The blog experimentation is over. I've been convinced of its value and now it's time to reorganise and split personal from professional.
This blog will now be the personal one and carry all the non-work stuff. I've started my CEO's Blog on the new ruralnet|uk Wordpress Multi-User system over here.
Thanks to everyone who has followed me and contributed here. Please re-subscribe to feeds and re-bookmark as required.
Many thanks
Simon
02/05/2008
Photo credits: Right: Nick Gripton Left: Marie-II
Today, via a tweet, I was invited by Number 10 to join a live blog of the Business Call To Action event. As the commentary scrolled by, Coca Cola made a statement and it reminded me of an idea that first came to me some 20 years ago, as I drove through the bush in NE Zambia in an area where one in five children die before the age five, usually from dehydration. This was in the days before blogs when it was difficult to know where to park such random thoughts.
This is what I typed in to today's live blog:
[Comment From Simon Berry]
What about Coca Cola using their distribution channels (which are amazing in developing countries) to distribute rehydration salts? Maybe by dedicating one compartment in every 10 crates as 'the life saving' compartment?
I still think it's a good idea. Coca Cola, are you listening?
I'm thankful to the photographers who have allowed me (through personal contact or Creative Commons Licensing) to use their photos.
This post has been brewing for a while. Indeed, it had been brewing for so long that it was going to get forgotten. So what was it that brought it out? Well, it was the full-page colour advert in Saturday's Guardian begging people to register to buy tickets for this year's Glastonbury Festival. Apparently, there are still some 30,000 tickets up for grabs, a month, yes a month, after they went on sale. Last year they sold out in 2 hours!
The bad weather of recent years and this year's line up with US rapper Jay-Z headlining have both been blamed by different parties. But the weather has always been an issue - no big change there. And you usually don't know the line up before you buy your tickets - they are just rumours at that stage. Neither line-up or weather can explain such a huge vote of no confidence.
For me, and many others, it's neither of these. The elephant in the room, the thing nobody seems to want to talk about is that fact that Michael Eavis has 'done a Ratner'. On 23 April 1991 Gerald Ratner said:
We also do cut-glass sherry decanters complete with six glasses on a silver-plated tray that your butler can serve you drinks on, all for £4.95. People say, "How can you sell this for such a low price?" I say, because it's total crap.
On 12 July 2007 Festival Guide reported:
Michael Eavis believes that there were too many old people at this year’s Glastobury Festival.
The farmer wants to attract a younger audience to the Worthy Farm extravaganza, saying that the 2007 crowd was too “middle-class” and too “respectable.”
He told the Metro: “We’re trying to get the youngsters back – the 16, 17 and 18 year-olds - because numbers were down this year. People say we’re getting middle class, which is stretching it a bit far, but we’re attracting a lot more people in their 30s and 40s.”
Mr Eavis continued: “These kids add so much to the flavour of it and should have a lot of fun but we’re getting the 30 and 40-year-olds in, which changes the character of it.
"The demographic is changing and it’s slightly worrying. We might lose the fascination the show has for the public.
"The people who now come have the right attitude, they grin and bear the mud. They’re fantastically well mannered and polite, and respectable, but they do change the nature of the show."
Source: http://www.gigwise.com/news?contentid=34614
Arrogant in the extreme in my view. A big mistake. Glastonbury has changed over the years and no doubt those who manage it want to influence this change but this is not the way to do it.
We started going to Glastonbury in 2002 when our daughter suggested we all went. We slept in the car (you're not allowed to do that now) and the kids did their own thing and camped and we met up now again over the three days - perfect. This was one of the unique things about Glastonbury. It was a place for everybody.
To be honest, before Eavis' coments I was re-thinking Glastonbury anyway. It wasn't the weather or the headliners. For me Glasonbury isn't about the headliners it's about surprise appearances by Armadou and Mariam, discovering 'Urban Space Lab' in the Jazz lounge (it's a tent!) and smiling respectfully as Tony Benn addresses those gathered in the 'Left Fiield'. Then there's the Zen Hussies, Jerry Fish & The Mud Blug Club . . .
I was having a re-think because last year they increased the ticket allocation by 27,500 (that's nearly an extra £4m in ticket sales) and it was too many and the place couldn't cope. I remember making our way home when the Killers were on the Pyramid stage. They were still in mid set. Yet the crowds extended way beyond the audience area and into the market. I was in a familiar place yet totally disorientated (must be my age!). Mud we can stand, but trying to stand - or even walk - in half a metre of churned chocolate means one thing: too many people. Michael, I think you've pushed us too far. Your site can only support a ticket allocation of 112,500 and you're trying to cram in 140,000. You've made it clear that us 'oldies' are spoiling things. The trouble is, us oldies have children and grandchildren and we all enjoy a good crack! Reduce the numbers, say you're sorry and the next time I come I'll bring my grandchildren. Notes on photos:
1) Was this Banksey?
2) Our campervan that we bought on eBay after the 'sleeping in the car experience' of 2002. Note the space we had. In recent year's we've been really crammed in.
3) Sheltering from a storm in the van with a 50 year-old - fantastically well mannered and polite, and
respectable, but they do change the nature of the show - you arrogant old fart!
4) Glastonbury WAS an inter-generational thing
5) It's not about the weather
6) I think I'd like to spend more time on the planet she's come from.
After experimenting with blogging for some months now, I am convinced of its value and I am moving to the next stage. I've split private stuff from professional and this is the private one.
The professional one is here - it's "The CEO's Blog". So what does a CEO's blog need? Well, it needs more than the odd blog post with my view on something in it.
My work colleagues need to know what I'm up to not just what I think. I need a mini-blog, to complement the core content, for short snippets of information.
This is how my mini-blog works. I have a Twitter account where my ID is @51m0n. On Twitter I signed up to 'follow' @hashtags. Over at the #Hashtags website I checked and found that nobody was using the hashtag #51m0n. This means that whenever I put these characters: #51m0n in a Twitter item (a tweet) it appears here: hashtags.org/tag/51m0n/ and, yes, you've guessed it, this page has an RSS feed on it.
The feed is: hashtags.org/feeds/tag/51m0n/. I then went to this, my lovely new ruralnet|online Wordpress MU blog and I added an RSS widget to the sidebar and told it to keep an eye on the 51m0n feed from Hashtags.
So, now if I want to place a item in my mini-blog I simply type a tweet in Twitter and include the characters #51m0n. Brilliant!
An extra refinement is that I use Quickeys on my PC and Mac and I've set things up, in Quickeys, so that pressing <Windows Key><Alt>£ automatically types #51m0n and adds the time and date.
Ah, the beauty of Web 2.0.
I am still very much on a learning curve when it comes to Web 2.0. But when I was further down the curve and struggling for ways to track and aggregate things I wrote this post: Call Sign - Blog Sign?. The suggestion was that each blogger should have a unique-ish 'tag' and then scan the internet (= set up RSS feeds) to aggregate everything using this tag. This way if Blogger A wanted to call his or her post to the attention of Blogger B, Blogger A would attach Blogger B's tag to the post. I still think this is neat idea.
But anyway, the #hashtags initiative by the Downtown Cartel does something similar for groups of people using Twitter. This is how it works:
You can also take an RSS feed from http://hashtags.org/tag/ruralnet/ and pull this into your community website.
With all this in place the whole 'ruralnet' community can post interesting items to the ruralnet community website via Twitter. Cool.
See the #hashtags website for interesting ways in which this has been used to help coordinate disaster relief.
This is a pre-dated post. I didn't get time to post it in real time. I'd been invited to Sunday lunch by Carolyn. She rang at about 10 to say that there was a bit a slippage in timing and that they wouldn't be eating until 1:45 which was brilliant. I needed the extra time and in the end this worked perfectly by 1:15 the last bit of flashing slipped into place and the drip, drip, drip stopped and I was able to throw the layers and layers of very wet cardboard outside and walk away from the building site to a fantastic lunch with great company.
After lunch I went to see the patient and had to confess to what I'd been up to as I needed to get back to get the tiles on before dark. The patient was very pleased! :-)
With the flashing and tiles in place I can relax. The interior can been completed at leisure.
Umm . . . ideally this wouldn't have happened until tomorow. I need to get that flashing in place. It's a bit wet in here.
Done it! As dusk falls the windows are in. There's only a couple of screws holding each one but that will keep most of the rain out. Tomorrow I'll need to finish securing the windows and fit the flashing and then we will be water tight.
I'm really pleased with the way they look. They were never going to be pretty from the outside (this is the back corner of the house, so not too critical) but actually things line up quite well.
:-)
There that's better! Thank goodness Angela offered to bring over lunch today - it's going to be a long one. It keeps raining! More later.
I was right to have the jitters at the change of tack at the end of yesterday. This single frame idea is not going to work either. It will leave an odd sticking out bit inside (see picture). So that will have to come out. Good that I didn't fix it.
I've now decided on a hybrid approach. I'm not going to move the existing rafters (the original plan). Moving the exising rafters was going to be really complicated as it would disturb the external brickwork. This is no longer an option anyway as I've cut them off! I'm now going to put new rafters in the right place. Watch this space!
Progress was a bit slow this afternoon as I realised that the way I had planned to put the veluxes in was not going to work. So I had to have a re-think and a bit of a panic that the re-think wasn't thought through enough etc etc. Then I had to go an buy more treated wood - twice.
But anyway, here we are. The hole you see will take the first 3 windows. You should also note that the dormer window hasn't fallen down.
Lessons learnt:
You never know how a thing is going to turn out until you have a go!
I need to cover things up as it's going to rain overnight. But it's dry again tomorrow. Lucky.
Off on Florence Nightgale duties for the rest of the evening :-)
