Adding images to Google Sheets from your iPad

The addition of Google Sheets to the iPad is one of the best moves ever from Google, well the best move this week anyway, I used it extensively last week to mock up a presentation, ready to finish of on my laptop. However I could have got a little further, well finished the slide set on the iPad, if there was a way to add some photos I wanted to use as part of the presentation.

Well Jeff Herb has written an excellent blog to outline the process, together with an excellent little video that allows you to do it, ok not on the app, but as a work around using the iPad Google Chrome web browser, and logging into the Google Docs site to add the photo, from your iPad onto the slide set.

I have tried it and its ok, I would rather it was within the iPad app, so guys at google, sort it, but until then this is worthy of knowing.

 

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Office Storage

Are there any practices out there still using internal web server storage, there might be, and I wonder how much it costs, against the likes of Dropbox or Google Drive. But the real question is, how useful is the storage looked on as a comparison, between usefulness , ease of use, cost to run, and perhaps ease of access, with reliability as the final comparison.

This article on Techradar, is relatively comprehensive, and I tend to agree with it, in my practice, we use both Google Drive for my larger CAD files, and Google Drive for almost anything else, I have almost given up on Apple Pages, and Keynote, unless your Apple I can’t share them easily, although I do like to use pages just to view a word or excel doc, its just quicker, but for long term, Doc’s always get imported into Google Drive, and when you consider that we have two offices nearly 50 miles apart, and I travel a lot between lecturing its a no brainer.

The article also ask’s the question, I think a lot of student might be asking, should I spend over a £1000 on a laptop, perhaps nearer £2000 for an Apple, when I can buy a Google Chrome laptop for about £350 max which will do most is not all of my work and storage .

In fact Google Chrome goes beyond just written word, because of the Autocad app, its not as good as the real thing, but them most universities have a host of machines running the educational version, if Autocad could get Revit to work in the cloud then I  would say its complete. One item I can’t do is scan, Chrome does not seem to have an app to do this, and I scan an awful lot into Evernote, so could not do without it.

So there it is, I will continue along the Dropbox path with Google Drive, together with my current Macbook Pro, and see what happens, I can see that at some stage I will purchase a Chrome Laptop, you will notice the complete lack of iCloud from Apple, its just not easy to use.

 

 

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Scanning Articles

This morning, its been a Scanning Articles marathon, by that, I mean I have been looking through that pile of free magazines, sales bunff, and other bits of article I have removed from tabloid papers. The pile has been substantially reduced and Evernote is now the wiser, or I will be, if I ever need the information, and every so often I do need it, as I search in Google, it comes up as a side panel, and shows that I did read something about the subject, and saved it away. I am away soon on hols, my laptop has been banned, but my iPad will be with me on the premise that I use it to read books, of which I have staked it up with a load of free books from Amazon Kindle store, The point here is that I will sync it as I leave and there will be a number of articles ready to read. So thats sunday morning, not a lot going on, just a little work, oh and several new jobs have come in, so a little paperwork to send out, and acknowledge. I have also rsarected an old iPhone 4, stipped it of all but essentials and left plenty of space for photos, my main phone will be used, but only in port, the spair as its now called will be for day to day use, I hate to see a good phone wasted, so this is a good chance to get some use for it, if it’s stollen, there is little on it that will show me or my personal life, the photos will be synced to a flickr account, so not lost.

Certified Chimney Systems

I have to install a new chimney system to a house I am extending, so as always I did a trawl on the internet, and found the Schiedel system, and its seems I have looked at this before, because my Evernote app to Chrome showed it up in the side bar search as well, so I have just downloaded some tech stuff and the DWG file, not much to write home about, but its a clever neat system, that has the right warranties and tech backup, so its getting specified.

Adding information into Evernote is so useful to the Technologist, not because its easy to get at, but the background search and show in just about every browser,  is so handy. I recently read that Memory sticks can not only contain virus and nasty stuff embedded in the files, but the actual software inside the stick can be hacked, so any self respecting system manager is not going to be happy with you plugging in a stick with all your details and spec information on it, so perhaps the cloud offers the answer, dropbox, flickr, and of course Google Drive, but Evernote offers so much more.

This week I was in the University library and was browsing the shelf looking for a specific book, but as always I found several I thought might be interesting, so I took a photo from within Evernote, and made a few types comments, the internal OCR will read the book binder photo and make it available for search, and show it up in my Google screen. I am happy, the system IT man is happy and I get instand recall of information, Oh and yes I tag.

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Architectural Salvage Yard

I have a large house conversion on at present, nothing unusual about this, I have several waiting to be done, but this one involves a lot of restoration, and the client wants to keep the floor boards intact, and keep the same in place on the new areas, so I am looking for a supplier or a Architectural Salvage yards of old timber floor boards, not the nine inch t&g boards, but wide and long butt edge planks.

My first job is to look at the timber type, next its to take some pictures, then I intend to trawl the Architectural Salvage yards to see if I can find any that match.

I have done this before, looking for old building materials, I once did a survey on an old house and showed a picture of the very old scullery with a double Belfast sink, see todays photo, I have several calls from like minded people asking if it might be for sale. In my search I found this site Andy Thornton, and I have no connection with this site, but its a nice well laid out web site that offers complete units, for shops, not my particular interest, but if your looking for an old style shop, it might just be the place to go.

My search on Google brought up several interesting other sites, and of course several I have loaded into Evernote, I have the Evernote app for safari that checks my personal knowledge base on Evernote, very handy.

 

 

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WeVideo

So often when I visit site, I take loads and loads of photos, my iPhone is simple to use, there is no space problem and transferring is relatively simple. I also include video in this statement, as I see both Video and Stills as a source for recording a site.

The iPhone, and for that matter almost any modern phone, make this operation, simple easy and almost uncomplicated. I use several ways to upload, I have both Flickr and Google auto uploading, It save time and I have the setting set to use only WiFi, and the uploads set to private, so I can go in later and reset the ones I want to use publicly. As I use a Mac, I also have the use of iPhoto, soon to be upgraded as my main safe file source.

For the stills, thats it, I collect them into sets and share, but for the videos I like to collect the short snaps I take into one video, for this I use WeVideo, as part of Google Docs . its relatively simple, link WeVideo to Google Docs,  just load up the videos, and drag them into the time line, I have subscribed to the service to get extra functions, but the basic free version is enough to get started.

The video below show how and a little why, for me video so often tells a better story than still photography, especially if I can give a commentary on what I am looking at.

Next I save a link into Evernote, so I can search on it, and as always its tagged reasonably well, with project No, and location title, plus anything else I can think of.

As Architectural Technologists, we get called on to do all sorts of things, not taught at college or Uni, so for me updating my skills in simple but useful video storage and clipping is valuable CPD, and good to add onto my CV.

For more tutorials on using WeVideo try this link to youtube. As for todays photo, this is my simple yet so useful Dumpy level, and its going to be the subject of my next video.

 

Sequence of Operations

I am pulling together some notes for the Architectural Technologist on the Sequence of Operations, we all need to understand, both in the way we approach detailing, but also how and why materials are used and in what sequence on site.

Take for instance Plaster, its not done till quite late on in the program, finished timber is also left till very late, but first fix timber is used quite early on.

When a contractor gets involved in a project, you might find that a Gantt Chart or Critical Path Chart is made, this helps enormously, but in the early days we so often do don’t have this luxury, so rely upon our skills to sequence materials.

So often on larger sites, plant and equipment are fitted very early, just because they will be to big to fit once the construction is in place, so we will need to apply support, or covering/protection early.

As I build up my thoughts I will add these to a Google slide presentation, see below, curently in early days, but I will add, change and update as I research the concept.

Todays photo is of a well I have just found on a site I look after, interesting and a small challenge for the contractor as the foundations pass right over the top, so we are treating it as a pipe and will stop the foundations either side and put two concrete lintels over as we might if a pipe is involved. The well itself will be capped, and sealed, although I would like to just mass fill it with concrete, safer and a lot easier, and will stop the brickwork collapsing, although I think its been there since before the turn of the century (1900) and is still in quite good condition.

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Architectural Technologist – The Architectural Grid

I am pulling together a presentation on the use of the Architectural Grid. It’s one of those projects that has been stumbling about on my Blog, to do list for a while, well ever since I needed to get some of my students to grid up their designs recently.

So I have been looking back over some of the large projects I have worked on over the years to see what I have used, and I suddenly find it’s not just large buildings, but medium to small projects that I have used grids on, and it’s not just the working drawings I find that I use grids, my survey pad, has a nice little 1:100 light grid on it as an A4 sheet, to help my freehand drawing, I have used Grids to design buildings, and I know a lot of Architects who use this method, it’s probably where I got it from.

Looking back over other peoples designs, we see the grid all over the place, from ancient Greece, to book design, to nature, to city design, look at New York, the grid is everywhere, I must have found thirty or so different web pages and article that relate to some form of grid use in Architecture. All, I must say have been saved to Evernote, and are being used to formulate my presentation.

For me though the real power of the grid, is in my working drawings, as a location system, as a referencing tool, but mostly to control the structure, which I suspect most of use use to lay out any grid.

Simple grids are the easiest to use, but complex buildings with different shape or legs require the grid to be adapted, circular, “L” shapes, even complex multi building projects where the OS grid is used to control a secondary building grid.

I have used small 2 and 3 meter grids, and remember a larger 10 meter grid being used , Walter Segal, an Architect I so often return to for just pure pleasure, used a Tartan grid to layout his house designs, based upon the size of material and structure.

CAD now allows us to class or layer the grid, so if necessary, it can easily be turned of, or coloured to help navigation.

Although I have never used a grid to control an elevation, they have certainly be used to layout and design the look and shape of the elevation.

As we move into 3D drawing, the grid is also in need of some further design to allow the extra dimension, I tech my student to use the same grid for each floor, does this need revision.

It’s not a simple as you might think, and worthy of a lecture all of it’s own, so hence my new presentation, which I  enclosed  below, it’s a work in progress, and will build as I add notes references, reading lists, and lecture notes, so keep looking to see the final result. As for CPD, again its a worthy research topic, and can easily add a good hour or two in initial research, but be aware its a consuming topic, especially nature, you will be so surprised at the way grids have been used here.

You might also be pulled into Grid Architecture in power distribution, its not so far away, and another good sideline research project.

 

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Architectural Technologist – My Evernote Personal Evernote gets better

I love Evernote, I save most things to it, I search and use the information I now keep in my personal Archive of information, almost daily, so often its several times a day. But one thing bugged me was if I managed to scan a pdf on its side I could not rotate it, well, those very nice people at Evernote, have solved this and made an update to the desktop app for, I think just the Mac, that allows you to, yes, rotate the pdf, but they did not stop there, they also gave some of the Skitch functions to it, so I can now also markup a copy and send it out, so cool and so useful. watch the ever so useful video below, or go to the Documentsnap site to read the full article and also see the video there.

Have you played with Apple maps lately, its getting rather good, ok, I still use Google maps, just because there is a street view, and it’s saved my bacon on several occasions, just because I wanted to see a street elevation, or worse, I did not take a street view on my survey,,,, it happens !.

Apple maps now comes as a standard with the Maverics update,  and its not bad, but Google maps still wins, just because of Street view, and it has the ability to give me a link, to embed into say a web site, something I do for one of my clients whose site I manage and keep up to date.

you might also want to zoom completely out of Apple Maps to see there equivalent of Google Earth, still not in the same ball park as Google earth, but interesting all the same, what you might want to ask is how long before they catch up with certain features. Todays photo is of a screen capture I managed to get as Apple maps was loading, and building the screen, it show the lines of latitude and longitude and I thought this would be a great shot to show my class, as to why we don’t use Lat and Long in the building industry, rather we use a Northing and Easting grid.

 

Architectural Technologist – Evernote post it notes

You all know I like Evernote! well two applications have just come to me! the first is the update to the iPhone app for Evernote it's self! just press the photo button on the menu bottom right! and swipe the bottom menu accross to “Post-it note” and take a shot of any post it note, give it a second to sort it's self out and the post it note is sent as a note in Evernote. I must admit to this being one of Jon Pickup's little gems that he told me about on a Skype call this morning.

The other is an app for the iPad, called Textgrabber, this allows you to import a screen grab of any text! and scan it for OCR, this takes little time at all, literaly less than a second for a full page, you then highlight the area of text you want and hit the share button, there is a number of choices, but the most obvious is evernote I sent a tech book I was reading! and wanted a particular paragraph! I sent this across! followed it over and added the source to the top of the note. Textgrabber is a paid for app, but at a little over £3:30 it's a snip.

The very obvious CPD is in the collection of notes for research, which I do an lot of, Evernote allows so easily to grab a web page, and it's own OCR for search is excellent, but books have always been a pain, particularly kindle, but now, I can save to evernote almost anything I want.

 

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