Another new/old bike

Latest addition. It’s a 26 year old Hillman road bike with Reynolds 531 tubes rebuilt as a single speed at Deus Cycleworks. It was my first race bike.

It is kinda an eclectic mix. The big White Industries hubs provide a lot of bling, so it isn’t all black. And they nicely match the breaking surface of the Mavic rims. I am struggling up steep hills in Sydney from a standing start, so either they have too big a gear on it or I’ve been spoilt recently by all the gears on my Bianchi & Pinarello road bikes. If I get the old Allsopp fixed I’ll almost have a different bike to ride every day of the working week. It has a gold chain because they didn’t have a decent black chain in stock. Looks OK. And it still seems like a nice fit to ride.

I just have to ride with a pump, even if it is only a few km. All those years on long rides I guess. Not that I can remember them at all really. Must have been someone else …

FasterChef DEUX

I am indeed fortunate to work with a number of creative geniuses: David Litting, Jemima McDonald (who needs to go back to cinematography school), Carl Hoschke, Belinda Tiffen and Patrick Tooth.

You need to watch all the way until the end to fully enjoy David's excellent sub-titles.

New library services: why, what, how & so what?

UTS Library future service model (with notes)

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More images from Ironman Hawaii

These are all from the marathon run.  I still have more to add from the closing stages of the run.

Ironman Hawaii images

 These are a few from the swim and bike. More to follow.

Dangerous ideas for libraries

Dangerous ideas for libraries: ASLA 2011

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This is the keynote presentation I gave to the ASLA 2011 Conference: http://www.asla.org.au/pd/conference/ 

I had a couple of good questions that went much further than the content of this presentation, perhaps into areas that I've covered in other recent presentations (also on SlideShare). One question, however, was on how we are going to manage all of the changes indicated in this presentation. I don't think I answered that one comprehensively.  I said that for some of the new initiatives such as developing a new range of services that will be more appropriate to the role of a new Library within a world-leading university of technology (UTS's aspiration), we are already engaged in active learning programs to improve our understanding of Design Thinking processes as they apply to service design.

What I should have added, however, is that I don't think there is anything in this presentation that presents a major change for us beyond the development of a new range of services. At UTS Library we are already actively exploring or already doing most of the "dangerous ideas" covered here. So none of this really presents a major change in direction for us.

Macquarie University Library

I toured the new Macquarie University Library in mid-September 2011 finding it bright, porous, welcoming, comfortable looking, spacious and not over-signed. It is already proving to be very popular with the students. I really liked the new areas devoted to post-graduates and higher degree researchers. Many of the internal design features look to be very clever and effective.