Scoot’s thoughts on all things technology, design, photography and life in general !
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Trust me to discover the Genographic project as it nears completion. Well the truth is I have known about it for ages, but just been rubbish at doing anything until the end of 2009. It was prompted by me completing a survey for National Geographic that gave me 20% off anything in the NG Store. I thought excellent I can get some books there are always interesting titles, especially on photography. Thats when I spotted the the testing kit and order it straight away. It was just my luck it was out of stock so it took about 6 weeks to arrive. The kit included loads of useful information and I also ordered the companion book for background information whilst I waited for the results. And about 6 weeks later my result were ready.
I decided that it would be interesting to share this information on my blog so that people can understand what the testing provides. Firstly it doesn’t provide details of where you are from, but instead it provides insight into the DNA markers that are caused via mutation as people migrate over a long period of time. For example my markers range from about 60,000 years ago until approximately 10,000 years ago.
So my haplogroup is R1a1 (M198)
Brief background on Haplogroup can be found here
Here is the map that the project provided as part of my results where it shows the DNA migration from its origins in Africa until it settles in Europe (Ukraine / Southern Russia)
Map & Data provided by Genographic Project.
So this map shows the complete path of:
M168 > P143 > M89 > L15 > M9 > M45 > M207 > M173 > SRY10831.2 > M17
M168 - Appeared around 50,000 years ago in Africa and at that time there were approximately 10,000 Homo sapiens
M9 - From around 40,000 years ago in Iran or Central Asia with approximately tens of thousands of Homo sapiens
M45 – 35,000 years ago in Central Asia approx 100,000 Homo sapiens
M207 – 30,000 years again Central Asia, this group split into two groups one heading into India and the other into Europe.
M173 - No surprising mine was the branch that moved to Europe. This marker is very common in Europe especially in UK. It is thought that these humans moved to avoid the ice sheets into Spain, Italy and the Balkans around 20,000 years ago.
M17 – My final marker is very interesting as the map shows this group heading east / south-east towards southern russia. The final marker is from an ancestor born 10,000 – 15,000 years ago on the grassy steppes in the region of Ukraine/Southern Russia. His descendants were nomadic steppe dwellers that spread as far afield as Iceland & India. One of the largest concentrations is in the Czech Republic across the steppes to Siberia and south throughout Central Asia. Around 35% of Hindi speaking men in India carry this marker. There seems to be a close correlation with linguistics as this marker is common with Indo-European languages such as Germany, English, French, Russian and Spainish.
Having finished a number of books related to E2.0 I thought that it was only right that I made a quick summary of my views on them. As a very slow reader of books and someone who always has at least 4 books on the go at any one time excluding manuals 
content can get fused. This has the plus side of allowing me to remix ideas and content to suit my business requirements. For example real world stories from non E2.0 books may actually provide context or anecdotes for business scenarios. I tend to read a lot of history related books, which is very strange considering it was one of my least favourite subjects at school. Typically I read military based history books so at the moment I am reading Tobruk: The Great Siege 1941-42 by William Buckingham as well as Admirals by Lambert. Both these show how people interact, work, collaborate,fail and succeed.
So back to the two books I have finished in recent months on E2.0. The first was the long awaited Andrew McAfee – Enterprise 2.0 : New Collaborative Tools for your Organization’s Toughest Challenges and the second was Willms Bushe, Soren Stamer – The Art of Letting Go Enterprise 2.0. The first thing that struck me about both these works was the excellent references to real world examples.
Coming from a technology background and having implemented, supported and sold collaborative capabilities over the past 12 years I am always looking for content that will aid me challenge my customers views of the new fads in the IT world and how to look for unique business opportunities to drive adoption and participation of E2.0 platforms.
I think this book really captures the essence of Andrew’s blog and hopefully will provide the opportunity for him to deliver a follow-on work that provides a more detailed insight into the progression of E2.0 and of course E3.0, or whatever term is coined to label the next wave of collaboration capabilities.
One final comment relates to the term social, I like Andrew’s idea of avoiding this term in some circumstances as in reality this is about collaboration and this has been a perfectly good term to describe the capabilities.
Moving on to the Art of Letting go this was a great example of essays from different people on real world situations and implementation of E2.0 style technologies to fulfil business requirements as well as enhance businesses standing with their customers. The book drew on experiences from Prof Andrew McAfee, Craig Cmehil (SAP), Stephen Johnston (Nokia), Stefan Bocking (Vodafone), Willm Buhse (CoreMedia AG), Suw Charman-Anderson, Nicole Dufft (Berlecon Research GmbH), Gotz Hamann (Die ZEIT), Prof / Dr Michael Koch, Prof / Dr Kathrin Moslein, Prof Dr Frank Piller, Prof / Dr Ralf Reichwald and Soren Stamer (CoreMedia).
All of these different authors bring their experiences to you enabling you to see how different organisations implement and use these types of capabilities everyday. I would recommend both of these works.
After a frustrating time during the snow when my hard disk in my thinkpad crashed big style I have successfully moved to an ubuntu build with a vmware for those windows based applications I need to use and demo. That week started with snow thus no access to the office, but with the beauty of spare technology I was able to swap the duff drive with the one from my original Macbook that is not being used being only 80GB
With my Macbook Pro I connected back to the office and downloaded the VPN software, whilst downloading the standard build in VMware format and the Ubuntu Karmic Koala 64bit. Within a day I was back up running with the exception of some quirks with the vpn build needed for access to work, but this was only a minor issue as I could still connect via the vmware image.
It was interesting when I rang IBM support to get the old drive sorted on warranty. Basically they wouldn’t except a linux disk test error message stating exactly how many bad sectors I had, instead they insisted that I download a Dr PC window version tester to test the disk that only reported a vague disk error message. This proved a challenge as I had to borrow a windows PC to burn the bootable CD to test the disk, great fun, what if I didn’t have access to a window PC. When I rang back with the error code the agent was only interested that I had a disk error message to satisfy his requirements to send out a new disk. This turned up the following Tuesday so it was a good job I had that spare otherwise with the snow I would have to use the Macbook…
Lets hope this disk can last more than 8 months…….
Todays photo was a hard choice in terms of subject matter, but after finally deciding on the dripping tap I narrowed the shots down to two. Below is the one that was second choice base on background clutter, but on the plus side is the way the tiles are captured in the droplet.
Todays 2010 picture was of a bowl of smarties in the snow. So I thought I would share the others in the series with you. The chosen picture can be found here.
For anyone that does not know what smarties are see here http://www.smarties.co.uk/home/
Went over to the park today to give LCJ a run around and a quick whizz on the toboggan before the snow disappears. Here are a few shots from today..
LCJ & CJ on the way down the hill
Berries
LCJ smiling being pulled along..
Holly…
Whats going on?
Road to park
The paddock
Only right that I should have a go
Now had my salomon boots for a month or two and have to say they have impressed me. They are very light, sturdy but strong and also very capable given the current weather conditions.
Image from Salomon Website
http://www.salomon.com/uk/?#/footwear/footwear/trekking/cosmic-4d-gtx
The boots have great grip and have coped very well in the snow and ice conditions whilst providing excellent ankle support plus have kept my feet nice and warm even with normal socks. In comparison with my timberland boots these have provided greater grip and have provided much better weather protection. Note the timberlands are old so to be fair I am sure the newer boots from Timberland would be able to cover these two issues without problem.
I decided to get these boots after seeing them twice on the Gadget Show where they came highly recommended so this really swayed my decision. They are quite expensive, but so far I cannot fault them The one thing that caught my eye was how the presenters were able to jog in these boots. Although I won’t be jogging in them they certainly allow you to run in them if needed, and this prove useful when I needed to run up our snow covered road to help push LCJ’s nanna car that had got stuck. They also help with grip whilst pushing the car as well.
Highly Recommended 9/10
Here are some more photos I took today of the snow, ice and LCJ
Here we are out in the snow today
Damn cold this morning car showed -7c after only driving 150 yards having started to -3.5c.
After leaving the gym I took a few snaps of the frosty trees.
I am so glad it had warmed up when I left work reaching the barmy -3c
