My first social media policy

Despite seriously considering deleting my Facebook profile in the past, I haven’t managed it, yet. The downsides are still just about outweighed by the way I use Facebook, i.e. very little. That’s my choice though and after a conversation in the canteen recently, I started wondering whether it was right to effectively start building up a social media profile for someone before they’ve even been born!

Despite Google’s unhelpful profile name policy, Eric Schmidt apparently commented that young people may need to disassociate themselves from a trail of embarrassment online by changing their names. I can see his point, but wouldn’t it be worse if your dad had created a Facebook profile for you?! You’d need to change your name at least twice!

So, given it’s not possible to control information on Facebook, we’ve decided to try and avoid putting anything there on behalf of the bump. Not that we’re picking on Facebook- we’ll be avoiding posting anything on the other social networking sites too. This is a bit of an experiment at the moment, along with the whole (very wide) parental minefield, so the bump’s social media policy may evolve over time. For a start it needs a better codename!

We do still want to annoy at least a few people with news and photos when bump’s big day finally arrives though, so we’ll be sending out announcements via ‘old fashioned’ electronic mail and Short Message Service. (And there will definitely not be any live blogging!)

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Hedge End uncut

Have a look at these albums for an alternative view of some Hedge End sights past and present:

• Dowds Farm
  (and my guess is that the chances of this surviving long enough to be refurbished  would be somewhere between negligible and not a chance!)
• Jacksons Farm
• APW
• Halfords
• Wildern Mill

Or, if you’re not interested in Hedge End (and who could blame you), there are more albums worth a peek in Andy’s urban exploring collection.

Turkey

Since I rarely send postcards when on holiday, here’s a blog substitute (minus the handwritten font)…

Hello!

You’ll probably get this after we’ve been back home several weeks! Having a wonderful time- we’ve seen a lot of this kind of thing:

Yes, blue sky! Oh, and ancient ruins, carefully put back together by markeologists. It’s amazing how big cities like Ephesus were, and slightly strange how they look today. It almost looks like a builders merchant in parts- not just rubble, stonework and rows of pillars, but piles of pipes as well!

It’s mind blowing just how much is just below the surface…

…or propped up in a corner (like the goddess of trainers!)…

I’ve no idea how the wooden horse fooled anyone; even with the windows closed the steps would be a dead giveaway!

(That horse is the same age as me and it’s been refurbished already! Yikes!)

And that’s why I don’t write postcards!!! It was a brilliant holiday though, and I’d definitely like to see more of Turkey if I get the chance. (More photo’s on facebook.)

The cake fairy

Reentry from honeymoon to real life was softened a bit by this…

…which was waiting for us when we got home this morning.  Looks like the cake fairy got in while we were away! And the milk fairy had restocked the fridge so we could start making up for missed tea without any shopping delays!

It’s been a fantastic September so far, but it’s not over yet. The rest of the month I will mostly be:

• Married!
• Unpacking
• Going back to work tomorrow- urg!
• Catching up (what’s been happing the last few weeks? Anything interesting?)
• Writing lots of thank you letters
• Looking at wedding photos
• Looking at honeymoon photos
• Finding out why @jthouse is frozen
• Working on my second CurrentCost development board circuit (this time sensing pipe temperature- any clues?!) inspired by the homecamp blog
• Taking things apart
• Going to another wedding!
• Other stuff I’ll find out about when I risk looking at my inbox in the morning

But first, of course, I’ll be eating cake! (And sleeping!)

Four thousand words

I’ve been looking for suitable photos I can use for a presentation I’ve been working on today. It’s my first attempt at the more pictures than words approach, although it does have bullet points as well- I don’t think my target audience is ready to let them go completely, and I don’t do enough presentations to get away with it.

I’m quite pleased with the selection of photo’s I was able to find, so here they are:

• Max Braun’s little cloud
• Mike’s Celebrations of Light Finale 2007
• Nick Wiesner’s bump (my favourite of the four)
• Karan J’s Tate Modern

A big thanks to the photographers and for the creative commons license that enabled me to use their photos.

Perranporth, Cornwall

Only six days in to October and I’ve remembered to update my monthly wallpaper- sometimes takes most of the month before I realise it’s time for a change! This month’s Ordnance Survey wallpaper is Perranporth, Cornwall.

Digital Roo

Just flicking through this month’s IET engineering & technology and one of my current favourite photos jumped off the page at me! I should have been expecting it really since I already knew Roo was speaking at the 30th IET Mountbatten Memorial Lecture in November and he has used the photo before but I think it will catch anyone’s eye.

Update: More from Roo about his choice of photo, Darren being published by the IET and a taster of what to expect on the night.

Little fluffy clouds

Before kicking off, a quick thank you to Jo who texted me a photo of a cloud that looks like the UK. I like clouds. Look up, it’s now the spangly new header image for my blog. By complete coincidence, BBC Breakfast had someone from the cloud appreciation society on the next day!