Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Monday, November 21, 2011
Caring for sick / injured hedgehogs
In a departure from my normal topic areas, I had to write about my experience this morning. If for no other reason than to offer some advice to anyone finding a stray, injured or otherwise bothered hedgehog in their shed, garage, garden etc.So I went into the garage this morning to find a strange puddle of oil on the floor.
And footprints.
So I followed the trail...and followed some more...
A cat I thought, judging by the paw prints. But no, there are only 3 or 4 pads in the footprints..... Yes, it turned out to be a hedgehog. A somewhat shiny looking hedghog with an oily sheen to it.
The poor thing had somehow got into our garage (? not sure how?) and climbed into a tray of old engine oil that I hadn't disposed of properly. Dammit.
How to catch and wash a hedgehog? A quick search on the net revealed an amazing range of advice, charities and plain old good hearted folk who take these cute little animals into their care and nuture them back to health. Examples such as http://www.britishhedgehogs.org.uk/ and http://www.wildlifeonline.me.uk/hedgehog_care.html had some great tips.
So..if YOU find a hedgehog covered in oil or similar, here's what I suggest...
1. Get a bucket of tepid/warm ish water and add 1 teaspoon of baby shampoo or washing up liquid per litre of water.
2. If you have one, get a spray bottle (but not one that has had chemical cleaning products in it of course!)
3. Pick up hedgehog carefully with gloves or wrap in a towel, place gently in an old plant pot or holey bucket. I used a large old plastic plant pot - handy because it is large enough for the hog to run around but it also has holes in the base so the water drains away quickly..
4. Gently spray hedgehog with soap/water solution, avoiding eyes and ears. A toothbrush or cloth helps wipe oil off the spines.
5. Rinse using same soap/water solution by dipping a cup or similar into the bucket and pouring carefully over the hedghog working from behind the head to the tail. This little fella / sheila seemed to like this..when I picked it up, the spines when up, but while washing, the spines went down and it actually looked up and started sniffing around while I was doing this.
6. Get some clean, soap free tepid / warm water and repeat to remove all soap / oil residue.
7. Dry hog with towel or cloth. Not easy if you are rough since those spines go up again. It's important to do this though since the advice I've read says hedgehogs must be kept warm.
8. Place in another plant pot or cardboard box or similar in a quiet place, ideally with some food/water/bedding and covered to make it dark for the little fella. The links above have good suggestions...I used some rabbit food, straw bedding and a water/sugar/salt solution in a small tray...see here....
9. That's as far as I've got! I'm going to check on him/her later this evening...
Horner's Hedgehog House : )
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Pingar: Extracting real competitive advantage from unstructured data
Robert Scoble interviews Peter Wren Hilton, CEO Pingar.
http://www.building43.com/videos/2011/08/23/pingar-turning-unstructured-data-into-knowledge/#comments
Large enterprises, and even smaller organizations in a document intensive industry, often have millions of documents stored on their servers. Finding any sort of meaningful relationship among the documents or gleaning any value from them can seem impossible. Pingar has developed technology to make sense of all this information and allow its owners to put unstructured data to good use.
http://www.building43.com/videos/2011/08/23/pingar-turning-unstructured-data-into-knowledge/#comments
Large enterprises, and even smaller organizations in a document intensive industry, often have millions of documents stored on their servers. Finding any sort of meaningful relationship among the documents or gleaning any value from them can seem impossible. Pingar has developed technology to make sense of all this information and allow its owners to put unstructured data to good use.
“What we’re trying to do is provide technologies that enable those enterprises to begin to understand what content sits within their data sets,” explains Peter Wren-Hilton, CEO and Founder of Pingar. “Typically the entity extraction and content analysis components that we have developed really are designed to enable enterprises to be able to identify relationships between documents [and] begin to, for instance, generate automatic meta data. If redaction is a key point, then our entity extraction components allow companies to redact documents through algorithms rather than through the black marker pen. So we’ve got a range of components that collectively enable enterprises to make more sense from the millions of documents that they have stored away.”
Generating the meta data is a key difference between Pingar and other enterprise solutions on the market and....... (click here for more info and video interview...)
Pingar web site: http://pingar.com/
Pingar blog: http://www.pingar.com/blog/
Pingar profile on CrunchBase: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/pingar
Pinger on Twitter: http://twitter.com/PingarHQ
Friday, October 8, 2010
Kitesurfing 101
Ok. So, I took 2 lessons. Bought some secondhand gear. Took it out last weekend, just to check all was well. Flew the kite no problem; light breeze, easy.So today it was...well...a little breezy. Gusty maybe. No problem I thought. If I stand as I am supposed to, 90 degrees to the wind direction, I will be able to launch and hoist the kite well outside it's powerzone, and gently bring it to 12 o'clock above my head where I can then apply a little power.
Ok. Out onto gravel/sand in front of the mudflats and water.
Hmm. Quite windy out here. And I'm still pretty close to the shore.
No worries....
Launch as planned, then gently direct upwards....but the kite turns abruptly to the right (as I realise, much much later, because I was pulling on the control bar too much)....and directly into the FULL power area. While I am standing on the gravel/sand.
Uh-oh. This is bad.
The kite pulls me from zero to sprinting speed in about 1 second. As I find myself running forwards faster than I have ever ran before...I find myself thinking erm...how do I get out of this. I am literally running just fast enough to stop falling on my face. Which would be bad, because I am on gravel/sand mix.
Wind gusts and I nearly take off. Waaaaaaa. Then more running at top speed (while trying to reach the safety release) until I hit mudflats. I decide sitting down is a good idea.
Bad idea.
Kite pulls me onto my front at speed. Now I cannot see and am laying on top of the safety release. I roll on my side and pull the safety while still being pulled along. Nothing happens. I pull again, harder,...and it releases.
Still being dragged.
?#@?!!! I reach behind me for the 'total kiss your kite goodbye' release toggle that will detach me completely...bang...kite gone and still flying...and I come to a st
op.Spit out mud and start cracking up. Still sitting in mud laughing when a bystander shoots by, chasing my kite which is now working its way across the mudflat. He and his mate, who are unsure whether to burst out laughing or ask 'are you ok' run across. As they realise I am laying there nearly wetting myself with laughter, they crack up too. Great guys.
Fun day. I learnt something about kitesurfing today. Looking forward to my next time out
: )
Thursday, July 15, 2010
The Powertread - Renewable energy generated from passing traffic!
Here's a great example of some home grown innovation from New Zealand... In an earlier life, I worked as part of the team to investigate the market potential for this technology, and co-authored a report into their market entry approach, and later, an investment memorandum for the company. It’s been, and continues to be a tough journey for the team; full of classic early stage company dramas, so its fantastic to see owner and inventor Justin Robertson (with strong support from the team at AUT’s Business Innovation Centre, including Enervate’s new CEO Kevin Ha, formerly the BIC’s incubation manager) celebrating a successful move up to Singapore as the first step in the commercialisation of the technology.
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