Is Collaboration Overstated? Two Articles on the Office Management Front

Whoever thought an open floor plan or low cube walls was a good idea?  A lot of people, apparently.  It's as if somehow, a cube wall prevented collaboration, that workers couldn't get past that barrier.

Not only that, the idea that groups produce better results than individuals, is suspect.

It's time to rethink the office, not only because of the above, but also the shift from long term, permanent employment to wide-scale, free-lance employment.  See Accenture's "Rise of the Extended Workforce," Princeton's "Decline of Worker-Firm Attachment," the Aspen Institute's "Future of Work."  A short book that explains the underlying factors in the trend: "Race Against the Machine."

Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments

At Harvard

Some mind mapping tools

Text2Mindmap simple and easy to use; allows you to outline your ideas and draw a map from indented text.  Bit limited (no notes, links, cross-node links)

Coggle - requires Google login.  Allows drag and drop of formatted (indented) text to create a map.  Seems limited (no notes, links, cross-node links)

WiseMapping - free, seems pretty full featured; no apparent limits.

Mindmeister - limited to three maps for free account.  Revert change requires premium account

Las Lajas Sanctuary

Places to visit.  Columbia

Las Lajas Sanctuary

programs to try - distributed P2P IM

http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/downloads.html

Converting Garmin FIT to GPX

Garmin has a (relatively) new file format for saving GPS and other related information used in a variety of devices.  Flexible and Interoperable Data Transfer (FIT) is a binary file format that can be converted by GPSBabel.  It contains things beyond basic coordinate information usually found in a GPX file.  Things such as heart rate, temperature, cadence, sport type are included.

In the GPSBabel GUI, the format is listed as "Flexible and Interoperable Data Transfer (FIT) Activity filefit".

The command line options are as follows:
gpsbabel -i garmin_fit -f  <input file name> -o gpx -F <output file name>

Exmaple:
gpsbabel -i garmin_fit -f /Volumes/GARMIN/Garmin/Activity/2014-08-24-09-02-57-Bike.fit -o gpx -F zzz.gpx

There is a way to save/convert to GPX on the Fenix 2 itself:

After you have ended an activity, hold down the menu button, then go to History, and that will show you your recent activities. Select one, then scroll down to and select "Save as Track", and when you connect it to your computer it will be a GPX file.

Geographing the UK

A project to get a photograph from every square kilometer of the UK: Geograph.  At the date of this posting, it looks as if central Ireland needs some attention.