Frog Up or Down

Apple of Google or Linux I sit on a fence, between Apple and Google, and no matter how hard I look at that fence, both sides will be pulling for me to by a new phone, Apple more than anything. So I sat this morning and took at long hard look and both Camp's.  Apple is mostly Calender,  Email and the Maps, for google its Calendar, Writing, Web Development, Writing blogs, Search and AI with Gemini. I share Email and Calender so no pull either way, Google AI works on what ever device I use, but is clear,  Apple is no choice but I can cope with my current phone. But using a pixel makes life a little easier for Gemini. So I am making a choice, I will move to Google Pixel a Pixel 10 XL with a decent memory. I can get a deal of the Pixel 10 from several places, so thats another pull. My only problem is moving some files back to Google, thats just a day or two's work, Email is a drop and drag and leave it alone to sync affair. So there it is, a move back to Google. Slow and sure!...

 Loosing Faith Well 2025 is over we are into 2026, and I am leaving Apple, well mostly, I will move across to Google, a place I should never have left. Why, well Apple is not just standing still, its moving backwards against Google and Linux, and I bring Linux into the equasion, simple because I view it as a place for development i so many ways for the construction industry, but Google with their integration if AI in the form of Gemini, is leaps and bounds ahead,  Even if Apple imports Gemini, and I think they will, Apple is to far behind to catch up. So I will be moving back, slowly with files I need in Google and deleating the Apple side once copied over I will keep my email as is, but at some point it will go back to Gmail,  Sorry Apple, its been a ride, but the future is Google, always was and for the forseable future will be.

 Google Speaker Tower I am reviving my old Google Tower, I have lost the power supply, but hopefully I will solve that soon, but the reason why I am spending time on its revival, is Google Gemini can speak to me through it, plus  it will play my music and well its a cool piece of kit. Let you know how it goes.

The future sometimes has many a strange path, for me, it's my Mac, its 6 years old, and has a few years left on it, but will I replace it, good question, with a simple answer, repacing it with a PC is just not an option, having used them at various workplaces,  I am burned, so my options are a Chromebook or Mac. Google Chrome gives almost all I need, except for CAD, Vectorworks my preferred package runs on Mac and Windows, and as the latter will not ever enter my thoughts, I have to look at Mac, the new Macbook Air is a huge pull.  My Asus flip just works, and its almost a 1/4 of the price of my Mac, so you might think its a no brainer, besides, I have a Pixel 3 and at least two Google speaker things that I can talk to, plus Google cast on the TV, so it's my prime platform, I tried to do everything on the Asus flip, and to a large extent I achieved it, but Chrome OS is not as slick as the Mac OS, and I just crept back to the Mac OS because it was simpler to do things. Openein...

For so long, I have been teaching that Augmented Reality will take over how we draw and overlay the technical parameters of our designs on reality. the technology has its ups and downs, Google glass lead the way, but fell due in part to the lack of foresight in the public, "Magic leap" has tantalised us with hints of what might be, but as yet have failed to deliver. The same goes for so many startups. Yet both Google and Apple are poised to offer us the next phase of Augmented life and it looks interesting to the point I might even have to keep my MacBook Pro. This article on Medium, and if you do not have an account here, get one, they are a major repository of so many interesting articles, but I digress. The article by Novac B, offers a lot of reason why Apple might just pull of another leap in Technology over the efforts of Google, that will, like the iPhone and Mac, send us into raptures and back into the Apple stores. The article is titled Apple’s Smart Glasses ...

So some days start of with a bank, some a spark some just fizzle a little, but this morning, a thought of a video I had seen a while back came into my head, and I managed to find it. So what was this moment, well it was a video tutorial on the way you can embed all of my blogs here into my Scays.co.uk web site, assume, at last, so pleased. So below the video, not mine but by a gentleman called, Richard Byrne , so simple, I have no idea how he came upon the small addition to the code link but it works so well.

For so long, as a sole trader, I have worked both my private and business life into one large Google Gmail account, extended to 1TB,  but as the impending data protection act looms on us all in the UK,  I have had to make some long overdue changes to both my private and business life and separate my contacts and client information. Making that separation was, on paper easy, in practice I have had to sit down and make the physical break, by making my company, Konstrukshon Ltd, a Gsuite account and migrate all the data that's applicable over to this new domain. Simple enough, but believe me it's not so easy, even when you're dealing with a Gmail account and Google Gsuite.  First off, it's creating the Gsuite account, this is easy, use the very helpful online, human, who will guide you through the process, this took about 40 min for me, looking up domain info of my existing Konstrukshon.co.uk account and using my providers Cpanel to update th...

Suddenly the world has woken up to the idea of Cities being smart, well that's what the marketeers think we should call cities that are increasing their technology limits from almost no digital control to a new understanding of city control in the form of digital information and communication. This blog together with my website  Smart City Review  will look at all aspects of this growth in digital cities all over the world. from the UK to the USA, to India, the Hong Kong and beyond. You might think this is all new, that we are right at the start of this revolution, simple answer to that is no, it's been ongoing for a long time, there have been one or two partial success stories, and a lot of unsuccessful attempts.

I was doing some research on CAD use over the globe and used this excellent service from Google Trends to compare search terms on three main products : Autocad Archicad Vectorworks Sketchup The graph below show a remarkable scale of interest, and not in the order I was expecting. ok Autocad I expected to be top, but Sketchup so high and the other two Vectorwork and Archicad so low, remarkable.

I have made the first of many moves I expect to make as I set up my computer system for the next few years. I have been Apple mostly from about 1985, with the odd lapse into Windows at some one else behest, namely an employer. But now I am setting up for a life with Google , I have transferred all of my emails over to gmail and I now use this as my main email services, I have moved my calendar over. Both these were remarkably easy to do, next was all my main files, again this was no more than a drag and drop , plus a short wait for it to complete a large move. Adding Google to my mac as an account on Mail, and pulling folders across made this job so easy, as for my calendar, I just had to add google tags to my Apple cal appointments and all was good, I could see them is Google calendar. Next were my photos, again Google made this easy and for some time I have had them copied across, I use Chrome for almost all of my surfing, and google drive for my slides and now writing, Blog...

I happen to notice today as I searched some info, that a new menu item has been added to the Chrome Browser , that will show what you have in your private collection that matches the search. Its limited to photos and gmail, but its a start, and I like it. I have a lot in Drive, and now a start of a good structured collection in Google Keep . OK so Evernote has something like it, but its never quite worked for me, even in this version the new Google addition has useful heads up. So make a search and in the result, took at the title bar above for more, drop this down and click on Private, and a window opens with the additional links. Related articles ifTTT and Mac IOS Moleskin Mind Maps

On the 4th Jan 2017, I left Southampton, on the P & O ship Oceana , for a 35 night cruise to the Caribbean and the USA on what promised to be a really great start to my 65 year. I will turn 65 in October so by my calculations I should have, by now, been created, and will be forming, I would liked to have talked to my mom, and asked her, when she knew she was pregnant, but unfortunately she has dementia and that memory is lost. I had brought with me most of my travelling computing equipment, my MacBook Pro, iPhone, and my Kindle, with the first 6 days after out initial stop in Spain, at sea, I have planned to complete a little work, and start writing a little. The ships WiFi showed up on my Mac, and I logged in, it has been some time since our last cruise, but it looked the same, £12 for 24 hours, fine by me I thought, I will dib into this and let my system catch up, 15 min should be enough to send stored emails, pick up waiting mail, and let Apple save the photos on lin...

Most lecturers and Teachers will know of Lesson Plans, I have mine it may not conform to some standard or other official way, but it works for me and helps me plan the lesson. I have all the information I need to plan the lesson, from the subject I am covering, the equipment I might need, to the slide set I will use. My slides are in subject on Google, and so often I go back to teach a lesson I did last year, and can't remember which set I used, the lesson plan sorts this. I also have a reading list, I expect my students to have at least read before attending, often as not its a free download, I give links to the source, and point to any specific section I want them to read. There are many reasons I do this, but most its to save time, and get the most out of my limited lesson, by asking them to say read a section of the building regulations. I also give a bibliography of source books, web sites and article I have used in generating my slides. This lesson plan have been...

On Thursday of this week, I attended the Google Next cloud event in London, ausum, not just good but totally, aussum, and I say that not because of the free lunch, but the presentations, and information the way I was received, and the help I got from all the Google Staff. So first, the reason I attended, was to learn about data, the way Google Handles it and how I can tap into this, using the wide breadth of storage they offer, but also to tools. It's here you suddenly understand the breadth of the capacity Google has, its in a world of it's own, they talk in numbers that only a few can really comprehend, and at speeds, I just look at and wonder. For some, the type and format of the products offered by Google is an easy choice, but for me, it's not so easy, this video has some answers: But for my sort of work I think it's spreadsheets, this video on Google Cloud give me more info Related articles Big City Data follow up

I have my pass for the Google Cloud Next meet on the 4th May 2017, although as yet I have only the pass for one day, I would so like to attend on the 3rd, so here's hoping. But back to the subject matter of Data, , I have planned out a long day of lectures, and for once I am not giving a single second on stage, this is a chance for me to sit back and learn. the presenters methods of teaching, the subject matter, and the networking possibilities. A long time back, I wrote a blog on the old site about planning a day like this, just attending is a waste of time, to get the most of the day, I intend to prepare. First I have listed my lectures, the days is packed with so many alternatives :, 09.15 - 10.45 Keynote Brad Calder, Greg DeMichillie and Matt McNeil 11:30-12:15 Breakout three Google Cloud Functions and Firebase Speaker: TBC 12:30-13:15 Breakout one Cloud Spanner 101: Google's mission-critical relational database Speaker: Fausto ...

I know Evernote is so good, and it just has the edge over Keep, but I am finding I like to save certain information to Keep, rather than Evernote, it is easier to find, edit, and use, my book lists for instance, I have several, all labelled "Books" links I want to use, again all labelled I put pdf documents into a Drive folder and take a link and again its put into Keep this time I add a note as to why I have kept it together with the links, and several labels if I feel it belongs to different subjects. In about a months time I am taking a Mooc Course with Warwick University looking at Data , they use "R"  its a language and environment for statistical computing and graphics, I want to be up and running with it, so have stated to collect examples of its use. Each note a separate link or comments all pulled together with my label "R". Is it not the way of life, somethings just become interesting, take Google Plus , I have not used or reviewed it ...

Immortalised through art is the way so many people seem to b able to take a pace in immortality, their art lives and people remember them, authors are much the same, although some books get lost in dusty shelves. Google efforts to scan all the known books at least puts these long forgotten people back into the frame through the their search. But so many get forgotten and never return to recognition except for a line in a private geological chart, and so many more are lost completely no headstone to read, no obituary in a paper. So for these reasons alone. I am making sure I remain not forgotten, it's a little morbid I know, but as I approach 65, I seem to be thinking of this more. I have no fear of death, just the bit before, although if I go in my sleep then thats fine, as for what happens after, well who knows, I tend to believe that nature wastes nothing,  but I would like to go knowing that I have left enough markers in this world to be remembered, and discovered bu...

I hover between Google and Apple , my primary is Apple, it has to be, but Google Becons so often, Notice though Microsoft does not get mentioned here, I will use anything rather than go here, the University has Microsoft OS and I have to use it some times, but if I can link my Mac into the plus on the wall for Internet, or presentation them I will. My last blog was on the trials I an going through with Google Keep and Evernote , and thats on going, and will be, it might end up with me again hanging in the coats of both, but leaning to Apple. The real test will come so soon, I dropped , yet again, my iPhone 5s , this time I managed to slightly dislodge the screen from the metal band, it seems not to make much difference, but, i think its time to look for an upgrade. What I will wait for is Apples big show, if the rumours are right, them I might be tempted, otherwise I will be looking for a deal, on a slightly older model 7, or a Pixel, but if I go that route then Apple might ...