Scays Architectural Technology: Books

Showing posts with label Books. Show all posts

Sunday, 29 March 2020

Home Lockdown Update

So here I am, at home, keeping out of everyone's way. The University is closed, so no travelling back and forward on crowed trains, plus I am saving a shed load of cash, no mid-morning breaks, two or three trips to the coffee machine and that odd chocolate bar mid-afternoon.

But I have never been so busy at home, first, the University may be closed, but only for face to face teaching, we have moved to the cloud and that means holding lectures online, getting students onto the preferred sharing platform, ie Microsofts Teams, and to a very small extent Zoom, plus whats app, text and mobile.

Next, it's the slides I use, most are great for general lecturing but needed to be updated to account for presenting online, so a lot of lecturer notes and individual video's for each slide, plus a complete video of the lecture. I am also sending out mini-blogs organising the lectures and in my case organising the linked lectures related to my module IDD or Integrated Digital Design.

I am also quite busy updating mt slides, I intend to retire at the end of this semester, and want to hand over to my successor a well-formulated and complete module. so lots of thinking, and updating to be done.

Next comes the usual University group meets, Teams is incredible for this, do you notice I have not mentioned Skype, it does not come close to the services Teams offers, and the ease of use. OK there is a learning curve, but the more you use it, the more you learn and use. The Uni team meets are essential as we venture into this new way of teaching, and the group meets are essential for sharing experiences and lecture methods.

Students are also demanding, and time has to be put aside for one to one meets to help them understand or use the lectures in their module and course work. so I am booking time slots for over 200 students all within the built environment. Then there are research students, who just by there very nature, need a lot of conversations to discuss a paper or theory of a new paper.

Its a long day in front of a screen, and although its once working from home it's also tiring. I spent a long portion of my career, working from home being a tech guy for Dow and I should know how it works, but this is so different.

I am also reviewing my web site Scays.co.uk and updating the layout a little, plus writing notes for up and coming papers, oh and walking my dog Barley. and it's here where I can indulge in my love of blogs. I listen to about a dozen different producers, on a range of topics and walking Barley is my blog time. I have also begun buying my books as Audible files, yes I still order the paper version, but so often I am taking offers to get the Audible file, it's part of my dog walking experience now.

But walking and listening, does not allow the making notes, so I get back and try to make notes, not easy and certainly not the best way, but it makes me rethink a little. Plus I have made Sunday afternoon a time to reflect on these badly written notes and try to correct and update. Kindle does have a great way to highlight a passage and retrieve that text, Audible has a clip feature that I have found so intent to test it out.

I have just finished "The order of Time" by Carlo Rovelli, and have just started "21 Lessons for a 21st Century" by Yuval Noah Harari. It's too late for the Order of Time and I will make use of the clipping in 21 lessons. Both books I have added to the Scays.co.uk web site book list.

Saturday and Sunday, have always been my days for buying the weekends papers. I started doing this in my early teens and never really stopped, except for the times I live abroad and English papers were very expensive. I started clipping articles and adding them to my little blue book, a ring clip binder I used. But now I tend to use an app on my Pixel mobile to scan as a pdf article the item I want to clip, far more efficient way to clip as I save it to my Google Drive and the article is OCR'd so searchable.

So there we have my update on home Lockdown, stay out of the way, and keep up with Uni life. Oh and try and get a Tesco or any other slot for home delivery, almost impossible, so might have to visit the local store.

Today's photo is my loan Brompton I have from the University, so good to get back into the sale, and on such a nice bike, I am now looking for one to buy.

Tuesday, 28 March 2017

So what happens when I die

Immortalised through art is the way so many people seem to b able to take a pace in immortality, their art lives and people remember them, authors are much the same, although some books get lost in dusty shelves. Google efforts to scan all the known books at least puts these long forgotten people back into the frame through the their search.

But so many get forgotten and never return to recognition except for a line in a private geological chart, and so many more are lost completely no headstone to read, no obituary in a paper.

So for these reasons alone. I am making sure I remain not forgotten, it's a little morbid I know, but as I approach 65, I seem to be thinking of this more. I have no fear of death, just the bit before, although if I go in my sleep then thats fine, as for what happens after, well who knows, I tend to believe that nature wastes nothing, but I would like to go knowing that I have left enough markers in this world to be remembered, and discovered buy the next and many more generations to come. So now it's a race to put in place what I can, so I reach this lofty goal.

First is my internet presence, I own several sites, but there existence is so dependant on several important factors, and quite a few of what I call secondary factors. Will the server company I use to host my sites, last a generation or two, even if I pay now for my sites to last there is no guarantee.

Take overs or just simple bankruptcy might just take them down with a total loss. I thought about this a lot, and decided to mirror my sites in different form, using sites like blogger, Facebook and the like to take the content, as I put it up, at first I use links, but that's no good, so I publish separate copies to each with my name as author.

Google + and Facebook are my first stabs at this, I'll add others as I find them. But still the fragility of the Internet worries me, all the articles and comments I have made, wiped from existence at the failure of the net, for what ever reason.

Books or the written word, has proved a resistance to even the most extreme of earths and mans, destructive tendencies, well mostly, and the older I get the more a good book is so nice, except when I have to carry it on a trip, then Kindle is such a good thing, so I end up buying paper and Kindle version of the book I want to read as I am away.

For a long time I have written several books, but these lie in my hard drive, I now have a plan to publish under Amazon, I don't really care if their not purchased, its the solid evidence of my writing thats now more important.

I have written several papers over the last few years, and although these are predominately electronic, I plan more, in the vain hope these will survive under some academics research, or university library.

My dad who died last year left loads of photos, some I can remember, but most I have no idea who they are. I will not let that happen to my kids, so I plan on making a book, sort of photo history, with my photos in it, and some form of note, people list, and perhaps story to go with it, again if I can publish this at least it will get some form of future. Afeter all, all my phtos are internet based, and will just fade away.

Which brings me onto the last point, and the one I started with, in my will, oh yes I have made one, all my accounts, passwords are left to the kids, just so at least one of them might want to trawl through my past, if they dare !!. My diary, so often the base line for many archivists, is electronic, well for the last 20 years or so, but before that, its a series of old paper diaries and loose leaf binders, but the electronic version I will print, just in case perhaps every few months.

Tuesday, 27 October 2015

Books - Paper, Electronic, all into Evernote

I buy construction books,,,, a lot, from any place, Amazon, Secondhand book stores, Ebay, any city any language, as long as there are pictures.

My collection is growing so much, I have a dedicated shelf to them, but even that is over flowing, so I also use Amazon Kindle, I started using it some time back, but although the reading was great, I just could not get on with the references I wanted to make, the highlighting made a list, but it was not easy to get at, and there was no search.

By contrast, with paper books, I often would add a sticky tab, to remind me of something, but even that got out of control.

Then I found Evernote, and life changed, to the point I scan, photo my links direct into Evernote, the OCR is brilliant, to the point of, what would I do without it. I can be reading a kindle book, and see a reference I want to keep, so I take a screen shot and save the photo to Evernote, the OCR will pick up the points I want, but if I want to make it absolutely clear, I can highlight the text this way I can see the text I want, I tag everything, so searching is made easier, I now scan almost all documents, and my reading is now not littered with yellow tags.

All my blogs get posted to Evernote, via the very Wonderfull ifTTT, a free service to watch this blog and for every new post, it posts to evernote.

Even my Moleskin gets the Evernote treatment, my writing needs to improve for the OCR to work, but given enought tags, I can find most things.