Vienna Richards
Communications specialist obsessed with best practice, new ideas and fresh twists and approaches on life and work.
Homepage: http://viennarichards.org
What is a waterspout? Auckland had one
Two days ago, Auckland saw this gigantic waterspout in the afternoon. I saw it! What a thrill. Amazing. Beautiful in its formation and size.
Watched it for at least two minutes from one of the old buildings at Greenlane Hospital, now used as office floors.
Stunning and terrifying cloud formation bearing down near Sky Tower, or so we thought at the time.
It had a clear funnel of greyish puffiness spouting down. We thought the spout, we were calling a tornado, was on land. It was, in fact, on water and far away from the tower.
Soon after, slightly confused by media stories and a stray comment from a learned colleague, calling it a “waterspout” (without any explanation why it’s not called a tornado), I asked a scientist for answers. Wasn’t what I saw a tornado, I asked. It looked fierce and just like the tornadoes I see on telly, I said.
A waterspout, he said, is what it is called when it happens on the water. They are still dangerous for their impact and destructive power if there are boats in its vicinity. When they hit land, they are then called tornadoes. Even more dangerous on land because there are people everywhere.
Thank goodness this water spout stayed at sea and never came on terra firma. For one beautiful summer’s afternoon, most of us stood on land enjoying it safely funneling out at sea.
Related articles
- Water spout spotted over Auckland (telegraph.co.uk)
5 Starter Tips Before You Set Up Your Own Website and Blog
Posted in Communications, Pictures, Video, Web Online on February 16, 2012
If you are an absolute beginner who has never created your own website or blog, weblog, before and digital technology is a mystery, this blog post is for you.
I use the words “website” and “blog” interchangeably in this post, not because they are the same platform which they aren’t, but because these tips apply to both. I also refer to the blog as a “weblog”, a term I use interchangeably throughout this post.
Before you start building, let’s get started with these tips to help you plan and prepare.
Tip 1
Determine your purpose for setting up a website or weblog
Knowing why you’re doing this will help you clearly identify your target audience, the features you’ll need, and what you hope your online presence will achieve. Talk to trusted advisers and friends, brainstorm and/or mind-map with a group of friends or colleagues if you are unclear on the purpose of your website or blog.
Exercise
- Why do you want to set up a website or weblog? Write down words and sentences that come to mind, without editing. Afterwards, go through your answers and narrow it down to a few sentences or one key sentence.
Tip 2
Identify your Audience
Do you know who you want to reach? Knowing who you want to reach, who will read your blog for example, will help you decide the privacy settings you may wish to apply.
Exercise
Describe your audience, how old are they, what do they do, what do they do for leisure.
If your target audience is a specific group of people, then you might want to consider having a private web or blog visible only to a select group, rather than an open website or weblog.
Tip 2
Choose content to post on your website
Photos. Images. Graphics. Flow Charts. PDF documents. Videos. Create a folder or box this will go in. The list can go on and on. You have a lot of material to use but that doesn’t mean that everything should go on the website. Review all the documents, material, photos and videos. Set up a folder organised with the content you wish to upload to the website.
Questions
- Has your offline content been updated to reflect any changes or updates in your organisation?
- Do you need to update any photos or graphics or logos before uploading?
- Have people’s surnames and roles changed?
- Are staff roles correctly stated?
- If you are working with long documents, do you have a writer who can go through the long documents and help sharp content for the web?
- Do you have a scanner?
Tip 3
Use Headings and Subheadings to Reflect Your Tone
Organise your thinking here. Take out the note pad and start to jot down broad categories or themes of the content. If you are setting up a website for lawyers or medical professionals, the headings will be more formal, straight to the point, and usually pre-determined according to work areas and clinical portfolios.
Standard websites headings:
- Home Page (First page on the website)
- About (Information on the organisation and who you are). This may also include sub-pages
- Services (What work or services you offer the public or other audience)
- Contact (this list phone numbers and contact staff or a web email form).
Tip 4
Brainstorm a name for your website or blog
Get inspired. This is worth the time it takes to come up with a name that fits for you. I love this part of setting up an online blog. It’s fun. Think about it as your headline. Be as creative as you wish, depending on the purpose of your blog.
I use my name for this blog simply because I had already purchased my domain name some years ago. I played with the headline on this blog, Vienna’s Blogdesk. I choose the word Blogdesk because I didn’t want to focus on any one subject or issue. I don’t know if there is a word called blogdesk. I merged two words as one.I wanted the freedom to write about whatever I wish to write about. Hence, blogdesk covers it all.
Whatever inspires you to be creative and come up with new ideas for a name, the better in your search for the right name for your website or blog. Some people have done this over a chocolate party, apparently. Again, I’d recommend brainstorming a lot of names and not editing any out because often random words can piggy back on each other. And viola, before you know it, you have a name. If you’d like further direction on this, post a comment or email.
Tip 5
Decide to purchase a domain name or use a free web address.
There is no shortage of free web addresses you can use for your website. But there is usually a catch and you are limited to using the address they offer you. You wouldn’t be able to use viennarichards.org as a free web address. I paid for the domain name. I’d recommend that you buy your own domain name. Why? You have more control over the address, if it is available for purchase.
Coming up in my next blog post on this topic, I will share more tips about buying a domain name and having your website or blog hosted.
Albert Einstein Quotes and Mozart
Posted in Communications, Motivation on January 26, 2012
Video says it all.
I’ll post the quotes in writing for those who cannot access this video, have used their limit of broadband, or are using a device to read text on this blog. These are the quotes from the first 2 minutes.
Albert Einstein
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex and more violent. It takes a touch of genius, and a lot of courage, to move in the opposite direction.
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.
Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.
The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself.
Before God we are all equally wise and equally foolish.
When you look at yourself from a universal standpoint, something inside always reminds or informs you that there are bigger and better things to worry about.
Betterment of conditions the world over is not essentially dependent on scientific knowledge but on the fulfillment of human traditions and ideals.
Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
People do not grow old no matter how long we live. We never cease to stand like curious children before the great Mystery into which we were born.
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there’s no risk of accident for someone who’s dead.
The aim (of education) must be the training of independently acting and thinking individuals who, however, can see in the service to the community their highest life achievement.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social enviroment. Most people are incapable of forming such opinions.
may or may not be continued…
QUOTE OF THE DAY
Posted in Communications on January 26, 2012
If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough. — Albert Einstein
Steve Jobs on Loving What You Do
Posted in Communications, Motivation, Opinion on January 17, 2012
It’s the start of 2012 and I love this. So let me share it with you.
Apple’s Steve Jobs speaks about the need to have a lot of passion for what you’re doing because it’s so hard.
Without passion, any rational person would give up. So if you’re not having fun doing it, if you don’t absolutely love it, you’re going to give up. And the ones that didn’t love it, quit. Because they’re sane, right?…Who would put up with this stuff if you don’t love it?
Two Uncommon Hopefuls in America
Posted in Opinion on January 13, 2012
Saints, make it to the primary elections as American presidential hopefuls.What’s the world coming to? Well, America has adopted the message of change, thanks to President Barack Obama’s positive election campaign.
But will this be a stretch too far for many Americans? Findings of the PEW survey below prove interesting reading.
Republican candidates Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman are both devout Mormons according to reports. Both very wealthy men from equally wealthy backgrounds. I haven’t read so much of Romney’s background but I have long found Jon Huntsman’s entrepreneurial father’s story compelling reading.
What I find most interesting, with a son serving a mission, is that Romney and Huntsman also served full-time missions for the Church as young men. Political pundits will pay little, if any, attention to their missionary service. So I’ll go for it. Romney served as a missionary in France and Huntsman served in Taiwan. Not surprisingly, Romney reportedly speaks fluent French and Huntsman speaks fluent Mandarin. They both report a lifelong love for the people they served all those years ago. That tends to happen when you live, eat, laugh, sleep, cry and pray closely as family with people for two years or more.
Huntsman later served as the US Ambassador to China taking with him his ready fluency with Mandarin, thanks to the mission he served as a Mormon missionary. Unfortunately, one of the presidential hopeful and his team, Ron Paul, resorted to misrepresentation of his love for the people he served and his Mandarin fluency. They uploaded it 10 days ago in a nasty political attack posted here on youtube….http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZeVqj-t1U0
So before anyone rushes off yet again and condemns Mormons to a life of myths and misunderstandings, I would recommend going direct to the source to find out what Mormons believe. It just so happens that PEW had done just that. It busts some myths.
