The penny suddenly dropped this morning as to why it was that at 11pm last night I had been struggling to complete some work I'm paid to do before a midnight deadline. Before you ask, no, I hadn't been out gallivanting all day and left it till the last minute. I'd been slaving over it diligently. So why hadn't I finished it earlier in the day? The answer's obvious really when you think of it. Cast your mind back to the adverts that have been appearing in a number of different forms on our televisions recently for a well known computer manufacturer and you'll probably spot the problem quicker than I did. Simple! I'm not a PC.
So why am I not a PC? I teach. I wear glasses, sometimes and a ring. All of those things according to the advert are characteristics of people who are PCs. It comes back to logic really. If you are something, then you must display all the characteristics of that something. Just because you have one or more of those characteristics it doesn't necessarily follow that you are that something. So having got that out of the way, haven't I just proved that PCs are not necessarily teachers?
Now that brings me to the next question I'm pondering. If only a PC could do my job in the stated number of hours it should take, but a PC isn't a teacher, can anyone do the job? Discuss! While you think whether there's any logical answer to the question I'd better get back to work. There's another deadline due soon.
Friday 29 May 2009
Thursday 28 May 2009
Not Much!
I don't begrudge Andrew Altman his £195,000 a year as chief executive of the Olympic Legacy company,[1] really I don't, though I do wonder where the money to pay any performance related bonuses he might be awarded will come from. Londoners of course will be pleased that every effort is being made to ensure that the park's construction will benefit them all in the years to come and that it doesn't become just another white elephant.
I do wonder though, how the role of the Olympic Legacy Company is defined. In a February article,[2] London First said "it needs strong leadership too, of the calibre of John Armitt or Seb Coe, so that good intentions turn into reality." Surely such leadership should have been put in place before the final designs for the Olympic park were approved and building work started? There is much work to be done on selling the space to interested parties after the event but I would have thought it was now too late to alter the infrastructure plans in any serious way.
The London mayor's office brought in Bob Kiley to try to sort out the mess which was then London Transport. Kiley famously described the maintenance contracts he inherited[3] as part of the public private finance initiatives as having been drawn up "on the other side of Venus" . Let's hope that a similar fate doesn't await Mr Altman. At least he can look forward to a generous payoff if the job gets too much though. Mr Kiley was reported to be paid[4] "£3,200 a day for doing not much" after his resignation in 2005. I wouldn't mind being paid £3,200 a day for doing something, let alone "not much"!
[1] O’Connor, Ashling (28 May 2009) Olympic Park's future to be assured by Andrew Altman, American regeneration expert The Times, Main section Page 20 [online] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/olympics/london_2012/article6374849.ece
[2]London First (Feb 2009) Olympic Legacy Masterplan Framework - London First welcomes real progress [online] http://www.london-first.co.uk/news/detail.asp?record=100
[3] Clement, Barrie (5 April 2004) Bob Kiley: 'We're still with the sherpas on the lower parts of the mountain, trying to find a way to the top' The Independent [online] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/bob-kiley-were-still-with-the-sherpas-on-the-lower-parts-of-the-mountain-trying-to-find-a-way-to-the-top-558912.html
[4]Muir, Hugh (29 March 2007) Former transport chief describes his new role: £3,200 a day for doing not much [online] http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/mar/29/localgovernment.transportintheuk
Sunday 24 May 2009
Sheep
There's never much competition for the various sections of the Sunday paper that flop onto our doormat with a thud. Everyone seems to have their own favourites. There's too much there to read thoroughly in any case without setting aside the entire week. My usual strategy is to skim the stories in every section in an hour at most and mark ones I plan to return to later in the week. Inevitably recycling claims many of those that remain undevoured by Thursday night.
I wonder if high street shops are warned of which gadgets will appear on the pages of supplements such as In Gear and Travel, both Sunday Times offerings, ready for the rush on Sunday afternoon. Today's featured gadgets include a SatNav for walkers[1]. Now don't get me wrong, SatNavs are great and next time I feel a sudden urge to go on a walk without having made any advance preparations I'll definitely consider downloading one of these OS walkers' maps to my GPS enabled phone. The snag is, for me at least, that it would create more problems than it solves at the present time. For one thing I'm not in the habit of keeping my walking boots in the car. They're still languishing in the garage covered in mud from the last walk. This brings me to the next problem. Will the walks you can download to your phone have any more information about which corners of a field closest to the style nearest to the pub on the way home have not been transformed by a herd of Friesians to a 2 foot deep quagmire, than the out of date walks guide on my bookshelf? No? I thought not. We dropped our map in said quagmire. It survived that, a little muddy perhaps, but the hosepipe outside the pub claimed it later! The SatNav probably wouldn't have survived even the mud.
I'm left thinking that for now at least I'll stick to good old fashioned maps. There's something rather good about being able to see the entire walk the whole time if you fold the sheet carefully enough. Then there's the later argument about which way you actually went as opposed to where you intended to go. Was that photo of you taken at the top of the peak or was it really only the hillock beside you walked up by mistake? It would really spoil the fun over lunch too if you couldn't recall the tale of how you had to climb the barbed wire fence to get back to the path without a 2 mile detour.
Anyhow, happy walking this weekend everyone, and if you see a sheep burping, do take a picture. Lamb may be off the menu soon[2] if too many farmers have a sudden urge to save the environment.
[1] Matt Rud, (24 May 09) SatNavs for Walkers , Sunday Times Travel Section Page 4 [online] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/travel/walks/article6342351.ece
[2] Jonathan Leake (24 May 09) Burping of the Lambs Blows Roast off the Menu, Sunday Times Main Section Page 11 [online] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6350237.ece
I wonder if high street shops are warned of which gadgets will appear on the pages of supplements such as In Gear and Travel, both Sunday Times offerings, ready for the rush on Sunday afternoon. Today's featured gadgets include a SatNav for walkers[1]. Now don't get me wrong, SatNavs are great and next time I feel a sudden urge to go on a walk without having made any advance preparations I'll definitely consider downloading one of these OS walkers' maps to my GPS enabled phone. The snag is, for me at least, that it would create more problems than it solves at the present time. For one thing I'm not in the habit of keeping my walking boots in the car. They're still languishing in the garage covered in mud from the last walk. This brings me to the next problem. Will the walks you can download to your phone have any more information about which corners of a field closest to the style nearest to the pub on the way home have not been transformed by a herd of Friesians to a 2 foot deep quagmire, than the out of date walks guide on my bookshelf? No? I thought not. We dropped our map in said quagmire. It survived that, a little muddy perhaps, but the hosepipe outside the pub claimed it later! The SatNav probably wouldn't have survived even the mud.
I'm left thinking that for now at least I'll stick to good old fashioned maps. There's something rather good about being able to see the entire walk the whole time if you fold the sheet carefully enough. Then there's the later argument about which way you actually went as opposed to where you intended to go. Was that photo of you taken at the top of the peak or was it really only the hillock beside you walked up by mistake? It would really spoil the fun over lunch too if you couldn't recall the tale of how you had to climb the barbed wire fence to get back to the path without a 2 mile detour.
Anyhow, happy walking this weekend everyone, and if you see a sheep burping, do take a picture. Lamb may be off the menu soon[2] if too many farmers have a sudden urge to save the environment.
[1] Matt Rud, (24 May 09) SatNavs for Walkers , Sunday Times Travel Section Page 4 [online] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/travel/walks/article6342351.ece
[2] Jonathan Leake (24 May 09) Burping of the Lambs Blows Roast off the Menu, Sunday Times Main Section Page 11 [online] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6350237.ece
Saturday 23 May 2009
Urban Rose
I'm not usually a fan of urban spaces. Perhaps I associate them too much with windy post-war shopping centres and soulless high rise tower blocks. There are exceptions of course. Take the Rose theatre at Kingston upon Thames. We were there for The Winslow Boy.[1] It was superbly acted but the theatre itself caught my imagination too. It has little in common with other theatres in the round, apart from its shape, in terms of construction methods. Its ceiling resembles the spokes of a huge iron cartwheel and one could be forgiven for thinking that someone forgot to apply the final layers of plaster to the foyer areas. I wanted to draw that ceiling, but even more delicious were the geometric shapes of receding triangles that lent perspective to the rooms of the set. Oh for a piece of charcoal!
This wasn't the first time in the last week that I'd found myself wishing I had a sketchpad in hand, not because I think I could necessarily turn out any kind of masterpiece but because art of any kind is somehow rather therapeutic; a pastime that is totally absorbing. The subject doesn't really matter. It could be anything that catches the eye from the odd perspectives in the theatre set to Ascot hats in someone else's painting or the stunning swathes of colour of an Azalea border.
Earlier that day we had been in an outpatients' waiting room. It was kind of them to display such lovely pictures on the walls. They were for sale of course, but my interest was in how they were painted rather than imagining them on my walls. This time I had a pencil at least but it was time to go before I had had a chance to finish. Perhaps I'll continue next time, or perhaps not. I should probably tear up my efforts and start again.
My week began however with a walk in the park; not any old park but one on the edge of a sixties shopping centre in Sussex. The sort where wind whistles round corners on blustery autumn days, leaves huddle in gutters and shopping lists are plucked skywards from your hands by sudden gusts, if you fail to grip them tightly enough. I'd walked around three sides of a square, depressingly, past abandoned shop-fronts on every corner, when I discovered that to reach my starting point the shortest route led through the park. For a few hundred yards I was in another land, of escapism, imagination and beauty. What an unexpected find.
[1] The Winslow Boy by Terrence Rattigan is reviewed at http://www.rosetheatrekingston.org/whats-on/the-winslow-boy
This wasn't the first time in the last week that I'd found myself wishing I had a sketchpad in hand, not because I think I could necessarily turn out any kind of masterpiece but because art of any kind is somehow rather therapeutic; a pastime that is totally absorbing. The subject doesn't really matter. It could be anything that catches the eye from the odd perspectives in the theatre set to Ascot hats in someone else's painting or the stunning swathes of colour of an Azalea border.
Earlier that day we had been in an outpatients' waiting room. It was kind of them to display such lovely pictures on the walls. They were for sale of course, but my interest was in how they were painted rather than imagining them on my walls. This time I had a pencil at least but it was time to go before I had had a chance to finish. Perhaps I'll continue next time, or perhaps not. I should probably tear up my efforts and start again.
My week began however with a walk in the park; not any old park but one on the edge of a sixties shopping centre in Sussex. The sort where wind whistles round corners on blustery autumn days, leaves huddle in gutters and shopping lists are plucked skywards from your hands by sudden gusts, if you fail to grip them tightly enough. I'd walked around three sides of a square, depressingly, past abandoned shop-fronts on every corner, when I discovered that to reach my starting point the shortest route led through the park. For a few hundred yards I was in another land, of escapism, imagination and beauty. What an unexpected find.
[1] The Winslow Boy by Terrence Rattigan is reviewed at http://www.rosetheatrekingston.org/whats-on/the-winslow-boy
Wednesday 20 May 2009
Food for thought
Heinz Wolff is probably best known for the Great Egg Race, a TV series which inspired a generation of young engineers in the late 70s and early 80s. I remember thinking at the time how much I would have loved to be a contestant if I had had the opportunity. Wolff will be forever associated in my mind with technological invention. Last night's lecture[1] at Ealing Town Hall, organised as part of the OU's 40th anniversary celebrations, showed an altogether different and more reflective side of him, however, that I hadn't hitherto appreciated.
Professor Wolff's lecture wasn't what I expected. It was entitled 'Frugality and Mutuality, Crunch and Care' and publicity said he would 'reflect on what the world will be like when he is 111'. In fact he did talk about exactly that, but not in terms of what inventions we could expect but about the unwillingness of youth to engage in scientific and technological careers in richer western countries and the dangers of a nation becoming over-reliant on other nations for essential products and processes. The mutuality theme was developed further with an example showing how a scheme such as LETS[2] could be extended to provide voluntary aid for the elderly or infirm, with the volunteers earning rewards in kind when they in turn needed help in the future.
It would have been interesting given a longer question time to have debated with Professor Wolff the economic advantages of a country specialising in its most profitable products, especially in current times where national debts are mounting, however his historical perspectives of a country needing to be able to manufacture essential chemicals in war time added to a compelling argument. As for his caring theme, middle class wives can, for the most part, no longer afford to spend the copious amounts of time in voluntary activities that our grandmothers might have done, so the kind of incentives that Professor Heinz was proposing seemed a novel idea that might just work. There is the contrary argument though that time spent in voluntary work to earn credits redeemable for help at a later date will not be paying for a pension which will fund such help should those credits be insufficient. There was much food for thought in any case.
[1] Open University (2009) Heinz Wolff 40th anniversary lecture http://www.open.ac.uk/platform/campus/events/heinz-wolff-lecture
[2] LETS - Local Exchange Trading Systems http://www.transaction.net/money/lets/
Professor Wolff's lecture wasn't what I expected. It was entitled 'Frugality and Mutuality, Crunch and Care' and publicity said he would 'reflect on what the world will be like when he is 111'. In fact he did talk about exactly that, but not in terms of what inventions we could expect but about the unwillingness of youth to engage in scientific and technological careers in richer western countries and the dangers of a nation becoming over-reliant on other nations for essential products and processes. The mutuality theme was developed further with an example showing how a scheme such as LETS[2] could be extended to provide voluntary aid for the elderly or infirm, with the volunteers earning rewards in kind when they in turn needed help in the future.
It would have been interesting given a longer question time to have debated with Professor Wolff the economic advantages of a country specialising in its most profitable products, especially in current times where national debts are mounting, however his historical perspectives of a country needing to be able to manufacture essential chemicals in war time added to a compelling argument. As for his caring theme, middle class wives can, for the most part, no longer afford to spend the copious amounts of time in voluntary activities that our grandmothers might have done, so the kind of incentives that Professor Heinz was proposing seemed a novel idea that might just work. There is the contrary argument though that time spent in voluntary work to earn credits redeemable for help at a later date will not be paying for a pension which will fund such help should those credits be insufficient. There was much food for thought in any case.
[1] Open University (2009) Heinz Wolff 40th anniversary lecture http://www.open.ac.uk/platform/campus/events/heinz-wolff-lecture
[2] LETS - Local Exchange Trading Systems http://www.transaction.net/money/lets/
Wednesday 6 May 2009
The Art of Processing
I've been involved recently in an Open University project to write a collaborative book on Processing, a Java based computer art API. The project has been driven by the creative energies of Darrel Ince, Professor of Computing at the OU. The original idea being to tempt 85 volunteers into writing a chapter each on the subject, plus a program, aiming to teach Processing as well as illustrating what could be achieved by it.
The project was fuelled by the amazing enthusiasm of its many participants last September and should have reached its conclusion about now. Originally, it was intended that all the participants would put their works in progress in cyberspace using a blog. The sheer awkwardness of doing this without losing any of the formatting proved a real barrier in practice, but a considerable number of the chunks are now there for all to see. Hopefully the book itself will be available in its entirety at some point as I'm looking forward to reading everyone else's efforts. "Processing", according to Holly Willis[1], "is allowing designers to push the boundaries of design". I wouldn't go that far with my simple sketches, but I have to admit they were great fun to do, if a little time consuming. My efforts can be can be found at http://writinginbytes.blogspot.com/
[1] Willis, Holly (2007) The Amazing Visual Language of Processing [online] http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/the-amazing-visual-language-of-processing (accessed 06 May 2009)
The project was fuelled by the amazing enthusiasm of its many participants last September and should have reached its conclusion about now. Originally, it was intended that all the participants would put their works in progress in cyberspace using a blog. The sheer awkwardness of doing this without losing any of the formatting proved a real barrier in practice, but a considerable number of the chunks are now there for all to see. Hopefully the book itself will be available in its entirety at some point as I'm looking forward to reading everyone else's efforts. "Processing", according to Holly Willis[1], "is allowing designers to push the boundaries of design". I wouldn't go that far with my simple sketches, but I have to admit they were great fun to do, if a little time consuming. My efforts can be can be found at http://writinginbytes.blogspot.com/
[1] Willis, Holly (2007) The Amazing Visual Language of Processing [online] http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/the-amazing-visual-language-of-processing (accessed 06 May 2009)
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