Thought of the Moment

February 9th, 2006

I was laying in bed thinking about something and it occurred to me:

Loyalty is for dogs and people who have everything they want.

I guess this would explain why loyalty has never really posed as something I care about, except for guilt by committing something that isn’t loyal. I am never really fulfilled or humble enough to say that everything I want is what I have. I should work on this.

By saying all this doesn’t mean I’ve done something terribly lewd and nasty; it was just a thought that crossed my mind one night as I lay in bed.



Fuel Efficiency

February 5th, 2006

My motorcycle (that I do not wish to take pictures of) is incredibly economical. I don’t wish to refer to it too often, as it isn’t a bike of pride; however, I am continually surprised at how far I can go on it for the money I pay. Whilst I could give you a buck for distance ratio, I have decided against it as that would make most other nations laugh; since the fuel costs in this country are so incredibly extortionate that it would appear as if I were making a null statement.

However, I have never emptied the tank. I once in a while (every 7 days or so) pop into a petrol station and fill the tank out of courtesy to the bike, for its kindness to me. I keep a log, writing down the distance every time I fill the tank to clock the distance per litre. I roughly get about 2.5 litres per 100KM or alternatively: 93 Miles to the US Gallon… which makes it very economical.. and environmentally friendly.

If you wish to follow my bike effeciency log, click on this sentence.



To the Limi-limi-limit!

February 1st, 2006

I have been in a situation a lot lately with many people where despite the communication being all that it can be; and having a full grasp of what the other person is speaking about, I have failed totally to transfer my opinion across convincingly. Despite all facts, rationale and justifications that can only point to it being wholley the only answer available, the other discussee disagrees vacantly in a manner that only suggests they failed to understand the proposition.

Initially, I pondered whether it was me being dense and not seeing their point of view. The age old pardoning of “Perhaps I’m not communicating properly“, sat down for a while whilst I searched for alternative reasons for this predicament. I concluded somewhat conceitedly that perhaps one of the two parties involved in the discussion had a limited imagination and whilst I’d like to think that my point of view was the more progressive despite the pedantic premise that my opinions generally lie under; the opposing point of view may be beyond the realms of my imagination.

What I am trying to get at: If you don’t agree with someone, don’t bother trying to explain. If they did not understand you from the outset, they probably never will… or perhaps you never will understand their opposing view. Eitherway, the exercise is totally futile.



Song for a Commercial

January 24th, 2006

I’ve had this idea…

It is a group activity, even if you do it alone. The idea is: “song for a commercial”.

Firstly, you find an item you own, make a film clip of it in use and then choose a theme song to suit. Finishing it off by turning it into an advert!

I’m going to work on one to show.

😛



Written Examinations

January 18th, 2006

Being a dyslexic disabled student I always struggle with exams. Hehe. No! Not in that respect; I meant in the sense that they’re so utterly futile. Practicality aside, if written examinations were to be replaced by a different means of assessment, they’d be less qualified fools without a clue of what they’re qualified in, and more qualified people who do know what they’re qualified in. Let’s embellish this statement with a little escoteric Neilistic example (as mentioned to Natti earlier):

Picture a car mechanic who can fully explain, identify and solve problems within a given car aurally; yet whose writting abilities are not confident or sophisticated enough to be stand to the same level.
Now imagine that mechanic competing in a written examination against somebody whose accademic skills were stronger yet experience was weaker.

Obviously, this petty example illustrates a non-reality situation. However, what it does suggest is that both candidates have their strengths in communicating and being able to transcend their knowledge onto the assessor. The mode of written examination is limited in extracting a true and accurate reading of what a said candidate is capable of. It therefore would be prudent to consider and factor in such attributes of people.

I’m not praying on the “equal rights” crap to save the day and allow wheel-chair bound peons to participate in the 100M sprint, as that is not what I am about. Although, what I am about is: seeing a person for what they are worth and what they can do and what they can’t. From my limited experience in life, I can see that there are a lot of over qualified people who study because they’re capable of it, without necessarily being intelligent; and then, a whole lot of skilled people who are bad at studying and live a repressed life despite being rather intelligent.

I always figured as a child that qualification and education were both the same thing and the resultant effect would be an intelligent outcome. Consequently intelligence, would be a skill in the thinking arena, generally specific to a particular field. I now believe (upon further insite) that education is a very distant myth and qualification is used to compensate for people’s lack of skill in the field they’re qualified in.



Third Piece of Wisdom

January 12th, 2006

I had another Wisdom tooth out today. It hurt.

Amen.

Misc/3rd-wisdom

Yesterday I bought some gloves for my bike…

Misc/biking-gloves



Literacy, Faith, Philosophy, Science and Teapots

January 9th, 2006

Those who know me need not be told that reading is a difficulty for me. This is not because I am uninterested or illiterate; in fact it is more to do with my eyes. As mentioned a couple of posts ago, asfedia has helped my eyes greatly in reading, however my eyes are and always will be very sensitive.

Being only a humble chimp descendant, focusing on small things for any length of time causes irritability and eventual pounding headaches. This could be a reason why it took me 6 months to arrive half way through “The Selfish Gene” but one day I intend to finish that book. However, if you do not know of this book by Richard Dawkins, please go to your local library and find yourself an edition. Regardless of your country I’m sure you’ll find a version somewhere (it was an internationall bestseller).

The purpose of this article is to tell you about two things I don’t do. Firstly read, secondly watch television. Today, I was tinkering about with my xbox and in doing so I happened upon a television show discussing faith. Gripped by the content of the show I stayed tuned, the perspective of the narrator very much favoured my own views, whilst not totally shutting out the plausability of a God, but narrowing that to a very unlikely state through the means of science. It wasn’t until the documentary finished that I discovered that the protagonist was in fact Richard Dawkins, I had never seen or heard him before so I was surprised.

The television show, has rekindled my desires to finish that book greatly, it also has given me great interest in watching the following documentary episode. For those able to receive Channel4 television: “Can you Believe it?“, I highly recommend it.



Debasement of Education at Kingston Primary School University

January 8th, 2006

I wont beat about the bush and say that the educational system in the UK is great; because it is not. However, the level of ¿education? at Kingston University is a joke. I was reading over a past exam paper from last year in a module I was taking this semester in order to prepare myself for the upcoming exams. It took me no longer than 2 minutes to realize how I was actually wasting my time. Allow me to demonstrate:

(5 marks)
Improve the last section of the following setence by selecting one of the options below (i) to (v):

Although several groups were absolutely opposed to the outside support given to the revolutionary government, other groups were as equal in their adamant approval of that support.

  1. were as equal in their adamant approval of…
  2. held equal adamant approval of…
  3. were equally adamant in approving…
  4. had approved equally adamantly…
  5. held approved equally adamant of…

I’ll spoil your fun to mention, this subject is Project Engineering. Other questions are as complex as reading a graph, working out a number sequence that is as simple as an incrementing differential all equalling 5 marks. Need I not also remind you that the pass mark for the exam is 40%.

I guess having more passes is better than actually caring what you teach your students. May I also remind you that for this same module we had lectures on how to write a CV and an assignment was to hand in what we had done in the lectures, despite the fact we had to write CVs last year to get out placement jobs.

There surely must be something in the staff’s water-supply.



ASFEDIA!

January 5th, 2006

I began writing an article one lonely night last year (or maybe the year before) and has been sitting here pestering me ever since. I wanted to share something that enlightened me and in some respect makes me sad that this is not a fully recognised method of practice by opticians. Please note I added a couple of paragraphs to the end… hence why it had been sitting there for so long.

The article follows as below:

I’ve had this eye headache for the past 4 days and I have been thinking a lot about ASFEDIA (Arrhythmic Saccade & Foveation during Edge Detection Iterative Arrays) for some reason.
It was first introduced to me whilst I was studying art last year, when I was undergoing some dyslexia assessments and the like. I had a couple of examinations by TintaVision in which I found that my reading speed and text clarity was vastly improved by optimising the background to black text.

To best explain although not to be fully accurate; each and everyone sees black and white differently. Myself for example I find white too bright to read off of, and find that the whiteness absorbs the edges of the letters when putting black on white. I guess the best way to illustrate this would be to imagine reading text on a sheet of acetate with a halogen light behind it.

In essence; ASFEDIA, is an eye examination that takes into consideration that generic colours such as black and white aren’t constants that everyone sees the same; consequently adapting colours aids the process of strengthening your eyes. I found after 4 examinations (staggered over 2 years) my reading speed had accelerated exponentially, and the mild prescription I had for my eyes (that required glasses which was prescribed by my optician) was no longer needed as my eye muscles had overcome their inadequacies through colour manipulation.

I would recommend this examination to everyone. You do not need a learning difficulty to justify this examination, and if it concerns you to what other people think of you by reading with a coloured filter then I guess you’re just old fashioned.



What Have I Been Doing Lately

December 29th, 2005

I think to best explain what I am doing at the moment I need to explain something or other about my sister. My sister has been asking me (repetitively) for a while now to make her a website so she can advertise and rent her properties out.

[That’ll suffice with the sister talk]

Well, obviously slaving away at my computer for hours on end would not be justified by the paragraph above. However, being lazy I looked for my options and alternatives and I was pointed in the direction of pre-built CMS (Content Management System(s)). I tried a couple and realized that they were so ghastly, streamlined for commercial use and over complicated with options for everything you never needed.

I concluded that the only real option was that I’d have to design and make my sister’s website from scratch; in doing this it occurred to me that I should make a cms the opposite of what is already out there at the moment. What I am suggesting is literally a content management system, with the options to expand in a modular form.

Obviously that isn’t as simple as I was going to leave it, I decided that to do the job properly I’d do it how I’ve been meaning to do for a long time and that involves XML and XSLT in a big way. Using a MySQL database back end I’ll interpret the data using PHP to render it into XML, which then will take form into any shape of form you wish to view the content… by this I mean I could knock the articles out as web-pages, RSS documents, PDF, Word Documents, etc.

Just a novel idea I’m working on… I’m not even close to having anything to show for it at the moment.