I’ll be cross-posting this to the other blogs shortly so apologies for duplication. I just heard from Mike at Blue Dragon about an author, John Shors, who’s written a novel based on street kids in Vietnam. Mike read the draft and has approved it – which is impressive given the usual stereotypes of street children. Apparently Shors has avoided all of these and Mike should know, given the fact he’s been working with these kids for so many years.
The book, Dragon House, is published by Penguin and available pretty much anywhere. You can order an autographed copy direct from John at the official web site… or if you go to Blue Dragon’s page and donate upwards of $100, John will send you a free one! Either way, part of the proceeds from the novel will be wending their way to the kids in Vietnam.
Well the Windows 7 Release Candidate is available for download. For free. If you want it, it’s a 2.3Gb DVDISO file and available from this link to the download information page. You’ll need a MicrosoftLive ID of some description, if you don’t already have one. Your free license key is linked to this ID so if you lose the key, it’s easy to get it back again.
As my copy trickles down at a meg a second (!), I’m sat waiting for some kit I ordered yesterday – a 160Gb internal IDE hard drive for my laptop and an external drive enclosure into which I’ll put the soon-to-be-replaced 120Gb drive I’m taking out. Sadly it looks like 160Gb is the largest drive I can get for my laptop due to IDE/ATA being superceded by SATA drives.
Still, the extra 40Gb will be enough space for another partition big enough for Win7 testing. Yes I know I don’t like Microsoft as such, but I still maintain that XP was excellent… up to a point. That point, generally, was about a year of hard use and application installs – and failed uninstalls. The chaff left behind by badly-written apps (and Windows updates) is the biggest problem faced by XP as it slows the system down incredibly and without a lot of forethough and know-how can drag system performance right down.
It’s one reason I prefer Ubuntu right now. It seems to do a much better job of getting rid of this bumph, even going so far as to clearing the /tmp (temp) folder every reboot. In fact, it deletes files on-the-go as it determines you no longer need them, such as if you close the web page that YouTube video’s on. Windows, as far as XP – I can’t comment on Vista as I’ve avoided it deliberately – didn’t seem to understand the definition of the term “temporary”…
Anyway, in a couple of days I should have the equipment I need to mirror my existing drive, add a partition and install the Release Candidate. I guess we’ll find out in a few weeks if I reckon it’s a worthy successor to XP.
We’ve all had it, but how does deja-vu work? Have you ever tried to figure out when you actually had that “pre-memory” that you experience when you’re doing something else? When did you “foresee” what you’re doing at this moment? Is there a standard time between advance memory and actually having something happen?
It does make me wonder if we actually all live a set distance in the past and are always “remembering” the future. Only it actually breaks down once in a while and we don’t get these precognitive experiences. Other side of the coin, if you will.
Or… perhaps we all live in the future and we spend most of our lives remembering what happened a set time ago. Except once in a while it hiccups and we actually see what’s happening now.
Newcastle Eagles, actually. They’ve just won the British Basketball League playoffs for the fourth time in five years, which isn’t bad going. I don’t follow basketball, but at least it’s good to see another of our teams doing well – it’s all good for the region. Bad luck to Everton Tigers who they beat – maybe next year!
Instead, policy is set by the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, formerly one half of the Secretary of State for Education. This position is currently held by one Edward Balls, who’s an economist. Not a teacher. He never has been – as far as I can discover – involved in the teaching profession other than by being a student.
So, given the decline in educational standards that’s pervaded our system for the last dozen-or-so years, what on earth makes him think he’s right in what he does and that teachers shouldn’t be listened to when they’re discussing their own profession? I’m not saying teachers aren’t as good, or as dedicated. I’m saying the infrastructure they’re forced to work within is screwed and makes their jobs far harder than they should be.
The current news story is one of the two main teaching unions deciding to boycott SATs exams for 11 year-olds next year. From their professional point of view, the exams are a waste of time and serve only to feed league tables – something our current government loves and has adopted for many of the public services.
Thing is, I agree with them. Exams are fine in certain circumstances but when trying to prove the worth of a school they’re utterly pointless. It’s easy to train someone monkey-fashion to pass exams, especially 11 year-old children. Instead of being taught about a subject, teachers are forced to teach them how to pass a certain set of exams. This narrows the educational spectrum massively and serves no purpose for the children whatsoever.
All you have to do is look back to the 60s when we had an educational system to be proud of. Exams were hard. I defy anyone to compare a 1965 O-level in maths and the 2009 GCSE equivalent and tell me that they’ve not become easier. Leaving aside the Imperial system used back then (I admit that would make things more difficult in itself) but the breadth and depth of the subject matter is far greater in the older papers than the current ones.
In a bid to make our schools seem better, we’re making things easier for children. Seriously, what is the point in ensuring that 30% pass with A-grades (or whatever the figure is) if we’re managing that by lowering the standards? Part of the reason we have to lower the standards is that teachers currently have to waste so much time coaching children through exams every other year.
We already live in a society where children (and adults) are handed things on a platter. By making schooling easier, we’re ensuring the production of generations which feel they don’t have to work that hard – if at all – to achieve what they want. Generations that’ll settle for what they can get with minimum effort.
No wonder the country’s in a complete mess. If something’s worth having, you have to work for it.
Now, I just want to make it clear that my criticism here is not levelled at teaching staff or the pupils themselves. It’s at the system, and at the government(s) that have created this system. As with much of our social infrastructure, the whole thing needs torn down and redesigned. Remember that old “back to basics” promise we were given? Why can’t we have that?
And isn’t one of the most basic things taking a person from within an organisation and promoting them to the top – simply as they have a lifetime of experience from which to draw? So how’s about making an ex-head teacher the next Secretary for Education?
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