Working out hurts!

 I've worked out tonight for the first time in months and I ache.

 When I say work out, I've actually played on the Wii for an hour.

 Think I need to do it more often.

 It's the first step in my new project that I'm working on - details are restricted right now but I will be trying out some new stuff over the next few months and I'll keep you posted (hopefully with pictures)

 I'm going to sort out a cherry scone and a cup of coffee now - after that I might watch President Obama firing a marshmallow cannon!

 Finally, if you've got a Twitter account and got nothing better to do, why not nominate me for a Shorty award?

The Shorty awards are described as "The Shorty Awards are a worldwide effort to engage hundreds of thousands of Twitter users to identify the best people and organizations on social media, culminating in a blockbuster ceremony in New York City." - basically they're social media awards and it's a great opportunity for everyone to have their say in who is the best.

Head over here to see how to support me. Thanks!

My hundredth blog post!

This is my hundredth blog post!

Apologies for the delay in blogging but I've been working on a new writing project (plus I've been under the weather).  Details of my new project are sketchy but suffice it to say that it's going to be my biggest writing project to date - it's going to be a book - and I may be needing help over the forthcoming months to undertake various activities.  As things become clearer I'll let you know!

Today I thought I'd point you to something fun that we can all try - easter eggs on Google.  If you don't know, easter eggs are fun little things that programmers put into programs and websites for people to find.

Take a look at the Wikipedia entry for the ones on Google.  I particularly recommend going on to Google and searching for zerg rush.

Sticking with the Google theme, it's Safer Internet Day and Google have released some guidance on how to stay safe on the Internet.  It's always been a bugbear to me that while people are able to use computers and the internet easier and easier these days (which is good) the traps and dangers online are getting smarter and better and it's consequently more dangerous for the non-savvy computer user.

Anyway, thank you for reading my posts - very pleased to get to a hundred and let's go for a hundred more!

My son is a geek

My son is a geek.  Here he is with his laptop and his tablet.

My son busy multi-tasking between his tablet and his laptop. The kid has more IT kit than I have.  I tried to arrange to take him to the park but apparently he had a videoconference with his team in Tokyo scheduled.

Had a very busy day today - I've been off, which sounds great (and is great) but I basically leave the house with my son around 9.30 in the morning and don't get back in until about 4.30pm, spending the day shopping, visiting people, going to one of the kids classes, more visiting, more shopping... it's a busy day.  Glad I've got a quiet evening ahead of me!

I wanted to flag up an interesting YouTube channel today, henders007 - the channel has all kinds of fun videos of scientific tricks.  For example, check out the below video of some ball bearings and a couple of magnets creating a Gaussian Gun:

Very cool.

Finally, if you've got a Twitter account and got nothing better to do, why not nominate me for a Shorty award?

The Shorty awards are described as "The Shorty Awards are a worldwide effort to engage hundreds of thousands of Twitter users to identify the best people and organizations on social media, culminating in a blockbuster ceremony in New York City." - basically they're social media awards and it's a great opportunity for everyone to have their say in who is the best.

Obviously there's no chance that I'm going to win but I've checked the charts and even just eleven votes will get me into the top forty bloggers!

Tweet the following:

I nominate @ravenswingthog for a Shorty Award in #blogger because... (put here a reason why you're nominating me!)

You need to include a reason otherwise the vote won't count!  See how the awards are going here.

Two Favourites for Tuesday - Oat So Simple and Rumpole

I've taken a liking to Oat So Simple for breakfast lately.

This porridge-in-two-minutes morning meal solution tastes good, is quick to prepare, and makes me feel as though I'm being healthy (even when I pick the Golden Syrup option).

Plus it comes with added excitement!

If you haven't had Oat So Simple, the way you prepare it is by opening a paper sachet of delicious porridge mix, tipping that into a bowl, then refilling the sachet with milk and then tipping that in too.

This refilling of a sachet with milk brings with it the risk of spilling the milk over yourself and/or the kitchen which nicely wakens you up and makes you pay attention to what you're doing, plus a small part of your mind is saying "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!? YOU DON'T POUR MILK INTO A FLIMSY USED SACHET!!!" as you do it.

It actually works quite well, and more often than not the milk is safely transferred from bottle to sachet and then from sachet to bowl without any loss by spillage, but you get the excitement of the possibility of having a kitchen splattered with wasted milk.  Twice so far this week we've had milk spills due to poor sachet control.

Apart from that, I've been watching old episodes of Rumpole of the Bailey.  Exciting eh?  But it is really quite entertaining - a reminder that just because something isn't brand new doesn't mean it isn't good.

Word Verification is annoying but it's worse without

I disabled word verification on my blog a week or so back after someone was saying how difficult it was to leave a comment on one of my posts.

Now I have to admit that I fully agree.  I absolutely hate word verification - for those not sure what I'm talking about it's when, usually at the end of filling a form in on the Internet, you are confronted with a box similar to the below:

Let me find my dictionary, is it the traditional spelling of endeeden?

You have to copy out the two words in the box to prove that you're a real person and not a computer firing off spam.

The problem is, far too often the system gives you two "words" that as far as I can see aren't words, certainly not ones that I'm familiar with (then again I only have a Grade C GCSE in English so perhaps they're all words that are only taught to those students attempting to get A's and for people like me who just wanted a C they only taught words in common usage) and because the words are blurred to defeat automated OCR systems I end up typing the words in wrong.

The type of verification system shown above is probably the most common, but I know of one that I came across last Friday that was so annoying (and had to be accessed to allow me to play a game) that I ended up uninstalling the game rather than tackle the verification system again.

So, I turned off the verification on my blog.  Unfortunately this has led to automated spam systems taking glee in spraying my blog in comments, to the point where I've turned on the word verification again.

Sorry.

I've been playing more FTL whenever I have a spare moment - I've now completed it two or three times on Easy and unlocked a few ships (although many still await unlocking).  I just love how the game can, in a sudden twist, change your fortunes.  You might be limping along, trying to keep everything together, then happen upon a random cache that kits you out with missiles and gives you a new uberweapon to destroy the rebels with.  Or you might decide to help out some fellow spacefarers with their big spider problem, and lose your helmsman that you've been training for eight sectors.  It really can give you a bit of a kick in the shins and you'll find yourself grumbling away half an hour later that you had the perfect starship until you blew up an enemy light cruiser, forgetting that your two hardcore Mantis boarding guys were still on it.

Finally and slightly randomly I'd like to highlight the Cambridge Union Society YouTube channel.  On it's channel it includes speeches and lectures by people such as Brian Blessed and Al Murray, and it's well worth a watch if you want an entertaining hour that also makes you feel somewhat intellectual, a bit like Radio 4.

We survived the G4C Employability event!

So Thursday night, we held a G4C Employability event at Sheffield Hallam University.

It actually went quite well!

On the build up to any event that I'm taking part in (especially any where I have some responsibility) I do tend to become slightly more nervous than usual.

Plus for this one there was the added factors of:

• I'd never been to the venue before
• I'd not met most of the presenters in person before
• We included a speed networking session, which I'd never organised before (or indeed attended before!)
• We were looking at having a far larger event than anything G4C in the region had done before
• I wasn't able to, if all else failed, do everything myself!

This last one might sound odd, but I was very much aware that in this case we had a decent group of people spending their evening coming to this event and I wanted it not to be a waste of their time (especially for the students as it happened to be the evening before their exams!).  I've certainly been to events in the past where, for what ever reason, I've not been engaged.

As it happens, the event went even better than I'd hoped it might, which is (in particular) down to:

• Sheffield Hallam, Tony Cheetham, their lecturers, caterers and their alumni team for the venue, making sure everything ran smoothly, encouraging their students to attend and putting out drinks!
• Paul Jackman of Thorn Baker and Hayley Smith of Mason Clark for presenting at the event
• Mark Taylor of Mott MacDonald for helping us out with the cost of refreshments as well as bringing along information about opportunities
• Caroline Key of George Hurst & Sons for generally sorting everything out, as well as on the night making sure no one got in without signing!
• Lisa Martin of Leeds City Council for having the idea for the topic of the event in the first place
• Megan Clough of East Riding of Yorkshire Council for filming and photographing the event (and thanks to Alex the photographer who lent Megan a clip to fix her camera to her tripod!)
• YORhub and its various framework contractors and consultants that attended to share their knowledge with the students
• The many groups and people that promoted the event for us, be it putting it on their website, emailing details out to their contacts or members, or however else they helped us
• The students for attending!

Many apologies to anyone that I've missed out!

I honestly can't remember why I was pretending to be a mime holding a two litre bottle of lemonade.

Personally I can say that I was really impressed by the students, they were really keen to take the opportunity to speak to people in the construction industry and ask pertinent questions.  It was clear that they really wanted to attend the event and weren't just coming along because their lecturer was pushing them to and I do hope that everyone got something out of it.

Feedback wise the event scored something like 7.9 out of 10 which I'm happy with bearing in mind that as it happened I think the speed networking could have gone better - probably if I'd left the room arrangement alone when I arrived and didn't squash all the chairs together that would have helped (but I was worried that we'd have the full 67 registered people turn up and we'd have to make room for them, as it happened the 45 that turned up was just the right number) and we probably tried to pack a little bit too much into the event, but I certainly think we can learn from the event to improve future ones.  Nevertheless I found the speed networking really interesting and would definitely consider doing again in the future.

While walking around Sheffield on the day I walked past Mott MacDonald's offices.  I took the photo because one of the G4C Yorkshire committee members is based here.  What the photo doesn't tell you is that he wasn't in the office at the time.

I also noticed this sign highlighting a route was a permissive path.  I now know what a permissive path is, but at the time it sounded faintly tantalising.  It probably means that I ought to go and study English again.

So what next for G4C in Yorkshire?  We've got an event on avoiding contractual disputes arranged for the 9th of May in Leeds, being delivered by Addleshaw Goddard, and I think contracts is a really key and overlooked issue in construction - whatever discipline you work in the construction industry, you're going to come into contact with contracts, and be affected by contracts, and I think at least a certain level of awareness of contracts is really necessary for any construction professional (and that's including site teams as well, certainly anyone looking to become a site manager).  Again it's going to be fairly introductory level and we'll be intending to attract a good number of students to the event as well as newly qualified professionals.

Being appropriate with social media

When I was at college studying IT far too many years ago (fourteen perhaps?) one of the things we learned about was "netiquette", or basically the practice of being polite whilst on the Internet and using email.

This has evolved as social media has taken off and we are ever more connected to the world (and more importantly, our contacts) 24/7.

However, this can cause issues.  I personally feel for those people in their teenage years who may make one or two mistakes in their time, acting silly or making bad judgement choices.  We are all human and none of us are perfect.  However, the new generation is under more and more scrutiny, everyone has a camera attached to their phone (and everyone has a phone in their pocket) so anything occurring can be photographed and shared with groups of people within seconds of it happening.  This is a great freedom but also means that people need to be careful how they behave and with who.

For example, I have my blog, my twitter account, my LinkedIn account, my Facebook, and several email addresses - professional, personal and mainly spam ones.  And I have to make decisions on what gets posted to which account, as what may be suitable material to appear on one I may not want to show on another.  Some people have more than one twitter account, one for work and one for personal use - I've not taken that option (yet) but as a result I am aware of what is going up on my twitter feed and try to ensure that it remains acceptable.

Also taking seemingly safe options such as "liking" something on Facebook - I may like the thing I've clicked on, but if friends of mine (who may also be work colleagues) see me liking something that they find offensive, does that cause an issue?

Possibly.  Do be aware that everyone has slightly different senses of humour and can take offense at different things, and something that you find absolutely fine can be anathema to another.

Very important for anyone in work is to be aware of your organisations social media policy and guidance (if available).  I've certainly read my organisations details several times and do strive to ensure that I stay on the right side of the guidance.

To hear from someone who is far more of an expert on these things than myself, check out Paul Wilkinson's website, pwcom.co.uk - Paul is a specialist in social media and is a fantastic speaker about the subject too.

I'll finish off just to give an update about the G4C event I've been arranging - the event we've been doing on Employability is taking place tomorrow at Sheffield Hallam University.  Everything is looking extremely good for the event and I'm very much looking forward to it.  We have now sold out of tickets for the ticket which is great (although I feel bad for anyone who wants to attend but now can't) so fingers crossed for a great evening and everything running smoothly!  We are filming the event and hopefully we'll get the video up at the weekend.

3D Printing is coming...

I do strongly believe that 3D printing is going to make an absolutely massive impact on our every day lives over the next five to ten years, as printers get cheaper, quicker and more capable we're going to see them shift from being used for specific tasks and being viewed as scientific curiosities to being an essential tool around the home.

Nokia recently blogged about their Lumia 820 and how they've made the 3D printing plans for it available online for people to modify and use.  From these plans (and with a 3D printer) you'll be able to print your own case, with whatever design you can draw on the thing.  Very exciting.

Looking at my field, construction, Janjaap Ruijssenaars of  Universe Architecture, whose other work including designs such as a floating bed, is designing and printing a house, due to be ready in 2014.  More information on the Landscape House can be found here.

(As an aside I'd recommend you check out the Universe Architecture website anyway because it's really cool)

Meanwhile over at MIT, they're busy creating a Spiderbot that will print a house.

Plus CityHome, a home that can reconfigure itself.  Having a party?  Reconfigure your house to give you a big room for people to mingle.  Want an office away day?  Create a couple of office spaces and a meeting room.

Don't get me wrong, it's going to be years before these are commonly used in day-to-day construction, but the ideas that are out there are startling.

We are truly on the edge of a new phase of scientific discovery and implementation.  There are so many new possibilities out there with new technologies and systems, and those of us that can recognise the potential in these new systems, and turn that potential into reality, can revolutionise the world.

Warning! Contains words!

I was removing the wrapping from a couple of pizzas today (not both for me, only one is for me, yes it is the meat feast one, yes I do have wasabi sauce to put on it)

Wasabi Sauce - makes everything... hotter

Anyway, I digress.  I happened to read the labels on the pizzas just in case there was cooking instructions (yes, I can cook a pizza without instructions, but if there ever are cooking instructions I like to read them), and I noticed the following text:

WARNING: CONTAINS ALLERGENS

Now, I personally think some of the other warnings found are overkill.  When milk bottles warn that they contain milk, or bags of peanuts may contain nuts, I think it's pretty silly.  I can understand why the company made the decision to put it on, but even so.

But this is surely just lazy!

"Contains Allergens". So basically, because pretty much anything could be an allergen to someone, they're saying that you might be allergic to something in this food.

Not very helpful!  It's a sign to me of a poor consideration of health & safety.

Health & safety, which is blamed for all kinds of silly decisions, is not a bad thing.  The problem is when people fail to keep it in proportion.

Sometimes risks can't be removed altogether, and you have to accept a level of risk.  You can't absolutely remove the risk of being in a car accident, but do you have a massive label on the front of your car when you buy it saying "Warning - using this car may result in death or serious injury"?!?

No, you accept the risk.

Rant over!

For those interested in a bit of geeky history, why not pop over to http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html where you can find some of the first web pages made.  I found it very interesting to check out what the Internet looked like at such an early stage.