brad

Link: Philosophy of effective teaching

I’ve been meaning to dig out this link for those anizers getting into university teaching (you know who you are). The site’s host was originally an engineering professor, but got more into figuring out what teaching/learning methods work. I recall many of the papers/links here were independent of subject taught, but I’ve had the link on ice and never needed to follow it up myself (yet).

Turku Photos

Over 1000 Photos from the World Ultimate Championships 2004 in Turku

Unfortunately none of my games it seems.

Geek museum

Sitting on a computer desk in my old room, my PC has been hibernating. At some point my dad thought about taking it to use as a webserver or somesuch, but said it was too out of date. I’ve been talking about trying to donate it somewhere.

I just turned it on to see what I should delete or save. Plugging it in I saw the delivery note taped to the casing: “12/94”. On -> 75MHz lights up. Dos window. Oh oh.

After a quick look around, I typed “win”. Windows 3.1.1. Since its been unplugged so long, the clock said its the year 1980. File Manager (pre Explorer) tells me the hard disk has 500MB, (less than one CDs worth, although the PC has a CD-drive). Right clicking the mouse doesn’t do anything, its all in the menus. A directory for graphics programs contains lview, cshow and pmaster. It takes 2 seconds to open an 80Kb JPEG. Netscape 1.1, Word 6.0, Autocad v13, diallup software called Trumpet.

Mum said last night that it will be difficult to donate, since they don’t take such old machines. I said “It can’t be so bad, I worked on my thesis on it”.

I worked on my graduate thesis on this machine. Wow.

Here’s some thoughts: I’m looking to buy a car. I was thinking old and cheap. A 94 car was designed when a 75MHz win3.1.1 machine with a 500Mb hard disc was state of the art or better. My “current” computer, the ex-work laptop I travelled with still runs win98. I’m trying to imagine a 15 year old user who’s “grown up” with Windows XP or similar, turning on Win3.1.1. For any geeks out there, the games directory contained: bbv, bolo, bubble, crobots, doom2, hb4, joust, offroad, omf, pactime, pinball, starcon, viking and wacky. I thought a bit of joust would be fun for old times sake and would you believe it, 75MHz is way too fast. You can’t even flap fast enought to fly :) The game must have been written for an older AT or even XT. I used to use at-slow.exe to play it :) (I also found 4 windows entertainment packs)

A part of me wants to keep it. My even older 286 (A 12MHz? Hyundai complete with 9-pin dot-matrix printer) is waiting for me in my brother’s room. That’ll be fun. A shame our old Commodore 64 went out years ago. But my 266MHz, 64MB Ram Palm Tungsten T3 runs a C64 emulator (Frodo) and fits in my pocket.

3 Things

Alright, so now I’m blogging, instead of writing anything interesting from my life, I’m referencing stuff from other people. Check out:

Some fantastic Australia photos (inc Perth) recommended by Pablo. Would you believe I brought 12 of these flashflight night discs back to Oz BEFORE I’d even seen this most excellent page? http://frisbee.s5.com/ Since I haven’t blogged much about Beach Worlds in Portugal yet, I can at least link to teammate Derek’s blog entry

Backpackers Readjustment

This is one of the more fitting “comedy” eMails I’ve been sent. Worth sharing, eh Volker?

—-

Having trouble readjusting to life back at home now that the travelling is over? Here’s a few handy hints to help you settle back in.

1) Replace your bed with two or more bunk beds, and every night invite random people to sleep in your bedroom with you. Ensure at least once a week a couple gets drunk and shags on one of the top bunks. Remove beds one by one as symptons improve

2) Sleep in your sleeping bag, forgetting to wash it for months. Add some bugs in order to wake up with many unsightly bites over your arms and legs.

3) Enlist the help of a family member to set your radio alarm to go off randomly during the night, filling your room with loud talking.This works best if the station is foreign. Also have several mobiles ringing, without being answered. To add to the
torture, ask a friend to bring plastic bags into your room at roughly 6 in the morning and proceed to rustle them for no apparent reason for a good half an hour.

4) Keep all your clothes in a rucksack. Remember to smell them before puting them on and reintroduce the use of the iron SLOWLY.

5) Buy your favourite food, and despite living at home, write your name and when you might next be leaving the house on all bags. This should include mainly pasta, 2 minute noodles, carrots and beer.

6) Ask a family member to every now and again steal an item of food, preferably the one you have most been looking forward to or the most expensive. Keep at least one item of food far too long or in a bag out in the sun, so you have to spend about 24 hours within sprinting distance of the toilet.

7) Even if it’s a Sunday, vacate the house by 10a.m., and then stand on the corner of the street looking lost. Ask the first passer-by of similar ethnic background if they have found anywhere good to go yet.

8) When sitting on public transport ( the London Tube would be ideal) introduce yourself to the person sitting next to you, say which stop you got on at, where you are going, how long you have been travelling and what university you went to. If they say they are going to Morden,say you met a guy on the central line who said it was terrible and that you’ve heard Parsons Green is better and cheaper.

9) Finally stick paper in your shower so that the water comes out in just a drizzle. Adjust the hot/cold taps at regular intervals so that you are never fully satisfied with the temperature. Because of this frustration, shower infrequently.

These simple but effective instructions should help you fall back into normal society with the minimum effort.

I Still Call Australia Home... but it feels funny

I guess this is the first anize post, entered from Australia. That sounds like an excuse for a beer. Cheers anize! I�m now waiting for 105 eMails to download via modem, ugggh. Time to fix my index and get this Aussie entry in.

Gday!

So I arrived in Perth and hit a bed some 35 hours after leaving my previous one. The journey was full of events and deserves a blog entry itself. All in all it was OK and I think I should have jetlag pretty well covered. (My laptop thinks its 16:33 instead of 22:33). I guess I expected more obvious emotions to surface during this homecoming than I’ve felt till now. Australia was home, but having not lived there for over 6 years, I’ve neither left one behind or arrived in the one I left. Also expecting new things to start happening, there’s not such a huge sense of having arrived already. Perhaps until plans starts shaping up I’ll feel like I’m still travelling. I dunno.

Mum’s lamb roast tasted like home.

Those in colder climates but warmer temperatures might enjoy knowing it was bloody freezing last night. It got down to 3C. Beautiful blue sky day though (maxed around 16) and temps will get up to 23C by Sunday and 25C next week. Not quite beach weather and I’m not at this Oktoberfest, but spring flowers are blooming.

I haven’t got around to writing any kind of todo list yet, but it’ll be pretty big. Luckily I’m in no rush. Time, now, to read those eMails.

Algarve Arrival

So I’ve got sunburn, cracked lips, bruises, aches, scrapes and the general exhaustion that you get after a long beach tournament (sleeping less than 4hrs a night). After the round robin, Australia exceeded our own expectations (drinking team) to be third, but since we had 5 honorary-australians, we were a tyro team and ineligible for semis. Kicked back to 5th we officially came 6th after losing again to the Belgians. Bugger that, we beat the Yanks and Poms and had as much fun as anyone, even the Irish. I may actually write properly about it all at some point. Photos are fun.

I met up with my folks and arrived in the Algarve where its warm and sunny. Now its a quiet week in an appartment here, then a flight from Faro (7:05am what!) to Dusseldorf, and get across to Frankfurt that night for the midnight run to Singapore and then Perth.