The day started at Autodesk, where we were completely seduced by the Gallery of objects that have been made using their software and programs. Like HP Labs and Serious Materials on the first day, Arup last night or the City Hall and Better Place teams we met today, it seems that these people use sustainability in almost every paragraph they speak. The City Hall people, thanks to the overarching vision of Mayor Gavin Newsom, who Elaine and I met some years back while tramping around a snowy Davos. ... more >

A Glass Eye in San Francisco
Some things my Leica has seen

Green Cities Event in San Francisco
And an HP Death Ray, apparently

The Clean & Cool Mission to San Francisco is going very well, though I'm finding my frequent flights of recent days have hammered whatever it was that I got a week-and-a-half ago down into my lungs. Still, I managed not to collapse into paroxysms of coughing during the Green Cities event last night. Great to see Tim Brown of IDEO, one of the other panellists - and a member of the Volans Advisory Board. ... more >

Flying - and Fluing - into Amsterdam
Two days with the GRI

Am tapping away in the kitchen, with Monty Don on TV demonstrating a threshing machine which reminds me to some degree of thresher that was such a key feature of my younger days on a farm in Northern Ireland, and recalling the past two days in Amsterdam with the Board of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). Have been struggling with flu for much of the time, despite the flu jab I had late last year. Luckily, several other people had the same problem, and, better still, the meeting ended early, so instead of flying back after 21.00, I got on a BMI flight around 15.35--though we had to stand in line to check in for over an hour, which with my damaged back had me swearing never to fly BMI again. Getting ready to fly to San Francisco tomorrow.... more >

Photo of some GRI Board members
Looking like we are in Madame Tussaud's

The Lancaster
A lesson in perseverance

 One of the more dramatic mornings of my childhood in Northern Ireland was going some time in the mid-1950s to see the Shackleton that my father had crash-landed at RAF Ballykelly.  My main memory is of the scorch marks underneath the fuselage and the propellers bent way back. What I didn't know at the time, but know now after finishing Leo McKinstry's book Lancaster: The Second World War's Greatest Bomber today, is that the Shackleton, once described as "a thousand rivets flying in close formation", was a direct descendant of the Lancaster.... more >

Man on Fire Underwater
Live coral blooms on submerged sculpture

I love the thinking behind Man on Fire, one of the first three submarine sculptures installed off the coast of Cancun, Mexico. Made out of marine cement and fibreglass by artist Jason de Caires Taylor, the figure weighs more than a tonne and is implanted with live corals, so that it blooms in fiery red and yellow--and, adding to the effect, the figure's coating of corals will sting.  Ouch, but makes me wish I was a diver.... more >

Spitfires of the Sea
Veterans of the Battle of the Narrow Seas

One of the more memorable afternoons of my young life was being rocketed out to sea from Plymouth in a sea rescue launch, powered by aircraft engines, when my father, Tim, was involved in air-sea rescue. I became more aware of the intense battle fought across the Channel by MTBs and E-boats thanks to the wartime involvement of Sir Peter Scott, who I first came across as a judge when I was going for a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship in 1981.... more >

Going Back
An afternoon in the arms of an osteopath

As I travelled in this morning on a packed-to-the-gills Tube train, for the first of a 2-day strategy away day session for Volans, my back gave out - so that rather than racing off for (what would have been) a surprise day with Innovation Arts, I ended up flat on the floor. Sam then taxied me off to Ale's osteopath in North London, during whose kind ministrations my spine gave off a sound like a pistol shot - at least in my head. Something tells me that having sat in front of computers for some 30 years hasn't served my poor back well. But am I likely to change? Well, I'm trying to sit up straight for the moment ...... more >

Caroline Prepares for Summer Exhibition
A bench and a summer storm

Have long loved and collected my sister Caroline's paintings, but two of the latest - painted for an exhibition in Dulwich - simply took my breath away. The first is based on a photograph I took one evening as I worked home from work by Barnes Pond, just after a downpour, but has been elaborated with detailing that appeals to my deep love of the weirder sides of stained glass. The exhibition will be held on Saturday 8th and Sunday 9th May, as part of the Dulwich Artists' Open House Festival.  The address: 4 Beauval Road, Dulwich, SE22 8UQ. More paintings here.  ... more >

Clean & Cool Mission on YouTube
Background and ambitions

Later this month, I'm involved in a Study Mission to California and Silicon Valley, with 20 entrepreneurs and/or CEOs of leading UK cleantech companies. A filmed interview of principals of the three supporting organisations - Polecat, the UK Technology Strategy Board and Volans - is now available on YouTube, here.... more >

CAM Ships Remembered
Hurricanes at sea

I intercepted the following email from Tim, my father, to a Polish WWII historian a couple of days ago - and was interested by the glimpse that it gave into one of the less-known aspects of the RAF's history at the time, the CAM ships, or Catapult Aircraft Merchant ships.



"It was 1942. We had only recently returned from Vaenga in Northern Russia, where we left our Hurricane IIBs for the Russians, and were enjoying the conversion to Spitfire VBs in Northern Ireland. Then, to spoil the euphoria, I was posted to MSFU, the Merchant Ship Fighter Unit at RAF Speke, which provided the pilots for the CAM Ships. And so back to old Hurricane Is, modified to Sea Hurricanes by the addition of lugs for catapult connection.... more >

Tellus Mater Award
Big boost for our Pathways to Scale work

Volans has won a major grant from the Tellus Mater Foundation to help fund our Pathways to Scale work, led by Alejandro Litovsky. The support goes to our work on ecosystem services through 2010.... more >