LATWITV4 late release

Due to complications with my laptop, this weeks episode of look at the week in TV has been delayed till this afternoon.
In addition to this the release day for future episodes has been moved to Monday (at around 8PM). Obviously I apologise for the late release. Hopefully it won’t happen again.
On the plus side, you get 2 episodes 4 days apart which isn’t a bad thing.

Look at the week in TV 3

The 3rd episode it out already. And as readers of my blog you get to watch it 1 hour before everybody else.
Enjoy

Speedtest and Pingtest

For quite a few years now I’ve had the compulsive urge to test the speed of my internet connection.

By far the best of the tools that I’ve come across, must be speedtest. Nice flashy interface, an increasingly wide selection of servers,  and a comparison to your ISP’s average.
For the gamers out there, speedtest had recently rolled out pingtest. This tests you computers ping time, measures packet loss and also something called jitter which is as incomprehensible to me as wow and flutter.

So if like me your an obsessive compulsive when it comes to testing your internet speed, try speedtest and pingtest.

Look at the week in TV 2

The second episode of my little telly mickey take is now online. Please rate and review. Its the only way I’ll learn…

Look at the week in TV

Being a budding television pundit, I’ve started making these videos. I’ll aim to release them every Sunday afternoon, or at least every other Sunday on the brand new AppreciateThefunk youtube chanel.
The first episode is just a pilot, but as I write I’ve filmed the second one and will start editing as soon as possible.

Is firefox a resource hog?

While the opera users rub their hands with glee, I’d just like to say I’m not switching. Yet.

But as the title says, Firefox is quite possibly a resource hog. It slowly eats up your RAM, you don’t realise it at first, but keep it running for a few days and suddenly its using half a gig. Why does a browser need half a gig of ram? Given, if I’m watching iplayer, it may need a sizeable chunk. But 500 meg is too much. Even if your going to use the iplayer analogy, thats 45 mins worth of video. Its almost as if the term garbage disposal means noting to Mozilla.

Then again the problem might be due to bad flash programing on an individual website. Quite possibly we7 infact. Very good service, but I’m not sure how well they’ve implemented their player. I do know thats its unreliable. Maybe thats whats guzzling the RAM and I just haven’t spotted the pattern yet.
Now that I think of it quite a few websites that I frequent come hand in hand with poorly written flash actionscript (Is it even possible to write good actionscript?)

So thats it.  A minor problem that just gets my goat some times. Whose to blame. I’m sure I’ll find out eventually.

And to finish off, a little prayer in the style of the proud pharisee. Even though I shouldn’t really be taking his example

Thank God I’m not running Vista
Thank God I’m don’t use real player
But most of all thank God I’m not using Internet Explorer

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Extra bit

Since I’m talking about browsers, I though I’d show everyone this atrocity that my web designer sent me. And he expects to be paid for this rainbow vomit-esque excuse for a logo. Well he’s got another thing coming. And its not money. As if the incessant web 2.0 lookalike nonsense he kept on spouting before wasn’t enough. This may very well be the final straw

</spoof>

Learning Styles

Possibly the most dangerous form of “modernisation” (save the increasing epidemic of laziness in the form of “dyslexia”), would have to be the nonsense that is learning styles. Entire industries have been made out of this pseudo-science. They use words such as activist, reflector, theorist; all ways of describing the same type of person. This poison that has infected our schools – after ravaging our business sector in the form of business speak and buzzwords – ploughs its way through the established traditions of learning. Now let me be clear, I don’t fully advocate the lecture style of teaching, especially in primary and high schools. I do however think it’s a very useful and efficient way of informing a large group of people about concepts and ideas. And isn’t that the whole idea of education? What these so called experts should be focusing their attention on, is highlighting the internal diversity that exists in everybody. Rather than segregating and forming people into ever more disparate groups, they should reinforce the use of learning via various means.

I’ll use myself as an example. I would be described by these deluded people as a “visual and kinaesthetic learner”. Notice how they have cleverly disguised the relatively moronic phrase “learns by seeing and touching” with their slightly more scientific sounding words. Now if this was true, and I can only learn by seeing and touching but not by hearing, how the hell did I learn how to speak?
“Well,” they would hastily attempt to rebut “speech is an important skill that everybody has to learn in order to survive. This is essential. But the chances are that you don’t speak as well as an auditory learner does.”
To which I would happily reply “Actually, I’m amazingly eloquent, and have an unfathomably robust vocabulary. Possibly on a par with that of David Mitchell’s”
Basically this poorly dramatised confrontation goes to show that it is simply not possible to only be able to learn via one or two methods, and it is evidently a combination of various techniques that are used to assimilate various pieces knowledge.

Then there are the learning style tests. These terrible questionnaires purport to be legitimate psychoanalytical tools, in much the same way that one of those frankly nauseating quizzes in the back of a girls’ magazine purports to be a professional relationship counsellor. Just in case anyone isn’t yet aware, these “tests” only work by rephrasing answers you give to them. For instance, someone that answered questions saying that they enjoy working with their hands would immediately be pronounced a “physical learner”. I enjoy working with my hands, and guess what. So do brain surgeons. But I assure you that brain surgeons don’t train by trial and error, with a hands on approach (except maybe in the NHS). They spend almost a decade reading books and learning theory before they’re let anywhere near a patient. (Despite the quite sobering fact that due to the veritably paradoxical modern medicine qualifications system, they’re still less qualified or on a par with a household vet)

To conclude, I’m not saying that there shouldn’t be studies about how we learn. I think that the analysis of cognitive ability is a very important part of society. Even for us geeks. Think of how much further developed AI would be, if we knew exactly how the human brain assimilated knowledge. What I am saying however, is that those in education should stop the pretence that everybody has a particular way of learning, and admit that everybody uses a combination of various techniques. So I urge you to question these questionnaires, and analyse these analyses. Brain chemistry is a complex issue, and we still don’t know everything about it. Pretending that this bastardised incarnation of psychology is a legitimate discipline with even an iota of scientific or empirical backing can only hold us back from truly understanding the way the mind works.

New widget thingy

Just an excuse to write something really. If you look to the right of this post, You should see a calendar. This all new feature (and the details is essential for padding out the post), that lets you search the blog by date.
Hopefully it’ll also inspire me to post more frequently as I’ll be able to see the unfathomable chasms of time that usually span the distances between posts.
Thank you and goodnight

New ‘machine’, revelations and plans

Firstly, my mac has arrived. You’ve probably deduced that anyway looking at the temporary header. Hopefully I’ll make a few more of those soon.
Unfortunately, I won’t be able to do ANY work at all on the mac for a few days because of another project, that I’ve been working on for almost a year. It’ll just have to wait. I’m not jeopardising a years work for some stupid white (or  blue) box.

Secondly, I’ve just realised that due to a deal Microsoft has with academic institutions, I now have a licence to use almost any piece of Microsoft software. Thats all the operating system,(including a pro release of windows 7 which isn’t even officially out yet), server OSs, and all the developer tools. There is even an official download source, so I don’t have to go through the dirty business of torrents. Whats more once installed I’m allowed to use them for LIFE. I think I’m gonna like university

Thirdly, seeing as I’ll be busy for quite a bit, the next few posts may just be links to interesting articles, seeing as I won’t really have time to write. I apologise in advance.

Finally, and I apologise for talking about pop culture, but am I the only one that thinks Derren Brown is actually a witch. As I write this its VERY early Friday morning (4:30 to be precise), and I’m still waiting to find out how he did the lottery prediction on Wednesday evening. Speaking as someone who actually took the time to stack two ANOLOGUE tellys on top of each other and watch the spectacle unfold live, on both channels at once, I can confirm that there was only a 0.5 second delay between the two broadcasts. And he seemingly did what he said he would do. The whole setup also brings up a few points about TV censorship, but thats a topic for another day.
Obviously, come Friday evening, it’ll be obvious, and everybody will be kicking themselves; but I just wanted it on the record, that I’m actually a little scared of that man. And fire is the only answer to things your afraid of…
Isn’t it?

“Its not so much operating the computer as it is fooling into doing what you want it to do”

“I fell like I’m just there sharing the mac experience and if I can so something useful while the mac is willing, so much the better.”

In order to investigate claims like that, I’ve decided to acquire a mac. Yes, I’ll say that again. I’m getting a mac.

A friend of mine has managed to get his hands on a few old G4s that were getting thrown out at his work, and since the opportunity of a free ‘machine’ presented itself, I’ve jumped at it.

Now some of you will be wondering (rightly) whether I’ve lost my mind, especially considering previous posts that I’ve written, but you can put you fears a rest. While I did say that I’d sell any mac that I got my hands on (and I will sell this one eventually), this exception to the rule is so that I can actually see how it feels to use one of these machines for an extended period pf time, and possibly learn some new skills in the process.
It also gives me the opportunity to do some real tests on it, as most of the mac owners that I know are quite reluctant to let me get my hands on there precious little machines.

Hopefully there will be a few updates on my progress through a machine that’ll probably be as wierd to me as naked lunch,  but I’m not promising anything major.