Scoot’s thoughts on all things technology, design, photography and life in general !
This morning in our bathroom I found a bee on the mat. The bee was alive although a little docile almost taking time for a wash. I grabbed a glass that had some water in and emptied it, gave it a quick wipe and then grab a piece of card. I scooped the bee up and decided it would be good to show LCJ before letting it go. Once I picked it up I noticed that it was a little unusual with a completely black body with orange thighs and a very slight orange tip of the abdomen. My first thought was a red tailed bumblebee but now that I have looked at a few pictures I am not so sure. I took a few shots but due to the thickness of the glass plus the amount of movement of the bee I only got some very rough one. I have included two here:
After research I suspect it might be a Red Shanked Carder Bumblebee (Bombus ruderarius) which is fairly scarce in the UK instead of the more common Red Tailed Bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius). They seem to be distinguished by the Red Shanked one having red hairs on the hind legs where the red tailed one has black legs.
Got the car back on Monday and so pleased to have transport back even if my wallet is very light at the moment. Paranoid that the roof will go wrong again so am avoiding using at this stage, fingers crossed for summer. Talking of summer have had a date for the work starting on the conservatory by first removing the old garage, this will be next week. I will post some pictures of the work as it starts and progresses.
In prep I had to clear out the garage which was a mixture of things like spare wood, bikes, golf clubs, carpet, tools, paints, ladder and jet wash.. Need a good clear out once the conservatory is completed..
Saw this today on the lamp post down the road and wondered if we were to experience planet of the apes sometime soon 
Or is it just planet of the graffiti ape!
So the nice man from Autoglass appeared about a week ago and spent 2hours fiddling with the broken sunroof. This was after saying this should be a quick job as it only 6 bolts to undo 
Finally he appeared stating Houston we have a problem, OK he didn’t use that exact phrase. It turned out that with all the will in the world the sunroof would not close as the anti jamming mechanism kept cutting in due to hidden debris. It turns out that glass cover only goes as far as replacing and hoovering up broken glass that can be got to. So as my sunroof cover was closed when it exploded most of the shattered glass ended up in the roof headlining and there some in the rails that the roof slides along. I spoke to the insurance company and they stated I have two choices the first would be initiate a full accident claim and hence stuff up my protected NCB or take to the dealer and get them to fix it.
So I decided the dealer as with excess and potential additional cost due to loss of NCB at next renewal would be greater than the costs overall. Next issue was getting it booked into the garage which meant that it only went in yesterday for evaluation. The garage rang and said that I had two options, first to have the glass taken out of the sunroof and the hoover stuck inside to try and remove all the glass at about 1.5hrs labour or the whole head liner removed and all the glass cleaned out at 5hrs labour. I opted for the expensive one as I was concerned that I would drive down the road and another piece of rogue glass get in the mechanism and the roof being stuck open again
The car is now due back on Monday as its a long job which they couldn’t finish on Friday.. Oh well looking forward to getting it back especially after hiring a ford focus for a week that was a bit gutless and noisy on the motorway..
On the way back from Heidi & Adrians in sunny Buckinghamshire we were traveling on the M25 between J16 & J15 when there was a loud bang followed by a shattering sound. After the initial shock it became clear that the sunroof has shattered, but how. The bang coincided with us going past a bridge so we can only think that something fell from it or was dropped/thrown on to the car roof. I got off the motorway to check the damage and the front glass had completely shattered
A good around the car and no other damaged could be seen so we are foxed to the real cause of the break. I am glad of two things about this accident, the first was the fact that the internal cover was closed otherwise the three of us could have been showered in glass. The second thing was that it wasn’t raining.
The fun has now started to get it replaced, I am waiting for autoglass to call me tomorrow about getting the actual glass whilst we wait for Privilege to authorise the replacement. Fingers cross that it gets fixed quickly as the car isn’t going anywhere at the moment and thank goodness we have the car port to protect it.
I have just finished reading Garr Reynolds PresentationZen Design which was an excellent follow-up to PresentationZen.
Image from Garr Reynolds site PresentationZen
The book is very easy to read and provides useful insight from Garr as well as other experts in this area. So what is the book all about? Firstly it provides a great grounding why design matters for you presentations and secondly it goes into how you can improve your presentation design following some simple rules or guidelines. The book really makes you think about your presentation and how can they be improved. I think this is particularly important given the amount of presentations I have written, used and attended where text takes over the screen with the focus on this rather than the presenters. The good thing is over the last 2-3 years I have seen a change happen in technical presentations where less content in terms of text, bullet points and information overload.
Hopefully the presentations I give today are an improvement and will continue that way
The book can be found on Amazon here
So todays photo had to be of the sky or a skyline given the fantastic colours we have seen at sunset this week. I managed to get out in time to capture some of these colours so picked this as my shot of the day.
And on the way I home I even got a shot of a big bold skyline
Today whilst walking through the leaves and undergrowth at Virginia Water I spotted the following:
Yes thats right the rotting head of a Pike, not sure what put it so far from the lake or whether it was a fisherman or an animal, but very unusual site. The second shot below shows the teeth..
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.
