My Brompton Travels

As a boy, I used to bike everywhere, the distance was no object, but as I started work, the joy of this activity fell by the wayside, a car began to take the lead and I travelled all over Europe for business. But now as I enter retirement, biking is taking my interest again, and one cycle, in particular, a Brompton, I have one on loan, just to see if this is not just a fad, well I am pleased to say its not. So I am looking for my own, new or secondhand.

I have a few trips planned, but it's going to have to be a summer expedition, I have tried cycling in the wet and its not fun, so Fairweather cycling it is.

But why a Brompton, well it's simple, I intend to use trains as part of my travels, it's folding nature allows easy access and no problems, My first trip will be on the train to London and a meeting on the Euston road, then on to the Kings Cross area to look at the Google building, and I hope a small report.

I use a Pixel phone, so along with my Brompton, a  handlebar holder, to use the maps app, together with  I hope time-lapse photography.

My fourth Career move

Its that time of my life when I suddenly realise its all over, 50 years working and I am seriously considering that final move to retirement. I had dinner with a friend last night and although he retired 20 years ago, he is busier than ever.

Will that be for me, I wonder. I take a look at what's available, I could go as a consultant and earn a little, but that means forming a company again, accounts and insurance, and that is just not appealing. No that's not the right route for me. Can I start writing, Mmmmm now this seems to be more like what I want, a little writing each morning sound good, but what do I write about, old work-related subjects or something completely new, or perhaps a side of my business life that I have never delved into?

This last thought has me thinking, and the more I dwell on the subject the more I think, this just might be for me. I have my Scays web site and I wonder if this is the tool for expanding this new area.

Scays.co.uk, was and still is my site for my lectures, this might prove a basis for all I want to do, expand my thoughts out of the normal lectures into something a little bit more out of the box, so to speak.

Scays has for the last few years been a place where students, ex and present, can find the slides I use at my University lectures on construction, themed around the role of the Architectural Technologist.

Expanding it into this new area is beginning to excite me, and might just be the fourth career move I have been looking for.

So where to start, well this blog seems the right beginning, a place where I can explore my thoughts, develop themes and work up ideas, that I can migrate over to scays.

In recent years I have developed an interest in photography, mostly about the places I have travelled to, but a little on photos to back up my slides, I have placed some of these on Flickr, so search scays to see my collection, or follow the link. I intend to enhance the collection with more from my Google Photo repository.

So here it is, retirement and my fourth career, oh did I mention travel, part of my writing will be travel, and yes I intend to travel widely. Mostly by trains, and including cruising. But some airlines will be inevitable.

Today's photo is of the monolith in Hudson Yard, it's not just the buildings or the truly stunning Architecture, but the construction itself being situated over the station and railway tracks. More on this later, but for now just one of my many photos of the complex.

So this evenings lecture via my nightly blog on stitcher was from the Technology Today podcast, episode 10, re the eight small satellites that cover the globe via the Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System(CYGNSS) aims to improve extreme weather prediction. ... In orbit.

I am going to claim 1 hour for this podcast together with another hour researching the technology. Why you might ask, well it's all about the data, and there's lots of it, all helping to provide assistance in predicting the intensity of any hurricane as it hits land, and in what direction.

Is this important, well yes, after all, it's my job not only to teach students about data but also to help them detail against it. so in my book, this is a straight 2 hours cpd

CPD via Stitcher - AI interview with George Hotz

This morning as I walked from the station to the University, I was listening, as I mostly do this time of the morning, to a podcast, I have a backlog at present to go through, but this mornings joy was a podcast on Data, a subject I am particularly interested in.

I currently run a course entitled IDD, or Integrated Digital Design., which for the most part looks at how data at a simple level is added and used in the design, my data page on Scays.co.uk is dedicated to this with a series of slide presentations and gets regular updates.

But this morning my attention was drawn to the bus stop I was walking past, and the way old paper time tables have now been replaced with digital time tables, ok so I have written about this before, so I started to ponder this subject, can I access this data in the same way I can with similar data like the training for trains running on the Dorridge Chiltern line.

The more I look into this subject the more I find new items to ponder, like AI, my next podcast was an interview with George Hotz, see right, on Autopilot, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the form of a Podcast by Lex Fridman, now this is a long interview and you have to stay with it, and some is just not relevant to construction, but several times I thought, oh, need to make a note of that, or could this also refer to construction, or FM, ie Facilities Management.

On a whole, it is a review of AI, with a bent towards cars autopilot, but it so outlines the thinking of AI and I could easily see it's relevance to Architecture, data and of course BIM.

The Interview is 119 minutes long and you need time to listen to it, I split it up into several timeouts. The podcast as a whole is excellent, as the name implies its all about AI, is this relevant to my CPD, of course, we can not teach or use Data, without taking in this subject.

I tend to use Stitcher as my prefered podcast player, just search for "Artificial Intelligence (AI)" Lex Fridman, within the App and look for this podcast, or search via this link there is also a video via Youtube of the interview if you're so inclined.

I am claiming 3 hours high-quality CPD for this, listening to the interview, making notes, and some quiet thinking time. Visit my private website to view my CPD Spreadsheet.

Demolition

I passed this the other day, a block of flat, I remember being built, but now being pulled down. Interesting to see the method. In another shot I took from a train, the skyline was full of tower cranes, and as some once said to me its a sign of the economy doing well.

Put the two together and we get a lot of work about for Architectural firms, and a great time to study for a degree in Architectural Technology.

Exporting from Vectorworks to another ie Autocad

As I close down my practice, which will be the subject of a much longer blog, I have handed over one project to another Architects office. Now I work within the Vectorworks environment, I like the way it works and feels, for me it feels like home. But the new practice want to work in Autocad Lt, this is a slight problem, the project file I have is quite large and although it is need of a clean, it works fine on my version of Vectorworks, But as I export the complete file to dwg, thins started to go slightly wrong, and yes before you ask, I did check and load the exported file into my copy of Autocad, all be it on a Mac, and it worked just fine, given a little patience.

So I had a call, the file you sent over keeps crashing, what are you loading it into, oh an old copy of Autocad lt, ah I say, best I come over, do you have a copy of Vectorworks, yes they replied, good.

To cut a long story short, I managed to export the model to Vectorworks 2016, and show the practice how to deal with this type of model, splitting up the various levels into different files for Autocad, and making Xrefs to a series of master site plans.

You might ask why not use IFC after all its what I teach at University, but in real life the output was a lot of work to make work and often dam difficult. The Autocad export offered the route of least resistance.

This is only the start, I have several other projects being exported to Archicad, which is a Nemetschek company, same as Vectorworks, but there is no real export link other than IFC or using dwg, both ways of importing the projects into Archicad seem to indicate spending a lot of time correcting,

So there it is retirement is not a simple process, apart from the legal bits of shutting down, the need for my PI runoff etc, I thought the drawing side would be a piece of cake, not so.

Linking this blog to my Google Web Site

So some days start of with a bank, some a spark some just fizzle a little, but this morning, a thought of a video I had seen a while back came into my head, and I managed to find it.

So what was this moment, well it was a video tutorial on the way you can embed all of my blogs here into my Scays.co.uk web site, assume, at last, so pleased.

So below the video, not mine but by a gentleman called, Richard Byrne, so simple, I have no idea how he came upon the small addition to the code link but it works so well.