Comparison of Business Class Travel

OK, before we start, I'm grateful to be traveling business class and not economy. These notes are meant to convey my own personal experience traveling with different airlines and give feedback on the best of the best. Overall my experience of business class travel is very positive. Maybe some other time I'll contrast business and economy class which is a whole different story (guessing JAL will be top of the list in both categories actually, but I'm ahead of myself as usual).

OK, here is my own person run down from best to good (can't say worst as the others are all good).

1. JAL - OK, so I'm on one of their planes typing this blog now so that may be influencing me, but I'm bowled over by their awesome customer service. The air stewardess (non PC but I forget the PC name so slap me), was very apologetic for not having the particular veggie/fish meal I wanted and made efforts to combine the meals to make sure I had something to eat. In addition, their video entertainment system has a better user interface, better screen and overall better experience than any other carrier I've flown. Japanese customer service plus Japanese Tech = ++++ experience! Well done JAL, I'm sold. As an aside, I also travelled with JAL in economy last year and their customer service was awesome - akin to what I'd expect in business class (without the leg room though!)
2. Qantas - it has been a while since I traveled to Oz on a Qantas flight but their customer service for business class is awesome (yes sir). The seats are very comfy and conducive to sleep, relaxation or just to watch a nice movie. Now don't ask me about economy class as it's odd to see that a country that regards itself as "classless" treats the folks in the cheap seats a little less than average, but I must say their cheap seats do still have a good entertainment system.
3. Dragon Air - this is an Asian airline based in Hong Kong and affiliated with Cathay Pacific. As such they may be classified as more of a "budget" airline but I have to say my own experience was far from budget! Their entertainment system has an awesome widescreen and their customer service was pretty good. The flight attendant (ah, now I remember the PC name!) was a little put off by me asking if I could have a non-meat meal when I hadn't pre-ordered a vegetarian meal but she wasn't rude at all and we figured something out (maybe I've become one of those difficult "high maintenance" people that I hate. Heck, I hope not - switching to vegetarian food is trickier than I thought).
4. American Airlines - pretty decent service and good staff but their entertainment system is starting to look old with a little screen. I had to wear my glasses to watch the movies. Sorry, that's picky but for Dragon Air and JAL the screen was bigger/closer to me so I didn't need to worry about that. Also, on the flight from Dallas to Narita, the video quality was sub-par. OK to watch but when you pay extortionate fees for business class you expect better.
5. British Airways - it has been a while, but my memory of the BA flight in business class is that the customer service was OK but that their seats were a little funky and I found it difficult to sleep. Sorry BA if my memory is failing me, but my mental list has you just below AA. Still good, and I'm not complaining, but some way to go to catch up with your Asian and Aussie colleagues.

OK, that's my totally biased opinion on business class travel. If I have a choice, the Asian airlines definitely have an edge. I've heard very good things about Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific but I've not had the pleasure of flying with them. Maybe next time?

 

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Movies on a plane

Spending hours traveling on a plane is not really my idea of fun. The one plus to the long distance flights with modern entertainment systems is the chance to catch up on all the movies I've missed. Surprisingly on my flights to/from Asia this month the blockbuster fantasy and sci-fi movies that I usually enjoy were a bit disappointing whereas a couple of movies that are outside my clichéd mainstay of movies were actually very good. OK, I also enjoyed the one animated movie I watched too, just don't tell anyone (if only Noah were still 6 and I could claim I was just watching them with him)!

Here Is my rundown of the movies I watched, my marks out of 10 and brief comments:

1. Safety not guaranteed - 10+/10. OK, if you read the description of the movie it sounds like a sci-fi, but it is most definitely not science fiction. It's about quirky people in the NW of the US interacting with each other. It's funny, quirky and a bit of a love story thrown in. Not my usual thing but I do love original movies done well and this is just that. This should win awards but I'm guessing it won't because it's too good. I recognize a couple of the actors but ask me to name them. I highly recommend to everyone.
2. Safe house - 9/10. If I have to pick a favorite actor it would probably be Denzel Washington. He is awesome in this very original spy movie. The supporting cast are very good too. In some ways this is a formulaic spy movie but with a couple of twists and strong and convincing acting. Definitely worth a watch especially if you like the Bourne series (which I do).
3. Brave - 8/10. OK it's an animated movie for kids but, hey, it's done well, the story is good and the characters funny throughout. There's enough "mush" to tug the heart strings but not too much that it degenerates into a soppy pile. Worth watching. Oh, the animation is impressive too if that's your thing.
4. Prometheus - 5/10. Very disappointed. Alien 1 was good and suspenseful. Alien 2 was even better. Alien 3 was crap. Alien 4 was OK. As a prequel, Prometheus promised a lot but delivered little. Now I think about it, 5/10 is generous. I put it in the same camp as Alien 3. Sorry. The acting was very good. The special effects excellent. But the story was awful and unbelievable. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for fantasy and sci-fi but somehow the story has to me credible. At college I recall someone saying that in fiction we have to "suspend our disbelief" but if the writer is bad then they can lose us and end up with a bad book or film. The whole scene with the lead character cutting an alien out of her own body was complete and utter... to be polite I'll just say "crap." Sorry, they totally lost me at that point. My disbelief was off the scale and the plot was lost. The other elements of the film were OK if a bit tenuous. Not one I'd want to watch again.... maybe 3/10 is closer to the mark. I'll watch Alien vs Predator instead.
5. Snow White and the Huntsman - 4/10. My wife loved this movie though I guess it's because of a certain lead character wielding an axe instead of a hammer. The acting and effects were good but, again, the story was a bit lacking. Ah well.

 

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Three Societal Objections to Evolution

In a previous blog, I listed 3 objections to the theory of evolution in its rawest form. In this current blog I turn my focus to some of the consequences of considering humanity as just a bunch of intelligent naked apes. I present 3 social or societal (sorry I'm not a sociologist, just a general observer of life) consequences of holding to this flawed theory of origins...

1. Ultimately we answer to no-one, so anything goes. The Bible talks about the Fear of the Lord being linked to knowledge and wisdom. This isn't just a poetic phrase or a means to control the masses; it's a basic and logical truth. If you know that some day you must answer for your actions and choices in life then that influences your decisions in society and how you interact with others. Without that, who's to say you shouldn't do something? Not sure that's a wise choice for society as a whole.
2. There is no right or wrong, just whatever works. This seems to be where the western world sits right now. There is a legacy of morality from previous generations (arguably from Christian ethics but that's another discussion!) but let's just keep what helps us to get along and throw aside the other stuff... as long as no-one gets hurt... or it's between consenting adults. Freedom for individuals to do whatever the heck they want seems to be the only moral guidance. I'm all for freedom to choose, but self-centredness and self-indulgence as a moral compass for a society doesn't bode well for civilization. Selfishness in all aspects of society can't be good for anyone in the long run.
3. The strong should prevail and the weak be discarded. One word. Eugenics. That's the consequence of holding to evolution as an explanation for humanity. The idea fell out of favor as a social movement after World War II (the Nazi's were big fans), but expect to see genetic engineering and bio-enhancements becoming the norm as well as the potential mis-use of DNA testing to enhance human capabilities. These latter ideas are not bad in themselves but in the context of seeing ourselves as evolved apes and wanting to give evolution a boost, then anything goes.

 

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Can't vote... Thankfully

I'm a foreigner (a legal alien to borrow from Sting), so I don't get to vote for your president or anyone else. I still pay taxes though, and still get to enjoy the freedoms and opportunities of this great nation. Now, for some, not being able to vote in the country in which they've lived for 10 years or so, would be a negative thing, but I have to say I'm glad I don't have to vote. American politics suck the life out of me when I think about them. The unruly mess of house, senate and judiciary at State and Federal level, the grotesque spectacle of lobbyists legally bribing politicians and the pork-barelling of bills to sneak through your own special interests without anyone noticing, all make me shake my head.

But none of these are the things that really make me glad that I don't get to vote. It's the negative ads. This campaign seems to be about what will you vote against, rather than what you will vote for. Vote against Obamacare, or vote against capitalist greed. Sad. But maybe that's what democracy is all about. For the most part the politicians try to do what's best for their country (though I suspect most do what's best for themselves or their lobbyists), so as long as they don't do anything crazy - have at it. But if they do something that does seem crazy to the masses, then they get to vote them out! Hopefully the next guy or gal will do a better job.

Still, I recall from my college education that negative ads aren't as effective as positive ads. Or maybe that was only in the UK and here in the US you're a more blood-thirsty lot! "Without vision the people perish" so it would seem that a vision means you need to be for something in politics and not just bashing the opposition, otherwise there is no way to govern or inspire people? But what do I know about politics? I'll close with this interesting note on Coke versus Pepsi. Surely the same applies to the politicians. For sure their negativity has turned me off...

Unlike politicians, companies hardly ever run negative ads. Pepsi ads don't tear down Coke; they build the brand image of Pepsi. Why? Because a tit-for-tat war of words would turn off consumers of both brands. And sales growth, not just market share, is what puts money in shareholders' pockets.

As the market leader, Coke would never give the underdog Pepsi the benefit of a mention in its ads. For its part, Pepsi would worry that negative ads against Coke would say more to consumers about the character of Pepsi than Coke. And when Pepsi did famously "challenge" Coke twenty years ago, it was with blindfolded consumers choosing between two unlabeled samples, as close as you could get to a scientific test. http://blogs.hbr.org/quelch/2008/05/how_negative_advertising_works.html

 

 

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Three Logical Objections to Evolution

I recently heard an excellent presentation by a colleague that included a slide on the evolution of the nitrogen cycle that he used to illustrate the role of archaea and anammox bacteria in the cycle. Whilst I deeply respect this colleague, his presentation highlighted one of my three intellectual reasons for considering Macro Evolution to be illogical and fundamentally flawed. He first showed an early nitrogen cycle, devoid of life, with purely chemical reactions driving the cycle. Next he showed a slightly more advanced cycle in which some basic life forms (archaea) take part in the cycle. Here's my problem... Where did these life forms come from? In his presentation they magically appear from nowhere. This is one of my main intellectual stumbling blocks for evolutionary theory. Every example seems to require a starting point that's way more advanced than evolution can explain. In other words, they need seed material.

So, here are my three intellectual objections to Evolution:

1. No seed material. In almost all descriptions I hear of evolution, the seed material magically appears with no adequate description of where it comes from.
2. Ecosystem complexity. Ecosystems are complex and require multiple interactions between living organisms. Take one organism out of the loop and the system breaks down. So we need more than just one seed. We need multiple and diverse seeds, right?
3. Evolution is a strong destructive force but weak creative force. "Survival of the fittest" is an excellent mechanism for wiping out species i.e. for describing extinction, and adaptation seems a reasonable description for how species survive and thrive (though somehow they must have this resilience already built in). But the reliance on random mutations to describe the creation of new species (macro evolution) seems illogical and inadequate. I've never heard a good example given for this. All the examples I've seen were for micro-evolution and then imaginatively extrapolated to explain major intra-species changes that ultimately produce a new species. That sounds OK in a sentence but requires a lot of creative thinking to get the pieces to fit for real examples. Somehow that seems counter to the assertion that evolution is scientific. If we have to imagine so much and get artists to creatively draw stuff, that's stepping away from observation and true scientific methods too much. That is too subjective.

 

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The PC is dead. Long live the PC.

I saw a couple of interesting articles this week on the rise of tablet computers and the pending death of the PC. The first was a news article on the new CEO of Apple talking about the "post-PC era." Apparently they sold more iPads in the past 3 months than any single PC manufacturer sold PCs. That's a pretty radical shift in technologies.

The other article I saw was on LinkedIn and focused mostly on smart phones but also talked about tablets. They projected the global use of smartphones and tablets increasing whilst PC use stayed flat. I suspect that their extrapolations for PC use may be shaky and I could envisage a decline rather than a plateau.

The times they are a-changing... again.

I started my career in the late 80s and early 90s in the UK at a time when businesses were starting to use PCs more widely and home use of PCs was pretty rare. Though it didn't seem like it then, that was a pretty revolutionary time. Think about handwriting memos or having the typing pool type one up for you, that you could then pop in the internal mail system to have it delivered next day. I'm sure I must have done that but I honestly don't recall it. For as long as I remember, email has been ubiquitous for business communication. Similarly, spreadsheets have been the mainstay of basic engineering calcs and data presentation, and PowerPoint has been the basic tool for presenting ideas.

The subsequent couple of decades (OK now I feel old using an expression like that!) saw home use of PCs increase dramatically especially as the Internet and information age took off.

About 18 months ago my lovely wife bought me an iPad (now that the iPad 3 is out I can legitimately claim to have an "original" iPad!) I've used it for plenty of fun stuff like Angry Birds (love the new one, by the way), Words with Friends, watching TV, reading books and mags, looking at maps, studying scriptures, viewing You Tube, looking up movies, checking Facebook,... For home use the iPad is ideal and I really can't think of why I'd need a home PC. I could see that home PCs could become a thing of the past within a few years or maybe just kept around for our kids to do their homework!

21st Century Office

So it's a no-brainer that the iPad is ideally suited for home use. Also a no-brainer that it's great for keeping kids young and old entertained when traveling. The thing I haven't figured out is how the iPad and other tablet devices could change the face of business. At the end of the 20th Century it was business use that drove PC development initially and then home use came second. In the 21st Century it's possible that home use of iPads will spill over into business use that will transform the office in the future.

I use my iPad at home but I've also used it some for work. Below I list out some ways I've used my iPad for work stuff with varying degrees of success versus using my laptop.

iPad works well for...

Reading e-mail: in this I find the iPad superior to my laptop. It's more natural to swipe through an email and tap on attachments. Very nice.

Reading PDFs: similar to e-mail, it's natural and easy to use the iPad. Annotating is pretty easy too with the right app. I'm using Notability and I like it a lot. Much better than using my laptop and the basic Acrobat reader.

Giving, editing or creating presentations: I really like Keynote and the couple of times I've given presentations using my iPad it was very slick. Once it was a formal presentation and the latter it was more informal sitting around a table. This was especially cool as it's more relaxed and natural to use the iPad than booting up your laptop and having it obtrusively on the table. I have even played with creating and editing presentations and think it's actually easier and more intuitive to use your finger than using a mouse. I just wish there was an AirPlay projector so I could cut the cord. Also, I'd love to use my Prezi app but unfortunately it only works with a projector for iPad 2 or 3 and not my "original."

Looking for reference material from the Internet or "Googling": the iPad excels in this, whether you're simply using Safari or one of the many apps specifically made for the iPad, it's very convenient to pick up the iPad and look something up. I love the Wolfram Alpha app.

Checking and updating my calendar: the mobility and inobtrusiveness of iPad make it ideal to take to a meeting where you can check and update your schedule. Arguably a smartphone is even more mobile and useful in this regard but here I'm just making the case for the iPad vs laptop.

Taking notes during a meeting: I probably should have listed this earlier as its such an obvious one, but I guess I don't do this as much as I could. Having an iPad in a meeting is as inobtrusive as having a notebook and yet you have access to your emails, and other info on your device plus the Internet. You can take notes and have them stored electronically. Very nice.

iPad works OK for...

Replying to e-mail: if it's a short reply of a couple of paragraphs you're OK, but if you want to type a long reply, poking on the keyboard on screen is tedious. I guess I could invest in a Bluetooth keyboard if I seriously wanted to generate more text. I guess I could also play with voice recognition.

Editing Word documents: similar to replying to email, the various apps for editing Word documents are OK but you wouldn't want to type too much. I've also run into problems with the graphics in Word documents being messed up. Maybe sticking to simpler Word documents and getting a keyboard would allow me to do more?

Using simple spreadsheets: as an engineer I use spreadsheets a lot. I've struggled to use the Apple "Numbers" app or other apps like QuickOffice that let you edit Excel spreadsheets. If the spreadsheet is simple, it is awesome to be able to have a spreadsheet "in the field" to enter data on site or to show operators or clients some simple calcs. I haven't done much with more complex spreadsheets but maybe that will come with time!

iPad really doesn't work well for...

Creating Text Documents: unless it's a short note, simple email or a blog! Maybe I need to get a keyboard after all!

Accessing Work Documents: in typing out this blog and thinking through the biggest impediment to me using my iPad more, I realize that I have a lot of files and information on my laptop hard drive. I also have information on severs in our office and on ProjectWise, none of which I can access from my iPad. This should be an easy fix for our IT folks if there's a will to do it but I suspect that it won't happen for a few years yet. For now I get by with shifting pertinent documents over to Dropbox but that has limited capacity, I'm way too disorganized to remember to transfer files and still it doesn't help me access internal company files.

Livemeeting: not sure why but my firm uses Livemeeting and you cannot access it from an iPad. Personally I would love for us to switch to WebEx which has a great iPad app that I use for a regular call set up by one of our clients, but alas, I'm guessing that won't happen anytime soon so I'm stuck having to allow 15 - 20 minutes before any web meeting to crank up my windows laptop and get Livemeeting running.

Windows-only software: in particular I use a couple of process modeling programs, GPS-X and BioWin that are windows-based. I keep hinting that they should shift to Cloud based applications that can be accessed through a web browser, but I'm not sure how seriously they take me! I can see that as more software suppliers shift to the Cloud, this will open more opportunities to leave the laptop at home.

Excel Spreadsheets with Graphs: not sure why, but the graphs don't come across into Numbers or most of the other apps I've tried. Some formulas don't work either I'd guess and I'm not sure about pivot tables as I've not tried transferring any.

Creating emails with attachments: OK now Apple, this one is just plain weird. Why have a device that's probably the best way to access email and not provide the ability to attach documents? Please fix this! You can send emails from within various apps with a file attached from that app, but say you want to send 1 email with, say, a Pages file and a Keynote presentation that goes with it, then you're out of luck. Unless there's a way and I've just not figured it out?

The future is bright and much lighter!

I travel a lot and I find using my iPad ideal for most of my needs whilst on the road. But still I have to lug my heavy laptop around for the few but vital things I cannot yet do without it. I'm hopeful that many of the impediments to wider iPad use I've noted here will be overcome in the not too distant future. Then I'll be happy to say "the old PC is dead, long live the new PC" (aka a tablet-style "Personal Computer"!)

 

 

 

Week in the life of a poop engineer

This week was particularly varied so I thought it might be interesting to share it on my blog. So here goes (If I can remember because it has been a loooong week!)

Monday

Started the week pretty normally in the office with meetings about a couple of projects, answering email and even found time to head to my favorite coffee shop, Latte Land for a dirty chai (if you haven't tried one, I highly recommend them. It's a regular chai latte with an espresso shot added!) In the afternoon we had a rather long but important meeting to discuss an important job pursuit. I enjoy the creative aspects of developing a proposal and making sure we have a clear message. On this particular pursuit we have an excellent set of folks on the team so it was a cool meeting (if meetings can be cool?)

Tuesday

Now my week starts to get more interesting... To kick off the day I had a meeting about social media and how the industry uses it. It was interesting to see that many people are signed up on Linked In but very few seem active in the discussion groups. Another observation was that the more specialized groups seem to have discussions with more substance. As an early adopter of Linked In (I think I had an account before Facebook was a twinkle in Zuckerburg's eye) I'm interested to see how it expands and changes as more people use it for different purposes. Later in the morning I had various discussions about various projects including a treatment facility using Anammox bacteria (exciting new development that could revolutionize wastewater treatment, no honestly!). I was also helping to finalize a proposal for a very interesting WERF project on Phosphorus recovery. That would be an awesome project and we have a very strong and truly international team so I'm pretty hopeful.

In the afternoon I flew up to Chicago to take a mid term exam at IIT, 'cause what else are you going to on a Tuesday afternoon? Later in the evening I flew off to Washington DC to stay with some good friends (also happens to be a client) whilst I was working in the area through to the end if the week. I travel a lot and usually stay in hotels so it's really nice to be able to stay with friends instead.

Wednesday

Wednesday? What the heck did I do Wednesday? Oh, that's right, I went into our local office in Gaithersburg. Spent some time helping with the finishing touches on our WERF proposal and then spent the rest of the day preparing material for a workshop to be held on Thursday. Headed back to my friends' place in the evening.

Thursday

Workshop day at the Blue Plains AWTP. It's a very interesting plant that serves DC and surrounding areas with a huge amount of work going on right now. Which means that pretty much every major US consultant you can think of is doing something on the plant! The purpose of the workshop I was doing was to discuss the process design of a future filtrate treatment facility that will use the fancy bugs I mentioned earlier (sorry any biologists reading, I know they're bacteria and not bugs, but that's the lingo we use in the poop treatment business so get used to us having our own sloppy definitions for things!).

The workshop went well, but I was pretty much worn out by this point in the week so it was very nice to head back to my friends' place for beer, wine, an excellent vindaloo and even some late night Scrabble (how did we end up playing 'till after midnight on a school night!? Naughty engineers!)

Friday

Friday I went and laid down in a dark room all day to recover. Well, that would have been nice but no, I headed back to our local office for a little while before driving to Baltimore airport to fly back to KC. One thing I do try to do if I have to drive a lot is to make calls to clients and coworkers. On my drive to the office I had a call with one of our CFD guys in the UK. CFD is cool stuff for engineers and geeks alike... Super cool for engineering geeks like me!

Fortunately for me, the SouthWest flight I was on didn't have WiFi (really pronounced Wiffy for those in the know), so I couldn't really work and so I just chilled out playing the Harry Potter Lego game on my iPad and listening to some old David Crowder.

Drove home via Taco Bueno. House still there, cats pleased to see me and spent the evening watching Real Steel and typing this blog.

Next week? Cincinnati and DC again.

 

 

 

Wastewater Treatment Blog?

 As I dip my toes into blogging, I've been considering the idea of starting a series of blogs specifically on wastewater treatment, possibly under the somewhat cheeky but descriptive title "The Poop Engineer"!?

I'm thinking that I'd start with blogs on each of the major treatment steps, focused on the lay reader rather than folks already in the business, and later maybe branch out into different topics. I'm also thinking that I'd try to point folks to existing good websites for information rather than generating a pile of new material, but I guess that's contingent upon the material being out there. I need to be careful to give credit where credit is due in citing and using material for sure, but I'm definitely an advocate of reusing information and not reinventing the wheel wherever possible.

Soooo, I welcome comments and advice as I consider this idea. Should I give it a go? Any tips for setting up a blog series? Any favorite poop treatment websites? Does someone already have a blog on the topic ? (I guess I should start with that one to save myself a load of wasted effort!). All lines are open so hit me with your comments...

It's a Green Thing

Not sure of the original source, but I thought this was interesting.  My parents grew up in the War years (WW2 that is) and so I'm accutely aware of how much less wasteful they are than me so I would never complain about them not having "the green thing back then"!  Enjoy...

Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman, that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.

The woman apologized and explained, "We didn't have this green thing back in my earlier days."

The clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations."

She was right -- our generation didn't have the green thing in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn't have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that young lady is right; we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana . In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she's right; we didn't have the green thing back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of from a plastic bottle filled with water shipped in from another state or country. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn't have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.

We wanted to improve our lives but we weren't so hungry for expensive gadgets and services that mom and dad both had to have jobs in order to pay the bills... we didn't need huge TV's, iPods, video cameras, personal computers, cell phones, cable, internet, ATV's, Play stations, jet skis, snowmobiles, carbon fiber tennis rackets and titanium golf clubs. We got along without that stuff, and some of us even had savings accounts and time to talk to our next door neighbors over the hedge instead of via email or text messaging.

But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the green thing back then?

Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a know it all young person.

Remember: Don't make old people mad.

Blogsy YouTube

 YouTube figured out

Well, I think I figured out how to pull YouTube videos into my blog in Blogsy I think. I didn't have my account updated on YouTube so hopefully these work OK!

 

Fun

First a couple of my favorite videos...

 

Cats

Now fave cat star, Maru...

 

Work

And finally I discovered B&V has it's own channel, so here's a good colleague of mine talking about climate change... 

 

Playing with Blogsy some more...

 Thought I'd try out some more features (still resisting the need to read the instructions!).

Tried a bookmarklet to pull over  Wikipedia article an Anammox (fascinating microbes by the way)? The link worked ok.

And dragging a picture across worked fine...

 hmm, opens up a can of worms on copyright issues...

 

Still can't figure out You Tube though... Ah well, I'd better read the manual! 

Blogsy test drive

Day 2 of blogging and I'm trying out an App called Blogsy. After reading a couple of articles that said it's pretty much the only app worth bothering with, here I am testing it out. Of course, as a true geek and in the spirit of testing how intuitive it is, I haven't read any instructions nor did I watch the video they recommended when I first opened it. Maybe I'll do so if I make a complete hash of this entry!

 

Entering links worked pretty well by simply selecting a word and then using a handy icon on the right side of the screen to find the website and dragging across. 

 

Changing fonts seems simple enough. Bold, italic, underline and strike through are all there.

 

Left

Right

Centered text

So, pretty much all the basics.

There's a gizmo that inserts a line for "more" no idea what for but maybe I'll play with that sometime!

Inserting photos seems easy enough. This one is from my Picasa...

Another here from my iPad...

For some reason I had to upload it to Picasa (or I could have used Flicr) first, but that's OK I guess? I need to head over to Picasa to see where it dropped it.

Finally it looks like I can drop in You Tube videos...  OK I failed to get my account to work. Maybe next blog... Hmmm, maybe I should read the manual after all.

And as for the more thingy...

Oh, that's what it does!

 

Happy blogging iPad users!

Saturday, February 11, 2012

New to blogging

I'm on something of a voyage of discovery checking out social media.

My latest exploration is into blogging. It's been around for much longer than other outlets. It maybe has more substantial content to offer, but also lays a bigger burden to develop text of a higher quality that actually has something to say beyond the sound bites of twitter and Facebook. Should be interesting.

Also, I need to figure out a decent app to use on my iPad for blogging. Any recommendations?

Here's to blogging!

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

watercrunch: Will our Associations survive?

watercrunch: Will our Associations survive?

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