For so long I have been rejecting the idea that I will ever use a Facebook Page for my CPD links, but in recent weeks, I have been trying it out and its so easy to post a link, article or just a comment, so I am going to step up and give it a go for a few more weeks, all I do I hope will be posted here, via the great program iFTTT, which will monitor what I post and list it here.

The address for the Konstrukshon CPD web page on Facebook is :

Facebook

Or search for “Konstrukshon CPD”

Please check it out, and post any comments or even repost

Google Doc Spreadsheet cell Bullet points list

Leave a reply

A long title for this post, but such an easy trick, I so often have to make Google Doc spreadsheet bullet point lists in my spreadsheet, and this is the way I do it, some might say, I should list each item on a separate row, and for the majority of times thats correct, but just every so often, I want to add a Bullet point list within a single cell.

I use Google docs so often now for almost all my writing work, the sharing is so easy, I can take the web upload code Google Docs gives me and load it into Moodle, the Student interface I use as a lecturer, and the students can see my lectures so easily, and get the updates as and when I make then instantly.

Google onhub the big picture

Leave a reply

Google Onhub

You may have heard me go on, in recent posts about the way my wifi drops has very load speeds, and in general just does not work, forcing me to use a hardwire link for my internet, where I get speeds in excess of 50mbs instead of less than 1mbs over my wifi, is Google onhub the big picture, being missed, read on.

My experience out and about is not much better, I live on the southside of Birmingham, where you might think I get high speed mobile 3G and 4G, and in the most part I do, but there are glaring gaps, and it disrupts my workflow plus my music far to regularly. Plus the amount of access to the internet given by my provider O2 is so often not enough, I end up with no coverage at all late in the month.

So when I see two separate avenues being created by Google, I started to sit back and look at the big picture, what is the main thing they do not control, yet might be the biggest obstacle to innovation and seriously harm their existing product portfolio, dam right its the mobile access to the internet.

The already well established long term project to get Google Fibre into major cities in the USA, and now Europe, is part 1 of their efforts to move the control of the phone companies to themselves. The introduction of the Google router onhub, is the second part of this movement, first to establish local wifi with some clout, better speeds and a more secure environment, but more important, to allow Google to offer better access to the net, by their customers from the millions of home onhub routers, that almost everyone in the industry sees as over spec’d and far more powerful than is really needed for home use.

You might now wonder why we have both a telephone number and an email address, why not just one, I use google for most of my calls, and after a while I began to see the real benefit of just my email address, no country codes, a fast system, easy video calls, and if connected to google fibre via one on the may onhub systems, a cheap no barrier to use system.

After all this, what does this have to do with CPD and Architecture, well look at the way I run my own practice, I work partly from home and partly from University, I have a Skype telephone number, and can receive calls wherever I am. but as most of my communication is email, and google hangout, with Skype thrown in.

I rarely get mobile calls these days, so I have to ask, is a phone number really a business tool. Internet and the vast number of excellent apps is far better, all that’s stopping it is the mobile operators who insist on a NUMBER.

Take also my home line, I have no use whats so ever for a land line number, yet bt insist I have one and charge me for it.

I am Flipped

Leave a reply

I have seen the light, and I am FLipped, for so long, I have used Zite to read articles, and search for more of the same, it worked for me, I liked the way I could leaf over pages and add more as I wanted, Flipboard came along and I just did not get it, so Zite remained my way.

The purchase of Zite by Flipboard, also went by me, I stayed with what I liked. That is until just recently I sort of played with it this weekend, and it struck me, I got the idea, and I spent a lot of time reading pages I had made up, I did play on Flipboard over the years, and did make up pages, but lost interest as I went back to Zite,

I have even uploaded all my searches and interests from Zite to Flipboard, and I don’t think I will look back.

I use a rather old iPad, its slow and lacking in both speed and ability, but Flipbard seems not to bother.I read the articles I want, I use the evernote app to save it, and all is good in the world, Oh one small gripe, Evernote sometimes will not save a Flipboard article, just a link, so I have to use the “open in Safari” and do it from there, not a great inconvenience, but worth a mention.

So there it is, I am FLipped,

Walter Segal Video

Leave a reply

It might come as no surprise to any one who reads this blog, I am a fan of Walter Segal, I never got the chance to meet him, but I did get involved in one or two projects using the construction methods he outlined, so when I saw this Walter Segal vide0, I have never seen before, I was all over it.

For students you might well want to take a look at my other article on Walter Segal, do a search in the bar above to see all I have collected and the AJ article I still send out.

As always, I wrote this post, then found another video I want to share,,,,,

BIM & Drones

Leave a reply

This excellent article on the CIOB Bim+ site, also entitled BIM & Drones outlines the use of drones to monitor large construction sites and use that information to check on progress. For me is a massive extension to the use of time lapse photography that we have al seen and watched, but this seems to take it to a whole new level.

I can imagine there are issues to resolve, privacy and other buildings it may well video, but I think this can easily be solved, the real benefits come from high end use of software that can measure progress against the BIM drawing model and Gant charts,