Lack of a phone signal

BT signal Assist

I live in an area that has a strong 4G signal most places, except where I live, and here its almost none existent, I had to hang out of an upper bedroom window just to get the most basic of a signal. I moaned like crazy to BT my provider, with no effect, they insisted I have a signal, I kept telling them I did not.

But this week I again moaned to BT but they then said they have a new piece of kit that plugs into my router and will give a local 3G signal. Now I have a cupboard full of these wonderful pieces of electronic garbage, all promised something and gave nothing.

But, with the hope it might work, I shelled out £20 and ordered my signal assist booster, it duly arrived and set up was no more than plugging it into my router and the power supply, the blurb that came with it quoted 24 hours max to set itself up, well after 10 mins I had a signal, my Pixel 2 had picked it up, and at last after almost 20 years I have a strong signal that allows none interrupted mobile calls via my mobile, wonderful. It has a nice range too it works in the garden and garage.

Whoooo no more hanging out the bedroom window and interrupted calls................ working from home takes a step forward.

Planning to the next level

For as long as I have been involved in the Architectural process of client, site, Planning Reg application, I have worked within a framework of past experience based upon materials and use that has a history stretching into the past well beyond Charles the 1st.

But all of that is changing, a new era approaches, that of the digital age, the unknown effects of sensors, the all most rapid use of data,  almost instant communication, not just between humans, but the blinding speed of communication between machines.

I have been asked to write a paper on HBIM or heritage BIM, its an eye opener, so many opinions from people who do not understand the difference between new materials and those made a few hundred years ago. Wanting me to apply standard values to the BIM table,

They have no understanding of manufacture of a brick just 100 years ago it was a hit and miss approach, and one single length of a wall might have two or three different kiln burnings producing three total different bricks, with totally different values in their day to day operation from strength to lambda to water absorption, not to mention colour and texture.

So my paper will focus on this single strategy, how to add HBIM values to materials that vary so much.

I have a lot of research to do, and little time to do it, so this paper is more like a market study, who is doing what and how.

The audience for this paper are planners, can I drag them into the real world, of CAD and all of the digital extras we as Technologists enjoy.

Almost Good By to Apple

Since my last post on this subject I have worked hard to eliminate Apple, It's almost there, but not quite. Let me explain.

It all started some years ago, and I was all but an Apple employee, all my work, files and most of my CAD was Apple based, not a problem, I did not share much, as it was only for my consumption. records, photos and my writing, CAD was the one thing I shared and that was mostly pdf oriented and Vectorworks my then and mostly now program for drawing was damned good at its generation. all was well in the world, I was happy to spend the hight bucks on Apple machines in the belief that I needed the power.

Then came teaching, I did not go searching for this, but as always I got sucked into lecturing and found I liked it., but Apple did/does not share well outside the Apple ecosphere, and Google came on board and they do like sharing, I also found that the Chromebooks were great, so much cheaper yet did all my writing and photo work with ease, but could not draw on CAD, that I might add is changing slightly with Sketchup now available as a web browser version, and its just great, Autocad is not there yet, but I saw a demo of their online version and it seems to be working well, they wanted me to sign up to get the extra such as drawing a line, and pay money for the privilege, so I backed off, and started adding skills to Sketchup, ok its basic but I can flesh out a model and details.

So almost there, just need a decent full bodied CAD program to work in the cloud and run on my chromebook, till then its a balance between Mac and Google with the balance on usability still on the side of Google.