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| Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 | | 3:20 pm |
BBC electronics fail
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8128133.stm shows some multiple choice questions on GCSE design & technology. Question 4 the answer is given as "inverter", to which the BBC have helpfully added the explanation "which is an electrical device that converts direct current (DC) to alternating current (AC)." Unfortunately that's the wrong sort of inverter! Lesson: Google is not a substitute for knowing the answer because terms may be ambiguous. My thoughts on the other questions: 1) I've always wondered that myself but never bothered to find out 2) Shouldn't you reword this as "which of the following 5 items does not ..."? 3) Transistor. Got one! 4) see above 5) Can't remember. The colour code has just enough items to be fiddly to learn and like the times tables you don't really need to know it either, there's always another way to the answer. 6) see below 7) Never heard of it. 6) is the sort of question that really put me off GCSE CDT. What is this question really trying to discover? Is it the recall of some physical fact that may be useful? Is it checking that you've absorbed the official national curriculum approved process of thought for design? Not even that - it's asking about some trivial classification of research methods (no doubt from the list of allowed thought modes compiled in Whitehall). I remember that we weren't allowed to come up with designs based on our judgement and then make an ex post facto explanation of why it was a good idea; there was a process to be followed. Very alienating. | | Friday, June 5th, 2009 | | 12:34 pm |
Addendum
Please hold.. Your job is important to us. A cabinet Minister will be available soon to assist you. Please hold. | | Thursday, April 2nd, 2009 | | 12:52 pm |
When noun phrases attack
The Royal Bank of Scotland which window through which a brick can be thrown is not the true Royal Bank of Scotland. (I was going to make a post about how an institution isn't its branches nor its staff, but I think I'll let that sentence stand for itself :) | | Friday, March 20th, 2009 | | 4:27 pm |
Replacement car time
On Wednesday I was just heading from taking Laura to work back to my own office, when the car died on me. Suddenly - I was halfway round a roundabout, and had to coast to the outside. Attempts to restart it failed; the engine would turn over but nothing happened. So I put the hazard lights on, sat by it in the sun, and waited for a tow. It was a lovely sunny day, there are certainly worse times and places to break down. Today I rang the garage, and discovered that it was a cambelt failure. No clear quote to repair, but it'll certainly be more than £500 and possibly as much as £900. Given that I only paid £900 for the car, four years ago, I think it makes no sense to repair it but rather to get a more modern one. I'd been thinking of this for a while, since before the MOT earlier this month. What I want from a car is something large enough to carry stuff around in, but small enough to park. It's possible to fit a bike in the 306 if you put the seats down, which I've done quite lot. I've also carried furniture in there, and it can seat 3 adults in the back in reasonable comfort (which I've only done once). I also want economical but with a reasonable level of vroom. Cost-wise I'm not sure. The relationship between cost and quality, murky at the best of times, is particularly shaky when it comes to cars. I've always favoured having a cheap car to avoid worry, but I'm prepared to spend more if I can be convinced of the benefits. Then there's the possibility of spending a bit more on a statusmobile or vroom machine. Thoughts? Suggestions? :) I'll be looking around this weekend. At the moment I'm leaning strongly towards buying an updated version of the same car: Peugeot 306 | | Wednesday, March 11th, 2009 | | 5:20 pm |
Gadgetry
http://usb.brando.com.hk/ - if you're ever short of random crazy devices to plug into your computer, from ferris wheels to illuminated rollup keyboards, this site has it. Mousephones. Dubious SIM card devices. Missile launchers. USB thermometers (actually useful!). Portable handheld shredders. Giant stress buttons. Coke-proof half-keyboards for gamers. You could spend hours just boggling at their catalog... | | 2:12 pm |
Someone's un-rant
http://www.zedshaw.com/rants/rails_is_a_ghetto.htmlThat page used to be a huge intemperate rant about various members of the US Ruby development community and their alleged idiocy. Among the complaints was the theme that people started regarding it as a religion, or a cult of personality, and behaving accordingly with dissenters. Now he's taken it down and replaced it with a comment that perhaps young men are too eager to listen to the toughest-sounding man, even in a geeky field, and that in order to avoid fuelling it more he's binned his own rant. I find that very impressively wise. | | Thursday, February 12th, 2009 | | 7:37 pm |
| | Friday, February 6th, 2009 | | 3:08 pm |
On the offence
There's a lot of offence-taking happening at the moment. One wave of it is upsetting Ingrid; another wave is the bizarre events at the BBC surrounding the sacking of Carol Thatcher. In the latter case it seems to have got into second-order offence. People are taking offence at a different set of people being offended. That way madness lies. It's also highlighted to me how much Cambridge* is dependant on a sort of crystalized standing wave of cognitive dissonance. Especially where everything is subject to critique, when I realise what isn't critiqued the only conclusion I can come to is that it's invisible to the participants. I'll also highlight these words of ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) like_a_swallow
If this is the person I think it is, I know that he is beautiful and extremely kind in essence, and so it makes me sadder to see him in flames.
Through my life, I've benefited so much from acts of kindness, of forbearance, and of deep understanding, that it really amazes me. The vast majority of it came from "difficult" poeple: people I've been "warned off", told were strange or toxic, and so on, and so rarely from the regularly balanced.
I've had the experience of having connected very strongly with half a dozen people over the years who could be described as "controvertial". There's no way they'd get on with each other, but I've learned from them. They'd say things that others wouldn't, throw a different light on the world. More worldview illumination is always good. The thing to watch is what you choose to present to others; as a certain controvertial famous person once said, it's not what goes into your mouth that defiles you, it's what comes out of it. Have a little grace towards people, and you may be suprised. (* by "Cambridge" I mean "a particular dominant social scene" - other social scenes are available, but I wish I could find one) | | Friday, January 16th, 2009 | | 4:35 pm |
cruise control for cool
Motorola razr. I can't write RAZR - you're only allowed a capital after a full stop. In either autocomplete or dumb mode. How am I supposed to EMPHASISE stuff now? (wow I need some LJ entries with actual content don't I) | | Monday, November 3rd, 2008 | | 4:22 pm |
Theif of time
Not procrastination, but Norwich Union. Burglary is one thing, but my insurers are stealing my time. The strange thing is their initial response was fantastic - locksmith round in a couple of hours, etc. We've even started to get replacement items from Ival, who appear to handle that part of the business. But now the locksmith has sent me the bill as NU deny existence of the claim. They've lost it. Twice. I'm currently waiting for them to call me back again. "Within 15 minutes". Hah. The terrible thing is that all the individuals I've spoken to on the phone seem to be fine, it's just getting lost by a computer somewhere. I've not even begun to deal properly with the car insurers, who are supposed to be replacing the locks as one set of my car keys got stolen as well... | | Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008 | | 4:19 pm |
Financial scandal
I've spent a little while this afternoon trying to get a handle on what exactly is happening with the "credit crunch".. This is probably the most astonishing thing I've seen so far. | | Friday, September 19th, 2008 | | 2:44 pm |
Lovely weather we're having
Wow, it's warm out there. The science park looks lovely in the sun. Must try to stretch my legs and enjoy it if it lasts into the weekend... Should be at hazyjayne's pirate party this evening, TfL permitting. | | Thursday, August 21st, 2008 | | 1:23 pm |
| | Tuesday, August 12th, 2008 | | 12:17 pm |
Games, puns, dancing
Yesterday was action-packed: we went to the Edinburgh "Interactive" Festival, which was basically a conference with a public section demoing various games. In the basement were the finalists from the "Dare to be digital" student games development competition. We spent a good hour or or two wandering around playing their demos and talking to the developers. Quite a varied bunch; some were just terrible, quite a few were unimaginative platform games, and some were really impressively polished and should be published. Ones I liked: - "Grav" a first-person puzzle game with a "magnet gun" (vide Portal), in the HL2 engine. The sole developer appeared to be a 12-year old boy, with his mum enthusiastically flyering people around the exhibition. - "Boro-toro", a puzzle platform game where you have to move items around with the mouse (or Wiimote) to enable your character to cross the level. Well polished with fun plinky background music. Reminded me of Lemmings and The Incredible Machine. - "World of Champloo": silly name, most polished game (and publicity material) of the lot. Colour-themed arena battle with fantasy RPG influences. - "VegeMe": think Qix crossed with Katamari Damarcy. Very kawaii. Then we went to Tim Vine: Punslinger. This guy is great. We were having a look at things to go to on youtube, and Tim reminded us very much of Tommy Cooper. His entire show is an hour of puns :) Finally we rounded off the day with an evening at "Hemingway's Havana", a Cuban dance show. Amazingly energetic, beatiful, fantastic fun. I've never before come out of a show with so much more energy than I went in! | | Sunday, August 10th, 2008 | | 9:58 pm |
"Don't let a gift horse in the house"
The first fringe show we paid money to see :) Set in the luxurious historic venue of the Pleasance .. portakabin. Isabel Fey did a show of four energetic sketches: - woman giving a course on arachnaphobia. But she's filling in for her colleague and is terrified of spiders. This was a little thin. Energetic but not all that funny. - author does a workshop about her book, involving Charlotte Bronte and a time machine. This is where she starts to pick up with some fine character observation and a few good puns. - "Minipops" 20 years on: former child star who married her fellow child star, 20 years on. Fantastic - she does an increasingly acrimonious duet with him over "video link". - Finally, Miss Hull and Humberside giving a presentation on how to be a beauty queen. This was worth the price of admission alone for the indoor solo synchronised swimming! I'm enjoying the festival already. It really defies any attempts at planning; I'm just making a list of must-sees and then going on impulse to other things :) | | Friday, August 8th, 2008 | | 11:56 am |
Off to Edinburgh
Laura and I are off to the Festival for a week :) Anyone know any must-see fringe shows on this year? | | Friday, July 18th, 2008 | | 1:22 pm |
| | Thursday, July 10th, 2008 | | 2:44 pm |
Parental tech support
I'm soon going to go and see my parents and sort out their various computer woes. I was considering installing some sort of remote assistence thing to save me the need to do telephone debugging in future, does anyone have any experience of these? Both they and I have the standard home NAT device network setup, and are running windows XP. There's some sort of Windows remote assistence, but I vaguely remember that you have to use Messenger to get it to work? Suggestions appreciated... I might try gotomypc, which appears to be based on Citrix in some way. Although their product website is very, very slow. | | Thursday, June 26th, 2008 | | 11:46 am |
FATE WHY DO YOU MOCK ME
Another round of machine failures at work this morning. After all the rebooting, head-scratching, reconfiguring and generally kicking computers back into a working state, we were relieved to find that nothing was permanently damaged and everyone could carry on as normal. So we went for a coffee break. ... the one permanent failure is the coffee machine. It is flashing all its lights in a "NO COFFEE FOR YOU" pattern. :( | | Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 | | 10:16 pm |
Eurovision
So far I think Russia has had the best gimmick, Czech Republic the best eye candy and Ireland the worst joke entry I've ever seen. I quite liked the Bulgarian one, pity it didn't get through from this one. :) |
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