Stuff and Nonsense

“What’s all this about motorbikes then?” says my Mum. Ah… so, her neighbour (hello Lorraine) has been on facebook again and has noticed my latest post. So, to make sure that they’re both on the ball I thought I’d post some information that Mum should be very interested in…

Dear Mum,

Eating cheese before bed does not give you nightmares. Sometimes I eat cheese sandwiches before bed just to test that I’m still right on this and you are still wrong.

Apple skin does not “rest on your chest”. Unless you actually drop it before eating it.

My face will not “get stuck like that”. As I write this I’m pulling a very odd face indeed. I’ve also left a window open to ensure the wind is blowing past. I’ve been doing this for several minutes now and my face has not yet stuck in its contorted state. I’m pretty sure that it’s not going to.

Fear of an accident is no reason to wear clean underwear. It’s just good hygiene. In any event, during the worst accident I’ve had I thought I’d probably crapped myself but it turns out the only skid marks were from the tarmac. In either case, the cleanliness of my underwear prior to the accident was of no concern to me and of less concern to the hospital staff.

Watching TV does not make your eyes square. Anyway, TVs are wide-screen these days so if there are any ill effects it’s more likely to involve rectangles (16:9 ratio) than squares. We also have high definition these days so I think watching TV is actually likely to improve my eyesight.

I didn’t wear my glasses and I have 20:20 vision today. I told you I didn’t need them. My son though DOES need his. So Ollie, if you’re reading this just read the bits above and realise that your Dad was right about a lot and I’m right about you really needing to wear your glasses.

It doesn’t matter whether you slice the cheese on the long side or the short, it goes just as far. The volume does not vary depending on the cut.

Sitting on the radiator does not give you chilblains. It does however give you plumbing bills and the occasional need to re-plaster.

Eating the seeds of apples/oranges/grapes etc. will not result in a tree or vine sprouting from my bottom. Yes, I’ve checked.

Playing with it will not cause it to fall off. Though speaking as the father of three boys I understand why you were keen to make a point on this one.

It has to be fate! A chap turns up to collect some kid’s toy that we Freecycled (essentially, you give stuff away instead of it going to the tip. Check it out on yahoo groups). He is on a motorbike and while my wife collects the toy I ask about his bike and we get talking. It turns out he is an owner of what may be the county’s largest bike shop!

He tells me they hire bikes (their website doesn’t give a clue to this) so I’m starting to get excited. We establish that they will hire any bike from their used or demonstrator stock, £150 for a weekend. So, now I’m hooked, I’m figuring when is the next free weekend. We talk some more and my wife muses why I’m talking about hiring and not buying. Well, I explain that’s because I’m really holding out for a Triumph Rocket III – the world’s largest production motorcycle. All 2.3 litres with enough torque to tow icebergs.

Now, for “The Sign!”. It turns out he JUST TODAY took in a 2009 Rocket III with less than 4000 miles on the clock AND I can hire it. It has to be a sign. The stars were aligned just right today. I was meant to ride this bike and ride it I shall. Maybe I’ll buy it. Let’s see if I’m still lusting after it when I’ve spent the weekend in its company!

So, as you do when you have young children and you’re travelling you buy tacky gifts at the airport. You know the type of think… wristbands, pencils, pens, keyfobs…

Buying gifts at the airport isn’t in the same category as buying your wife flowers from the petrol station on the way home either. The gifts are tacky but kids like tacky. All they really want is something that has the name of the place you visited and is small enough to take into show-and-tell on monday. This type of souveneir isn’t sold in the massive shopping mall next to your hotel, it might be sold at some tourist spot but on a busy business trip generally you are not going to make it there. So, the airport is the place. The place you can rely on for the little things that get kids wonderign about the world and gives them something to look up on the globe, pin to a map, whatever.

This has worked very well in a recent spate of business travel. Wristbands from The Netherlands, Key Fobs from Paris, Red Sox plates from Boston (best not mention this last one since I bought three and only had two on unpacking in the UK…) but Malaysia? No. At Kuala Lumpur International Airport you cannot buy this stuff. You can buy Gucci, Dunhill, Perfume, Cigarettes, Cigars, Booze and Kids toys that you will find in Tescos all over the world. You can buy chocolates and you can buy Union Flag Key Fobs and little Beefeater figurines from the KLIA branch of Harrods but can you buy a T-Shirt “Someone who loves me went to KL and all I got was this lousy t-shirt”? No. Can you buy a key-fob, medal or indeed any piece of tat with “Kuala Lumpur” emblazoned upon it? No.

Fortunately, anticipating a certain lack of shopping ability on my part rather than cheesy-gift-free-zones my Wife makes plans for my failure to obtain appropriate gifts and has a certain stock of location agnostic giveaways that could be from anywhere and are at least something, rather than nothing.

I type this on a Malaysian Airlines Business Lounge PC, gazing onto a pristeen  taxi-way awaiting the flight home. The headache has almost gone, the Nausea already has and the “Kuala Lumps” (think Delhi Belly) seems to have, how shall I say, run their course.

Wait! Genius! I just notices a small pile of identical postcards. Pictures of a 747-400 at KL and on the back it says “Malaysia”.  They will do. Write a “Wish you were here” message on them and post through the door back home. Three delighted kids guaranteed. Thank you Malaysian Airlines!

“Flight MH4 now boarding at gate 4.” I have to go…

Warning, not my usual whiny “I hate the world and the world hates me” type post common recently.

So, my car tells me last week that the oil is low. Not just low. It’s “At the minimum level”. I must top-up.

I found this hard to believe, it’s only done 5000 miles since new. Regardless, I check the oil level, of course.

I find it to be at the maximum. At least that’s what I convinced myself. I am still convinced I saw it at the maximum on the dipstick. I’m convinced, and yet I am pretty sure I simply have to have been wrong. This particular dipstick was mistaken.

In my defence, the fact that I did not top-up and the message disappeared for another day and 60 miles before reappearing (it was on for a full day’s long drive the first time) lends some credence to my opinion at the time that it must be a faulty sensor.

So, I call my Audi dealer on Monday and they ask me when I can bring it in, they’ll need it for an hour to do diagnostics. I’m leaving work early on the wednesday anyway and the garage is on the way to my destination so I suggest wednesday at 3pm. “Yes, no problem, see you then.”

First gold star then. They are willing to look without question and have a slot within 48 hours exactly when I want it. Coincidence, sure, but it all counts.

So I pitch up on time and the service rep is out within 2 minutes to gather a “history”. Takes the keys, offers me coffee etc. which I decline and go for a walk for an hour.

55 minutes later when I”m just a minute from getting back they call me to say the car’s ready, all sorted.

They let it cool down, checked the oil and found it was at it’s minimum so topped it up. Ok, now I’m embarrassed but even so I have to wonder when did a new car need oil between services? He explains it happens occasionally before the first service. Not so much “running in” these days but “bedding in”. Ok, this sounds plausible. Now, I’m expecting to be hit with a bill for oil and maybe some labour.

“How much do I owe you?” I ask.

“Nothing”.

“Great!”. No charge for the oil. No charge for looking at it AND they stuck a litre in the boot “just in case” I need more before the first service.

Full marks all round Audi. Actually, Northfield Audi of Tetbury, Gloucestershire. I’m a little worried that with service like this I made have paid too much for the car. You just get what you pay for then? Perhaps. I’m happy though.

Good grief. Labour are at it again. This time it’s the even more bonkers than usual suggestion that parents should be given the right to “vote out” the senior management teams of failing schools and “vote in” the senior management team from an “accredited” school.

I see a couple of problems with this. First, the aim is to have 500 “accredited schools”. Well, there are around 30,000 schools in the uk. So thats a 1 to 60 ratio. I would challenge any school management team no matter how good they are to manage a second school as effectively as the first without declining standards in the first. Unless the rate of failing schools is less than 2 in 60 then this means every accredited school will be split between two schools and there will be an inevitable decline as the performance of each reflects the split loyalties and time. If the rate is higher than 1 in 60, you won’t even find 500 accredited ones to start with!

Of course, I’m probably missing a huge amount of information that may make this idea sound slightly more plausible but hey, most soap-box ranting is under-informed, especially on the net so why should my blog be any different?

I am sure of my ground on one point though. Parents should not be given any more power over schools than they currently have. The problem is this. There are a lot of poor (morally, emotionally, not financially) parents out there. There are a lot of parents who rarely read to their children for example. There are more still who fail to hear their children read regularly. Unfortunatel,y those parents least likely to take an active part in their children’s education – the “high achieving” workaholic salary ladder slaves with mortgages and cars they can’t really afford unless they work so much they don’t see their kids – are precisely the types who will turn up to vote out a failing management team because their kid can’t read without realising that their kid can’t read because they never do it at home where it really counts.

As in all things of course, it’s a bell curve. The parents I describe above are at one end of the curve. There are parents who can’t spare the time to actually parent at the other end of the curve working double shifts just to pay the heating bill. In between there is a broad range that are doing their best and doing a good job but the problem is everyone has a vote and most parents’ experience of education is limited to just being a parent. They are not qualified to teach or to manage teachers. They do not understand the pressures that teachers are under; they do not even understand for the most part the laughable way in which the national curriculum calls for more hours to be taught each day than exist in any actual school day. (Don’t believe me… go ahead, get a copy. Add up all the recommendations. It comes to about 6 hours a day. Now how long, less lunch, breaks, registration, religion (grrrr) is left in your kid’s school day? a lot less than 6).

For crying out loud, most people you will meet in life are very likely to be insufferably stupid anyway (note: this opinion may be as a result of my acknowledged anti-social outlook and like most statistics “most” may be completely bogus.) The chances of getting a sensible reasoned decision on anything from a sample of “the public” are slim at best and parents, myself among them are well, you know, The Public.

Fixing education is simple.

1. Don’t have a national curriculum then leave wriggle room for teachers. Either give them free reign and let the cream rise or mandate the teaching so even the crap teachers can do some good and the really creative ones will go off and do something creative.

2. Have governing bodies made up of seasoned retired teachers who can serve for up to five years following their last full time teaching post. They should have the power to separate the wheat from the chaff. They should get paid.

3. Don’t try to kid parents that it is school’s job to teach their kids to read, write and add up. This is the parents’ job. The teacher’s job is to add some structure and to make sure the gaps are filled in.  This should be made clear to parents. Stop trying to come up with nannying tactics that make parents think that they can devolve their child’s education to the school alone.

It’s not much is it? I could go on… how about not letting kids move on a year until they’ve reached the required level of attainment in the current year. If they don’t get it, they do it again until they do. Sure, it would be chaotic at first, it would have to be flexible and schools would have to adapt and have the resources to adapt to their local mix of abilities. But no-one would leave school not being able to read, write and add up unless they also needed so much help that they needed help to live independently anyway.  Did you see that program “Kids can’t count”?  quite shocking. Lots of poor teaching going on there admittedly but I’d bet that the most chronic under achievers are not getting the support for learning from home that they need either.

Rant over. I feel better even though it’s highly likely that no-one is reading this and less likely still that anything will change because of another whiny blog post.

I watched ‘Shrek the Halls’ tonight with the family. I think the story was based on my life and I’m not seeing a penny in royalties. Can I sue?

Lets examine the evidence..

First, there is more than a passing physical resemblence between Shrek and I. Anyone who knows me could attest.

Like me, Shrek has three offspring who confuse him with some invincible young person with boundless energy who is impervious to pain inflicted while ‘play’ fighting.

Like me, Shrek has a best friend who is annoyingly optimistic and has to be told quite clearly when his visit is over and it’s time to go home. Sorry Si – you know it’s true.

Like me, Shrek lives in a house that has too much stuff in for its size.

Like mine, Shrek’s house is in a swamp. Not literally of course. But I think of the swamp as a metaphor for living on a modern estate – despite this one being very pleasant by many measures.

There’s another similarity. Shrek likes his swamp too.

Shrek knows the only bastion of peace is the toilet. An Englishman’s home may be his castle but a Dad’s sanctuary is the loo.

Like me, Shrek has an appalling diet. This is because we both know that anything that lengthens the time we can plausibly remain in the throne room is a good thing.

When Shrek shouts, the family listen… then ignore him anyway.

Princess Fiona was a babe before he met her and now she’s an ogress. This is a statement of fact and unlike all the others above bears no resemblance to my life whatsoever.

Shrek is not at all scared of his wife.

In a London Starbucks today…

“Two cappuchinos, one earl grey tea, one breakfast tea and a cup of hot water please.”

“Would you like ice in the water?”

I think for a moment. Yes, that makes sense. My colleague who wants hot water will be able to drink it without 3rd degree burns so yes, ice makes sense to me.

“Yes please.”

Teas arrive. Coffees Arrive. Water arrives (with ice) in a plastic ‘glass’.

“This can’t be right…” methinks. I feel the ‘glass’. It’s cold – luckily, lest it collapse in a molten heap.

“Excuse me. I asked for a cup of hot water.”

“Hot water?”

“Yes”

Assistant 1 confers with assistant 2.

“Sorry sir, we do not do hot water.”

“Pardon?”

“We do not do hot water.”

“But my tea is hot. It’s made with water.”

“Yes, but it’s tea.”

“But it’s only water until you add the teabag. Until then, it’s hot water. Isn’t it?”

“Yes, but we can’t sell it.”

“Ah, I see…”

I gather my thoughts. I think the problem is they want to charge me for a cup of hot water (ok) but it’s not on the menu.

“Could I have a cup of tea without the teabag?”

“No teabag? No, sorry”.

I’m now starting to question my own sanity but the city type standing next to me hasn’t had this much fun in years.  I think I’ve got Starbucks man cornered now though, he’s not going to wriggle out of this. I have a cunning plan (kudos Baldrick)…

“Could I have a cup of tea please but please give me the tea bag. I don’t want the tea bag in the cup.”

“Sure, no problem, here you are sir”

He hands me the cup of hot water. And an orphaned tea bag.

This story from the BBC seems to highlight what to me seems an intractable problem with faith schools and religiosity in general. Is anybody really surprised that the report commissioned by Ed Balls found that schools from faiths with opposing views of middle east conflicts explained their age-old enemies’ faith using “inappropriate” and “inflammatory” language? Why would they do anything else? Those faiths believe they are fighting a religious war. Actually I applaud them. How the schools in the report describe other faiths is how the parents who send their children to a faith school describe those other faiths so at least it’s consistent for the kids and it’s honest even if it’s not healthy. By “not healthy” of course, I mean no more unhealthy than the brainwashing of children that religious doctrine of all faiths depends upon for that faith’s continued existence. You see, even I’m not averse to a bit of political correctness  - or at least even-handedness.

Pandering to Governments’ desire to appease everyone and offend no-one is not high on the agendas of most faiths and consequently not high on the agenda of most faith based schools. Until the G-men come knocking and their central funding is at risk a faith schools is going to do what its community of parents and donors expects it to do – educate its pupils in the same way as they are “educated” at home.

To any secular onlooker, all religions of the world suffer from one obvious problem. They each believe they are right. Of course in these days of political and multi-cultural correctness that invades every aspect of our daily lives, you will find religious leaders clamouring to be the first to declare how their faith understands and accepts different cultures and viewpoints. This is of course completely inconsistent with the tenets of most faith groups. The very thing that marks them as a faith group is their belief in one god or another, one messiah or another or one interpretation of their chosen scripture against another. To say that they believe, that they have FAITH in this view or that view (or “facts” as some will falsely represent their views) and then in the same breath to say that they understand and accept the views of another group is nothing more than a bare-faced lie. They are simply paying lip-service to the media and government who will “crucify” (insert your preferred method of mutilation and murder here, I intend no religious bias) them if they don’t follow the line about tolerance.

So the report’s outcome hold no suprises for me and perhaps for no-one. It has just highlighted a much broader issue. Should faith schools exist at all? I have some views on that you won’t be shocked to hear, but that’s for another post.

p.s. Whilst I’m sure you will find typos or genuine grammatical gaffes above, the lack of a capital G for god is intentional. A capital implies that “God” is a thing or someone. I don’t believe this and since I’m doing the writing, I will decide which words I will treat as proper nouns.

So, I took my six year old son to the Cheltenham Literature festival again last weekend, this time for an audience with Johnny Ball.

Who is Johnny Ball? Those of you of a certain age will remember him from the eighties as the ebullient presenter of BBC children’s program “Think of  Number” and others (full details at Johnny’s website if you need a reminder). To younger folks, he is probably as well known for looking slightly tearful on Strictly Come Dancing as his Radio Presenter daught Zoe Ball was voted off.

It’s a little sad that an entire generation have missed out on the infectious enthusiasm of JB’s maths and science based output. I’m a maths head and science enthusiast anyway so I guess it’s no surprise that as a child the impending arrival of Think Of A Number had me totally giddy. To see JB’s performance “in the flesh” was an absolute privilege and took me right back to lying on the lounge carpet, riveted to the show, blocking out all distractions. The hair is thinner and greyer of course (mine too), but the pliable, lively, friendly face and glinting eyes are unmistakable, familiar and reassuring.

Most impressive is, the energy of it all; his presenting style; brash, lilting, full on and animated and then suddenly slow, deliberate, contemplative and smooth as he reveals a beautiful , simple, mathematical truth is absolutely captivating and has not been dulled by the years one bit.

In all too brief a time he covered multiplying large numbers just by knowing your two times table, binary number base, geometrical methods of multiplication and division, the great pyramid, Eratosthenes, Pythagoras and finally, atomic theory. My Son loved it, as did I.

The show was marred by only one thing. Right at the end, with 10 minutes or so to go, Johnny who by this time has the audience in the palm of his hand launches into a lecture on the big business/government conspiracies that say carbon dioxide emissions are responsible for global warming. Now, he has a point, he really does. Many aspects of climate change are indeed over-hyped and in many scientific journals you will find some tempering views on aspects of climate change. Unfortunately though, good argument or not, this was not the platform to do it. My Son, who was keen to ask a question or three after a few minutes of climate change bashing had totally lost interest. He was tired, cuddly, fuzzy Johnny now seemed altogether just too grown up and unhappy all of a sudden and the boy was not impressed.

By the end when Johnny was finished, a lot of the audience left, as did my Son and I. When we came in my Son was keen to have his booked signed and I was keen to shake the hand of someone who was no less than a childhood hero. By the end we just had to get out.

It was a sad end to a brief evening but I don’t blame Johnny for taking his chance when on stage. Unfortunately, this stage, at this time with a audience consisting of a large number of under-10s was the wrong one for much of that audience.

He’s still a hero. You should still buy his books for your children. The BBC should release all his TV output on DVD. Or, better still, on iPlayer! come on BBC!, no distribution costs, little production costs a mention on the website home page and at his book publishers and you will soon see if there is a market for the DVDs.

Johnny is, quite simply the maths and science teacher every parent would wish for their children. His TV shows are as relevant today as they were when first broadcast and enthusiasm for learning never gets old or out of date. There is always a generation who will benefit from exposure to teachers like Johnny Ball.

I didn’t mention his spot-on views on the bland and narrow national curriculum but suffice to say he’d get my vote for schools minister and judging my the applause on this subject, I’m not the only one who agrees with him.

So, like the iTunes newbie that I am, excited with my new car’s ability to play MP3 CDs I tried to burn such a thing from within iTunes. I hit the message that you are not allowed to do this for protected tunes, only stuff that was already in MP3.

Hmm… surely, I think to myself, a virtual cd burner would be useful here. I’d like to tell iTunes to burn an audio CD all the while having a virtual process take this output and convert to MP3 on the fly and save to disk.

Well, it exists and it works. It’s called Noteburner and you can try it for free then pay a modest $40 approx.

I just “burned” a 10 hour playlist (a load of purchased Richard Feynman Physics lectures in case you’re wondering) and lo, now I have all the stuff that I paid for sitting pretty as MP3s. Resulting files fit on a single writable CD so my travelling world is complete.

The rest of my music/audiobook collection, such as it is, is being converted as I type this.

One note of caution though, there is not much CPU to go around as iTunes sends out CD data and Noteburner rips it. Using a browser to post blog entries is fine but nothing else is going to get done.