Catherine
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Posts by Catherine
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-03-07
Mar 7th
- @kallekenkel surely you meant 2tb not 2gb drives for your home server
in reply to kallekenkel #
How about safe drinking water for everyone?
Jan 27th
I just came across this fantastic video on Ted.com about a water filter that makes safe drinking water from any water source.
How about that then? Isn’t this something you could get behind and vouch for?
I certainly do and wonder how I can help make this a reality.
Happy New Year for 2010
Jan 25th
How late am I in wishing and starting a new year on this stop go blog! I still haven’t found my writing subject for here properly and the drive to fill it with interesting things.
I have loads of opinions and thoughts on things and .. as always I think to much and wonder about consequences of sharing the stuff I think. Maybe I should be brave and post. Maybe I will be when I find something I truly want to share about any of the things that interest me. I guess I’m interested in so much .. how do I narrow it down, but in doing so I only then present one facet of what makes me .. well .. me!
So I’m not going to quest what I write in subject matter .. I’m going to post it and in time a ‘theme’ will occur and that will be what I write. Or the theme could just be me and what I’m interested in .. it is my name up there after all
Here’s to your dreams and mine .. hope we achieve what we desire in 2010.
Good luck.
Illustrated videos as a powerful form of education
Nov 6th
I’m always interested in learning something new, and this first video (Flu Attack!) was right up my street when it popped up as a ‘post’ within my Google Reader. I already understood most of how viruses multiply from my science classes which I enjoyed. Still it was good to see a visualisation of it to get the gist of how a virus is shared and how our bodies fight it.
I also liked seeing the credit crunch explained in a video. This was from a year and a bit ago, back when it was all kicking off in everyones awareness:
What would you like to see illustrated in a video? What would make more sense to you if you saw it illustrated or in real time?
For me a good explanation of profit and loss with T account balancing and double book keeping would have saved me a lot of aggrow back in Uni!
2009 seems to be the year of video and strangely enough the year of the written word. Its a balancing act between different consumption styles, some people prefer to be more vocation and also see what is being taught, while others learn by reading. Most learn via a mixture of the two styles of presentation.
Personally .. I’m loving the way of screencasts and also illustrated videos that teach. Makes me wonder about that saying ‘Seeing is believing’, is seeing also the way to understanding?
The obituary of Common Sense, may he RIP …
Nov 4th
image by soy alex reyes
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An Obituary printed in the London Times – not a joke and it makes you think.
Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as: Knowing when to come in out of the rain; Why the early bird gets the worm; Life isn’t always fair; and Maybe it was my fault..
Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don’t spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge).
His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.
Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children.
It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an Aspirin to a student; but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.
Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims.
Common Sense took a beating when you couldn’t defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault.
Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled some in her lap, and was promptly awarded a cash settlement.
Common Sense was preceded in death, by his parents, Truth and Trust, by his wife, Discretion, by his daughter, Responsibility, and by his son, Reason.
He is survived by entities known as:
I Know My Rights
I Want It Now
Someone Else Is To Blame
I’m A Victim
Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone.
If you still remember him, pass this on. If not, join the majority and do nothing.
America vs UK and Mac vs PC
Nov 3rd
image by Business Pundit
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The photo above from BusinessPundit.com tickled my funny bone, this is obviously an american lecture hall and its predominantly mac’s and one visible PC. In the UK its very different, the UK universities rarely support Mac laptops / desktops and Macs don’t have a large share of the computer market in the UK yet but it is growing.
I just find it humourous that we have a photo of the american students in a lecture theatre and if you came here to the UK student lecture theatres you’d firstly find less laptops visible and even then they would predominantly be PCs!!
Reminds me of when I came across Digital Cribs which is done by Cicso advocating a networked and wireless world, see the ‘coolest geek’ at Harvard!
Work with me on my health doctor!
Oct 28th
image by oreillygmt
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I was wandering the web world again because a colleague at work wrote a blog on a cool word: Tomosynthesis; which simple means a 3D image of part of a body from multiple xrays.
This started my journey and while at the site that he linked to about ‘Painless Mammography via tomosynthesis’, I came across this guy: Shaun Riley who is on youtube and twitter (two guesses who I’m now following!). While browing the page on tomosynthesis I saw the small video to the top right which looked like Microsoft Surface and I am always curious about new tech. So I opened it and noticed that it was hosted by the same guy who was labled as a ‘favourite tweep’. Eh voila, here we are!
Long story short here are two video’s that Shaun Riley has shared that look exceptionally inspiring for our near future.
The development of using microsofts surface technology and interface along with Amalga as the application to share information between doctors and their patients during a consultation.
Hope we can help impact and perform in this arena too. These video’s were provided by Shaun of healthtechnica.
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Until the next post, internet.
Blogging reminds me of …
Oct 26th
…
- writing for a time capsule.
- having formalised and accepted logorrhea, instead of the worrisome type.
- guilty feelings, when forgetting it for months on end!
- personality suicide, just who is the real me?
Suffice it to say I’ve been busy … busy busy bee busy!
Inspired by Eva Vertes & video knowledge management
Apr 21st
I love watching TED.com .. its not much of a secret as I talk about it with a lot of different people. I love to learn new things, new perspectives and TED is a perfect medium for me in expanding my mind, opening my mind to new interpretations.
I’m not talking in this post about Cancer, its a serious condition and I’ve had quite a few close friends and family either die or survive. It was very unique to hear Eva talk about Cancer as a failed repair condition and I will be watching her in the future and I fervently hope that her ideas become a reality.
Instead I’m talking about the medium of sharing information. I’m a passionate learner, and I’m interested in different ways of learning and consuming information. Video’s are become more prevalent on the internet with Vimeo, YouTube, Veoh, Google Video and so many more. Screencapture software is now a lot more affordable too or even better … free! Its been great to see that I’ve been watching the business industry for many years, that companies are developing and including video presentation into their online representation more and more. For marketing, sharing information and teaching customers about their products which goes beyond the marketing of a product and actually discussing it with its end clients.
Video is especially great for teaching. I’m a good teacher, I enjoy it and would love to teach a classroom but I’m hearing impaired and this new medium of recording tutorials for on demand classes for students / employees to learn from is great. Include subtitles and everyone will benefit. Everyone can then watch the video, read the subtitles to ensure that they’ve heard the entire message (which is so incredibly important to me as a hearing impaired woman), to watch the reality of how something is done. Its invaluable. Its almost approaching a vocational way of learning as the person watching the training video will actually see how what is being taught is done, they can then duplicate this in their own time.
I’ll be speaking on this blog about this area (among other areas of interest / knowledge) and showing exactly what I mean about the importance that video will have on corporate knowledge management. Just imagine how useful it would be if you, starting a new role that is replacing a previous member of staff, could watch them presenting their work informally in a simple recorded video.
Pretty great isn’t it, that TED and now businesses and individuals can share their knowledge and the information that made up their knowledge with the world! Here’s another video that shows just how far it could be taken:
Definitely food for thought.
Emails – just say it and say it quick
Apr 18th
It amazes me just how easy it is to obfuscate facts and the message you want to give in emails. I’m one who recognises that I can sometimes be too long, I struggle with giving too much facts which will stop someone needing another to come back to me with more questions!! Its a hard line to judge.
I’ve always been brought up with the fundamentals: Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How .. I nicked named them the six Ws (saying as ‘how’ ends in W, it became the last and sixth in the line). If you can define these you know what its needing to be said.
Who are you writing to, what are you needing to say, where is it to go or be done, why is it important, when does it need to be done and how is it going to be achieved. Once you’ve got that sorted it all down to revision and rework. Here is a great article in how to do this succinctly.
How to Revise an Email So That People Will Read It by David Silverman
I particularly liked the following points:
1. Delete redundancies. Say it once. That’s enough. If you’re repetitive, the reader will stop reading and start skimming. (Like you probably just did.)
8. Delete anything written in the heat of emotion. Will this sentence show them who’s been right about the hamburger buns since the beginning? Yes? Cut it.
9. Shorten. Remember the reader struggling to digest your message on the run — a BlackBerry or an iPhone gets about 40 words per screen. What looks short on your desktop monitor is an epic epistle on their mobile device.
Here’s to saying what needs to be done in as few concise words as possible. Get the job done and stop making us read long winded emails!
yes I’m paying attention to this lesson too!