International Geocaching Day 2024
The 2024 souvenir is earned by logging a geocache, Adventure Lab® Location, or Event on August 17, 2024.
What does one do, when arriving at the airport with an ardent geocacher (and a muggle in tow) – go hunting a cache of course!
Geocaching Italy Souvenir
Surprisingly, Rome Fiumicino Airport has a Tracker Bug Hotel cache within it’s carpark, a short walk from the terminal building and railway station; Getting outside proved an excursion, as we followed the signs to the trains, whereas a short cut was followed on the return… at the GZ, the cache was quickly found by my cacher-companion (TheDoctor12), the log signed, and the Italy souvenir gained. All to the bemused observation of our muggle companion.
I dropped off two trackers that have have been long-standing residents in my backpack… hopefully they can now continue their travels; likewise we logged but left two of the three listed resident bugs – the third appeared to be missing.
It was only when looking up the details of the two I realised that Helga the Hippo wants to get to Farnborough – my home town!!! An opportunity missed, but hopefully someone else can bring her back to the UK.
Many of us play games on our phones… in my case, it’s a small number of brain-exercisers, which I play just for the fun of them.
But recently, I’ve noticed that I’m being barraged with adverts for games that promise easy cash winnings. But are these adverts simply too good to be true?
After a bit of experimenting, I’ve compiled a few guidelines…
It is likely an app is Fake if:
Interestingly, some in-game adverts make similar claims…
If you are expecting a pay-out, and your app exhibits these, then I suggest you delete it, and try something else.
Following on from the success of the MISRA track at previous editions of the embedded world Exhibition & Conference, MISRA is pleased to announce the continuation of this collaboration into 2024:
The embedded world Conference in collaboration with MISRA is calling for proposals for a special MISRA session. The session will provide opportunities to hear about the latest developments from the MISRA Working Groups, including a Session Keynote from myself, as the Chair of the MISRA C Working Group.
As Chairman of the MISRA C Working Group, I am pleased to announce the release of MISRA C:2023 (MISRA C Third edition, Second revision). This is a further update which incorporates Amendments 2, 3 and 4 (AMD2, AMD3, AMD4) and Technical Corrigendum 2 (TC2) and provides support for C11 and C18 language features.
At the present time this document is available in PDF form, but an option for purchase of hardcopies using a “print on demand” service should be available soon.
My thanks to all involved in creating this new revised version.
Note: Contrary to some media reports, the publication of MISRA C:2023 is not late… there were never any plans to publish it at Embedded World 2023 – in fact, the intention was that the new version wouldn’t be available until 2024. Publication was brought *forward* to mark the 25th anniversary!
The following primary editions of MISRA C have been released:
Subsequent to the publication of MISRA C:2012, further incremental updates have been released, and consolidated into revised documents:
Regular readers will know that I have already self-assessed as having met the required standard in four of the the forty-nine Leadership Components identified by the Institution of Leadership & Management (InstLM):
As I’d given myself the objective of refreshing my leadership skills during the summer, it seemed the logical next step to start chalking off a few more of these componets – and being me, I decided to do them in order…
The forty-nine Leadership Components are grouped into five Leadership Dimensions:
The first Leadership Dimension is Authenticity. It is composed of eight Leadership Components:
Each Leadership Component is formed of web-based self-study material
As a rough estimate, reading everything, watching all the videos and completing all the worksheets takes approximately one hour per component… and if you achieve the required standard in all components, you get a badge:
Having achieved Standard Met, the next step is to arrange a more formal conversation, to become Certified… I’ll leave that for another day…
Sometimes, the pitfalls of being a Member (or Fellow) of a Professional Body is that you get bombarded with lots of emails… most of which have limited applicability.
But hot on the heels of carrying out my L&M self-assessment, I was prompted for the free online short course Ready to lead: Be resilient, agile and future-ready, which the InstLM states:
… equips aspiring, new and experienced leaders and managers with essential knowledge and skills to help navigate 2022 and beyond.
InstLM course blurb
Timing being everything, I decided to take the opportunity…
Full details of the Ready to lead: Be resilient, agile and future-ready course can be found on the InstLM’s website
The course material is split into three sections, with an associated self-assessment questionnaire – these three sections are each linked to one of the InstLM’s 49 leadership components.
The three topics covered are:
Obviously, in the context of a free course, lasting only a couple of hours including the assessments and some background reading, the depth is not massive – but I felt it was a good refresher of the concepts… and most importantly, I got a badge 🙂
Over the years, for my CPD I have very-much focussed on the technical aspects of my job and roles… despite increasing my leadership and management focus.
Recently, I decided that this should change, and I needed to re-assess my L&M position.
Fortunately, the Institution of Leadership & Management (InstLM) offer suitable self-assessment…
The InstLM describes its methodology as:
At the Institute of Leadership and Management we believe leadership is crucial to success in all human endeavour, and fundamental to this is what happens between people. Sustained, optimal performance is achieved by working together towards a common goal in a trusting environment which, while objective, is guided by strong moral values and celebrates the human dimension. Our Leadership Dimensions give structure to this approach and so your responses have been ranked relative to; Authenticity, Collaboration, Ownership, Achievement and Vision. We know you are on a journey and so Your Report recognises your strengths and indicates areas which may benefit from further reflection.
Institute of Leadership & Management
Having undertaken the MyLeadership Profile self-assessment, my results showed:
I guess that’s a pretty good basis to start from. Plus I got a badge…
As birthday presents go, this is right up there:
I am pleased and honoured to be able to announce that at Monday’s Court meeting, my Election to the #Freedom of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists was approved.
My thanks to all those involved in the process.
Like all the other City Livery Companies, the WCIT has four main pillars of activity:
While last evening, I was able to indulge in the fourth of these, I look forward to contributing to the other three as well!
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Based on a work at https://andrewbanks.com.
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