Blog of the programming P.I.M.P.

The End

Pimp_Daddy — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 23:08:00 GMT

Hi everyone. I know I haven't posted in a while, but I've had my reasons. Work has taken over a large chunk of my life and I've discovered new things. While I enjoyed my time here at theSpoke, both by posting on my blog and being on the download selection for a short time when it was Spoke v1, I'm not going to be posting here anymore. If any of you are still interested in what's going on in my life and what my thoughts are about things, you can check out two new blogs I've set up:

An Educational Critique
Life: Downloaded

The first is more work-related and the second is more about my life and any non-education related thoughts I have. Both of the above links are for feedburner RSS feeds purely because I want to see how the stats system works.

Goodbye theSpoke.

Education - the rise and fall.

Pimp_Daddy — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 16:48:00 GMT

Year after year I hear the same old line about standards falling because exam pass rates are up. This is the same at both GCSE and A-Level. It was exactly the same when I was at both of those levels. It never seems to enter people's minds that perhaps students may just be doing better. Let's not forget, a few decades ago the school leaving age was 14 and there were less subjects available to pupils/students. Now they have a longer period of education and a greater choice - so it's more likely that they are going to be studying something that suits them. That means success in exams and greater pass rates. Nobody has picked up on that in the mainstream media at all and it really annoys me.

However, this doesn't mean that I think the education system in Britain is perfect. There has been some news recently about modern foreign languages not being compulsory in the National Curriculum. That is absolutely shocking. We talk about multiculturalism. We also hear about more and more British citizens going abroad for their holidays. There's also the issue of international business dealings. How are we meant to communicate without at least a basic knowledge of modern foreign languages and their associated cultures. I might not remember a great deal of the French and German that I was taught at school, but I'm glad I was exposed to it. I'm also glad that I remember enough to be able to have a good start if I wanted to go on a refresher course one day. It'd be more difficult if I knew nothing about either of those languages.

Modern foreign languages aren't the only problem. There's less and less physical education in the school system now. I wasn't exactly the most sporty person when I was in the 11-16 age bracket, but in hindsight I'm so glad the provision was there. There is less time for P.E. in schools now and many playing fields are either being sold or being built upon. How is there supposed to be substantial amounts of rigorous, taught excercise when that sort of thing is happening. There is only so much that you can do in sports halls.

Children are tested waaaay too much as well. It puts too much pressure on them early on. It's all because the government is focused on targets. You can get young kids to achieve and still test less.

That last point brings me on to another pet hate of mine. The government wants 50% of the country to have university-level education. That is just stupid. Yes, increase the numbers by making it more accessible - but 50%?? How can the quality of university education be sustained? Well, top-up fees have been introduced in an effort to provide the institutions with the finances needed to provide adequate resources. The thing is, if courses are more expensive this makes universities less accessible because fewer people can afford to go to them. Grants have been re-introduced, but they will only be available for the poorest students - many won't benefit. If the government stopped setting these ridiculous targets, then things might improve. It might be a slower process - but it might just get better.

What do the rest of you think?

Fixed

Pimp_Daddy — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 01:50:00 GMT

I've now been able to get Windows PowerShell installed. It was a tortuous process involving deleting a load of keys and values that were buried deep in the registry. I have to thank Lee Holmes for the help he gave me.

Microsoft Command Shell

Pimp_Daddy — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 22:39:00 GMT

Yes, I know it's changed to PowerShell, but at the moment I can't try the renamed version because I can't get the old Command Shell off my system. I can only put it down to the fact that it was a beta product. It's stuck in Add/Remove Programs without a Remove button. There are no folders for it in Program Files (or anywhere else) either. I've tried using RegCleaner to identify anything to do with the msh that I can remove, but it didn't help. I've just been going through the registry using regedit and manually trying to remove entries. I have found one or two things, but it's a tortuous process.

Does anyone have a way of helping me to completely remove any evidence of Command Shell so I can try out PowerShell?

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Pimp_Daddy — Sat, 05 Aug 2006 23:16:00 GMT

My blog content has changed a lot since I started. It started being about tech and my personal life, but now it's more about higher education. theSpoke was originally designed to be a tech-oriented community. I'm wondering whether I should continue to blog here or move somewhere else. I'm also taking into account the fact that not many people blog here now.

I'm concerned

Pimp_Daddy — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 14:33:00 GMT

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/nottinghamshire/5235032.stm

Degree Essays UK seems to think that students are only going to use what it sells them as a 'starting point', which concerns me greatly. Firstly, it's either incredibly naiive or just a lie and secondly it's providing another way for the weaker students to cheat and avoid doing hard work to get results. If a student needs a reference or a starting point of some description, they can look on the internet, read a book, look at a magazine or simply ask questions in a lecture. If a student spends the ridiculous amount of money Degree Essays UK want, then they deserve any punishment that is coming their way.

Whether the essays are original or not, the fact remains that the student did not create it, which is a form of cheating and that should never be allowed.

What do the rest of you think?

A rare burst of creativity

Pimp_Daddy — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 22:21:00 GMT

I've come up with some designs for things like posters that are to do with my area at the student union. I'll try and think of some more and pick the right one at the end, with some help from the VP Media & Communications - after all, she is responsible for what posters go up in the union. Plus, she's a hell of a lot more creative with posters than I am!

Some of these will form part of what I going to put on my stall at the Fresher's Fayres. The boards will have all sorts of advertising about student reps, the training team and the postgraduate committee, among other things. There'll also be a computer where people can sign up to be put into rep elections.

Things are going quite well so far. There could be one difficult moment on Monday regarding Senate reps, but apart from that it's just more work in the office.

Work and papers

Pimp_Daddy — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 03:17:00 GMT

I didn't have many meetings this week - however, I was still kept busy with things ranging from senate representation to this thing called Collaborative Provision - which is basically the University working with partner colleges on certain degree programmes. There was many more emails and phone calls than usual - and the first semester hasn't even started yet!

Anyway, you may have noticed that I've been ranting a bit recently. It's not because I'm stressed all the time, but mainly because there are things you hear and you wonder whether they are are made up because they're so ridiculous.

There isn't much to rant about at the moment, apart from one or two stories in the papers - but newspapers aren't my only source of information. I hope nobody here only relies on the papers - you're making a grave mistake if you are - especially if the papers that you're reading are tabloids.

Apparently students own gadgets!

Pimp_Daddy — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 18:30:00 GMT

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/5215944.stm

According to this article based on a survey by YouGov, students are buying gadgets such as mp3 players and laptops.

<sarcasm> Well, isn't that a surprise! I never knew that before </sarcasm>

It must have been a low-news day at the BBC if they're producing things like this. It's been widely known for a while now that student s are buying more expensive items.

The article also suggests that students are buying luxuries such as clothes and wardrobes - WOW!

The students who were surveyed didn't find their spending to be overly extravagant. They just felt they were buying what was needed. Calling something like an mp3 'needed' is reasonably worrying as it will hardly have as much benefit as things like food and water. However, this is another aspects of students that has been known for a long time and is probably because different generations can have different standards.

What in the hell is Bristol Uni thinking?

Pimp_Daddy — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 21:00:00 GMT

Click here

The above link shows you an article which has an example of stupidity in it's purest form. Bristol University currently runs summer schools for the visually impaired which have been highly popular for many years. Due to funding issues, it's decided to close them. They they have to focus on the main objectives of the university. That's a ridiculous statement as the main objective of any university is to educate. These summer schools educate people, therefore it's part of the core values of the institution.

Apparently few universities do that sort of thing, so taking it away has naturally caused outrage. They are denying a large group of people the ability to gain skills and better jobs. What do you think about this?

Many things

Pimp_Daddy — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 22:09:00 GMT

Ok, first thing is that Tiger Woods put in such a great performance all the way through the Open and definitely deserved to win it. Naturally, he was very emotional after his last putt and he is now joint second with the great Walter Hagen for the number of majors won. Chris DiMarco also had a tremendous tournament and finished in second place. After his personal problems it must have felt great to finish where he did and I would think that he will be in the US Ryder Cup side.

Apart from watching the golf, I've also been playing with some of the features of my digital camera. I finally decided to read the instruction book so I could find out how to take movie clips and while the quality isn't cinema-like, it is good for a small camera. I've also had a look at HDR, which involves taking multiple images of the same thing at different exposures, merging them together and doing what is called tone-mapping. I've seen some pretty spectacular examples of this, but unfortunately it didn't go too brilliantly - mainly because I didn't take the shots in exactly the same position. Oh well, at least I know the technique now.

Another thing I've been looking at is .NET 3.0 and the Windows SDK. Yes, I know it's been around for a while, but I just never had enough time to look at it in great detail. I make quite a few Windows Forms apps, but I realise if I'm going to keep them looking up to date and fresh, I need to use things like the WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation). I might also have a look at things like CardSpace in the future too. I haven't done much programming in the last few months and it'd be nice to do some again.

I'm famous

Pimp_Daddy — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 01:38:00 GMT

Some of you will know two former Microsoft employees called Gretchen Ledgard and Zoe Goldring who set up their own recruitment business called JobSyntax. I read the blog they have on their site, which is in a similar vein to the award-winning Jobsblog they contributed to at MS. Yesterday I had an entire blog entry dedicated to me and I appreciate the time Gretchen took to answer my question. It was basically to do with the fact that I'm worried about staying out of computer-related jobs for too long and that having a negative effect in my future career. You can find her response here:

http://jobsyntax.com/blogs/jobgals/archive/2006/07/17/430.aspx

Since I read that response I now feel I have a clearer idea of what I have to do in the future to maximise my prospects of getting a computer job. Yes, I want to eventually get a job that involves management - but I can't go straight into that even though I'm VP Academic Representation.

The internet is a series of tubes.

Pimp_Daddy — Sun, 16 Jul 2006 16:47:00 GMT

I first heard heard about this on This Week In Tech. It has to be one of the funniest things I've ever heard. Senator Ted Stevens clearly knows absolutely nothing about the internet. You would have thought he'd do a bit more research, or even get his advisers to look for him. 'Tubes' eh? While it's really funny, it's quite worrying that that sort of thing even gets to the Senate meetings of one of the most powerful nations in the world.

Jon Stewart comments on this brilliantly.

End of the week

Pimp_Daddy — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 16:17:00 GMT

Thursday was my last day attending the graduation ceremonies and I really enjoyed them. It was good to get pictures of my friends - especially since I might not see some of them again. I put all the shots on Flickr. You can see the pictures of where those ceremonies were taking place here.

On Friday it was back to normal, carrying on with some work in the office. It looks like I might be able to send of the National Postgrad Committee delegate forms for an annual conference taking place in Birmingham. I also managed to finish of the content for the revised student rep handbook. There's less pages in it, but certain bits have been updated and it's all relevant.

I have a few committees next week, but they should be interesting and I'll still have time to get other work done in preparation for fresher's week. It might be a long way off, but there's plenty for each sabbatical officer to do. One of the things involves putting together boards for my area for the volunteers fayre in fresher's week.

Honorary

Pimp_Daddy — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 02:03:00 GMT

Professor Bernhard Sheuble and Dame Kelly Holmes were given honorary degrees in the morning's degree ceremony today. In the afternoon it was Alwyn Humphries and Gervase Phinn. All of them gave very good speeches. Some were quite inspirational and others were very funny. The afternoon ceremony was great because there were huge cheers from the crowd for a lot of the graduands/graduates and some even did comical walks across the platform. While some might think that isn't good for this sort of thing, I thought it was brilliant. That's because it's really hard to keep a constant smile when people walk by unless you've e.g. got something funny to smile about.

Anyway, I've got two more ceremonies in the kevlar-like robes and then it's office work on Friday. I have enjoyed the ceremonies, but not the shedding of roughly 3 gallons of sweat!

Tomorrow's honorary graduates will be Ann Stevenson, the writer and poet and Kevin McNamara, the well-known British politician.