Love it. Have a read if you’re interested in web design.

I’ll add more articles and information here as I find them.

This was a great find from the99percent.com. Have a read. In fact that whole website is full of massively useful information.

http://the99percent.com/tips/6585/10-laws-of-productivity

You might think that creatives as diverse as Internet entrepreneur Jack Dorsey, industrial design firm Studio 7.5, and bestselling Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami would have little in common. In fact, the tenets that guide how they – and exceptionally productive creatives across the board – make ideas happen are incredibly similar.

If you don’t already know what I do for a job, I teach people how to use Atlassian’s Confluence wiki software and how to extend the product using Adaptavist’s Theme Builder and Community Bubbles.

I usually provide training for large organisations and companies where Confluence is often used as an intranet, as a wiki or for storing and sharing data (wiki+intranet). I’m a massive fangirl for the software. Why? Because I recognise how immensely useful it is for organisations. One of the things I really appreciate about Confluence is its ease of use. I believe that anyone, even those who are not members of the facebook generation can use Confluence and it can help them in their day to day work life.

Recently I’ve been doing quite a bit of travelling for the purpose of training. I don’t sleep well on planes, so many of these hours have been spent staring at the lights on the ground and hoping that the wing doesn’t fall off as it wobbles intensely during turbulence. Or on a plane from Atlanta, watching the lady next to me using a ballpoint pen to select items in the on-screen entertainment unit, rendering it scratched and useless. During these times I daydream. In one such day/waking night dream I was taken back to a place I once worked and considered how we all could have benefitted massively from using Confluence. I began to consider how really, every educational establishment should use Confluence. Now, you will need to excuse me somewhat as I am making some broad sweeping generalisations here. I’ve been out of education for a few years. I used to work in a college in the UK and at the time read about higher education policy for Elearning and the like. But I’m out of the loop, and I have no idea about grade school (or whatever 5-18 education is called nowadays) and educational policy. It will be different country by country anyway, and as I say, these are broad sweeping statements generated by my own enthusiasm for wikis and education.

Confluence, as software goes, is priced pretty reasonably. It isn’t free and you have to factor in the cost of hosting confluence. There are reductions for education and you can get a 10 user version for as little as $10. Importantly, the software can do all of the items I’m about to discuss, or with the addition of the some of the applications I mention such as Comalatech’s adhoc workflows plugin.

So, back to my daydream. Well ladies and gentlemen, I have a dream…Today! Well, the other day. And it was a daydream on a plane, but here goes. First of all, I considered the reality of technology in the college I used to work in.  In the system I experienced, there was the intranet which was updated by a small team of one or two people to cover several thousand staff, departments and deal with masses of content. Using Confluence, spaces and permissions could be set up with minimum hassle moving updating of content out to the people and their departments.

That was the way the public website and the intranet worked, I’ve no doubt that it has changed for the better since then. Then there was first class, or “first crash” as we dubbed it (ho ho ho, how we used to laugh). This was for for email and document management. There was, as far as I recall, no version control available and it was a difficult system to navigate and use. There were shared drives that needed the assistance of the IT department to set up and manage. We had two elearning platforms; Blackboard and Moodle. Both required a team of eLearning folks to host, manage and provide support. The eLearning platforms, it should be noted, were used mostly for storing documents, with some use of quizes etc. Many of the Elearning requirements could be covered by Confluence and the use of one or two plugins. Moreover, I have been wholly unimpressed by  all Elearning software as being bloated, difficult to use and in most cases, completely underutilised.

Confluence, on the other hand, one piece of software, multiple uses, easy to use. Furthermore remove the burden on the IT department by moving the hosting and support of the system to an external company. Then use Atlassian’s crowd and there’s your single sign on covered with one solid piece of software, software about which I hear nothing but good things.

Very quickly you could have staff taking responsibility for updating content. The system is easy to use. They could if needs be, import content from Microsoft word, or embed it into pages. The one team responsible for updating content for an immense organisation would longer be a bottleneck and a potential source of failure. Problems of control could be overcome with the adhoc workflows plugin. With this useful plugin, content can be unpublished until approved.

The wiki would release staff from their reliance on email. Rather than email a document around a company, or set up a meeting via email, collaboration on documents across teams and staff members could happen with the ease of use that Confluence offers. Content can be edited across people and teams working together inside a version controlled, workflow integrated, permission controlled page. Fewer documents flying back and forth via email with different versions. Maybe even by allowing people to work together on policy, course criteria or whatever, work could be less political. People do tend to be less protective over stuff that is not written in isolation.

For me as an ex-tutor the benefits are clear. For the courses I taught, Students had to track their work by reflecting and writing about it. They had to prove they’d covered criteria by creating paper trails, linking back to criteria points. They had to produce course work. This was stored in sketch books and in folders. Student work would sometimes get lost. With Confluence loss would be virtually impossible as it allows for version control. Using the Adhoc workflows plugin, students and teachers could assign tasks and requests to each other, making it easier for staff and students (if you are like me as student/teacher with plenty on the go and the memory of a goldfish) to manage their work.

Group work was always a bit of an issue, especially as the students often had to miss classes due to childcare or work commitments. But by using the wiki for their project, this would be less of an issue.

The work we dealt with was mostly multimedia design, and in my dream I saw how through the use of plugins such as Balsamiq, mock ups for user interfaces could be easily generated, changed, submitted and commented on. Beautiful! Non-digital work would be documented using video and digital photography, all uploaded to the relevant pages. At the end of the year, students could submit work via a list of tasks assigned to them via Confluence and the Adhoc workflows plugin, or the Taskdock plugin. They would be automagically prodded by emails to react to that to do list. If managed correctly the work would be stored and ready to submit to examiners at the end of the course by printing out the relevant pieces of information, or even submitting electronically in the form of exported word document or pdf. Add the Scoll Wiki into the equation and the content could be submitted in a sweetly formatted and generated pdf.

Imagine if this was extended to teaching and learning on the programming courses, and other applications Atlassian has available such as Crucible were used.

And while doing all of this students would be learning how to use software that they may be asked to use within their new working lives.

So that was my dream. Our approach to everything, the way we deal with every single thing in our lives is being and will be revolutionised by technology. This is just one way I thought that would benefit from the application of one piece of software.

A good thing about swimming is the lack of equipment required. Of course, when I start doing open swimming, I will need a wetsuit and they are super expensive. But that will come later. For now, nothing more is required.

I pretended I was in a miniature biathlon and ran to the pool. It is only about ten minutes away. And when I say “run” I probably don’t mean it in the same sense as your regular athlete. I am to running what the EDL is to race relations, public order and intelligent informed debate.

Glossop swimming pool is housed in a beautiful building, so much nicer than other leisure centres I have tried swimming in. It was built during the victorian era presumably to provide exercise and entertainment for the local millworking population. It has a slight feel of a church about it. Vaulted ceilings, huge windows and ornate metalwork on the balconies. The brickwork isn’t painted, which gives it a warm slightly serene and relaxing air. A further bonus is that it is very clean and well maintained. The water isn’t freezing or too hot. In sum, a pleasant environment to swim in.

Perhaps it was this that made everyone swimming in the pool do so at the pace of a leisurely amble in the park. I went for the lane swim and the ladies only swim that followed it. Lane swim wasn’t bad (although there were no lanes). Ladies swim was massively frustrating. I am generally a modest person and (I like to believe) tend to be lacking bullshit regarding my own abilities. However, I am a good swimmer. I used to swim competitively as a youth and while I was never going to swim at national or even regional level, I do have better technique than most people.

So we’ve established, by me telling you, that I’m a good swimmer. It’s my best sport. The result is that despite being overweight I can go quite fast. Comparatively. Which means that in the pool I was mostly either behind or in front a pool width wall of women swimmers so I couldn’t manage a proper uninterrupted swim. I observed that most women were there with a friend and swam and chatted, stopping for a quick chat, then a bit more swim-chat. Swim-chat means you can’t put your head under the water. Which means you go very, very slowly. It was like experiencing the horror of having to shop in tescos on a saturday and probably for the swim chatters, the same level of exercise. I shouldn’t have a go, because it’s better to exercise than not, but come on! Try at least to break a sweat ladies. I believe that they say you should try to do exercise that renders you “out of breath” three times a week. If you can swim-chat, that’s not really exercise. Maybe it is more of a social thing.

Anyway, that was my experience of swimming. I think I’ll have to go to the early morning sessions if I want a proper swim. I imagine people who want swim-exercise rather than swim-chat go to those sessions.

I tried out my new goggles and mp3 player. And here are the results:

Goggles

Aqua Sphere Vista Goggles

These were absolutely brilliant. They do not let any water in, you can see everything clearly and they do not give you a headache by having to seal so tightly that they cut your circulation off. I recommend them. I think they probably look a bit over the top in the pool, and people probably think you look like an idiot. I ride a bike though, so I’m used to that.

Waterproof MP3

Speedo Aqua Beat Waterproof MP3 Player

I wanted one of these for ages. Swimming is, it has to be said, really dull. I imagine open swimming isn’t. But pool swimming… yawn! I’ve always wanted to listen to music while swimming. And a few years ago I saw a waterproof MP3 player. They were much more expensive then. This one seemed pretty reasonable, so despite quite a few bad reviews, I gave it a go.

The results:

Of course I failed to read that the software is pc only, which actually wouldn’t be too bad as I run windows in virtualisation mode on my mac. BUT they put the software on the mini-cd thing. So I couldn’t load into the laptop which doesn’t have a nasty drawer thing. Anyway… it turns out you can just drag and drop songs onto the drive when it appears on your desktop. Means you can’t order them or create playlists. But then there is no user interface on the player either, so it doesn’t really matter. It is a sub-optimal system for sure, but it is better than nothing.

While Swimming:

Good points:

• It works! You can listen to music while negotiating a wall of swim-chatters.
• The unit is fixed in place on the back of your head with your goggle straps. You could attach with swimsuit straps too, if you’re a lady. It stayed there without any problem at all. I read in reviews that it comes unfastened, but not for me.

Negative points:

• The earphones are really useless. Maybe I have massive earholes, but I couldn’t get the things to stay in. Especially while doing front crawl. My sister informs me that you have to buy the £40 headset in order to make the whole thing work. Which makes it more expensive than I was expecting.

Conclusion:
Was the MP3 player worth it? I believe it would be if the headset would stay in. It does make swimming laps less tedious, which would be even less tedious if there were proper lanes to swim in.

So much has happened, so many potential blogs and blog subjects, but I haven’t posted for ages.

I need to update the old Diet Club information, in which I’ve lost 2lbs and some centimeters.

I’ve done some bike rides with Joby, some other bloke and Lost.

I’ve been to the gym and made myself unable to walk for a few days (not in a bad way, just in a muscle pain way. In Germany they describe this as a muscle kater. You have a kater if you have a hangover. It’s a good description I think). Wikipedia’s description of the symptoms of a kater:

Ein so genannter „Kater“ ist gekennzeichnet von Kopfschmerzen, einem flauen Gefühl im Magen und allgemeinem Unwohlsein. Häufig kommt durch eine Gastritis (Magenschleimhautreizung) Erbrechen hinzu, verbunden mit Appetitlosigkeit. Die geistigen und motorischen Fähigkeiten können eingeschränkt sein (z. B. Konzentrationsschwierigkeiten, leichtes Zittern). Teilweise treten depressive Verstimmungen bis hin zu Angstzuständen auf.

Hope that helps .

Other activities include spinning at the Studio in Glossop with Cherry Baker, pilates guru, fitness instructor and my aunty! I love spinning, really I do. If you feel tired and a bit low, then Spin! You feel lifted and alert after a class. And you sleep well. Also if you prefer sore buttocks. Spinning can help there too.

I have some new bike stuff I should review, including a saddle, waterproof overshoes, gloves and lights.

I set up the diet club web site and subsequently did nothing with it.

It became winter. I forgot about the grey smudge skies, rain and darkness in the afternoon that is winter. Now I remember. While I can’t wait for summer again, I’ll aim to make the most of winter. I find I have to be careful to keep hold of the hours as they blur past into days. I always feel as though I’m holding together a leaking dam of to dos by patching stuff here and there, holding off the deluge of bills to pay and household tasks. I keep missing stuff as I find myself tired and more absent minded than usual.

The reason for my silence is that there’s been a whole lot of work going on. From time to time I get completely absorbed by work. I don’t live to work, but I find it difficult to let go during busy times. I’ve been doing a lot of theme customisation with Confluence. This involves using CSS and Theme Builder to change the look and expand/more around some of the functionality of the Confluence software. CSS is really fiddly and time consuming and it works in quirky ways especially in internet exploder. Helpfully most businesses and government/public organisations use Exploder so it results in a lot of hitting head on table/hair tearing moments as it has to work for them as their browser of choice along with several others. On a positive note, as a result I am pretty good at this with several years behind me now, if I don’t say so myself.  I’ve also been doing some Theme Builder and Community Bubbles training. I got some really nice reviews on the training from some folks in California too, not sure if I can include it in a non-work blog. It could be the case that I’m essentially a teacher at heart. God help me. I’d hoped for a calling with a bit more bling and less sandal wearing.

Oh and my big news is I’m signed up to the Tower2Tower ride in May. This is from Blackpool to the other not so impressive tower in Paris, the one that based its design on the one at Blackpool. It’s just a few people and was set up by Paul Carruthers who recently completed the Lands End to John O’Groats ride.

On the other rides subject there’s the Fatboys Unofficial Cycle Club that we are unofficially setting up. I think it’s another bloke’s baby, but I’ve asked my friend Daz to do us a logo and some decal which will go on a T-shirt. It will look brilliant, he’s a great illustrator and does awesome stuff in a very stylised way. He did the wiki monsters on the Adaptavist t-shirts. There’s a ride with them, I’ll include that in a later post. My brain is slowly becoming porridge so I’ll have to stop with the wittering for now.

I especially like the Spaces application as it really helps me keep a handle on the 100 windows I invariably leave open. The look and feel is an improvement too. Everything is very ITunes-ish, perhaps in a move to advertise the computer to the iPod masses. Or perhaps just to standardise the product line. There is a whole lot of gradients and shine, but it seems a little more muted than the excess use of Fisher Price – like icons of the earlier versions of X.

I guess I’d give it 4/5. A nice update, but not a completely stunning new operating system. Is £85 too much? Not sure, look at how much Vista is. And there’s a strange update. I prefer XP.