Eotis – my alter ego in World of Warcraft.
OK – I only have a WoW character to keep the kids company – honest!
But here's Eotis – the level 36 Night Elf priest. Look at those magnificent ears.
The choice of a priest character is supposed to reflect my personality but, in an act of subversion, he's accumulating losts of offensive 'shadow' abilities.
Because I don't have much time, he tends to work solo. He would progress much further if he could afford to join group expeditions. So all his friends out there are levelling up much faster than him and outgrowing him. Remembering that, here's hello to Bua and Kashti in particular who helped Eotis a lot earlier on in his 'career'.
A quick thanks to Craig
He puts up with my rambling explanations and my obsessive photo recording.
Here he is in his treatment room – complete with certificates.
Thanks Craig!
Sponsor me!
Good news and bad news
The bad news is that with two viruses in three weeks I haven't been able to train regularly. So I've lost some muscle and my body fat is stuck on 26%. Even worse, this week's return to training has triggered a nerve problem like sciatica so I'm hopping around in a pathetic fashion. Still – heat, neurofen and some of Craig's stretches and I should be OK.
But I'm still on target for my 50lb weight loss in the year in support of the GfK NOP 50th Anniversary charity fund. I'm setting up a justgiving.com site for people to make their donations, please sponsor me now – and I'm also thinking about an extra element to the challenge. That's assuming I get settled back into regular and quality training.
The Death of Words
I have been going through some case studies. I’m looking at how you identify the insights they contain, what sorts of insights there are in the world, how you share them and how you apply them. You know – just a casual side project. !
In writing some notes I found myself using the word “secenario”. It was actually a useful and appropriate word to apply – in the context. My thought was that a plain English description of the scenario in which the insight was applicable, or a deeper analysis of the types of scenario in which it did/didn’t help, or a simple list of relevant scenarios, were really good ways of making the insight accessible.
“Scenario” was an economical and efficient word to use.
But I hesitated for a long time over it, and I know why. It felt like an old, used up, hollowed out buzz-word (‘scenario modelling’, ‘scenario planning’ etc). As such it was full of negative and outdated connotations. Again I know why – first, it’s one of those things that enjoyed a vogue amongst management consultants for a spell – and therefore I’m reacting against a time when you couldn’t move for scenarios. Second, there was the inevitable second wave where people cottoned on to the word being convincing and popular, but never even had a nodding acquaintance with the concepts behind it. The more popular the word, the more likely it is to be seized upon and have cheap plastic knock-off copies peddled by the million.
So looking at this dirty dusty ‘scenario’ word at the back of my mental cupboard, in a colour and a material that was fashionable in another time, I was tempted to throw it in the bin. Instead, I don’t know why, I cleaned it up, fixed it a bit, and started using it with pride. Another happy tale of re-cycling.
So the danger is that the concept dies because the word has been mis-used and flogged to death by people who acquired the word without the real concept (without the insight – sorry if that’s a bit self-referential). So next time we recognise an old buzz phrase, or even better an old concept being paraded under a new name, perhaps instead of being cynical we should be grateful that someone has found a way of respectably re-cycling it.
Read and post comments | Send to a friend
The crucial scales reading – in Kilos!
Somewhat belatedly – here's the photo we took of the scales at my weigh-in on 2nd January. Trust me – that's 225lbs. [Correction – it's just over 226lbs – but that's not so tidy!]
Lose 50 pounds and still be better off.
No – it's not spam. NOP, now part of GfK NOP, is 50 years old in 2007. It's a Market Research company and you could argue that Market Research itself is also 50 years old since 2007 is the 50th anniversary of the Market research Society.
I work for GfK NOP and to mark the company's 50th we are boosting our normal charity activity and launching a special campaign. We have a number of selected charities and are aiming to raise at least £50k for them – in which case the company will match this with a further £50k.
There are lots of different activities themed around the number 50. Jokingly I talked about losing 50lbs in weight during the year. To my horror, when I checked the charts I found that I could do so and still be within (in fact near the top of) the correct body mass index. At this point I was 6ft 1" tall and weighed 16st 1lb – that's 225 lbs.
So my target weight is 175lbs by the end of the year. In fact I'm aiming for the end of September – giving me three months to panic if necessary.
I'm going to set up a http://www.justgiving.com page to recruit sponsors for my efforts and to collect money. But I can't do that until GfK NOP have made the campaign fund into a pukka Charitable Trust – which justgiving.com can then list as a beneficiary.
So I'm blogging this here bacause I've already started.
On 2nd January 2007 I was weighed in at 225lbs by the excellent Craig Barkway at the Next Generation gym in Dartford, Kent. We took some photos to make it all official – and Craig is acting as my independent adjudicator. (I'll put some photos etc on here soon – Craig has already proved an essential guide and motivator.) I started on my programme there and then. Meanwhile I'm eating about 2000 calories a day – so I'm not crash dieting or anything. But I'm eating low GI where possible and the whole family is getting into cooking more, using more fresh food, and baking fruit bread, seed bread, flatbread…..
Last Thursday (1st Feb) I had my programme review with Craig. I've lost about 7lbs already. We've upped my routine a bit – rowing intervals look a bit scary – and started looking at body fat. I'm currently 26.8% (probably down a couple of points from Jan 2nd) and aiming for 15% by the end of the year.
So – we'd better get that Trust, and the justgiving.com page, going soon before I lose too much. I'll be looking for my sponsors soon – so watch this page and look out for a link to justgiving.
At least I've got it all on the record now.
One more thing – if the first three months go well I'm going to add a bonus challenge. It will be a 50 mile static bike ride over a profiled hill course against the clock. Come March I would get a 'learned committee' at the gym to identify an attainable profile/time for me to reach by, again, late September (31st December at the latest). Note – the subtly introduced '50' theme again. I'll be looking for sponsors for that as well.
To the gym….
Get it?
People who just don't 'get it' – whatever 'it' happens to be – are also often the least likely to get the fact that they need to get it at all. This means that if you do get it you are more likely to find a ready market amongst those who already get it a bit, than amongst those who don't get it at all!
How do you sell to those in most need? If they realised their need they wouldn't have it…
and so on.
I think I may move in
I have blogged fitfully for a couple of years. I've always had problems with wanting to blog about different things and, in particular, for different audiences and levels of intimacy – without having to split my personality between different blogs. In particular I don't like having to partition, on a pretty fixed basis, my 'life' opinions and my 'work' or 'professional' opinions.
So I think that Vox's tiering of exposure of one's material may be just what I need.
That's not my only reason though. I experimented with a lot of the platforms over the same period – writing neo-blogs just to get a feel for the functionality and integration with other services and apps. I like Vox more than any of them. I'm giving myself the luxury, for now, of not having to analyse why or to give a functional justification for this. It just feels good. Interestingly that's about both the interface and the people who I am starting to sense are present in the Vox communities around me. Maybe the former attracts a certain type of the latter. Lets see. But I'm definitely going to move my furniture in – a few pictures, a few disks…
Vox Hunt: It Better Be Good
What's the first image that comes up when you Google your name?
Well – as in a lot of cases it was the name of the photographer – not of the subject which, in this image, I think must be Tanya Streeter judging from the filename.
Nick Buckley : Practically Mindful 