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I’ve started going through my old CDs now that I have them out of boxes and in a huge cupboard in the living room. While I’m pretty much mp3-only these days, I’ve a pretty huge collection and I can see me digging through and ripping some of the older ones. Amongst them are some classics I’d pretty much forgotten about so now and again I thought it would be nice to pop them up here. Some have memories that go with them, so do excuse me if I waffle.

As Hans would say, it’s my blog so I can write what I want!

First entry is the first release from a Hollywood band called Love/Hate entitled Blackout In The Red Room. To the best of my knowledge (without going to Wikipedia, in other words), they only released one other album – Wasted in America. [update: they had another five including a "best of"]

If memory serves, I got my first copy of this album – on vinyl – as part of a competition prize, probably at the Gateshead Garden Festival way back in the late 1980′s. I absolutely loved it. High tempo, sleazy, varied, shouty choruses… perfect.

I was also lucky enough to see the band at the Newcastle Riverside back in the days when it was a tiny venue, not the dance club or offices that it later became. This dinky place held around 500 (probably far less, really) and the gigs were rarely more than a tenner. This one was packed to the rafters and the band played pretty much the entire album plus a couple from the second album which hadn’t been released at the time. I recall the title track and a lovely ballad called “Don’t Fuck With Me”.

I believe the band are still going, with their last tour in 2009 including a UK leg that I didn’t know about (dammit). If the album’s still on sale, it’s definitely worth checking out. In the meantime, if you go to what I think is their official page (lovehate.com) there are links to all their songs in mp3 formats. Many of the links don’t work, but those for the first album certainly do.

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Oldies but Goldie: Love/Hate – Blackout in the Red Room

I know. I’m evil.

Still, what’s up?

I’m a fair bit of the way through a long-term teaching contract, my first as a full time certified teacher. I’ve landed on my feet with an excellent school, great support and (generally) good pupils. It’s great being able to get a good run at a job which is my own responsibility, but still a little worrying that I don’t have a permanent position. Obviously, I can’t complain – I have a job and there are plenty of other people who don’t. It’s just that lack of security as to what happens in a few months time?

Well, if there’s one thing that I really learned while travelling it was how to take one day at a time and roll with things.

For the three of you who didn’t know, Gillian and I are now engaged and will be getting married – in Jamaica – on October 22nd this year. I’ve set up another blog which will be filled with details about the wedding. As it stands, it has some background information, mainly about the engagement, but as the Big Day approaches I’ll try to put more things up.

Shortly before the wedding, though, we have another event… sometime in July (date to be determined shortly) we will be welcoming a new addition to the family! Gillian’s on week 11 at the moment and everything seems to be progressing well. We should know the sex of our little bundle of joy in the next couple of weeks. If it’s a boy, we’re sorted for room sharing as our youngest is also male. If it’s a girl I’m pre-empting puberty and applying for a shotgun license.

Work starts again tomorrow after the lengthy Xmas break and I have to be up and running as soon as I get in. This full time lark is a definite jump up from my probationary year – more responsibility, more hours, more classes – but it’s flying by. I’m covering pretty much every level that the school has to offer. I honestly don’t think there’s another job that offers this level of variety.

So that’s it at present. Engaged, father-to-be and teacher. A bit of a change from when I started this blog so many years ago!

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Life update

In addition, I got a new toy – a Panasonic Lumix TZ20. It has a cracking zoom and the photos from the gig tonight are definitely a step above what I’ve been getting in the past. Not professional level by any shot, but definitely more “keepers” than “chuckers” out of the 200+ I took. This means more upload time to Flickr, but what the heck. It’s all fun!

I also promise that I’ll try my best to get back to some general posts on here rather than the constant film and gig reviews.

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Big gig update

Little Mister's current favourite

I still hear a lot of people whinging about how children play too many computer games, and how they’re bad for them. I have a lot of experience of video entertainment (this doesn’t mean I’m any good – I’ve just played them a lot), and some limited experience in the child-rearing side of things but here are some things I’ve noticed.

Our littlest is around 3½. Despite his age, he’s still not a talker and has some communication issues which are mainly due to problems with his hearing. We got an Xbox at Christmas and he, of course, wanted to play all the time. But he was rubbish. Worse than me rubbish. Which is very rubbish indeed. He’s very active – too active, frankly. Runs circles round us and will chase the dog or cat for hours, bounce on the trampoline, run around outside until he falls over and comes home screaming… you know, a proper kid. As such I’ve no issues with him spending some time glued to the telly if it keeps him quiet and out of our hair for a bit.

There aren’t that many toddler-friendly games for the Xbox, but what we have so far are: De Blob 2, Megamind (scratched to hell and unplayable), Toy Story 3, Lego Indiana Jones and Lego Star Wars. Over time, he watched us playing and we often let him have a spare controller in co-op mode. This usually involved him twiddling the two joysticks randomly and giggling when a Lego character dropped off a cliff in an explosion of coins, releasing a Wilhelm scream. Or Wilhelm Wookie roar. Or whatever.

Hey, he was happy.

Over the last few weeks, though, he’s taken to it big style. He can’t read yet, which means we often have to explain things to him, but if the game has good use of imagery then this can help. Toy Story 3, for example, has “help” bubbles that show you a ghosted image of a character performing an action while the keys you need to press are displayed next to them. The Lego games are similar, although both games suffer from the player often having to be in just the right position for those buttons to work.

What’s amazed me, and prompted me to post this, is how quickly he’s come on since we sat him down with a controller and let him loose by himself. I just sat with him this morning as the played through the train stage at the start of TS3. Aside from one section which I did for him, he completed the whole thing himself. Picking aliens up and throwing them off the train, throwing bouncy balls at moving targets, smashing boxes open, jumping and double-jumping gaps and obstacles. Wow.

Lego Star Wars has captured his imagination more than the Indy game and its simple problems in the early levels are just right for him. After some demonstration from myself, he’s able to work out some of them with no assistance. Swapping to use the correct characters to perform a task is an example. If he sees a C3PO head, he knows he needs the right kind of droid. Sparkly things? Jedi force. Bounty Hunters only? Wander off, find a helmet machine, get a helmet, go back and get through the door.

And so on.

He can now control the characters and camera independently using the two joysticks. His timing for jumps is good. Not brilliant, especially double-jumps where he often can’t hit the jump key quickly enough in succession, but still pretty damn good.

Now, he’s a good kid with his other toys. He loves tool kits and his Toy Story figures – and his sister’s Lego much to her annoyance. But I don’t think we have much else that has improved his logic skills or hand-eye coordination as these computer games.

I actually think his communication has improved slightly as well, as he tries to explain where and how he’s stuck, or tells us what he’s managed to achieve.

Over and above that, he’s learned how to check whose profile is active when he comes to the console and change it to his own. It’s simple image recognition (as I said, he can’t read but he can identify the icons and avatars), but it also shows he’s aware of what “belongs” to him and to others.

So to those who say that kids shouldn’t be let anywhere near computer games? Think again. There’s a time, a place, and a use for them.

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Kids and computer games

Smashy Smashy

It’s been a while (again) since I had a non-review post on this blog, mainly as I post everything on Google+ and Facebook these days. In a bid to redress that balance, here’s a quick post about something that happened last night.

I’d popped out for the evening to see an old uni mate. Gillian asked me to pick her up a bottle of wine while I was out, which I duly did. The thing is, you can’t buy alcohol from the supermarket after 10pm up here so I had to buy it as I left the house, ferry it around and bring it home later on. Me being me, I also couldn’t just buy a bottle of wine. Not when Morrisons were doing cider on three for £5.

So I loaded the car up with my plastic bag containing one bottle of rosé, two Koparberg’s and a Bulmer’s for later.

I drove to Tom’s, stashed the booze in the boot for safe keeping, enjoyed my evening and headed home around 11pm. I even remembered, on the way back, to get the booze back out of the boot so it wasn’t slamming around when I went round corners.

Just as you get into our estate, there’s a single-lane humpbacked bridge. I waited for the lights to go green and drove over. Just as I went down the other side, a beautiful full-grown fox darted out in front of the car.

I jammed on the brakes.

The fox stopped, stared at me, pooped a bit of fox poop into its fox underwear and scarpered back off from whence it came.

The bag of bottles slid off the passenger seat into the footwell.

You know that “pop” sound that large bottles make when they are no longer bottle-shaped? Yeah, I heard that. As I pulled into the driveway I could smell the alcohol.

Thankfully, as everything was in a bag, there was no broken glass to dig around for. The three cider bottles had survived, but the wine was now only drinkable by a very desperate alcoholic who didn’t mind the mingled taste of carpet fibre.

So I now have a car that stinks of booze instead of stinking like “new car”. I am dreading being pulled over for something innocuous and then being forced to have a blood test because my car has been drinking and not me.

Thanks to those on facebook who’ve recommended something to get the smell away. Off to Morrison’s shortly to see if I can find any of the scary chemicals mentioned…

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My car smells of booze

Mr Russell,

I would be glad if you would clarify your statement on STV this evening that, I quote, “‘The actions of the Government and Local Government along with the new deal with teachers will ensure there are more jobs next year.”

I ask as your own figures state that there will be a drop of 1057 jobs this year. Far be it from from me, as a Computing teacher, to tread on the toes of the Maths or English departments to argue numbers or semantics, but I usually associate a “drop” with a lessening, i.e. resulting in a lower number. Not an increase, as the word “more” implies.

Or, dare I say it, are you just lying to the public in a bid to gain support while you destroy our education system?

Many thanks, (etc.)

If you want to ask him yourself, he’s available at Michael.Russell.msp@scottish.parliament.uk

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An open letter to Mike Russell

Image via Wikipedia

Or more specifically, making it harder to find teaching jobs.

I’m coming to the end of my probationary year through in Edinburgh and intend to move through to Glasgow in the summer to be with Gillian and the kids. Therefore I’ve been looking for a job in the area. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not naive, I know teaching jobs aren’t that easy to find at the moment. However, it seems that Glasgow Council are making it more difficult – and their methods seem purposeless.

Only one job for a Computing teacher has come up in Glasgow and I didn’t get an interview. Given the number of candidates (and I’m sure many were far more experienced than me) this isn’t a huge surprise and I’m not that downhearted about it.

What’s really getting my goat is that I inquired about being put onto the supply list for occasional work up until I can find a permanent position. “Sorry,” I was told, “Glasgow are only putting their own probationers onto their supply list”.

So, basically, to get a job in Glasgow you have to be working in Glasgow already. Let’s not take into account the fact that some of those probationers might be moving elsewhere and that some who studied in Glasgow (like me) took advantage of the “go anywhere” scheme promoted by the GTCS to fill vacancies elsewhere on the understanding we could head “home” afterwards.

The plot thickens, though, when I heard that only the best graded probationers in Glasgow would go onto their supply list. Now I’ve only heard this from one person, but it is a probationer who is within the system so I’ve no reason to doubt what they’re saying. I wasn’t aware that probationers were graded beyond “suitable”, “suitable with some extra time required” and “for the love of all that’s holy, don’t let them in a classroom again”.

So it seems that Glasgow have decided – somehow – to grade all their probationers. This applies to Primary, secondary and all subject specialities therein. It’s unrelated to any other council so there’s nothing for them to regulate against. Hence their “grading” must be completely arbitrary. Given that it’s the first time they’ve done it, it’s also unproven.

Right, so they grade all their teachers. They only allow the “top” ones onto the supply list. This assumes the aforementioned top ones don’t get permanent employment in Glasgow or elsewhere. Or that they’re not moving out of the area, perhaps as they themselves were on the “go anywhere” scheme.

Throwing in some random figures, let’s say there are 100 teachers. The top 20 get permanent posts, so you’re left with 80 who are OK ro good (or crap). 15 of these go elsewhere or drop out of teaching. Glasgow needs 100 new entries on the supply register so where does it get the space-fillers? The first 35 to apply from elsewhere, or from further down their graded list. Not the best, the first. Which means they’re not necessarily going to fill the register with anyone decent.

In addition, when a school seeks a supply teacher the local authority don’t say “here – you’re having this person”. They send out a list of potentials. The department head will then put out the feelers and seek references, official or otherwise. What “grade” they got is irrelevant.

In fact, I would expect that grading teachers would cause them to be more likely to end up skipping the supply list because – assuming a probationer is told how they’re doing grade-wise – it could be used as a “selling point” in interviews.

From what I’ve been able to find out, it’s only Glasgow that are doing this. None of the surrounding councils are bothering. Why? I have no idea. But I simply cannot figure out any actual reason for doing so that doesn’t revolve around generating paperwork and giving some council monkeys a job.

If the GTCS – the governing body for teachers in Scotland – doesn’t see fit to grade new teachers, why on earth do Glasgow Council think that they have the needs, or indeed the skills, to do so themselves?

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Making it even harder to find teachers

Image via Wikipedia

Sorry for the awful pun. It had to be done.

For those who don’t know, Scratch is a programming language geared primarily at younger children. We use it with our S2 classes (around 12-13 years old) although I am aware of many primary schools who also introduce it to children at a younger age.

Frankly, after a bit of struggling to begin with, I’ve found it to be a great language. Sure it doesn’t have a solution to every problem and yes, you often have to fiddle around a lot to get it to do precisely what you want but for the level it’s aimed it, it’s a fantastic tool.

The best thing is the layout. It’s bright, clear and gives very fast results. The colour-coding of different data types makes it easy for children to spot how the programs are put together. There’s no typing necessary (other than the occasional number) as the programs are built using jigsaw pieces with code on. The pieces change shape dynamically as code is formed into loops and the like. All very pretty.

Over the holidays I spent an hour or two with Little Miss (aged 10) who was very impressed with the simplicity. She managed to create a couple of short animations on her netbook. I went into full-on geek mode and created the attached Ghostbusters game (no copyright theft intended – it just seemed like a nice name).

Use the mouse to point your gun in the right direction and the space bar to fire. There are seven levels, on each of which you have ten bullets and have to hit the ghost five times. Clear a level using exactly five bullets and you get a bonus.

You can download Scratch from http://scratch.mit.edu/ for free. There are versions for Windows, Mac and more penguin-oriented operating systems.

My ghost-busting title is available as a single file here: Ghostbusters (ZIP file, 2.8Mb)

UPDATE: you can play the game online here!

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Scratch-ing an itch

Blue Dragon Children's Foundation

I’ve just been going through the “in progress” work that the wonderful Kristian (of Loondesign) is doing for Blue Dragon‘s website. The new “Kid’s stories” page details three tales of children who have found themselves fortunate enough to receive help from the crew at BDCF. Courtesy of a discussion I was having with someone on facebook recently, the third one made me wonder – why are people in different countries, yet in similar situations, so different.

I can’t link to the story directly as the site won’t be uploaded in its new form for a week or so, so I’ve pinched the relevant section:

Hanh’s story

Hanh grew up in Bac Ninh province with her mother, Khanh. Hanh’s father walked out on her even before she was born, so that mother and daughter were homeless and had to live in abandoned houses.

When Blue Dragon met Hanh, she was 12 years old and living in a decrepit old house with no electricity or water supply. The roof had caved in and snakes infested the toilet area.

Hanh was still going to school, but her mother could not afford to pay the fees much longer. This was a family in crisis.

Blue Dragon immediately offered Hanh support to go to school, and then we set about securing land for the family and building a house that they could be proud of.

Today, Hanh is in the final years of High School and looking forward to university. Their new house is kept immaculately clean, and Hanh displays her certificates of achievement from school on the wall for all to see.

Let’s get this down to the simple facts. A family of two living in horrid conditions as a result of being left with no money manage their best for 12 years. Someone offers them help. They get a new house, the child goes to school and does well. The house is cleaned and maintained – by them – and kept as good as new.

Compare this to the UK where we have a benefits system to help people who find themselves in such a situation. Before I begin, I know that not everyone is the kind of person who will do what I’m about to rant about, but a ridiculously large number of people are.

First of all, there wouldn’t be a the 12 year wait before someone “found” them. Shortly after financial problems started, they would be able to apply for assistance. A house would be forthcoming, or at the least a flat. Their rent would be covered and assistance given to find work. Schooling is, of course, free in the UK. As a nation, we are incredibly fortunate.

Given where I lived for 13 years (Bradford) and specifically the area within it, I saw far too many examples of people who took the free house and turned it into a complete dilapidated  pit. Lawns turned to jungles, rubbish left lying, windows broken. Absolutely filthy. The simple thought being that it cost them nothing and if it got bad enough they’d just be moved somewhere else – again, for free.

Children would refuse to attend school, assuming their parents bothered to try to get them to go. Instead, they’d spend their time loitering, committing crimes and ending up as the type of people who would be demanding another house of their own as soon as they were legally able.

The only major difference is that the Vietnamese family realised exactly how lucky they were to be given a fresh start. The appreciated it and showed their gratitude in taking this gift and showing how proud they were of the house and fresh start they had been given. A home to be proud of, academic achievements to boast about and a future they could never have dreamed of beforehand.

Here in the UK, we’re so used to getting something for nothing that we take our good fortune at being born in a comparatively wealthy country for granted. We’re like spoiled children – we want everything with no explanation as to why we’re getting it. To some extent it’s human nature to take the easiest route to solving a problem but some people, unfortunately, take this to extremes. Why put effort in when you can get something for nothing?

I think this is one of the reasons I enjoyed working in Vietnam so much, and especially with the children at the Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation. Everyone there appreciated what was being done for them. The vast majority took this piece of good fortune and turned it very much to their own advantage through hard work and with a great spirit. They knew they wouldn’t have another chance, and that they would have led a significantly worse life if they hadn’t.

If only we could make our own citizens realise how fortunate they are in comparison.

Related articles

• Thanks from Blue Dragon! (moshblog.me.uk)
• Re-sold into slavery (lookatvietnam.com)

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Why are people so different?

BT Home Hub 3

We just “upgraded” to a BT Home Hub 3.0 after having some problems with the old version 2 which kept losing settings (including the password). It looks nice, but don’t believe the press that it’s the “most sought after router on the market” or however they worded the hyperbole. If I was shopping for a router off my own back, this is not one I’d buy.

Don’t get me wrong. Setup is simple, but it’s still rather tied down as far as configuration goes despite the extra features available with the new firmware. A few points to ask include:

Why is there only one Gigabit Ethernet socket and three 100Mb/s ones?

Why do you claim it doesn’t get as hot as the v2 when the one we have would comfortably warm the tortoise’s run?

Why is there still no wireless bridging functionality?

Why is it still branded as a hub when it’s actually a router (OK, it just niggles)?

My main issue at present, though, is down to a series of dropped connections that we traced to a missing microfilter. Not, therefore, a connectivity problem related to the router but to an upshot of it – the redirection of failed connections to a “holding page” on the router which causes a ton of problems and solves none.

If the broadband connection drops and you try to access a web page, the browser redirects to “bthome.home”, an animated graphic of the front of the router which flashes to say that there’s no connection at present. All well and good – but what’s happened to the URL I was trying to get to?

The answer is that it’s now malformed, filled fill of “%” space-fillers, pre-pended by the aforementioned “.home” domain and with a SQL-style query suffix on the end.

In other words, if I was in the middle of some transaction when the connection dropped I’d not be able to get back to my intended target once it came back up. Prior to the v3, I’d simply wait and hit “refresh” a lot. Now hitting refresh just reloads the “your connection is down” page – even once the connection is once again live.

After all the lyrical waxing regarding automatic wireless channel-hopping and smaller footprint, it would have been nice if someone has actually got some users to check the flipping thing before they shipped it. Don’t get me wrong, it works well when the broadband’s ticking over, but when your connection goes down that’s a bad time to be further aggravated by poor software design.

Related articles

• BT Home Hub 3 ADSL Wi-Fi router (go.theregister.com)
• BT Home Hub 3 offers reliability other routers can’t match (telegraph.co.uk)

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BT Home Hub 3.0 – one major annoyance