Masters of Money

There is a great series being shown on BBC Two on Monday nights - Masters of Money, presented by BBC Economics editor Stephanie Flanders.  See here for a link to the programme on iplayer.

These days it is useful for all of us to know a little bit about economic theory, to help us to decide which approach is most likely to be followed by politicians, and which appoach is most likely to work.  Sadly these are not always the same (whichever party is in power).

This is the sort of stuff that the BBC can point at when justifying the license fee - bringing knowledge to the masses.

Calderdale Manufacturing Meet the Buyer

I am involved in a Meet the Buyer event that is being held in the Calderdale area (around Halifax, UK).  The venue is The Shay (Halifax Town FC ground), on 21st November 2012.
The focus of the event will be on Manufacturing.  More details to follow, but I will be one of the speakers entertaining people whilst waiting for appointments as well as helping to set up and run the event.

Engineering Procurement

Check your diaries and book ahead, I shall be running a one day course for IChemE on Engineering Procurement on Wednesday 23rd September 2013.  Yes, next year not this year (2012).  So you have more than a year to wait.

This course will of course focus on the procurement for the Chemicals industry, in particular for Chemical Engineers.  It is new enough that it is not yet advertised on the IChemE website, and I shall let you know when it is.  Booking is through the IChemE, and the price should be about £500 +VAT for IChemE members, £600+VAT for non-IChemE members (but don't hold me to that).

We live in a Science Fiction World

The pace of change around us is relentless, but often imperceptible.  The other day my son announced he needed a photograph to take to school.  This is a faff, but hardly a major issue apart from the fact that he announced it at about 20 to 9.  After a few seconds of panic, I realised the answer - quick photo on the iphone, then wirelessly print on his printer in his bedroom while he ran upstairs to fetch.  When I was his age the best we could have hoped for was a polaroid, or a photo booth.  Otherwise photographs had to be batched till you get roll developed which took about a week.  (how many were on a roll?  I can't remember).

These changes are hardly life changing, but just a sign of how much things move on and we don't really notice.

Last week there were a couple of inputs on the same topic by Penny Arcade here, and Warren Ellis here.
Let me cut and paste a small section of Warren Ellis's talk...
"
There are six people living in space right now. There are people printing prototypes of human organs, and people printing nanowire tissue that will bond with human flesh and the human electrical system.
We’ve photographed the shadow of a single atom. We’ve got robot legs controlled by brainwaves. . .
Here’s another angle on vintage space: Voyager 1 is more than 11 billion miles away, and it’s run off 64K of computing power and an eight-track tape deck."

I recently read 25 things you need to know about the future, but Christopher Barnett.   If you don't know what is happening in the 25 areas he discusses, then you owe it to yourself to find out.  Otherwise the future will creep up on you unnoticed even more.  And it is amazing!

Fundamentals of Supply Chain course

I shall be running a 4 day Fundamentals of Supply Chain course 15th to 18th October in Hastings, which is a lovely UK sea side town on the south coast.  This is going to be a small number  of delegates so any one interested in joining in please let me know - it will be a chance to have a course in a really small group and get personnalised support. 

Details are here.

The Final Frontier

I don't really have heroes.  I respect a few individuals, but am often aware that their successes and failures are bound up together in a real human being.  Heroes should be above the normal human failings of vanity, hubris, self centredness, ruthlessness that often accompany the doing of "heroic" tasks.

The nearest I got would probably the recently deceased Neil Armstrong. 
A man who's name is famous around the world, and will probably live on for centuries, but who was almost invisible.  His attitude was that he was a man doing a job - not a hero.  That is heroic, in my book.

Without his achievement, which he pointed out he shared with 400 000 other people who worked on the Apollo programme, I would never have been a Phyicist.  Or spent my life considering a question asked to the 8 year old me by a primary school teacher - is it right to spend so much money (4.4% of USA GDP at the time) on going to the moon when people are starving around the world?

A brave and balanced man (as far as I know).  A role model at least.

Flexible Printed Electronics

I have wittered on for the past couple of years about the exciting prospect of flexible printed electronics as a result of working for PETEC, part of CPI in the North East of England.  What this basically means is that surfaces all around us can become video displays or solar cells.
The BBC technology programme Click has just run a section on this as developed by Plastic Logic as part of their Paperless special.  You can see it here. on iplayer.  It might not be up for long, and might not be accessible outside the UK.  The relevant bit starts about 9:32 into the programme.