Author: jamesclay

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My top ten tweets of 2017

Bonnie Stewart KeynoteLast year I posted my top ten tweets for 2016 which was interesting to see which tweets of mine were popular. The top tweet back then was this one for #WednesdayWisdom

So here are my top ten tweets of 2017, ranked by the number of times it was seen on Twitter.

My tenth most popular tweet was about the difference between teaching and learning.

Though we knew this all along… the ninth most popular tweet was a link to the Nature article on the myth of the digital native.

In eighth was a tweet about my favourite child book, The Enchanted Wood by Enid Blyton.

The seventh most popular tweet was the photographs I took when the first passenger service GWR Inter-City Express Train arrived at Weston-super-Mare.

I attended ALT’s annual conference and made some sketch notes, the sixth most popular tweet was my sketch of the keynote by Peter Goodyear.

Another tweet from that conference was the fifth most popular of the year and was a photograph of Josie Fraser receiving her Honorary Life Membership of ALT.

Fourth position was one towards the end of the year and the only @ reply in the top ten. Amy Pearlman had asked for some best follows for women in IT, HE and Tech. Looking at her profile and seeing she was from Philadelphia in the US, and knowing lots of fantastic women in this space from the UK I added some in a reply.

This response then went somewhat viral and lots of other people added their top follows, it got retweeted and liked a lot, so of course more people saw it and added more people to the list. It’s a fantastic list of some great women to follow on Twitter.

Third place goes to a temperate graph of the tube lines in London.

Last year a fair few photographs of WHSmith made the top ten, this year my second most popular tweet was about a cat in Boots

I did like this response to it.

So what was my top tweet for 2017, well it was another one from the ALT Conference and it was my sketchnote of Bonnie Stewart’s keynote on openness.

My longer thought piece on this keynote can be found on my e-learning blog.

Overall an interesting and delightful year on the Twitter for me.

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Muscle and Power Cars and Trucks

On Tuesday evening, a bundle of muscle cars and American trucks arrived on the Weston seafront for a “cruise”

Nice looking vehicles, but to be honest I have no idea what they… though I can see this is a US Ford F150 pickup truck.

…and this one is an older Ford pickup truck.

A Ford Popular.

No idea what this one is….

Big gas guzzler…

Ford

A Ford hotrod!

A Ford Mustang?

All looked very nice, bright and shiny.

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Puss in Boots

In our local branch of Boots they occasionally have a cat guarding their entrance.

Puss in Boots

Seems quite happy to sit there in the doorway.

Puss in Boots

It wasn’t raining either.

Puss in Boots

Puss in Boots

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Is it a treehouse if it’s not built in a tree?

Canopy & Stars at Crane 29 is a unique treehouse built around one of the cargo cranes outside M Shed. The treehouse will grace Bristol’s skyline from June until September 2017.

I don’t know if you can really call it a treehouse as it’s not built in a tree, but it certainly looks very nice (see more pictures here).

To register for the ballot to stay in the treehouse, visit www.canopyandstars.co.uk/crane29. A night’s stay costs either £185 for a weekday or £250 for a weekend, with the final ballot open until July 3. All profits from Canopy & Stars at Crane 29 will go to Friends of the Earth.

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The tide is coming in…

When I mention where I live, the talk often comes round to people getting stuck in the mud or cars getting caught by the tide.

Those who live in Weston-super-Mare will know that every summer weekend, a visitor or three gets caught in the mud trying to cross between Uphill beach and Break Down. The river Axe gets in the way, but it’s usually the mud that gets in the way first.

After the mud, the other thing that comes up in conversation is the tidal range.

Usually referred to the as the second highest tidal range in the world, it is actually the third, only the bay of Fundy (North America) and Ungava bay (Hudson straits) are bigger. The tidal range on the Severn can be as much as 15m (49ft). What this means for Weston-super-Mare is that the low tide mark in Weston Bay is about one mile from the seafront. For most of the time you don’t see the sea, which is why when I get the chance to see the beach with the tide in I take a photograph!

Grand Pier in the sea at Weston-super-Mare

Although the beach itself is sandy, low tide uncovers areas of thick mud, hence the colloquial name, Weston-super-Mud.

The other aspect of this long ideal range is that sometimes people get caught out by the fast rising tide having parked their car on the beach and their car gets swamped by the incoming tide.

This was the first time seeing the tide in at Uphill beach (just along from the main beach at Weston-super-Mare) that I saw a bus right by the high tide.

Bus in the sea

This wasn’t any old bus though, this bus served coffee!

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Legoland: May the fourth be with you…

May the 4th is seen by many as Star Wars Day. Over in Legoland there is a whole miniland scale exhibit on Star Wars.

The exhibit covers the six films, the original three and the three sequels.

A recent addition was a Miniland scale model of the trench run from the first film. There is Luke Skywalker flying down the trench in his X-Wing followed by Darth Vader and two TIE Fighters.

There is a also a model of the Death Star in the process of firing its primary weapon.

I like how they have used air conditioning to add an icy feel to the Assault on Hoth display. Here the rebel forces face attack from the might of the Imperium.

No Star Wars exhibit would be complete without the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy! This is the Millennium Falcon that “made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs.”

There is also an Endor display complete with Ewoks.

The three prequels make up quite a few models and includes this huge tank.

Virtually all the models have lights, like this palace from Naboo and the displays go from day to night.

Miniland scale droids.

As well as the Miniland scale exhibits there are also some larger Lego models too, such as R2-D2.

…and Lord Vader!

I wonder if at some future point the exhibit will cover episode VII or Rogue One?

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Can you sing us a song?

A member of the audience of a Bruce Springsteen concert asked him and his band to play “You Never Can Tell”, that song that was used in Pulp Fiction.

This was the result.

Fun.

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Stuff: Top Ten Blog Posts 2016

Across this blog I wrote fifteen posts in 2016. As might not be expected most of the top ten posts that year were from 2016, and I was pleased to see how popular my 1990s photographs of the Bristol Harbourside were.

I visited Legoland in 2013 and felt that it was A bit tired and this was the tenth most popular post, dropping one place from last year.

Also about Legoland Miniland was the ninth post.

The eighth post was about Time travelling by train which was a post on the newly painted GWR High Speed Train in the classic 1970s blue and yellow.

Inter City 125

The seventh popular post was inspired by a newspaper article and talked about the many Changes at the railway station in Weston-super-Mare.

The sixth placed post was from my 2012 series of Cinematic Advent Calendar posts, this one was #07 – The Eagle has Landed. There were quite a few films in the advent calendar that have significant memories over and above the film itself. Queuing for Star Wars was significant for example. With The Eagle has Landed I went to see it at the Aldeburgh cinema with my grandparents.

When I used film, I didn’t take than many photographs, but I did take a fair few of the Bristol Harbourside, so the fifth post was of the Bryan Brothers’ Garage Demolition, Bristol, circa 1999.

Three of the next four posts were similar and all contain photographs from the Bristol Harbourside in the 1990s.

Construction in the Bristol Harbourside

Fourth was this post Bristol Harbourside in the 1990s and third was this one: Bristol Harbourside in the 1990s (second part).

The second most popular post was a comparison of Trenchard Street, Bristol, circa 1970s and the view today.

The most popular post of the year on the Stuff blog was a series of photographs of Bristol Harbourside in the 1990s.

So quite a few posts from 2016 in the 2016 top ten.