The British steam car challenge – dubbed ‘Inspiration’ – has taken a further step forward with dynamic tests of the car running independently entirely under its own …um… steam. This is a video of one of its first ever runs – a low speed dynamic test to ensure all the components function together to make a drivable car.
In the process the support team is learning new skills, including how to ‘launch’ the car. A team of 6 people is involved. The sequence of operations involved in checking, filling and starting the car requires coordination, timing and teamwork. Each step is a step closer to achieving the ten-year goal of this team to break the world’s speed record for a steam car, last officially set in 1906 at just over 127mph.
This team has displayed remarkable tenacity and overcome enormous financial and engineering difficulties to come up with the turbine-driven car seen above. They hope to establish a new world record next year.
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Geoff Hudspith, UK inventor and steam enthusiast has built a steam powered gramophone to play records at the various steam fairs he attends.
Powered by a small Stuart single cylinder double-acting steam engine, the gramophone took four years – between other projects – to complete. Water is fed into the boiler by a hand pump and an injector, and then heated by kerosene. The gramophone is fairly standard with the speed regulated by spring weights and the exhaust steam is cleverly vented through the sound horn.
Here is another view of it at a steam fair in Denmark
This is the ultimate in steampunk entertainment!
Here is a different gramophone powered by a stirling hot-air motor. This one is a Paillard “Maestrophone No. 205” gramophone manufactured in Switzerland between 1910 and 1914.
This exhibition of the latest woodworking equipment, demonstrations and stacks of timber is one of the must-see events if you are a woodworker – whether hobbyist or semi professional.
As you arrive, there are demonstrations of the Lucas saw mill, and the Swedex Logosol mini saw mill. This latter made short work of a large log using a chainsaw mounted in a frame that holds the saw horizontal for cutting slabs. The whole thing is adjustable for slab thickness and slope of the log. Very impressive for such a small mill.
Once inside I went in search of lumber – I have in mind to make a couple of musical instruments – another pochette fiddle and a travel mandolin. Trend Timbers was my first and primary stop as they had some lovely birdseye maple and rosewood. I also found blackwood, silkwood and purpleheart. But alas no spruce. It seems I have to go to Sydney for that, or order it on the internet. I also got the last piece of American sycamore in captivity in Canberra.
The guys there were very friendly and helpful – they even helped me carry my acquisitions to the parcel pick-up place. And I learned that Brazil is the only country to be named after a timber! Brazil wood was known before the country had a (Western) name.
There were great demonstrations and seminars – don’t miss the chair making one by Richard Vaughan titled ‘Seat yourself’. Richard Raffan and Bruce Bell did wood turning demos and Roger Givkin showed off his dovetail jig and demonstrated the art of small box making.
While there are many great new toys out there, one really stood out for me this year – the SawStop. This is amazing and will save countless fingers from being injured by table saws. A small electrical current passes through the saw blade, and trips a sensor as soon as the blade touches flesh rather than wood. Within 5milliseconds – ten times faster than a car airbag deploys in an accident, and seven times faster than we blink, a gas charge propels an aluminium brake into the saw blade and the whole blade drops below the table. I just had to film this demonstration:
I hope every educational institution teaching woodworking buys this as it will save countless hands from serious injury.
There was a great selection of books at the Australian Woodworker stand – and you could pick up any back issues you missed on the news stands.
If you are into bush crafts there wasStan Ceglinski with his crosscut saw race – but he is also very skilled with a riving knife too!
There were also demonstrations of pole-lathe woodturning
and demos of chair making by a master bodger using green wood and a draw-knife
But in case you thought it was all about rough timber – there were excellent displays of fine woodworking from the ANU School of Art and Sturt universities and ACT Woodcraft. For example there was this beautiful cabinet…
If you are into boats – then the Cape Boatworks is a must visit – they are building a canoe from wood strips through the course of the weekend. It’s the first day and the canoe is already well advanced!
And I came away with new knowledge – and a small stash of rather special timber
Blogher08 has come and gone and the pixels are settling, and the blogseeds are sprouting.
The weirdness of the final session has stayed with me – the exchange between Jenny the Bloggess and Dooce – which has been well blogged here and elsewhere.
But from that session was a real gem that came straight afterward in the shape of a question from the audience on how Dooce manages her time. How does a professional blogger structure her day – is it in one or two hour chunks, or is it in marathon writing sessions, or is it squeezed into the interstices of the day?
Heather: Depending on what product I have going on inside of my blog, it can reach 10-12 hours a day. I’ve worked harder at this blog than any other blog in my life. Are you dedicated to working your ass off? It is way more than a full time job.
And like any conference the main game can be in the margins – and that’s where Weber Shandwick’s Screengrab interviews work really well. Check them out on YouTube. I particularly liked the one with Susan Getgood – a marketer, social media consultant and blogger.
I really liked her take on the four P’s of marketing. There’s the traditional ones of Product, Placement, Promotion and Price. But she has four more for bloggers and it works this way:
Prepare – read blogs, find out what the market is – and do so over time. It is not something you can pick up in five minutes, or with a google search. Remember, blogs are about people;
Participate – leave comments – but don’t spam. Leave comments that are relevant to what is being blogged about. Big companies love ‘mommybloggers’ because it is a good broad demographic;
Pitch – Identify how you fit in the community, and if you’ve done the three Ps above, then;
Publish – get out there and do it
This all seems like very sound advice – and is a spin-off from the biz breakout session at BlogHer08.
Here’s the Weber Shandwick interview:
Blogher is still the world’s biggest blogging conference (bigger than the blokes’ ones) with over 1000 participants in San Francisco, and a whole host in SecondLife and on the web.
I enjoyed Erin Kotecki Vest’s vlogs – she know how to interview people, and was one of the organisers of BlogHer08.
I would like to see three things next year:
Better bandwidth allocated to streaming video into SecondLife – along with camera on proper low light settings etc so we can see it in SL and hear it without (so much) choppiness;
transcripts of sessions put up online – during or soon after the conference – especially the keynotes and key points from the breakout sessions – especially those that didn’t make it into SL – that way you get a global audience; and
more micro vlogs – like the screenshot interviews – three to four questions across a lot of the participants.
And finally – I know it’s a political thing not to have prepared papers and it’s great to have discussion-style panels, but I would like to see the keynotes at least do a structured ten minutes on their key themes rather than just ‘riffing’ on the audience questions/comments.
But these are minor things in what is obviously an incredible, wonderful experience for those who participate – and even for those of us who participate through the smaller bandwidth version via SecondLife. Blogging is about the conversation – whether you are a Mommyblogger or a Tech blogger the great thing about it is that it is open to everyone.
Despite being plagued by the tyranny of timezones (Australia) and some technical hitches with the vid feeds and audio, I really enjoyed what I was able to experience of this great conference from within SecondLife. However, for much of the content – especially the breakout sessions, which were not streamed into SecondLife – I am largely reliant on the summaries put up by those who were there in person.
Happykatie put up a good summary of the breakout session on: DIY content syndication and promotion.
The panelists were:
* Moderator Krista Neher;
* Gwen Bell;
* Anne-Marie Nichols; and
* Esther Brady (aka faintstarlite)
For her it was about the way the interwebs make it easy to create, post and promote content across video, audio and blog posts.
Social bookmarking is a key to this. Social bookmarking is a bit like the Devil’s tea party where you have a sumptuous banquet and the cutlery is two metres long, so you have to feed each other across the table. Social bookmarking promotes your work by you promoting that of others, whether they are bloggers, twitters, or social aggregation sites like facebook, myspace or bebo. One way is to use StumbleUpon to show your approval of other’s content – and maybe they’ll do the same for you. It’s a ‘pay it forward’ philosophy that seems to work for web 2.0.
Others do video content. And although there are many vid sites out there, YouTube seems to be a constant. If you put vids out there, they should also be in YouTube.
Twitter is made for people to jump in – it suits those who want to just join the global conversation like they’ve just walked into a room and after a little bit, just start throwing out their own part of the conversation. It is not a space made for didactic types who want to show off their knowledge. Collaboration is a good way to get going – working with other bloggers. And leave thoughtful comments on blogs that share your conversation, and use that to participate in and build your community.
Happykatie recommends using “…Friendfeed to search for your company and product name to track what people are saying about you. It gives you an opportunity to engage another blogger and grow your community…” And there’s a heap more on Happykate’s site!
Thanks for a great writeup Happykatie 🙂
Kribaby also gave a great writeup – summarising five tips from BlogHer08 DIY content Syndication – a session she moderated.
Here tips were:
Depth over breadth
Leverage other blogs
Find niche sites
Analyse your current traffic; and
Not all traffic is created equal
You’ll have to click over to her site for the expansion on these excellent tips.
Thanks for sharing these Kribaby/Krista
The panelists were
Writing Workshop Web Teacher blogged about the writing workshop, and loved the discussion about tools for writers, including:
Wordtracker – for finding the right word
co.mments.com – for tracking comments you leave around the web; and
Lijit – for searching and tracking all the things you post in blogs, social between working sites and bookmarking sites, in a searchable format.
The Friday night keynote was a sampler of blog posts from a wide range of bloghers – and the odd bloghim 😉
Web Teacher summarised the session on building traffic to your blog, led by Elise Bauer, who spoke about thinking about Content, Community and Technology. Content referred, not just to the words, but whether you use photography, video, words or all the above. For photography, Bauer recommends a good DSLR camera and good editing tools like photoshop or lightroom. On community it’s about linking out and sharing comments. And for technology she proposes making your site easy to use, easy to find and platform independent.
The photography session led by Me Rah Koh gave ten excellent steps in using photography – go to Web Teacher’s blog post for the list – it’s great!
And Web Teacher herself moderated the session on Boomers and Beyond.
It’s a pity we didn’t see these in BlogHer08 in SecondLife.
Again thank you Web Teacher for providing your writeup.
Monetizing Your Blog Christine.net provided a great summary of the session on monetizing blogs. In essence click ads are only one way to go, and not necessarily the best way. Like any business the key is to be strategic, know your audience, and think broadly – including selling directly, whether tee-shirts or some product, either tangible (things/stuff) or intangible (plans, software, tutorials).
There are a number of click models for advertising, and you will need to consider which might work best for you:
CPM – cost per thousand impressions
CPC – cost per click; or
CPA – cost per action, such as completing a form or purchase
Others work with affiliate programs, like Amazon.
Again, a great summary Christine – many thanks.
Tomorrow I’ll post on the one session that I was able to see and hear clearly from SecondLife – and that made the 3.00AM schedule worthwhile – the final keynote session.
