Elemental

A couple of weeks ago Building magazine published a supplement ‘The Building Good Employer Guide 2007′

Firstly, I love the digital page turning on the electronic version – very smooth.  Secondly, I have worked for and with some of the contenders. I would have liked to have seen them ranked in order rather than alphabetically, but it’s good to see this kind of survey happening.

Lastly, though, the best thing about the supplement is the access to 50 top quality mission statements.  Think of the fun that can now be had – games matching the company to the statement, prizes for most imaginative use of the words unique or values, the possibilities are endless…

mel starrs Uncategorized Management

Those who have been floating round in cyberspace for the past few years will probably have heard of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month – the aim is to write every day in November and at the end have the semblance of your inner novel).  I’ve always kind of fancied that except I’ve always been either working or studying or both and I have this little addiction to blogging which kept getting in the way.

This year, it appears there is going to be NaBloPoMo where participants blog every day for the month of November.  I’m not promising anything, but I have over 70 drafts just waiting for me to either delete or polish up and publish.  Watch this space…

mel starrs Uncategorized Blogging

Isn’t it always the way? You leave a dry boring post about tedious housekeeping matters up for a week or so, and your blog gets a mention in a weekly national magazine.

Now will we see a rash of new bloggers eager to join in the debate? I hope so. This little corner of the blogosphere is growing slowly and the more the merrier, I say.

Incidentally, in related blog news, Casey, who used to combine his professional and personal blog over at In Picenum, has split the two strands and joined up with an ex-colleague, Nick. They now blog over at Carbon Limited.

Another blog I’m enjoying (a more news than comment focussed publication) is Work in Property.

And if you sign up to iThink*, it’s possible to get a blog penned by Wayne Hemingway.

So, we are growing. Slowly but surely…

*I am going to write a review of i-Think some day soon

mel starrs Uncategorized Blogging, Carbon Limited, Nick, Sustainability, Wayne Hemingway

Things will probably continue to be quiet here for a bit while I do a bit of catching up and reorganisation.  Things I intend to do to the site:

• Upgrade to WP2.3
• Reorganise the blogroll.  I’ve been recategorising my blog feeds into 3 broad types across each of my topics.  The topics are generally
  • sustainable built environment (including architecture and building services) – feel free to suggest a snappier title for that one
  • economics
  • activism, sustainable development and general greenery
• within these topics I’ve subdivided the types of feeds into blogosphere (i.e. those who aren’t affiliated with a publication, but may or may not make money from their blogging) and I’ve included comapny blogs as well as personal blogs (like PHS ); blogalists (yes – a totally made up word i.e. blogger/journalist) – those who are affiliated with a ‘proper’ publication (such as Phil or the guys over at Off the Record) or are Op-Ed feeds from journals or newspapers; news feeds which are not blogs or opinions, but rss feeds from magazines, journals and newspapers (like the Economist full feed which is completely free and averages over 100 items every Friday), mag-blogs (magazines online without a paper equivalent) are also lumped into this category (like Treehugger).  Within news feeds I have daily headlines and weekly reads and monthly journals. Finally, I have feeds from institutes and government bodies.  I’m wracking my brain trying to find a snappy title for them too. I just need a way of displaying on my sidebars now in a logical way…
• Sadly, there’s a few on my current blogroll who have stopped blogging.  If you know of the whereabouts of anyone (for instance, they may have changed their feed/site without me noticing), please let me know.
• Create an amazon store for all the great non-fiction I have been reading
• My little experiment with FeedYes has ended disappointingly.  FeedYes have decided to insert ads into the free feeds.  I may have to revert to using WatchthatPage or find an alternative for my CIBSE feed (of course if CIBSE could just produce a feed for their news page I would have one less task to do…)
• Find some way of closing out comments on old posts – I’m getting too much (i.e. any!) spam creeping past Akismet
• I also owe several people responses to emails and comments and a few reviews of sites etc – bear with me, I’ll get to you as soon as I can…

And now would be a good opportunity for anyone to pipe up with anything which annoys you or could be improved with the site/

I’m sure normal service will resume soon…

mel starrs Uncategorized feed/site, Housekeeping

I follow over 200 feeds (yes, way too many) and one happens to be the National Statistics Office (I am a huge geek when it comes to stats, in case no-one had noticed).  Spotted this today.

Population aged 100 years and over, as at 01 January, England and Wales

This is showing an interesting trend.  The UK may not be breeding as much, but we’re lasting longer.  Lifetime Homes takes on a whole new meaning.

In other news, it’s all kicking off in the ‘blogosphere’ with great discussions on population, Code for Sustainable Housing and lots of new bloggers popping up.  I’m trying to read and comment where possible, but my internet access is currently limited and, as I said before, I read way too many feeds and am struggling to keep on top of things.

I’m off to visit a renewable energy factory in the next week or so, so will try to report on that when I can.

mel starrs Uncategorized internet access, National Statistics Office, renewable energy factory, statistics, Sustainability, United Kingdom, wales