I first became aware of the word "respect" used in the context of Ali G a couple of years ago. I recall a student team for the Crusoe CAD project using animated gifs of Ali G as a backdrop for their website. [I'll need to search this out just to confirm my hazy memory]

Numerous student teams have over the years acknowledged my contribution to their learning with what many of my colleagues would call 'bare-faced cheekiness'. IMHO, I believe that most of this 'cheek' is in fact respect in the Ali G sense. Team Wazzock is a prime example.

OTOH, I may be deluding myself but I find it hard to believe that they would be as 'in my face' as that.

Like previous years', many teams have dreamt up funny (in both senses of the word) names for their teams. I'll share some of these with you when the team projects have been submitted.

My students get my respect for their effort, good grace, and humour in the face of adversity ;-)

Ruminations : Study Guide for Radio.

Tomorrow I'm travelling by train to Linlithgow. The last time I did this I was suffering from sleep deprivation and missed the stop. Hopefully I'll stay awake this time. Just to make sure I'm heading off for an early night ;-)

Pity the poor teachers that were told in four years ago that calculators were used too much. Now inspectors are saying that Calculators 'not used enough' in lessons. The confusion surrounding this is further compounded by the following quote from the article:

"... the calculator's main role in mathematics lessons is not as a calculating tool, since children are still developing the mental calculation skills and written methods that they will need throughout their lives."

Ofsted said a mental method of calculation should always be pupils' first strategy and they needed to learn that a calculator did not replace this.

Excerpts from a dog's diary:

Day 180

8:00 am - OH BOY! DOG FOOD! MY FAVOURITE!
9:30 am - OH BOY! A CAR RIDE! MY FAVOURITE!
9:40 am - OH BOY! A WALK! MY FAVOURITE!
10:30 am - OH BOY! A CAR RIDE! MY FAVOURITE!
11:30 am - OH BOY! DOG FOOD! MY FAVOURITE!
12:00 noon - OH BOY! THE KIDS! MY FAVOURITE!
1:00 pm - OH BOY! THE YARD! MY FAVOURITE!
4:00 pm - OH BOY! THE KIDS! MY FAVOURITE!
5:00 pm - OH BOY! DOG FOOD! MY FAVOURITE!
5:30 pm - OH BOY! MOM! MY FAVOURITE!

Day 181
8:00 am - OH BOY! DOG FOOD! MY FAVOURITE!
9:30 am - OH BOY! A CAR RIDE! MY FAVOURITE!
9:40 am - OH BOY! A WALK! MY FAVOURITE!
10:30 am - OH BOY! A CAR RIDE! MY FAVOURITE!
11:30 am - OH BOY! DOG FOOD! MY FAVOURITE!
12:00 noon - OH BOY! THE KIDS! MY FAVOURITE!
1:00 pm - OH BOY! THE YARD! MY FAVOURITE!
4:00 pm - OH BOY! THE KIDS! MY FAVOURITE!
5:00 pm - OH BOY! DOG FOOD! MY FAVOURITE!
5:30 pm - OH BOY! MOM! MY FAVOURITE!

Day 182
8:00 am - OH BOY! DOG FOOD! MY FAVOURITE!
9:30 am - OH BOY! A CAR RIDE! MY FAVOURITE!
9:40 am - OH BOY! A WALK! MY FAVOURITE!
10:30 am - OH BOY! A CAR RIDE! MY FAVOURITE!
11:30 am - OH BOY! DOG FOOD! MY FAVOURITE!
12:00 noon - OH BOY! THE KIDS! MY FAVOURITE!
1:00 pm - OH BOY! THE YARD! MY FAVOURITE!
1:30 pm - OOOOOOOH. BATH. BUMMER!
4:00 pm - OH BOY! THE KIDS! MY FAVOURITE!
5:00 pm - OH BOY! DOG FOOD! MY FAVOURITE!
5:30 pm - OH BOY! MOM! MY FAVOURITE!

Excerpt from a cat's diary:

DAY 183
My captors continue to taunt me with bizarre little dangling
objects.They dine lavishly on fresh meat, while I am forced to eat dry
cereal. The only thing that keeps me going is the hope of escape, and
the mild satisfaction I get from ruining the occasional piece of
furniture. Tomorrow I may eat another houseplant.

DAY 184
Today my attempt to kill my captors by weaving around their feet while
they were walking almost succeeded, must try this at the top of the
stairs. In an attempt to disgust and repulse these vile oppressors, I
once again induced myself to vomit on their favourite chair ... must try
this on their bed.

DAY 185
Decapitated a mouse and brought them the headless body, in attempt to
make them aware of what I am capable of, and to try to strike fear into
their hearts. They only cooed and condescended about what a good little
cat I was.... Hmmm. Not working according to plan.

DAY 186
I am finally aware of how sadistic they are. For no good reason I was
chosen for the water torture. This time however it included a burning
foamy chemical called "shampoo." What sick minds could invent such a
liquid.
My only consolation is the piece of thumb still stuck between my teeth.

DAY 187
There was some sort of gathering of their accomplices. I was placed in
solitary throughout the event. However, I could hear the noise and smell
the foul odour of the glass tubes they call "beer". More importantly I
overheard that my confinement was due to MY power of "allergies." Must
learn what this is and how to use it to my advantage.

DAY 188
I am convinced the other captives are flunkies and maybe snitches. The
dog is routinely released and seems more than happy to return. He is
obviously a half-wit. The bird on the other hand has got to be an
informant, and speaks with them regularly. I am certain he reports my
every move. Due to his current placement in the metal room, his safety
is assured. But I can wait, it is only a matter of time...

I've just noticed that Scottish Lass has a Learning in Scotland category with news relating to education and online learning resources.

Jon Udell's Zope Lessons Learned:

"It's taken me a long time to get comfortable with some of Zope's basic idioms. Maybe passing a few of them along will help you ramp up more quickly. Here, then, are a few of the lessons I've learned along the way..."

From an http://frontier.userland.com/discuss/ thread - coexisting with apache on same server. One of these days I just know I'll need to find this again ;-)

Andrea's Weblog: Tuesday, April 16, 2002

Guess who's the number one result in a Google search for "Andrea"? Duncan mused about first name surfing via Google a while ago. Now he is the first Duncan on Google.

Looking for inspiration for their project group name for my [52.225] CAD Practical #1 one team used the Ned Names generator and used my name as the seed. So they now call themselves "Team Wazzock" ;-) I'm going to have to have a word with "Belter" B-)

Later: this is spooky. A google search for wazzock threw up this from the Letters page of a Sinclair ZX Spectrum fanzine:

...whatever happened to Dunc in December? Also you said that wazz is short for wazzock, but once you gave a way a poster which you said would "wazz up your wall". Why?

Dunc and wazzock together in the same paragraph is an almost unbelievable coincidence!

O'Reilly Network: The Body Electronic: An Interview With IBM's Robert Morris

Under the leadership of Robert Morris, vice president of personal systems and storage and director of IBM's Almaden Research Lab, IBM is putting forth the concept of autonomic computing.

As IBM puts it, "Increasing processor might, storage capacity, and network connectivity must report to some kind of systemic authority if we expect to take advantage of its potential. The human body's self-regulating nervous system presents an excellent model for creating the next generation of computing."...

Had my train home tonight not been 30 minutes late I would have had time to take a photo of a gorgeous sunset over Belhaven Bay. You'll just have to take my word for it. Hopefully in the next few weeks there'll be equally spectacular sunsets which I'll get a chance to capture with the digital camera.

Now that All Macros support stripHTML and clipLength attributes, Seth suggests an update to the way of generating "items" in the RSS file. I've updated http://duncan.smeed.org/rss/jotter.rss - documented at http://duncan.smeed.org/1521 - to use the new attributes in my macro call.

Thanks Seth!

via HtP - ZapMedia ::: Product - The ZapStation...

...allows you to enjoy your media assets through your TV and Stereo system while sitting on your sofa, instead of sitting in your desk chair in front of your PC. So whether you are using DVD, CD, Windows Media, or MP3 formats - whether you're watching TV, or listening to Internet radio - the ZapStation brings an unparalleled, in-control experience.

Aspects of the ZapStation are almost identical to a final year project I supervised last year. I'll have to let Jamie know!

Mark Pilgrim Investigates OPML and is not impressed:

So as far as I can tell, OPML is XML that isn't really XML, has (but doesn't use) a DTD that isn't really a DTD, and can only be properly defined as "whatever Userland's tools happen to accept at the moment".

Here ends my one and only foray into OPML.

I've just been watching the (rerun) coverage of the Scottish Women Curling Team winning the World Championships. See BBC SPORT | OTHER SPORTS | Scotland take world title for details.

I finally got round to scripting IE to use BBEdit as the 'source viewer'. I'm using a combination of a Studio Log: Script Snippet that takes the source of the front window in Internet Explorer and opens it in BBEdit and the latest version of DragThing to bind the AppleScript to a keystroke (F11). If I wasn't a registered user of DragThing I'd be tempted to use Key Xing to do much the same thing. Works like a charm.