The End of 2016

I sat down this Boxing Day morning to tidy up my desk, and files a few bits away. I normally do this small, in brackets, job at this time of the year, its seems right to start the year of to a clean plate.

But as always I get side tracked, and its hard to stay focused on the job at hand. So after a full morning, dodging tasks handed to me by my good lady, and incoming text messages from my sister who also seems to think I have nothing better to do, I have got my filing more of less done, a book shelf sorted and my computer cleaned, and I mean that in the literal sense, as the screen looked like it was in need of a dam good clean, so the glass cleaner cloth was used to a big effect.

Next is my year of CPD, as a lecturer, I can not be accused of not full filling my 35 hours, I read constantly and often, a lot of my notes and photos get logged into Evernote, I tried Microsofts OneNote, and dabbled with or is that continue to dabble with Googles Keep, I just want it to succeed, but how can it against Evernote. it just works, and works well across all my devices, the same can not be said of the others in this respect.

I want to update my spreadsheet for CPD hours, but i fear this is going to have to wait, I have just found my list of papers and articles I want to write, or finish, my web site needs updating with my latest paper, and I have the notes on my recent Professorial lecture to update and bring together into an article.

Saldey 2016 has not been a pleasent year, my father died in August, so a lot of things I had planned were put on hold and other things moved or did not get my full attension, whilst I dealt with this, but as I speak, dad is in a small plasic bag on my shelf awaiting a final resting place with his father. I know roughly were he is, but need to spend time finding his old plot in Aston Parish Church.

I live on the cusp, let me explain, I run a Mac, and for the best part, its fine, but I use Google for lectures, and writing, Drive is so good at being on all the machines I have to work on, here at home and at Uni, Mac just does not like sharing like Google does, Pages is ok for short writing, but I prefer Google Docs, for my longer papers and articles, and Chrome, I have set up with a few nice little apps, that Safari just does not have. You may ask why not move to a chrome book, I might in the new year, but my CAD work with Vectorworks is firmly placed on the Mac and I will not move from this, unless Nemetschek, come up with a web based app like Auto cad. I want to return to Gmail, after moving to Mac mail some time back, but the pain I will have to endure in doing this just is not worth it, so here i satay mostly Mac, with more than a little Google.

So there it is, end of another year, I have so much to do in 2017, my list of things I want to do grows longer, I shall be 65 this year, and thoughts of retiring just don't form any part of my plans, but a change in work just might, as I write more, blog more frequently teach better, and add to my mentoring, the future is not me, its the youngsters who are waiting in the wings.

Consultancy now seems more viable, as I concentrate on developing my futurist side, our industry is changing, CAD is morphing into something else, point cloud looks so inviting , but the real interest for me is all the data we generate, how we use it as we delve into AR and VR,  plus data has to involve Algorithms, and online data from so many places and things, hence todays photo. Oh and not to forget how spreadsheets and Google are going to play such an interesting part in all of this.

2017 is going to see all of these melt into MR, or Mixed reality. How it will be used is an ongoing development, there are several camps, which  track , one looks interesting, one has promise, and the rest, well we will see !. At the right time, I will expand my thoughts on this, but until them  watch the blog.

Talking of which, the blog has been a little quiet I know, but now, as I enter 2017 I have so many lined up to write about, expansions of several lectures, more videos to post and if I can some trial live lectures. As I write my abstracts for papers, I will use the blog to air thoughts and discus the paper before going to print.

So there it is, the end of 2016, and a whole new year looms,

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