There's not much to be said in favour of releasing balloons is there?

by @JoBrodie, brodiesnotes.blogspot.com


I've been following the exchanges Andy Mabbett (aka @pigsonthewing) has been having lately with people who are determined to release balloons for a variety of celebratory reasons. There's something very pretty about watching a lot of helium balloons floating off up into the sky and I can see why people might want to do it as a form of advanced ribbon-cutting.

It's not awfully good for the environment or livestock though.

There are many things that aren't very environmentally friendly but there's some other benefit against which the risk might be balanced. For example it's reasonably impractical for most people to undertake a sea voyage to go to America (takes a week, fairly costly) although I'm led to believe that doing so has less of a carbon cost than flying there in a few hours.

From what I can gather there's pretty much no benefit in letting off balloons beyond the pleasant visual spectacle and feelgood factor - it seems to be nothing more than aesthetic vertical littering.

I've been reading up on in-air balloon behaviour - they can get pretty high before popping but many of them don't pop 'properly' and instead just deflate. A spent balloon can end up several miles away from its original launch site and with no tracking system built in (as happens when you send up a weather balloon for example) there's not much responsibility that can be taken for clearing up afterwards. They land all over the place on land and sea and seem to have managed to kill a variety of livestock and birds, especially the ones that have a string and card attached to them to say who sent them.

Apparently biodegradable ones are an improvement, but not that much of an improvement and I can't help thinking that releasing balloons is... well a bit pointless.

It turns out that quite a few councils have banned balloon releases on council property and plenty of environmental and animal welfare charities have called for wider spread bans / legislation etc. I'm not sure how successful that will be.

The problem is persuading people to stop doing it. No-one really likes hearing that the x hundred balloons they're releasing to mark the death of a small child is actually a bad idea for the environment. Some of them dislike it so much they're pretty rude to anyone who tries to point this out. Simply ignoring / not engaging with the people who are making a mess seems to be a bit of a cop-out... what to do?

The perils of sharing URLs - be aware

[Edit 14 June 2012: now with Guardian Facebook app info (below)]

I recently wrote a post about 'what is all this crap Google adds to my search URL' referring to the alphanumeric text that Google appends to the web address that results from doing a search. I can share this URL with other people and when they click on it they'll get more or less the same search results too. Since I'm not sure what information is shared by the alphanumeric gibberish I tend to clip all URLs (or at least check them in notepad) before sharing.

While on a local volunteering site I typed in my postcode to see what's available (I'm interested in being a Digital Champion and helping people get online) and came across an opening for a freelance journalist living in Tower Hamlets. Since I know lots of journalists and writers I thought I'd share this on Twitter but it would have been rather unwise to copy and paste the URL as it is, as you'll see below:

http://www.do-it.org.uk/search/opportunities/1682771/Journalist?unit=mile&distance=5&location=SE3+[redacted]&activitiesSome=47

While I've no problem with people knowing I live or work in Blackheath the last three digits of my postcode can narrow things down quite a bit - I can't help thinking this isn't something I want to share.

Many URLs now have extra information at the end of them that tell you how the person sharing them came by them in the first place, eg through a search (quite possibly what they searched for), via Twitter (look out for something like utm=twitter at the end of the URL), or through a newsletter when you click on a link that arrives in your email inbox and is used to track your visits to the website. Not that long ago I received an email from an organisation to say that they were no longer going to send me newsletters because they'd noticed that I never clicked on any of the links.

I think it's worth paying a little attention to these URLs just to see what you might be unwittingly sharing. You can hover over an URL and right-click, copy 'location' and then paste it into notepad (for PC users: Start > type 'notepad' into 'Search all programs and files') to inspect it before sharing :) 

I have to say I do this pretty much constantly for any link that's longer that I can see in the status bar at the bottom of the screen (when you hover over an URL the full details show up in the taskbar - you can toggle this on or off in the View menu). The only URLs that don't yield this info are t.co - anyone know of a way to see where it's going to take you (eg with bit.ly URLs just add a + at the end to see what the page is before visiting it).

To make the above URL 'safe' all I need to do is delete everything after Journalist and all will be well. Note also though that if I paste it here then Blogger will turn it into an active link and deleting part of the visible URL is insufficient as the information in the full URL is embedded / hidden within the text - caveat linkor.

http://www.do-it.org.uk/search/opportunities/1682771/Journalist

My philosophy, unless the faff of tweaking outweighs the 'risk', is to share only the minimum amount of URL text that will take a reader straight to the relevant page.

Well... this is one reason why I think I might be good at teaching people how to get online and stay safe ;)

[Guardian Facebook app]
I have platform apps switched off on Facebook. While I don't truly believe that I can ever hide from Facebook I like to do what I can to thwart it. If a friend has OKed the Guardian Facebook app (or other newspaper apps, not to pick on The G in particular) every time they're logged in to Facebook and read something it's posted to their timeline unless they've disabled it. This means I'll see something and think "oh that looks interesting" and click on it - which is precisely what's meant to happen, Facebook being about sharing. However I don't get very far because of the app block I have in place.

Rather than let me just read the article it doesn't let me unless I sign up. To get to where I want I have to chop bits of the web address off so that I end up with a working URL to go to the article. Fiddly.

I must have recently tried to read a story about pro-choice and ended up with this URL. It seems that Facebook wants to share with The Guardian my email address, birthday and location - I don't particularly mind either having this info (wouldn't have shared it in the first place if it was secret) but I like to know when I click on something what I'm sharing. Even if it's information I'm happy to share it feels weird not to know when I've shared it.

https://www.facebook.com/dialog/oauth?client_id=[redacted numbers]&redirect_uri=http%3A%2F%2Fapps.facebook.com%2Ftheguardian%2Fworld%2F2012%2Fmar%2F21%2Fpro-choice-protest-anti-abortion&scope=publish_actions,email,user_birthday,user_location

To turn this into a working URL then you need to clip out everything that doesn't look like a regular Guardian web address and turn everything that says %2F into a forward s/l/a/s/h and %3A into a c:o:l:o:n

Clipping this bit out gives:
http%3A%2F%2Fapps.facebook.com%2Ftheguardian%2Fworld%2F2012%2Fmar%2F21%2Fpro-choice-protest-anti-abortion

Tidying up gives:
http://theguardian/world/2012/mar/21/pro-choice-protest-anti-abortion

This still isn't a proper recognisable web address so a bit of logic, guesswork, assumptions and tweakings (or you can just plug that URL into Google search and the right one will come out anyway) gives this, which works:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/21/pro-choice-protest-anti-abortion

Writing down the steps makes it seem like much more of an effort than it actually is. I like the chase ;)

Storify has added an 'add all tweets' button - hooray

One of the reasons I've traditionally preferred Chirpstory over Storify is that Chirp has always let you move large amounts of tweets at once (50 at one go). I've just noticed that Storify now lets you move 20 at one go - I don't know how long this has been possible, only visited the site today.

Anyway this is the bit to look for, highlighted in green.



For big events with lots of tweeting I'd still go for Chirpstory - another advantage is that you can re-order the tweets so that the earliest is at the top. You can also easily remove duplicates (which can creep in if you go back and edit on the second day of the conference, for examp, adding in the more recently posted tweets).

More Twitter wrangling tools here: http://brodiesnotes.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/list-of-tools-for-finding-or-capturing.html

How to get rid of white space / line breaks in Word

I seem to be on a Words / lines thing at the moment.

Right then, I had a 35 page Word document* which had many paragraphs each separated by four lines of white space (the equivalent of 'enter' having been pressed four times). One line suffices so I sought to find out how to quickly Find / Replace (Ctrl+H) the three extra linespaces with nothing (or I could have replaced four linespaces with one linespace).

@dianthusmed had the answer to my question

Word: document has 3 or 4 linespaces between paras - quick way of making it one line? Tried / failed Ctrl+H and variants of ^p / ^13
— Jo Brodie (@JoBrodie) May 24, 2012

@JoBrodie If they're line breaks rather than paragraph marks, you need ^l in the replace box, not ^p
— Dianthus Medical (@dianthusmed) May 24, 2012

It works: ^l^l^l is the string to select three linespaces. The ^ is called a caret.

1. Press Ctrl+H to bring up the Find and Replace menu
2. Type ^l (SHIFT 6 on full-size keyboard and the letter L) three times into the 'Find what' dialogue box, leave the 'Replace with' box blank
3. Click the Find Next button to make sure it's selecting correctly and then Replace to replace - once you're satisfied that all is well click the 'Replace All' and smile as your 35-page document trims itself to 23 pages.

Thanks also to @zeno001 who offered suggestions too and this is also a useful read "Special characters you can use with Find and Replace in Word"

*Technically it's a LaTeX document that I'm viewing in Word. Ironically I can't compile the 'tex doc into a pretty thing to read because there are other files (bibliographies) embedded into the doc that it needs to run and I don't have access to them. So this was my workaround, but I like saving paper when printing.

Building the picture pipeline - free images for use in healthcare and medical research #scicomm #nhssm

Years ago I helped the then editor of our research magazine (Research Matters) find some illustrative images to go with short summaries of our various bits of research. I remember in particular looking for things that conveyed 'kidneys' to match the section on our kidney research.

There are some standard-issue visual tropes for kidneys, including pictures of actual kidneys (either photographs or drawings, including the urinary system), kidney-shaped metal dishes, kidney beans and even, if you're so minded, steak and kidney pies. 

It's worth clicking on this image and seeing the original image in Flickr as the photographer has added a really nice explanation of what it is that kidneys do and why they're rather important.

But the concept of kidneys can also be put across by images of clear water - after all the job of the kidneys is to filter and clean blood, and conserve things that the body wants to keep. Even the concept of a fuse might be used in relation to the role the kidneys play in blood pressure and how this can damage them. You might even get away with 'balance' in that our kidneys keep everything in order.

I found that being in the role of someone who picks the pics made me think much more laterally about images in general, which I'm sure is all to the good. Although we have a budget for the CHI+MED project that I'm currently working on, and I have bought one or two images from commercial image suppliers, I've derived a lot of enjoyment in looking through what Flickerians have made available through creative commons licensing. 

I've even created a Pinterest pin board of 'images that illustrate the CHI+MED project' - I wouldn't say it's gone viral but it has 21 followers compared to the average 8-12 that my other boards have acquired.

  

In the recent #nhssm (use of social media in the NHS) Twitter chat, which focused on the way that the NHS might use Pinterest, a number of people queried the copyright issue (I only use CC images, with appropriate accreditation that Pinterest automates). 

This reminded me of a question I've probably asked before which is - should we try and build up a 'database' (it could be a list of links and signposting, or a Flickr pool) of images that research scientists, people in medical research charities or the NHS (or any healthcare) can use freely in their documents, leaflets, websites, whatever - with appropriate attribution. It would be cool if people could also use it to request images too...

This probably already exists - where? I didn't find such a thing on Flickr (it might be somewhere else that I don't know about) so I have created.... drumroll...  Health, medicine and research images - it's a group on Flickr which currently has no images, but I shan't fill it with them yet in case someone comes along and points me to the already-invented wheel elsewhere on the web.

Going back to Research Matters I was delighted (and a bit amazed) to find a picture of piles of white paper which I could use to illustrate research grant applications, which at the time came in on paper (now all electronic). We actually took some photographs ourselves of the piles of paper created by making sure that each member of the research committee (who recommended projects for funding) had a copy of every single application under consideration, and used these in our own material. 

People working in a lab will be used to their boxes of pipette tips and the purple nitrile gloves, centrifuge machines, microscopes and blue-topped Schott glasses - they're part of the furniture. But images of them do a terrific job of saying "RESEARCH". Similarly if you work in a hospital you'll walk past the signage every day and one hospital bed probably looks like another, but I can't easily get hold of images that say "HOSPITAL" without either going to one myself or being lucky enough to find cool stuff that others have shared.

  

So... please take pictures of things that you might think are fairly mundane, and share them on Flickr with a Creative Commons license so that others can use them. Make sure you give them relevant titles and tag them appropriately - the trick is to think of words that other people would use to search for them. I might search for 'kidney' but someone looking for pictures to illustrate their renal replacement service for a leaflet for patients might search for 'renal'.

Here's what I've found so far:

Free stuff

Flickr Creative Commons - Advanced search

This link will let you search all images licensed under CC and this one will let you search the smaller pool of images that are both CC licensed and may be used commercially. You will need to check with individual images what you can do with them (eg if you want to crop them to fit a smaller space etc, this isn't automatically permitted in every license so do check).

List of free resources
53+ Free image resources for your blog and social media posts Buffer (14 May 2014)

Public domain photos
http://publicphoto.org/

Not necessarily free stuff

Flickr groups - note that these images might not be available under CC licensing but there's nothing to stop you asking an individual photographer if you can use them. 

• Laboratory Science - for fans of glassware old and new
• Medical images
• Science & Research in Europe
• Hospital pix - images from inside hospitals
• Search all groups

Other stuff

• Graphic design and picture resources (25 February 2010) - a blogpost by me on some of the image resources I've come across on my travels.
• Images that illustrate the CHI+MED project - my Pinboard, all images are creative commons on Flickr.