Annoyances

Bug catching day

Fiddling around with code always reveals new problems. Today I seem to have spent way too much time finding, developing and solving little problems. A full day of this and all I can see are the small irritations instead of the accomplishments.

For example after installing new wordpress blog software (version 2.0.5) I got this error every time I tried to do something

Found
The document has moved here.

Additionally, a 500 Internal Server Error error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

Very annoying. First searching then failing. Eventually I found a discussion on this bug which seems to be particularly prevalent among users who have One.com as their ISP (which I do in this case).

Not to worry the solution was here:

Find the file:
wp-includes/pluggable-functions.php

find the line:

> status_header($status);

and change it to

> // status_header($status);

Changed and everything is sortedâ?¦ My day has been full of little bugsâ?¦ Or as LP keeps saying: Maybe you should read the manual.

Read the manual? What? I ask you: What kind of amateur tecchie would stoop to reading manuals?

Posted on by mklang

Do you hand out your handouts?

Powerpoint is my crutch. As a teacher I have long been dependent upon powerpoint*. But I have also been concerned about the way in which it forms the way I teach and the way in which students learn. Increasingly students have an expectation of getting the lecturerâ??s powerpoint slides â?? Preferably in digital form and in advance of the lecture.

Powerpoint Students
What is a lecture? University is filled with them. They are praised by some and reviled by others (this will be the topic for a future post). To the student the lecture almost defines university life. Therefore it is maybe not all good when the lecture has become confined to the square space and bullet point list defined by presentation software.

Most often I do not hand out my handouts, nor do I provide my powerpoint slides in digital or any other form to my students. This is not an attempt to monopolize or capitalize on my knowledge. To understand the purpose of this we must look at the purpose of powerpoint slides.

Slides are used (in my teaching) for two purposes. First, and foremost, the slides are there to keep me on track to help me keep my thoughts in order. Second, the slides are intended to underscore certain more important thoughts or concepts. Thirdly, the slides may provide light entertainment they can help the listeners to keep listening.

As these points show, the slides are not a replacement for the lecture, lecturer, or literature. So in order to make sure that this message gets across: I do not hand out my handouts.

Powerpoint Lecturers
If the student has become used to being fed with powerpoint slides then what about the lecturer. We have (generalization warning!) become dependent upon powerpoint. Planning a lecture begins with the opening of presentation software. The knowledge we want to transfer is confined by our ability to condense it (knowledge) into squares and lists.

By adding features, such as effects, sounds and images we believe that we are somehow helping the students to understand what we have learned through reading, scientific method and experience.

Handicap Warning
Powerpoint can be, for both students and lecturers, an invaluable support. But letâ??s not forget that the same software can be used as a way in which to hide the fact that no transfer of knowledge is taking place. Each student should as him/herself what they hope to see in the handouts and why they are so eager to obtain the handouts â?? at the same time so disinterested in the original.

Lecturers should stop and think before resorting to powerpoint. If powerpoint is necessary then they should stop and think about the content and its presentation. Would the students be equally served by the applying the old adage â??less is moreâ?? to powerpoint?

Did Einstein hand out handouts?

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* the term powerpoint is intented to refer to a generic set of presentation software. The same results are obtained by Open Office presenter, Macâ??s Keynote, or any other such program.

Humor: The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation: Gettysburg Address as a powerpoint presentation http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/index.htm

Recommend Reading
Allan M. Jones. The use and abuse of PowerPoint in Teaching and Learning in the Life Sciences: A Personal Overview, BEE-j Volume 2: November 2003 http://bio.ltsn.ac.uk/journal/vol2/beej-2-3.pdf

David B. Daniel. Using Powerpoint to Ruin a Perfectly Good Lecture. Presented to the 1st Biennial SRCD Teaching of Developmental Science Institute 2005. http://www.srcd.org/biennial_archives/atlanta_2005/documents/daniel.pdf

Greg Jaffe. â??Pentagon cracks down on … PowerPointâ??, The Wall Street Journal Online. http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-502314.html

Jens E. Kjeldsen. â??The Rhetoric of PowerPointâ??, Seminar.net – International journal of media, technology and lifelong learning Vol. 2 â?? Issue 1 â?? 2006. http://www.seminar.net/volume2-issue1-2006/the-rhetoric-of-powerpoint

Jeffrey R. Young. â??When Good Technology Means Bad Teaching: Giving professors gadgets without training can do more harm than good in the classroomâ??, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Vol. 51, Issue 12, November 12, 2004. http://chronicle.com/free/v51/i12/12a03101.htm

Posted on by mklang

Missed Buy Nothing Day

Yesterday was buy nothing day. All I can say is that the buy-nothing idea was not particularly noticeable at Ikea. So I must consider myself a buy-nothing failure. Here is some information about the day.

Every November, for 24 hours, we remember that no one was born to shop. If youâ??ve never taken part in Buy Nothing Day, or if youâ??ve taken part in the past but havenâ??t really committed to doing it again, consider this: 2006 will go down as the year in which mainstream dialogue about global warming finally reached its critical mass. What better way to bring the Year of Global Warming to a close than to point in the direction of real alternatives to the unbridled consumption that has created this quagmire?

Read more over at Adbusters.

Oh well, there is always next year…

Posted on by mklang

Customisation

Have you ever held a knife which fits perfectly in your hand? Or any other tool which once you picked it up seemed to become almost a natural part of your body? If you have experienced this then you have experienced â??goodâ?? design. Often the only way to recognize â??badâ?? design is when things do not work or work badly.

During the past days the problem of good/bad design has been an issue since I managed to crash my laptop and needed to format and re-install everything. On one level this is not a complex operation but what is difficult is getting the computer back to the feeling it had before.

Since it is the tool I use the most it has been adapted from a standard factory machine into a highly personalized artifact and therefore once it was restored to factory standard working with it for longer periods was a painful experience in much the same way as working with a bad knife is a painful experience.

The process of customization is slow and getting the machine to adapt itself to my wants and needs an exhausting experience since it requires remembering hundreds (thousands?) of small pieces of software that made my machine mine.

Posted on by mklang

Angry, upset & annoyed

My computer crashed. MY computer CRASHED. I cannot access my stored mail! Actually all my mail is gone. All of it. Gone. I have not backed up my work for at least two weeks. I cannot even see my appointments.

When technology dies – it really dies. The problem was that I was lulled into a false sense of security with the shiny mac. It’s user-friendliness made me forget the vunerable situation.

If it cannot be repaired and rescued then I will be cursing out loud for several months to come.

DAMN!!!!!

Posted on by mklang

Knuth versus Email

For some time now Donald Knuth is no longer doing email. But did you read his reason? He has a great online explanation where he writes:

Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration. I try to learn certain areas of computer science exhaustively; then I try to digest that knowledge into a form that is accessible to people who don’t have time for such study.

On the same page he also quotes Umberto Eco “I don’t even have an e-mail address. I have reached an age where my main purpose is not to receive messages.”

Knuth wrote this almost 17 years ago. It’s still right. It is very impressive. I am particularly impressed today since I spent a great deal of time yesterday cleaning out my inbox dealing with over 200 little tasks which had piled up there.
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PS. For those of you who do not know who Knuth is: Before you even start to think about attempting to call Knuth anti-technology or using complex words like Luddite make sure you read up, why not try wikipedia?

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Posted on by mklang

Fashion rules the blogs

Checking some statistics on Swedish blogs only to find that right now seven out of the top ten blogs are fashion blogs (according to this counter). Now even if we discount the methodology used it is still a scary statistic.

Yes â??scaryâ??.

Even if we try to explain the fact by claiming technological arrogance and superiority. That maybe fashion oriented people visit blogs while many others use rss readers it still does not begin to match the statistic â?? seven out of the ten top blogs are focused on fashion.

Therefore the clothes we wear are more important to the population at large than any other subject or topic. Forget social issues, forget politics, forget technology, forget war, and forget sex. Fashion rules the blogosphere.

We have come a long way from Naomi Klein “No Logo” and the like…

In an attempt to capitalise on this information cartoonist Mattias Adolfsson has turned his blog into a fashion blog for one week only. But be warned â?? fashion isnâ??t what it used to be when Mattias looks at it!

Check out his “Showroom” series of sketches.

Posted on by mklang

Some Days

Some days, a certainty of paranoia appears. Like a cold ghost from nowhere. It is a conspiracy of soulless, joyless fools, hell-bent on sucking the joy out of life. Wearing favourite socks is not armour enough from their clammy hands. Irrespective of the amount of struggle all that is left is the vague feeling of helplessness and hopelessness.

Like a fly bouncing ineffectively against the glass windowpane growing ever more tired, while life slowly evaporates.

Posted on by mklang

Not Headhunted

Today I had a meeting with a large consultancy company. My impression going into the meeting was that we were going to talk about a cooperation. Nothing specific but I was being courted.

It turns out that this was not the case. As usual my expectations were higher than reality. They wanted me to pimp students to them. OK so this is NOT the way that he put it and it may be a nice idea for the students to meet consultants.

But what gets me annoyed is the fact that the meeting should have been arranged differently so that both parties knew what it was about. The flirting was false, their interest in me or my talents was veneer thin.

Normally I don’t care about corporate disinterest but today I had to re-arrange my schedule and make my way through the rain. If I had known they wanted my students I would not have been so interested. So yes this was a good way of getting me to the meeting. But the result is that I feel like I have been hustled – not really a great way to get me to help them.

Posted on by mklang