In through the outfield

Big toys for big boys

It is often said that men are just boys in adult bodies. This seems to be the approach taken by Männerspielplatz, an amusement park for men that lets them get in touch with their inner construction worker (thanks to SpringWise for the tip-off).

For EUR 219, visitors to Männerspielplatz can shed their office trappings and get seriously dirty while playing with excavators, wheel loaders, Caterpillars, quads, Jeeps and more.

The park, which is situated in an old factory site just outside Kassel, Germany, offers 18 stations for visitors to enjoy to their heart’s content. Challenges include using a Komatsu Hanomag excavator to move huge stones; leveling the ground with a bulldozer; off-road riding on a Quad Unimog; and participating in an archery course. 

Participants must be at least 18 years old. A Class B license is required, and admission is limited to minimize waiting times.

Today my bins are ‘wheelie’ clean

It is becoming a common complaint that too many of us are bringing work home (the almost ubiquitous spread of Blackberry devices is a factor in this).

However, this took an unexpected turn for me this weekend, as I ended up cleaning my two large local authority wheelie bins as a result showing a colleague around the Business & IP Centre on Friday.

I was demonstrating the brilliant Cobra database and the thousands of Business Opportunity Profiles it contains. As I mentioned in a previous blog (Wheelie cleaning up in business), I like to surprise my visitors by pulling up the Wheelie Bin Cleaner report.

So when emptying my re-cycling boxes into the wheelie bins I realised today was the day to clean them out.

On the topic of unusual business opportunities, one of my colleagues stumbled across a Business Opportunity Profile for Life Model, but I have no plans following up on the advice in this guide at home.

I was an April fool, but it’s no joke for SlideShare

I have always been a fan of April fool stories. My previous job included producing a daily press cuttings service for my organisation, and I used to look forward to trying to find all the April 1  ‘news stories’ for inclusion. One of my all time favourites was from the Daily Mirror announcing that the Channel tunnel diggers had struck gold half-way to France.

The big ’story’ from today has been the Guardian newspaper letting its loyal readers know that it would shortly be giving up on old fashioned ink and paper. Instead they would switch to Twitter for all future news coverage. The Twitter switch for Guardian article has some lovely touches about the benefits of reducing all news to 140 characters. Even going back intto their archives to ‘re-write’ history;

Major stories already completed include:

“1832 Reform Act gives voting rights to one in five adult males yay!!!”;

“OMG Hitler invades Poland, allies declare war see tinyurl.com/b5×6e for more”;

and “JFK assassin8d @ Dallas, def. heard second gunshot from grassy knoll WTF?”

On a less amusing note I received an email today from SlideShare (a free service I blogged about in 2007).

Hi infield,
We’ve noticed that your slideshow on SlideShare has been getting a LOT of views in the last 24 hours. Great job … you must be doing something right.
Why don’t you tweet or blog this? Use the hashtag #bestofslideshare so we can track the conversation.
Congratulations,  SlideShare Team

I checked my three presentations and sure enough one of them had rocketed to 751 views. This was something of a surprise and perhaps I should have been suspicious. However, it took a blog post from Phil Bradley (Slideshare April Fool joke goes disastrously wrong), before I realised I had been conned.

As Phil points out, SlideShare have made ,”a huge error”;
I don’t appreciate anyone manipulating data on my content. That SlideShare are so relaxed about this, and feel they can do what they like is really sending entirely the wrong message about how they view users and content.

To be fair to the authors of this ‘prank’ have confessed their sins on Phil’s blog, and apologised to their customers;

Phil,
My sincere, personal apologies. Its just an April Fool’s prank. I understand why you are upset, however, we did not mean to offend our users who we love. But I can see your perspective.
Rashmi, CEO & Cofounder, SlideShare

I think I can  forgive them this time, but fear many of their customers may move to rival services as a result.

South of England wild with big cats

I’m not sure if BBC South have been reading my blog recently, but this evening they had a feature news story on big cats spotted in the South of the country.

They had a couple of scratchy videos which could have been a lynx, plus lots of citizens who had seen these beast close up - even brushing past in one case.

As you can see from the graphic copied from the BBC website there have been plenty of spottings. I still can’t quite make my mind up on this. Some of the stories are worryingly similar to the kind of alien or crop circle ones I have heard over the years.

‘Beast of Balcombe’ spotted in my backyard

Although I feel very fortunate to live so close to nature in my rural retreat on the edge of Balcombe, I feel somewhat perturbed by the recent spotting of the ‘Beast of Balcombe’ just beyond my back garden.

As you will have seen from my recent post, deer are not unknown in my garden, and in fact are becoming something of a pest in to gardeners in Mid-Sussex. When I first moved into my current house we also used to have rabbits wandering freely in the garden. But that all stopped when our aged cat was replaced by two young and active farm cats. Now we just get recently deceased remains brought in through the cat flap for final consumption on the kitchen floor.

However this ‘big’ cat appears to be a puma from the recent sighting (and sounding) from a reliable source in the village. I shall certainly be on the lookout for the ‘beast’, and if I manage to snap a photo you will be first to know.

Fans of big cat sightings in the south of England can keep up do date with a blog dedicated to this topic.

Vote Silly 2008 - Vote Michael Palin

My intention is to keep politics (and religion) out of this blog. However I couldn’t resist the Vote Michael Palin campaign. Especially when you consider how qualified he is for the job (watch the video below). Added to that is the gift of a free ‘fuzzy thing’ when you sign up to their newsletter.

Michael Palin could be the new ‘nice’ face of politics, even if we discount the fact he can’t stand, as he is not a US citizen.

 

Friday fun with Leonard Cohen

Having read a recent Guardian newspaper Great Lyricists supplement on Leonard Cohen, I was reminded not only of the genius of his songs/poetry, but also his sense of humour. I know he is widely considered to be one of the most depressing singers of recent times, and his music is often unkindly referred to as ideal to commit suicide to.

However there is a lighter side to Cohen as illustrated by my one of my favourite lines at the very beginning of First We Take Manhattan, his hit single from the 1988 album I’m Your Man; “They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom, For trying to change the system from within”. And in “Tower of Song,” Cohen sings ironically that he was “born with the gift/ Of a golden voice”

It would be a mistake to pretend that it is all sweetness and light. A listen to Dress Rehearsal Rag on Songs Of Love And Hate from 1971 is not for the faint hearted.

But Cohen is also something of a romantic, as proved by my favourite line of all from Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye on the 1967 album Songs Of Leonard Cohen, “Your hair on the pillow like a sleepy golden storm”.

Lucy Kellaway: Puncturing egos and praising good service

I have been a fan of Lucy Kellaway’s columns in the Financial Times for many years. Her humour, usually at the expense of corporate gobbledygook and management fads, would often brighten up a dull day in the office.

I now get to hear her columns via the wonders of podcasting as I walk to work, which adds a personal element to her columns.

A recent target was Accenture’s group chief executive for management consulting in a column entitled “Accenture’s next champion of waffle words“. This gives a good indication of the content of the item, but I can’t resist including a short quote:

“The memo starts with some background to the announcement: “…wanting to give you continued visibility of our growth platform agenda…” it says. Visibility is the latest thing in business. Companies and executives all crave it but, until last week, I didn’t know that growth platform agendas were after it too. What is he saying here, I wonder? I think, though couldn’t swear to it, that he wants to tell his colleagues how the company plans to make more money.”

However it would be a mistake to assume all of her output consists of (well deserved) barbs aimed at self-important executives. A more recent article concentrated on (an admittedly rare) case of customer service that created a warm glow inside, rather than an icy chill, or getting hot under the collar. Unpolished exchanges put soul into shopping, concentrated on the rare experience in today’s consumerist world of having something repaired, in this case shoes. As Lucy points out:

“An immaculate, luxurious shop gives pleasure the first time, but after that diminishing returns set in. By contrast, having something mended has become an exciting novelty, a nostalgic return to how things ought to be.”

A thumb drive by any other name would…

Since introducing selected downloading from selected databases from the Business & IP Centre we have been faced with the dilema of what to call those those little portable storage gizmo’s.

Below are just some of the names I have heard bandied about:
USB flash drive
USB drive
Keychain drive
Memory key
Memory stick
Jump drive
Key drive
Flash drive
Pen drive

One way to solve this problem would be to adopt the term widely used in the U.S.A…. thumb drive. As you can see below, by using this name it is possible to generate a strong visual reminder which might reduce the amount of confusion.