Why Bradford?

Just to explain why I was in Bradford. It was a NIACE conference on offender learning, specifically eLearning policy. Fascinating stuff including an interesting presentation from the Head of Learning and Skills at HMP Wormwood Scrubs and it was great to meet Cos Michael from the Prisoners Education Trust.

The People's Republic

Love this web site (image is the link) - hat tip to Tony Hirst for flagging it up on Twitter. Check it out and you'll see that he is an honorary citizen!

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For Gill

DSCF2080
Originally uploaded by nogbad the bad

I mentioned the bedroom to Gill and realised I hadn't posted the photo so here it is.

Bradford

I took this from the bedroom. This big patch of building site is in the middle of Bradford. It's going to have 100 shops, offices, apartments and a multi-storey car park. Bold plan for a bold city! I had a walk last night and it's a lovely place - and great curry too.

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Leeds

I don't think I've been to Leeds railway station before - it's fascinating. It seems to be built on a slope so the platform next to this one is much higher. The platform lengths are divided into sections identifed by letter so if I've not been in 2C I've no idea where this train will land up. I'll need to change some money soon - are beads still the main currency in Yorkshire? :-)

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Tecknologi

Sending this simply because I can - I'm on a train with a free (but slow) wifi connection! How cool is that?

Simple twist of fate

Many years ago I worked as an auditor for a group of funeral directors. They were a national company and I was responsible for the businesses north of Birmingham. One day I arrived at a satellite office in Kidsgrove and as I waited for someone to let me in I saw a plaque to say that RJ Mitchell had been born there. On Friday I saw a train with his name on it - how spooky is that? Of course there will be some reading this who don't know who Mitchell was but he has a page on Wikipedia so he must be famous :-)

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Boyz night in

The weather precludes anything which means staying outside for long so Cal and I have had a film-fest. Stocked up on food yesterday and got stuck in to "Casino Royale". We saw it at the cinema shortly after release and I'm still a fan though I think it gets lost a little in the middle. Today we had to go out (cab service for Rowan) but we slotted in "National Treasure" and "Die Hard 4.0". We saw National treasure 2 at the cinema recently so it was interesting to see how much it followed the formula/plot of the first. Bruce Willis in vest and blood is predictable but fun and comparing the 21st C plot with the original is fascinating.

Cal is going home tomorrow and I've still got another four films to watch!

Sheep shot

DSCF2059
Originally uploaded by nogbad the bad

Sheep and lambs in the orchard behind the house. This post is for those who live in towns.

I love personalised adverts

Not sure that the hair loss advert is really going to attract me too much!

5 Ways To Have Fun with Twitter When You're Bored - ReadWriteWeb

5 Ways To Have Fun with Twitter When You're Bored - ReadWriteWeb

Laura blogged this and I love it but I did have to read her post a few times to work out what she's calling Martin - I really should wear my glasses when reading blogs......

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£10.4bn skills council scrapped

The Learning and Skills Council is to be abolished, as local authorities take charge of training places up to 18.

View Original Article

Predictable really - the government emasculated the LSCs years ago and they've been lining them up for abolition. Of course there will now be a period during which anything which goes wrong will be due to "the previous setup" followed by a period while "everyone is getting used to the new arrangements" and while all this is happening FE colleges will be further starved of funds and adults (young and older) will miss out on opportunities to improve their skills.

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Cloudy

Went to Rochester yesterday - the weather was foul but we had afternoon tea (well coffee really). The three people in this photo were with me - Calum, Jemma and Aska - Japanese exchange student.

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Don't forget Tibet

This dramatic photograph shows crowds, including priests, openly displaying the Tibetan flag - in Tibet - while being watched by police. The Chinese authorities claim that 10 people have been killed during the current unrest while Indian news agencies put the numbers at more than 80.

Check the BBC report for more details.

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School left in dark gets apology

Autistic pupils at a school that was without heating and lighting for five days receive an apology from a council.

Three days after the thieves stole the electricity cables the authority provided a generator but it broke down within 24 hours. Jill Hewett, whose son Josh is a pupil at Grange Park, said: "If this was a big school, a mainstream secondary school, with say a thousand children in it, this problem would have been sorted out within days.
View Original Article (BBC Kent)

That this school caters for pupils with special needs shouldn't come into it. A week without heating and lighting, in one of the wealthiest areas of the UK - itself one of the most developed countries in the world, is simply unacceptable isn't it?

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The first casualty of war?

Ministry of Defence teaching materials that give an unbalanced view of the Iraq war are being used in schools, teachers' leaders have said.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7294219.stm)

It seems that some of the more brutal realities of the war in Iraq have been missed from materials provided for use by schools and while we're at it military recruiters play down the potential dangers of a military career when talking to schoolchildren.

It's probably me but I'm not really surprised by this - I'm not being cynical but pragmatic.

Let's look at the recruitment issue first. The military "consumes" people each year through natural wastage - after 20-some years, at an age between 40 and 50, the longest serving foot soldiers (generally those below sergeant) are slung out with a pension. They need replacing and that's why the recruiters visit schools. If they included images of ex-servicemen and women with catastrophic injuries or of body-bags it's hard to imagine that they'd fill their quotas - even now there are problems getting enough people through the doors. Last February the New Statesman highlighted some of the shortfalls and some of the strategies being adopted to try to fill the gaps.

Thus can we also be surprised that a government still stuck in a costly war isn't flooding schools with statistics about civilian casualties?

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Blunogville

Blunogville is my city on MyMiniCity. By inviting visitors (that'll be you guys) we can make the city grow and prosper and thrive and I can have a big palace and live in splendour and you can all toil in the fields and send me tithes and I can get the whole Droit de seigneur thing going and we'll all live happily ever after - or at least I will, you guys will all be villeins and I think there is a certain amount of grief in the job spec but hey ho.

So visit Blunogville please? :-)

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Cheap jokes

Names
Originally uploaded by nogbad the bad

Spotted this while flitting round Morrisons. Someone has already started with the comments on Flickr

Config.sys is corrupt a/r/f

Brakes stuck on train so driver was told to 'reboot' it. When I worked in IT support that was always the first thing we'd suggest!

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Blockage

The whole lane was blocked - no idea whether they are unstuck now.

Later: Sent the photo and brief text from the phone on the way to work. The blue lorry n the right is a Pickfords van and is being loaded. The orange lorry is trying to squeeze by and the driver's mate was on the roof of the cab checking clearance on both sides as he edged forwards. This is Forge Lane and it's a busy lane between southern Maidstone and East Farleigh and a bridge over the Medway.

A history of blogging

From Twitter: The evolution of cat blogging

D'oh!

"One of the guys took off... straight through a glass window, he didn't even bother pushing the button, he just ran straight through it."

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I'm almost tempted to suggest that they know a bloke in Kent with a pilot's licence....

Read the full story to understand why robbing a bar while it's hosting a bikers' meeting might just not be the smartest plan in the world

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Couldn't make this one up

A pilot whose light aircraft crash-landed in a garden in Kent has been arrested on suspicion of cultivating cannabis. Sid Clark, 47, of Tonbridge Road, Barming, near Maidstone, has been bailed pending further inquiries. The plane crashed in Lyminge on Saturday, carrying a prisoner on day release from jail.

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So the story so far. Light aircraft crashes in a garden. Pilot is interviewed on TV and admits that he made a mistake in the fog and mistook some trees for a landing strip. He'd hired the plane and the owner is not a happy bunny. Oh and his passenger turns out to be a prisoner on day release from HMP Blantyre House - they were taking a day-trip across the channel........

And now the police have popped round to the pilot's house and stumbled across a few hundred plants.

I suppose the moral is that if you are growing your own and fancy a jolly to France with a serving prisoner and the weather is a bit off it's probably best to make sure you are absolutely straight - know what I mean?

Full story on the BBC Kent site

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We built this city - heard it in Asda today

For Mouse folk

DSCF2016
Originally uploaded by nogbad the bad

I promised to show you where the apples grow. To the right of that barn, behind the trees, are the orchards. I've uploaded more photos showing views from the front and back of the house.

Whoops!

I've been talking about Internet censorship in a few places over the last few days and here it is again - this time it looks as though Pakistan managed to pull YouTube over for an hour.

Pakistan's attempts to block access to YouTube has been blamed for an almost global blackout of the video website for more than an hour on Sunday From BBC

I think there are some real issues in amongst all of this. I live in a tolerant, Western democracy with few restrictions on what I can say, see or do yet an engineer somewhere on the other side of the world restricted my access to something while working on blocking a web site from the inhabitants of a specific country. Of course this isn't the first time such a thing has happened and the US, Canada, Algeria and others censor Al Jazeera. The news agency's web site is frequently targeted by lone hackers and political meddling.

Rheingold finishes "Virtual Communities" with this paragrah

If electronic democracy is to succeed, however, in the face of all the obstacles, activists must do more than avoid mistakes. Those who would use computer networks as political tools must go forward and actively apply their theories to more and different kinds of communities. If there is a last good hope, a bulwark against the hyper-reality of Baudrillard or Forster, it will come from a new way of looking at technology. Instead of falling under the spell of a sales pitch, or rejecting new technologies as instruments of illusion, we need to look closely at new technologies and ask how they can help build stronger, more humane communities--and ask how they might be obstacles to that goal. The late 1990s may eventually be seen in retrospect as a narrow window of historical opportunity, when people either acted or failed to act effectively to regain control over communications technologies. Armed with knowledge, guided by a clear, human-centered vision, governed by a commitment to civil discourse, we the citizens hold the key levers at a pivotal time. What happens next is largely up to us. - http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/10.html

I think that we, the citizens, must keep a close eye on what governments around the world are doing to try to curb our Internet access "for our own good"

Facebook numbers down

Martin predicted this but the numbers are in and Facebook is losing users in the UK.

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End of an era

So the curtain will finally fall on Netscape Navigator. AOL are pulling the plug on support although Netscape 9.0 will still be available for download. Those who've read the stories about the birth of the web and browser wars will understand how important Netscape has been and why its place in the history of online communication is assured - and Eric Bina was working for Netscape added the HTML tag which allows the image above to be displayed. Support stops on March 1st so take a moment to think about its passing on that day.

Nanny knows best

Let it be known, once and for all: if a smart, computer-savvy 16 year old wants porn, no technical barrier will be able to stop him. This is a natural law, similar to the laws of gravity or thermodynamics.

Great quote and not a bad story either. The Australian government has spent A$85M on trying to create tools to filter the Internet. Of course this was doomed to failure and when a teenager cracked the filter in half an hour they might have got the message but now the Australian government has decided that ISPs should censor what they carry. The proposal is that those who want the unfiltered version will have to contact their ISP and request it.

Of course some countries routinely censor what their citizens can access on the web so Australia is hoping to join Iran, China, Syria, North Korea, Thailand and others in "protecting" their citizens but Amnesty International keep a site, Irrepressible.info, against web censorship and it's hard to see how Oz can avoid being added. Censorship is censorship.

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UGC

Part of the promise (and threat) of the web has always been user generated content. Of course this post is an example of UGC and I'll let you decide on its value. I'm on safer ground flagging up a more organised UGC site. I spotted this on the SmartMobs blog (hat tip to Marius). Allvoices features a smart looking map and it aggregates news stories geographically based on photos, blogs, video, etc.

The mission statement is

"The goal of Allvoices.com is to create a global community that shares news, videos, images and opinions tied to events and people that have impact. Unlike a traditional news portal, our style of presentation creates new contexts in which stories are tied together in order to provide multiple points of view."

and it looks like an interesting use of technologies to do something that couldn't otherwise be done.

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The End of Mr Y

Just started reading this book. It's hard to dislike any author who starts a book by destroying a building on a university campus. The building the author targets is still there but in 1974 a building did collapse in the way which Scarlett Thomas describes - a disused railway tunnel beneath the building caves in. Thomas doesn't name the campus in her book (or she hasn't so far - I've not read much) but I'm sure that many readers will recognise it anyway.

Elearning at Brighton

Elearning at Brighton

Questions

Rob Spence (cheers Rob) found Labi Siffre's blog in response to my posting the link to the song. The latest post is wonderful - art question you will never hear - check it out

Try as I might............

Please believe me when I say that I tried to hold off from writing this post but I'm afraid I simply couldn't resist.

The last time City won at Old Trafford the scorer was Dennis Law, with a cheeky back heel, and United were relegated - that was in the mid 1970s. Since then we've had a few draws but we've not won. The last time we won both games against United in one season was 69/70 but on the day when both sets of fans came together to remember what Manchester lost 50 years ago it was City who got the points! Great photo from the BBC shows the fans holding up scarves provided to all fans by MUFC.

Blue Moon!

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It must be...........

Just felt like sharing this as I love the song

Take a look at those lawmen.............

..................7 February 2008, 9.00pm, BBC One

Erm

Maybe it's me but I found this story rather worrying.

The Ministry of Defence has expressed concerns that some wind farms interfere with military radar, making aircraft flying over the turbines "invisible".

I'm not a military strategist but announcing that our defence early warning system can't detect incoming if they navigate over wind farms does rather strike me as offering them some clues about how to stage an attack. The Thames estuary is now rife with turbines so that might offer an easy approach to the capital (not letting out many secrets here - anyone can see them from Herne Bay). In fact I would imagine that an underhand enemy might trumpet their achievements in meeting the Kyoto targets using large, floating, wind farms and actually be using aircraft carriers camouflaged with radar-defeating windmills.

I know I'm worrying unduly because the MOD have a great record in making sure that important information is held securely.

The times they are a changin'

After the last guy I think the poor people across the pond deserve a change. This is the bloke I'd vote for.

It's nearly that time of year

Support the guys at Anti-Valentine - you know it makes sense! (Some language may offend)

East Malling

East Malling
Originally uploaded by nogbad the bad

Today I twittered about the trip to London and also took photos with the phone and camera. You can see all the photos on Flickr. I think I noticed things I might not otherwise have seen simply because I was looking to take the photos. I certainly hadn't noticed the number of cameras on Herne Hill station - there must be at least eight on each platform.

An observation

A shortcoming with living alone is that you have to use your own toothbrush to clean the tread on your boots.

MyBlogLog

Undergoing MyBlogLog Verification

Check it out

If you haven't already done so. It's a site about the potential cuts in funding to the OU

Today

60 years ago today, in New Dehli, Nathuram Godse shot and killed Mohandas K Gandhi. The Mahatma is officially known as "The Father of the Nation" in India and his creed of non-violent civil disobedience directly led to the independence of India.

Raise a glass of something non-alcoholic in his memory?

Love this

Guinness: Tipping Point
Uploaded by Razorbuzz

The beer is good too!

Knees

There is simply no point in having knees unless you jerk them - frequently. The latest balls from Balls is that schools should teach cooking - and it's compulsory.

Of course making up education policy on the hoof isn't a new idea so this has famous antecedents but this one is pretty special for all sorts of reasons. First up the hardware - rather like teaching IT or metalwork cooking needs some capital investment and space. you can't simply go into a general classroom and teach cookery because sooner or later you'll need knives and sinks and wash basins and cutting boards and cookers and microwaves and all that good stuff. You also need people able to teach cookery. While there are some wonderfully skilled teachers out there and many can teach maths as well as English or geography and history but cooking isn't something that can be "crammed" the night before a lesson. and where is the time coming from? The school curriculum is already crowded with all the other compulsory subjects so what will be pulled to slot this in? and how will it be assessed? I've got cooking qualifications and i promise they aren't easy to test.

Of course I'm not the only one flagging this up - the link I've given rehearses the same arguments - but I really think this deserves a wider audience. Further evidence that education is too important to be left to politicians?

ELQ Again

Some good stuff here and here

DSC00024

New LCC group are all keenly watching the screen

Thoughts from Sy

Sy and I used to share some office space. Suggesting we worked together would almost certainly breach all sorts of laws about accuracy; I'm not sure either of us worked but even if we did the idea that our short bursts of work-like activity coincided stretches the imagination beyond bursting point. Anyways..... Sy is a techy and now he's blogging too!

I recommend his posting extolling the virtues of an environmentally sensible lifestyle as an entry point to the world of Sy but sample the other goodies on display too.

OFFS!

Try as I might I can't find evidence of Mr Ed Balls, Children's Secretary, spending any time at all involved in educational research. I can, however, find evidence of this story having been run ever since the invention of children.

Children should spend less time playing computer games and more time reading with their parents, the Children's Secretary Ed Balls has said. There was a danger that reading was getting pushed out by television, the internet and computer games, he warned
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7177045.stm)

I can imagine parents meeting in the 15th century to complain that children should be out playing rather than reading and that Mr Caxton had a lot to answer for!

I wonder if someone will finally realise that rolling out a politician to kiss children might impress a few Sun readers but most of can read and we're not at all taken in by this kind of crass self-promotion and his argument is baseless and spurious.

Government in "Stunning lack of joined-up thinking" shocker

The Conservatives are adding to protests against government plans to cut funding from students taking a second undergraduate degree.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7175513.stm)

You probably won't be too surprised to know that I'm very interested in this subject. If this proposal isn't stopped the OU stands to lose over £30M and that's going to affect everyone rather than just those students who the government think should be targeted. I've got letters from a handful of MPs - two opposing and one from Bill Rammell, Minister for Lifelong Learning, explaining that it's far fairer if they shift what is - to government - pennies and ha'pennies because it's a great vote winner with those who think that a degree is something that only rich folk can get anyway.

Get behind this - if only by looking at some of the proposals - because it stands a chance of damaging adult education in this country in ways that HM government simply haven't considered.

Ministers want Britain's top IT and science companies to encourage "career switchers" to go into teaching.

Ministers want professional scientists, mathematicians, information technology experts and engineers to help fill the skills gaps in classrooms.

Many of England's science teachers have not studied science to degree level.

I'm afraid that this stated desire to get people out of commerce into the classroom is, however well meaning, a perfect example of simply not having a clue.

Let's ignore for one moment the money - even as a mediocre IT professional I was earning about as much as the headteacher of a large secondary school. Bumping up the salary to attract people simply leads to wage inflation across the board. Let's not focus on the work itself - without doubt there will be some tough times but at the end of the day very few teachers will find that they have to drop everything and get on a plane to NY or Stuttgart because a server has crashed or the project team have hit a snag - it's not 9 to 5 but it's also reasonably predictable. Let's look at the biggest disincentive - the other teachers. Don't get me wrong - I know lots of teachers are hard working professionals doing a sterling job in trying circumstances but we've also all met those teachers who are straight out of teacher training and don't look old enough to be out alone. Many have few social skills and depend on a world where the people they interact with have to call them "Sir" and offer some kind of respect whether it is warranted or not. Would you chose to spend too long in the staff room with these folk?

In my world nobody would be allowed into teaching until they had spent five years in the world of work after graduating. Going into the classroom without "life skills" is doing the teacher and their pupils a great disservice.

More than 250,000 qualified teachers no longer work in England's schools, the Conservative Party says.

My plan might help deal with this too.

So here we are again!

The end of another year. Been a busy one for most of us; I've moved house and I'm still unpacking and trying to work out why I bothered shoving some of the stuff into boxes rather than straight down the tip. Mark Jopling (Historian of Kingston) wrote a great piece about one little slice of WWII and how it happened in Bishopsbourne - read it here.

Hope everyone has a great time tonight and a peaceful and prosperous 2008!

Have a good one!

Veg prepped, more food than you could shake a stick at and a handful of decorations tastefully strewn around the house. Yesterday I took a hired van and both daughters to Ikea so I now have furniture to sit on!

I hope everyone is sorted for the festivities and that you have whatever sort of day you wish yourself. Whatever you celebrate use tomorrow as a space to celebrate it.

The one you were looking for

This is the web site you are probably looking for. It's "Norad tracks Santa" - every year the lovely folk at the North American Aerospace Defense Command use some of the high tech kit at their disposal to track Santa and grab some real-time video as he travels round the globe delivering presents.

For Mouse

Sheep
Originally uploaded by nogbad the bad

The sheep were in the field across the road today. And then the road was closed for a moment as the sheep were brought out of the field and up the farm yard behind my house. They did all this just for Mouse so that I could grab some quick snaps - the whole world knows that Echo Mouse loves sheep photos :-)

Robert

Robert

Explanation

Sara is a 3rd year undergrad in the group I work with at LCC. I was publishing from the phone to demonstrate the speed of the digital world.

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Sara 2

2

Sara

Sara

Eureka!

My initiation into the secret world of cleaning products continues. I wasn't sure how I'd clean the racks from the oven and the grill pan which doubles as a roasting tray until I found a garishly decorated box on the shelf in the aisle I've just discovered at Morrisons. The box looks as though it was designed by a three year old on ecstasy but, boy oh boy, it's the real thing inside. It comes with rubber gloves and more warnings than a nuclear power station. It also has a large plastic bag in which the items to be cleansed are deposited. Bung them in the bag, pour in the gunk and leave for a few hours. Wear gloves, old clothes, don't get the liquid on your body or furniture or any materials not provided in the kit or constructed of stainless steel or enamel.

Bunged them in yesterday afternoon - I got two boxes so one bag has the grill pan and the other has the oven racks - and let it do its work. Wow! All that's left to do is to don the protective gear and wash the gel away but through the bag I can see that this stuff has eaten away all the grease and baked-on crud - it is amazing. I'm sure that everyone else knows about this stuff but to me it's a revelation. Of course the text on the box is confident that there are no environmental impacts of swilling the stuff down the sink so that's all good too.

Unknown delights

I have to admit that beyond a dab of bleach and the stuff that makes the water in the cistern blue the mysteries of bathroom cleaning products were an alien world to me. Clearly I need to make sure that all is shipshape and Bristol fashion so I strayed down one of the two aisles I usually forgo (pet food in case you wondered about the other).

Bloody hell but there's a lot! Who would have thought that there could be so many ways of getting rid of limescale on plugholes? (Hands up all those who even knew that the white crusty crud was limescale!). Because I can cook I don't need Brillo pads to clean pans, I use those sponges with a green abrasive side, but I now find that they are available in white for cleaning baths. I'd hate anyone to think that I live in abject squaller but I wasn't aware of the sheer delight in stocking up on these gels and preparations which will transform my life.

On the packing side - blitzed the packing cases which had been untouched since I moved in here (3yrs 1 month) and now have 9 bags of recycling waiting for collection and just two neatly packed boxes - mainly books about exciting stuff like education and advice & guidance. Got rid of piles of old OU brochures from when I was doing some project work from home, equally large amounts of prospectuses (oldest dated 2000) from colleges and universities around the county - another legacy of project work.

Moving....

I'm good at project management, I've done it for years and been paid - often handsomely - for knowing how to do it.

Why then am I in bits about getting all this stuff sorted? I'm surrounded by "stuff" and I have to determine what stuff is worth packing and what stuff should go to the tip. Some of the stuff has no intrinsic value but means something because it's part of my lives - stuff that I've carried since I was a child, stuff that means something as a husband and a father and stuff that has been part of the latter life as a bloke alone. I have things that measure my success as a person alone - I'm proud of not having broken things or of having clothes that I've managed to wash and iron alone. These might seem silly tests but by such tests we measure how we've managed, the metaphysical question of "How am I in the world". The person I was when I moved in here on 18th October 2004 is gone but should I save some trace? Is memory better than artifacts?

Have I picked the right place to move to? Is it the right move?

My father remains my hero - he was a quiet man who occasionally said things which I try to aspire to and one such thing was "That's what being grown up means" - he used that whenever I said that something was difficult. Right now moving is difficult, beyond the physical packing and going, because it means I have to assess where I'm at and where I'm going.

Which stuff do I need?

Outside (through window - too cold to go

Outside (through window - too cold to go there!)

Llandoger Trow

Llandoger Trow

Beer

Sending this from the bar of the Llandoger Trow in Bristol. Chilly night but everyone is outside so that they can have a smoke. This building dates from 1664 and features in 'Treasure Island'.
Famous feet have trodden these worn old boards; Alexander Selkirk met Daniel Defoe here and pirates sailed from the quay outside and Gowing and Rivers wrote in green ink.
Halcyon days and 5oz rumps.

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Sent using a Sony Ericsson mobile phone

Happy birthday!

DSCF0222
Originally uploaded by icedjem2040

My big child celebrated her birthday in Japan.

Moving!

bus
Originally uploaded by nogbad the bad

I'm moving at the end of November and this is where I'm going to live. It's bigger than where I am now, it's just over a mile to where my children live and more than 30 miles closer to where I work a couple of days each week. Fields out the front and it backs onto a farm. Now I've got the faff of packing up and shifting over things like the phone and broadband but it's all good and it'll mean I can see the children even more.

This map shows where the house is and in the shot below I've highlighted it in red with the blue circle showing where the children live.

It's jolly exciting!

Today

I've just realised, while driving home, that today is my 25th wedding anniversary!

World school

Largest child is at "World School" in Japan right now. She appears in one of the photos - I've not looked through the videos yet.

Plymouth

Plymouth
Originally uploaded by nogbad the bad

Went to Plymouth to do a presentation to colleagues from the OU today. I went yesterday and stood most of the way from Paddington to Plymouth but there was a really friendly buzz on the train - a couple of guys who did the trip regularly were going out of their way to talk to people. Had a walk (and beer) round the harbour and a nice curry. After the presentation I headed back to the train station to get the replacement bus service to Tiverton and then the train to Paddington and then the tube to Victoria and the train back to Maidstone to collect the car - loooooooooong day but great meeting people from the far west.

Getting old

Today is the anniversary of the birth of both of my daughters. Rowan is having a sleepover with some chums so Cal is here with me. Jemma is in Japan with the school. I'm not the only one who is getting old.

So...................................

So England didn't win but it's still amazing that they dragged themselves to the final after an appalling four years since the win in Sydney and being destroyed by South Africa at the beginning of the tournament.

I love this image! It's from The Guardian today and it's a waxwork model of Jonny on the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square. Whatever the result tomorrow night I think that English rugby has reason to be both proud and relieved - the team have managed to deliver despite a terrible start and appalling four years since Sydney. Go England!

40 years ago

Today is the 40th anniversary of the death of Dr Ernesto "Che" Guevara - his nickname came from an interjection he often used when speaking. Hero or villain his image is now an icon and many of those who recognise it know nothing of the Marxist Revolutionary who helped Castro to power in Cuba. people of my generation grew up with this image as a poster next to the girl playing tennis.

Dali in Bond Street

Dali
Originally uploaded by nogbad the bad

The Persistence of Memory - a statue

Teachers....

I think this makes a good deal of sense except it'll take teachers out of the classroom - again! Schools are already suffering and using teaching assistants in the light of the last cut in teacher contact time.

Thirsty

Apparently it's difficult getting a pint in Earls Court tonight - the bar staff won't stop crying.

Happy birthday

50 years ago today the starting pistol on the space race sounded and the first man-made satellite went into a low space orbit. In a brilliant PR move Soviet scientists set Sputnik's broadcasts to be at a frequency available to radio hams - people around the world could listen to the chirping which signaled that the Soviet Union led the world in space exploration.

For goodness sake!

10 years? More funds than ever before? Sixth richest country in the world? And only now are we aspiring to "world class"???

Before anyone asks I spend enough time talking to teachers and others working in the compulsory education system to know a few of the reasons why we're still not there yet. And if you need proof of how much we're not there yet........

By the end of the last summer term, 246 schools were in "special measures" - the most serious category - compared to 208 at the end of summer term 2006.

That's according to OFSTED and they should know.

Jacquie

Tony Hirst has written the posting I've been avoiding since Thursday.

Dome

DSCF1765
Originally uploaded by nogbad the bad

Tidying up

I'm going to be doing some tidying up over the next few weeks. That'll include separating my links by type and shortening the roll. Just warning everyone that things will be coming and going.......

A monk

A monk
Originally uploaded by NaingKo,Burma/Myanmar

I'm blogging this as the only way I can think of showing support for what these people are doing in Burma.

Wonderful!

Animator vs. Animation by *alanbecker on deviantART

999

Just been listening to a piece on the radio which has brought me to tears. It's a recording of an emergency call to Essex Ambulance service

"With the midwives stuck in traffic and his wife going into labour, Leo Hickman had to turn to the emergency services......"

It is incredible and very, very moving. To read the transcript check out Leo's article in the Guardian, to hear the tape check out the BBC site. Not covered in either is the news that the operator had only been working there for a few months and is 20 years old.

Tricky

My mate Phil mailed and in amongst a fascinating dialogue about the origins and meaning of the word "mountebank" he mentioned a long held belief that it's impossible to strike a match on a jelly. First up it's difficult to see how this might be inaccurate but then I got thinking about the difficulty that this seemingly simple fact might cause in our polyglot blogosphere. And then I got to thinking about a blog someone I work with pointed me to - it's wonderfully written but so it should be, the writer is a professor of linguistics and English at the University of Sussex. Check out Lynne's "Separated by a common language". Back to striking that match - anyone ever tried it?

Martydom

Martydom
Originally uploaded by nogbad the bad

I didn't take this photo - my mum did when she was down for the graduation. I'm using now because the local BBC have arranged a showing of "A Canterbury Tale" a film made in 1944. It's special because it was filmed in Canterbury and shows much of the bomb damage and vistas of the cathedral no longer visible as buildings have grown up again to restrict the views.

The photo is of the supposed site of the martydom of Archbishop Thomas Becket on 29th December, 1170 - supposed because accounts vary, it was certainly there or thereabouts. Bad day for him but without it York would probably still be the seat of the church in England and Canterbury would have little to look forward to except a market once a week. Thomas turned the town into an internationally renowned tourist attraction and inspired generations of men and women to build an awesome cathedral (UNESCO World Heritage site number 496) which, in turn, inspired countless men and women to visit and spend some of their hard-earned cash in the town. Now there are a couple of universities, always close by seats of religion, and a swanky new shopping centre but the jewel in the crown remains the cathedral and tonight, for the first time ever, a feature film was shown in the nave. The star of the film is Canterbury.

Erm....

UK slips behind on graduate numbers

Let's ignore for one moment the recent decision to withdraw funding for students studying any course which is at a level lower than that which they've already achieved. Let's look first of all at some of the details of the BBC report. Firstly

With modern economies emphasising the need for a highly-skilled, well-educated workforce, the survey shows that the UK has been relatively sluggish in its approach - with much less expansion than in countries such as South Korea, the Czech Republic and Hungary.

Of course it's difficult to find any real research that supports this proposition. In fact the reason that so many Poles come to the UK is that they have a highly educated workforce, one of the best in Eastern Europe, but the economy is a basket-case.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development says the UK has slipped from the third highest proportion of graduates to 10th.

The survey also found that teenagers in the UK had particularly low expectations of going to university.

Damning really given that this government has spent the last 10 years pumping money into projects like Aimhigher and P4P. Millions and millions of pounds - the cost of each widening participation place is incredible and the ongoing failure shows how poorly targeted these activities have been. If the money had been put into secondary schools....

In response, Higher Education Minister Bill Rammell said: "The figures are encouraging.

"The UK has one of the highest entry rates for vocational higher education and since the higher education figures in the OECD report are from 2005 we expect to see continued increases over the coming years.

And here's the nub of it. This government is so hung up on the idea of "vocational higher education" that they are prepared to devalue all the other types of higher education. The much vaunted lifelong learning agenda has a rider - only if the learning is vocational. How long before they offer a degree in floor sweeping to increase the number of vocational higher education courses? New Labour's love affair with qualifications rather than learning continues and we are all paying through the nose for it.

Templated

Decided to upgrade the template through blogger. I wish I could find out how to change the default font for postings though - I have to change to Verdana every time (and it's zapped the earlier posts into Arial)

Now my Flickry friends

Have you tried loc.alize.us? Check out this link and let us know what you think!

Jump

I dropped this in here because I was finishing some work and listening to some music and I was struck with one of those "Hi Fidelity" (the book rather than the rather poor film adaptation) moments. What is the best guitar-based pop/rock track? What is the best guitar riff? Clearly Layla has to be in there and any number of tracks by Jimi but does Eddie's pop/rock fusion bundle of energy with David Lee Roth's screaming vocals hit the spot?

Of course even David Lee Roth has to grow up and slow down - check out this video...

Proof that only crooks and scoundrels use the Internet

Simple really. Our local authority, Kent County Council, bans any images which show a child's face on any of their websites in order to protect children. The BBC news have been running a film today where a charming older lady is named, her location made public and all the watchers have been told that she's withdrawing £750K from her bank account with Northern Rock. Ergo robbers and burglars are too busy using the web to watch television and paedophiles also use the web.

Am I a wimp?

I read. I read lots and I read for fun as well as for work and studying. I love reading. I buy novels in threes and I rarely read the same book twice - I have the kind of memory which tells me who did it after the first couple of pages if I've already read that book. Some books I do reread, things by Anthony Burgess and ZAMM and Jupiter's Travels and a couple of others.

Recently though I've found that I can't finish some books. First up was Haddon's "A spot of bother". I got past halfway and there really wasn't anything happening. I don't need a double digit body count but the initial charm of its gentle humour wears off after a while. Now I'm struggling with Will Self's "Book of Dave". Those who vaguely know Self's name but not why might be half remembering him being banned from travelling as part of the press party with John Major after being caught nasally ingesting some Columbian marching powder in the lavatory on a prime ministerial flight, he was employed as a journalist by The Observer at the time. He was never allowed near Blair because of this lettle indiscretion. Anyways, Self is straightened out and flying right and is a good, if wordy, writer. "The Book of Dave" is really imaginative and well written and makes great use of language including a phonetic language of his own making but it's just so damn bleak. It's described as having some humour but it's unrelentingly downbeat in a range of time periods through flashbacks and flashforwards. It's erudite and makes me feel "virtuous" in the same way that eating lettuce does but I feel just as fulfilled. Maybe I need "fast-words" as well as fast food?

Am I being a wimp swapping away from Will Self and starting on "Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders"? Rumpole is an old and much loved favourite and I've not read this account of his first ever case alone and without a leader.

Wagamama

My son. I took this photo with my camera and uploaded it to Flickr while we waited for the food. Connectivity and social networking at the beginning of the 21st C.

"Fears over NHS e-records system"

The Health Committee said there was a "worrying lack of progress" and raised concerns about the security of patients' electronic records.

But the MPs also said the system - an online database of 50 million medical records to be accessed across the NHS - had huge potential to improve care.

There can be little doubt that the database has huge potential and improving care might well be one of the benefits but simply stating stuff like this doesn't make it happen. Nor, of course, does blindly pouring cash into poorly specified and ill-conceived projects which are badly managed. Governments of all hues have proved singularly unsuccessful when it comes to implementing big IT systems yet they keep on trying. Biometric ID cards are reliant on a database similar to the one they are trying to build here but with far more trying and robust external connections; terminals at all border crossings, police stations and countless other places will need to be able to access records for everyone in the country - anyone any idea of the potential costs? And who will be footing the bill?

Read what the BBC think.

Got it!

DSCF1738
Originally uploaded by nogbad the bad

Scrappy game today and one where Dings Crusaders got a couple of tries against the run of play and Canterbury's handling and kicking game let them down. Halfway through the second half Canterbury brought on a new guy who joined last year. He's still a teenager but a great kicker. Of course if I had the programme to hand I could name names but.............

sunset

sunset
Originally uploaded by nogbad the bad

Stunning sunset this evening - took this quick shot with the phone (it's one of a lot because I didn't want to take my eyes off the road!)

Jane Tomlinson

Jane Tomlinson has died. Those who don't know her story will find some of the details on the BBC page announcing her death. An inspiration.