Blogger's block

Tip of the hat to Nick Robinson of the BBC, who used this phrase when he was a bit stumped. I hope that a series of post will ensue, as Nick has demonstrated! ;-)

I've been thinking of writing about:

• The War Memorial in Morpeth, Northumberland
• Two fantastic experiments I learned about during my Psychology degree
• What I'm planning to order from http://www.fungi.com/

Instead though, I wanted not to blog about crashing bores or dreadful ones, but in this instance *sonic* ones... ;-)

I passed a van from Sonic Bore and it made me smile.

Also, I am going to be experimenting with Twitter. I've attached a javascript box to the top left of my blog page. Find me at http://twitter.com/justingsouter.

I'm 'following' Bill Thompson (and Millionsofus), who writes for the BBC, and has been twittering me recently by what he's thinking about.

I thought it would also help me get over my blogger's block... :-)

BT customer's YouTube complaint

My friend Matthew Rippon recently introduced me to Nina Belk at Zest Innovation.

Nina and co-founder Laura Williams help organisations understand how Customers perceive the service they receive (or don't). At Fujitsu, I have a colleague who leads a Practice doing the same sort of thing.

I reckon that most organisations find it difficult to understand things from the outside in, which is why they need help -- and why the article linked to in the title made me smile (wryly).

The reason for the smile is that Caroline (my Partner - and she of the Prince and the Queen link to the right), has been trying to cancel her BT broadband connection for the last 10 months.

The connection doesn't work (and only ever has done very intermittently) but she can't get through to the blighters to pack it in!

So they carry on direct debiting her account, and she's unlikely to see the money again as the BT Customer Service experience is so dire. She's complained repeatedly and got nowhere. Bah! :-(

Mobile Cranes - a confession

[although I enjoyed compiling it ;-D]

I'm working near a building site, and they're putting up one of those steel framed buildings.

Key to all this are cranes - mobile, self-propelled cranes - normally, they're the ones you seen driving around your Town Centre.

However, every so often, you come across a real monster.

One that needs a smaller crane just to hang the weights on the back.

One with 7 or 8 axles.

One that puts up the tower cranes - maybe one with cantilevers or a lattice frame on the end, to give extra distance & height

I'm strangely fascinated by them, and I rue the demise of Jim'll Fix it -- which might have given me the chance to drive one -- to take a day out going to site, setting it up, extending the pneumatic legs, lots of shouting, laying the cargo down where it's needed... [hopefully!]

Perhaps there could be a Diggerland for cranes?

I've found some really fantastic links:

• Liebherr Mobile cranes
• Liebherr Tracked crane with whopping capacity
• Liebherr monster self-propelled crane - 1200 metric tonnes
• You can even buy die-cast models, but they seem a little pricey at €451!

Ainscough is the name that comes to mind with mobile cranes. Check out their video

Maybe it's because as a child I had a yellow dinky toy of a Coles Crane, which actually had a hook and string...

I've also come across a further Liebherr link, which reminds me of tower crane crawling itself up the old Britannic House just off Moorgate [not that tropical view below] - a geet red thing with a self-assembling block below it.

This block got the pieces lifted into it by the crane itself, then jacked itself up from the new bit to create the next space - true self-assembly, and pretty impressive!

Justin Souter - disambiguation

In the best tradition of Wikipedia, I thought I'd explain why the Blog's title includes my middle name.

If you thinking that *one* Justin Souter was enough, there seems to be a growing list (gulp!):

1. Justin *Alan* Souter - resident of Los Angeles, whose work has won "an Academy Award for technical achievement"
2. Justin Souter (New Zealand) - surfer
3. Justin Souter - Facebook search - there's one in Canada [hello, by the way!]
4. No entry on Wikipedia yet (any volunteers?)
5. www.192.com tells us of Justin *J* Souter, although you'll have to visit the site yourself, as I haven't paid for access and the URL was too long to paste as a link
   
6. Supreme Court Justice - [shurely shome mishtake]. I think think this has been transcribed from audio and should be Justice (David) Souter. He shares my late Grandfather's name...
   

Thanks to Google for the links. More Justin Souters as I discover them.

"Fujitsu Islands" Open in Second Life

I work for Fujitsu Services in the UK, so big up to my colleagues in Japan, who have been beavering away to get us on the map! :-D

A great place to start from, and catch up with the likes of Dell, IBM, etc., although there's a long way to go. fyi, my work av is Fujitsu Infinity.

Tip of the hat to Roo Reynolds and the folks at Eightbar, for providing inspiration along the way - I've been very envious of what you're up to. ;-) Thanks also for the tip on blogging and VWs guidelines, an inspiration for the rest of us!

What do you think of what we've done?

Opening Salvo

Having prevaricated for several days, I thought I'd get going with an introductory spiel about why I'm starting this personal blog.

Firstly, a tip of the hat to Tarek Nseir, Boss of TH_NK, who was the prime mover, suggesting that I start writing to share my ideas and passions.

I'm an ideas-led fellow, and look forward to the opportunity to pass on what interesting tidbits and trends I'm looking into at the time of posting.

I would like to think that, in writing this blog, I can tap into the ever-growing wisdom of an increasingly self-aware "crowd" that is the Internet - and that this will encourage a two-way flow of ideas. :-)

Potential future topics for discussion:

• Fungi
• Emergent Complexity & Self-organisation
• The works of Steven Berlin Johnson
• Crowd-sourcing
• Virtual Worlds
• Information & Knowledge Management
• A bit of politics (emphasis on "bit")
  
• fyi, I've subscribed to The Economist for ten years, so consider myself socially liberal, economically conservative
  
• n.b. there may be the occasional rant when I get particularly frustrated!
  
• Graphic design, typefaces and the like
  
• Mountain biking
• Emotional, spiritual and psychological toolsets - my undergraduate degree was Psychology

That's probably about it for now. "Wellbanked" is derived from the house name of my dear Granny, Frances Gwendoline [name withheld], God bless 'er. :-D