Tag: whsmith

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My top ten tweets of 2019

GWR HSTLast year I posted my top ten tweets for 2018 and I did the same in 2017 and 2016 which was interesting to see which tweets of mine were popular.

The top tweet back in 2016 was this one for #WednesdayWisdom

Whilst top tweet for 2017 was this one from the 2017 ALT Conference and it was my sketchnote of Bonnie Stewart’s keynote on openness.

The top tweet back in 2018 was this one about the newly revamped WHSmith at Bristol Temple Meads complete with storage cage!

So in 2019, my tenth most popular tweet was this one about my son appearing on BBC Points West whilst working at Bristol Temple Meads as a GWR Apprentice.

In ninth place was a nostalgic tweet about a steam train visiting Weston-super-Mare ten years ago in July.

I did tweet a lot about the past this year, and will do less of it next year.

At number eight was a tweet about the phrase “digital detox” which gets bandied about a lot when people feel they need to take a break from services such as Twitter. If you feel you need to take a break, you probably do, but is it necessary to tell everyone about it?

Seventh was about about an incident at Oxford Circus. The tweet was picked up by some news outlets and my photo appeared on a news website.

The sixth tweet was about WHSmith in Bristol being covered in plastic last February.

I did find this reply amusing….

The reason was less worrying, it was because they were putting the Post Office into WHSmith.

The tweet at number five was one about  great women in edtech from March for International Women’s Day.

Fourth was another nostalgic tweet about the #140conf Twitter Conference  I attended in 2009 and was on a panel session with some great people.

And now the top three, with the third tweet was an early morning tweet celebrating that GWR were now using old HSTs as commuter trains, so we had more seats and faster trains.

At number two was a tweet about the revamped WHSmith in Weston-super-Mare.

So the most popular tweet of 2019 was this one about keeping the old Twitter.

So what does this tell us? Very little.

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My top ten tweets of 2018

WHSmith at Bristol Temple MeadsLast year I posted my top ten tweets for 2017 and I did the same in 2016 which were interesting to see which tweets of mine were popular.

The top tweet back in 2016 was this one for #WednesdayWisdom

Whilst top tweet for 2017 was this one from the 2017 ALT Conference and it was my sketchnote of Bonnie Stewart’s keynote on openness.

My tenth most popular blog was a response to another tweet of mine which was responding to the question:

Men of Twitter, is there a woman that you look up to in your own field or in another one? Who is she and why does she inspire you?

The ninth most popular tweet was a response to a Jeremy Vine about tweeting and cyclists. My point was that signs don’t work!

The tweet at number eight was responding to the question:

Men of Twitter, is there a woman that you look up to in your own field or in another one? Who is she and why does she inspire you?

The seventh most popular tweet was my sketch note of Maren Deepwell’s keynote at the 2018 ALT Conference.

The tweet at number six was about Bristolian emoji.

Fifth tweet was a reply to Andy Ihnatko with a composed image of Andy with Beyonce on the International Space Station.

No real idea why the tweet at number 4 was so popular, it was just a complaint about some issues I was having with Twitter back in April.

The third tweet which saw The Range competing with WHSmith on shop floor tidiness.

Second most popular tweet was about a carpet, a carper in a WHSmith in the Bristol area.

My most popular tweet in 2017 was about the newly revamped WHSmith at Bristol Temple Meads complete with storage cage!

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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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My top ten tweets of 2016

WHSmithSo here are my top ten tweets of 2016, ranked by the number of times it was seen on Twitter.

In 10th, 9th, 8th and 7th position are some random tweets of photographs taken in various branches of WHSmith.

These tweets were re-tweeted by the amusing @WHS_Carpet Twitter account. If like me you grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, WHSMith was a real high street institution, which though surviving today still seems to have lost its way somewhat.

My 6th most popular tweet was an image comic strip of a Dara O’Briain routine on video games.

I was surprised by how popular the 5th tweet was, which was about some great images from JD Hancock on the Flickr.

A reply to Google was number four.

I was disappointed that NERC did not name their boat BoatyMcBoatface, but I did like how they embraced the whole thing, as I said in my third most popular tweet.

A work tweet was number two…

And my most popular tweet of 2016 was a silly comment for #WednesdayWisdom

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Stuff: Top Ten Blog Posts 2015

As with my other blogs I am looking at the ten most read postings over 2015.

The tenth most read post on this blog was posted in the last two weeks of 2015, and was about WHSmith. At WHSmith you can afford to give them anything but the ordinary this Christmas contained an old advert from the high street store.

I visited Legoland in 2013 and felt that it was A bit tired and this was the ninth post in this top ten. Certainly when we went this year in 2015 there were some new models in Mainland.

Legoland

You have entered the Quiet Zone! was eighth most read post and I asked what’s the point of the Quiet Zone Carriage?

Back to Legoland for number seven, Legoland Miniland.

The sixth most read post was on Ten Incredible Sand Sculptures that have been on the beach at Weston-super-Mare over the last ten years.

Ten Incredible Sand Sculptures

The post at number 5 was from the Cinematic Advent Calendar which I posted back before Christmas in 2012. The post in question was #24 – Back to the Future and as 2015 was the year in which Marty McFly went to in the film series, it’s quite apt that it in this year’s top ten.

Back to the Future DeLorean

More Lego at number 4 with The Bat Cave in Lego.

The third most popular post was “the cafe on tv at weston super mare is it real” and the answer is, it isn’t!

Over 2015 there were seventy Shaun the Sheep sculptures places all across Bristol and the top two posts on the blog were about these Sheep. At number two was Ten out of Seventy and the most read post was about all seventy sheep, Shaun in the City.

42. Sgt. Shepherd - Shaun the Sheep

Happy New Year for 2016.


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At WHSmith you can afford to give them anything but the ordinary this Christmas

WHSmith Christmas advert from 1983, click image for a larger version.

At WHSmith you can afford to give them anything but the ordinary this Christmas

Looking at the prices, you realise how much cheaper some things are today. Of course inflation means that these prices in today’s money would be much higher. The ZX Spectrum at £99.95 was expensive, today you can buy a tablet, which is a lot more powerful for as little as £50! Of you can recreate the ZX Spectrum experience for £90.

The one that surprised me was the Indiana Jones VHS for £19.95, today you can get all four films in HD on Blu-Ray for roughly the same money!

Back in the 1980s I do remember going to WHSmith to  buy Christmas presents. My local branch was in the Lion Square development in Cambridge. The top floor was records and I remember buying quite a few cassette tapes up there as well as the odd piece of vinyl.

The gaming section always looked exciting, the covers of the games always seemed to be so much better than the actual graphics of the games themselves, but that’s 1980s gaming for you.

There was something warm and comforting about the brown and orange that WHSmith had back then. Today of course they seem to have lost their way a little and I am surprised that they are still around.

So what memories of WHSmith in the 1980s do you have?