Biomimicry Course Assignment 1: Naturalist Lens

Assignment 1: Naturalist Lens

Where is your place? Did you name it?For this first observation I sat beneath a tree in the gardens of my block of flats (see picture below, it's unfortunately sideways, so you will need to turn your head). I found a bunch of busy ants that looked like they were scouting out new places to live and perhaps excavating a home within the trunk of the tree. (See my writing below)

What is 1 thing that you noticed during your observation that you’ve never thought of or seen before?When listening to the wind, it blew in a periodicity that emulated the sound of waves at the beach and I wondered about the "frequency" of wind gusts - are they regular, are they similar to the periodicity that we find in ocean waves? 

What was the hardest part about doing the observation for you?Finding the time to get outside to actually do the observation as it's been an incredibly busy week.

Online Learning and Biomimicry

Online learning is starting to become a bigger and bigger platform as time goes by. From free learning platforms such as Khan Academy, that lets you choose to practice a variety of skills, to websites dedicated to various, more specialised courses (such as the CS-101 course I took through Udacity, back when it was free), if you keep your eyes open, you can find the most incredible courses.

At the beginning of this week, I started a one month (free) course offered by an online learning platform called Canvas,  on an introduction to a topic that goes by the name of Biomimicry. This is something that I've been passively checking in on every now and then but is a concept that I really like. In a nutshell, and to use the words of the women who is the primary force behind Biomimicry, Janine Benyus, 

The idea, in the broadest sense, is that that one observes how nature solves a particular problem and then uses the insight gained by this and applies it to the problem that you're trying to solve. The key here, is that you emulate a solution on three different levels - on natures form, on natures process and finally, on natures ecosystem. 

I'm still in the early stages of the course, but I'm really looking forward to learning more about this topic and I thought that, since it's only the first week, if anyone who reads this blog was interested in joining me, you can click on the link here and also enroll for free!

There are so many different online learning platforms, here are a list of ones that I'm familiar with (some of them I've tried out, some of them I've heard good things about), just in case you'd like to check out the world of online learning for yourself!

Udacity
Codecademy
Excel With Business
Khan Academy
Canvas
Coursera
edX
Crash Course

What Do I Do? Project and Software Job

This time one year ago, I was still coming to terms with living a life where I didn't freak out every time my phone rang, worked normal hours and no longer worked in a factory. I had just moved back to Cape Town and almost 2 years of long distance for Frosty and I had just come to an end. 

I was just into my second month of my first job that my dad asked me what I did for my new company and at that stage I didn't really know, so I wrote a post on what I did at my factory job. Since I've just completed my first year with my current company, I thought that now would be the ideal time to share what my current job entails.

I am now a project engineer (well, that's what I call myself) and part of a project team with a few other members, which means that I get to deal with clients and develop software for them that will suit their particular operations requirements. In order to give you a vague idea of the industry I'm involved in, we develop software, mainly for factory environments, that replaces paper based record keeping with computer-based record keeping. The software helps to facilitate shift handovers, allows users to generate reports for those handovers and reports for other relevant operations information relevant to everyone from CEO level down to plant operator level.

On a day-to-day basis you will find me involved in some or all of the following:

• Keeping track of our project plan and status and other project management activities.
• In meetings (most of them calls) talking to our clients trying to understand their requirements for a certain piece of work.
• Configuring our "base" software to fit in with needs specific to our clients.
• Designing reports as specified by our clients.
• On Google, trying to figure out SQL queries*, python** syntax or some other thing related to coding that I still have to learn about.
• Sending e-mails responding to queries,  following up on requested information and generally "adminny" stuff.
• Organising monthly staff socials (the fun part of my job).
• Deploying bug or client fixes to client servers in order to make sure that their software is running smoothly.
• Putting together test plans, to make sure that our software works as specified.
• Every now and then, I also have the opportunity to travel, such as when I went to Italy for work (you can read about it here and here, and for the more "travel-like" posts on italy here, here and here).

I have to say that I really am enjoying my current job a lot more than my old job. I miss working with code that let me see a physical change in the factory (i.e. making a small change to a line of code could stop a tank from overfilling and overflowing). But getting to work normal hours, have weekends and be close to Frosty mean that I'm much happier overall, so it has definitely been a worthwhile change! Plus, I still get to be involved with factories without having to worry about the day-to-day issues that are involved with running a factory!

* SQL is a programming language that allows you to get a lot of information out of a database quickly

** python is a programming language, and the main language that my company uses.

Why Using Someone's Name Is Important

When I was small, I was very shy and my mum always used to struggle to get me to use peoples names when I said hello or goodbye. Saying "hello" was a push to little-me-at-5-years-old, so saying "hello Eugene" was often unfathomable. Every time I greeted someone, if I just said a quiet "hello", my mum would say "Hello who?" and I would then reply (if she was lucky) "hello Dolores" while clinging onto her leg or hand, looking down to the ground or hiding my face away.

Fast forward 17 years and I found myself sitting in a training session at the Four Seasons in Vail, being taught about the importance of greeting our guests by name and using their name in our interactions with them. I was no longer a 5 year old and I had become much better at greeting people by name (and remembering people's names), but this training session re-emphasised how important it was to use someone's name. It was so engrained in the company culture that not greeting guests by name felt incredibly wrong. Luckily, more often than not, we would at some stage either find out their name when they checked in to their spa appointment or restaurant reservation and you only had to remember someone's name for the duration of their appointment or meal. As a last resort you could get their name off their card at the end of their stay and then say something like "I hope you enjoyed your treatment Mr. So-And-So, I hope we see you again soon".

The idea behind addressing someone by name is very simple. It makes people feel important and valued and that they're a "someone", not a "no-one". If you make people feel important and valued and like a "someone" they're likely to think favourably of you (or your company) and therefore be more likely to want to interact with you (or your company) in the future. It's an easy way to make someone you just met feel important. And everyone wants to feel important. 

Cape Town At Dusk and Night

Just before the fires that ravaged the Southern Peninsula in Cape Town, my mum, Frosty and I had a dinner at the Brass Bell and I used the opportunity to play around with taking photos at dusk and at night (on the drive home). 

I experimented with a range of exposures, ISOs and apertures - each picture has more detail on the settings I used. As always, I used my Nikon D3100 while taking these pictures. 

Here's a quick reminder of what these 3 different settings mean. Using a combined knowledge of these settings will hopefully help you to improve your photography (it's certainly helped me!):

Exposure (sometimes called Shutter Speed) is how long your shutter is open for. The longer your shutter is open, the more light is let in for a picture.

ISO: This is effectively your sensitivity to light. The higher your ISO, the more sensitive your light sensor will be to light. Also remember that the higher your ISO, the more "grainy" your photograph is likely to be.

Aperture: this is how "open" your lens is to light and it also affects your depth of field. Imagine your eye, where your pupil expands or contracts to let in more or less light. Your aperture is similar to this. A large aperture (f/1.4) means your aperture hole is open wide and things close to you will be in focus while things far away won'te be in focus. A small aperture (f/22) means that your aperture hole is very small and things close and far will be in focus. This post, over at Photography Life, explain it in more detail.

After a bit of editing in GIMP, here is the finished product of these pics - enjoy!

Exposure: 1/30s
ISO: 400
Aperture: F/7.1

Exposure: 20s
ISO: 800
Aperture: F/5.6

Exposure: 6s
ISO: 800
Aperture: F/5.6

Exposure: 6s
ISO: 800
Aperture: F/5.6

Exposure: 13s
ISO: 800
Aperture: F/20

Exposure: 20s
ISO: 3200
Aperture: F/11

Exposure: 10s
ISO: 3200
Aperture: F/11

Exposure: 5s
ISO: 1600
Aperture: F/11

Exposure: 5s
ISO: 1600
Aperture: F/11

A Weekend of Planes, Parties and Play-Dates in Joburg

This last weekend, was one of the first times that I've looked forward to going to Joburg - probably because I no longer live there and it was for a special occasion and Frosty was coming with me! But still, it was lovely to actually look forward to flying to Joburg.

My cousin, having recently celebrated a milestone birthday, managed to organise a weekend to have a family party that allowed not only most of the South African contingent to get together to celebrate, but we also had my aunt and uncle out from Australia who were also able to partake in the celebrations! 

It was such a treat to stay with a different cousin and her adorable son (who, for a two and a half year old, has a vocabulary that almost rivals mine), along with my folks, and then to spend a day catching up with all of the different family members, extended family members and family members who aren't blood-relatives, but who looked after me so well while I was in Benoni. 

Since most of my cousins are older than me, there were kids galore at the party. I was battling to remember all the names (and I'm related), but I got there in the end. At the next family gathering, Frosty (and probably my dad) are getting tested on all the cousin-kids, I think if they start swotting now they might pass! 

On Sunday we spent the day with a dear friend of both Frosty and myself. Tea at her house, lunch at a market and then, a few hours before we flew back to Cape Town, we spent some time at the Walter Sisulu Botanical Gardens which was absolutely stunning! There were people with a telescope pointed at the nest of a breeding pair of Verreaux's Eagles (Black Eagles) that is situated alongside the waterfall. We took a peek through the telescope before following the geological path which took us on a lovely walk.

All in all it was a great weekend away and such a treat to be able to catch up with family and friends from afar.

Waterfall at the Walter Sisulu Botanical Gardens.
Who would have thought that we would find a waterfall
in the middle of Joburg? It's definitely worth a visit if you
haven't been before!

Cape Town Fire Pictures

Last night was the second night in a row that Frosty joined the VWS (Volunteer Wildfire Services) team to go and battle the fire that is making it's way through the south peninsula in Cape Town. 

Twice, he's gone from work to the VWS Newlands base ready to be deployed to fight this incredible fire, popping in at home only to get supplies and for a quick nap yesterday afternoon - he got back at 4.30 yesterday morning and at 6.30 this morning. I know that many of the other volunteers do exactly the same - working a full day and then at night giving up their time and efforts to help fight fires.

What Can You Do To Help The Fire Fighters?

Donations of food are coming in fast, but I know that food isn't the only thing that the VWS team are in need of. 

Instead of spending money buying ingredients to make sarmies for these brave fire fighters, why don't you donate that cash to them instead. EFT it or drop off the cash at one of their bases. If you take a browse through their website and Facebook page, you will see that they're requesting:

• donations of money
• gift vouchers for food that they can use in the future
• services (such as people who know how to fix land rovers)

in order to help them buy or fix other necessities that are required for fighting the fire. Yes, the teams get hungry when they're fighting fires (and the people who bring food are the favourites with hungry fire fighters), but if they don't have any money they won't have any equipment (think vehicles, Personal Protective Equipment {PPE}, petrol, fire fighting tools, pen and paper, radio equipment etc) to fight the fire to begin with! 

Also, please remember that the fire fighting crews have gone through special training in order to enable them to fight these fires. So as much as you may want to go and join the teams on the fire, don't. You will endanger yourself and the teams that are already on the mountain. Instead, join up with VWS, go through their training program and then be one of the trained guys fighting a fire next time it happens. There are certain protocols and procedures that need to be followed in order to ensure everyone's safety that you won't know about unless you've been trained.

The night before last I drove through to have dinner with my mum who has been running a course in the same area and I decided that I may as well take my camera with me to snap a few shots on my way to and from dinner. Here they are:

A weather update for March 4th: At about 11:30 this morning, there was a bit of a pitter-patter of rain (and even some thunder!) outside my office in Kenilworth, so hopefully this makes it's way down south to give those fighting the fire a bit of help!