lined up before the end of the year and more to come in 2008. With the new feeds we added just before the re-launch and the changes to the navigation and layout in the re-launch itself, it’s hopefully now easier to get to the interesting stuff quickly.

A new addition to the team

I mentioned back in early August that we were hiring at Gottabet (now bragster).

Well, for pretty much the entirety of the Gotabet-bragster re-brand I was also reading CVs, conducting basic HTML/CSS tests and interviewing people to hire a new front-end developer. We set ourselves quite a high bar for hiring someone as we needed someone who could slip into the team pretty much seamlessly and get working on making our site more awesome.

As a result, the search took a while but in the end we had two great guys come along pretty much at the same time (the old ‘waiting for a bus’ thing) and I’m now pleased to welcome Andy Dust into our team. Andy only actually graduated this year, but has already hit a pretty high level with standards-based web design so we’re looking forward to his input at bragster. The first thing you’ll see from Andy is a new Flash-based widget for sharing your bragster bets/dares with others that he’s already been working on in this, his first week with us.

Tabasco shots, skating on a treadmill and sailing the Tyne in a dinghy

A few of my friends from back home in Newcastle have been getting into the bragster spirit recently with some mad dares…

A while back, there was a ‘tabasco challenge‘ on Gottabet, in which ChiefChimpanzee reckoned he could down 10 shots (25ml each!) of tabasco sauce in 10 minutes. He got oh-so-close at 9 shots. We then set up a challenge for our members, offering a prize if anyone could do the ten shots. Krishna came down to London one weekend and tried (even using the gorilla suit like ChiefChimp), but failed at 6 shots. Sent packing back to the North East, another of our friends, Neill took up the challenge.

He did it in 1 minute 10 seconds.

Check out the tabasco challenge page for the Video of Triumph.

On another visit to London, Krishna (bish) and I came to discussing whether it would be possible to get to level 10 (whatever that might mean) on a treadmill with a skateboard. We ran out of time to do it while he was still in London, but a visit home to his parents’ house and a quick use of his Dad’s treadmill later, the challenge was complete!

Follow the link and watch the video as, while he managed level 10, the whole ‘getting off the treadmill’ thing was a bit harder than bish had planned.

And finally, to the latest mad-cap adventure: Neill has declared that he’ll ’sail’ the Tyne river from Newburn to Tynemouth (where the Tyne enters the North Sea). In a rubber dinghy.

Backed up in his quest by Richy (warbastard on bragster), the pair will have to travel around 10 miles down-river watching out for, among other things, large sea ferries leaving Tynemouth for the likes of Amsterdam.

Rumour is they’ll be dressed like pirates for their voyage as well, so it should make for a good video no matter what.

The Gottabet office is a rather multi-national affair and, that being the case, most of the guys just don’t get the whole ‘tea’ thing. As in me and Ken actually get incredulous looks for drinking tea each day.

That’s why I think I’m gonna have to buy one of these mugs I just saw linked on The Big Noob for ‘me cup of cha’ once they’re available and play it up a bit.

At Gottabet we’re looking for a ‘web application designer’ to join the team. The job entails a range of web dev, from helping design various sections/features of the website to implementing them in HTML and CSS.

There’s a full job spec on the website, so if you’re a developer who’s big on web standards looking for an exciting, fast-paced job working on a big social website, check out the job spec and get in touch with Wim and Bertrand (email addresses on the linked page).

The top-secret project I’ve been working on since moving down to London at the end of October had a still-quite-secret launch late last week and now we’re ready to tell a few more people.

Without further ado, I present Gottabet.com!

Gottabet.com is a social networking site where people exchange challenges and bets on any event they can think of, from “I bet it’ll be a white Christmas this year” to “Nobody can catch a pigeon” (thanks to my brother, Christian for posting those two).
I say a ’still-quite-secret’ launch last week, but only in as much as it was limited to a small number of people. The launch itself was far from secret, held in a pub where we got drunk people to take part in silly bets and dares. The result was a set of photos that I’ve added to flickr under a new Gottabet-specific account. There are some pretty funny pictures (especially the two people racing to fit the most Maltesers in their mouth), so check ‘em out.
On a more techy note of possible interest, the site has been developed entirely in Ruby on Rails by a team of 5 developers (including me, though I’ve worked much more on the HTML/CSS side of things). The site was built in around 6 months, which is even more impressive when you find out that for the first few months there was only one developer (Peter) working on it. The other three (Rich, Ken and Phil) joined within a few weeks of each other around September time and I joined at the very end of October.

The team is completed by (and indeed started with) two Belgians: the founders Wim Vernaeve and Bertrand Bodson. They came up with the idea around a year ago and have gone from simple idea to launched website in that time. There’s a team photo on the ‘about Gottabet.com‘ page. Mini-profiles of each of us will be added soon too.

To get you started, have a look at my latest bet: I bet at least one of the presents I’ve ordered won’t arrive in time. It’s just for peanuts, no money needed