Face The Facts

I read that Danish students are going to be allowed to use the Internet during examinations.

According to the BBC, 'Sanne Yde Schmidt, who heads the project at Greve, says: "If we're going to be a modern school and teach them things that are relevant for them in modern life, we have to teach them how to use the internet."'

I can see this being the shape of things to come: it's trendy, and it's accepting what many would say is the way of the world.

Me? I can't argue with the statement that young people need to know how to use the Net. Am I the only person who would point out, though, that young people generally manage to work that out for themselves?

But the argument is that this kind of examination tests the ability to research a subject and work out the answer to a question through the integration of information derived from various sources, rather than just the learning and regurgitation of facts.

And I certainly approve of children being taught those skills as early as possible. And I'm aware that there are now sophisticated computer programs that do a good job of spotting plagiarism, generally seen as one of the biggest risks of access to the Internet.

But I can't help wondering whether this is going a little too far. We do need to learn how to commit information to memory and how to use the information we've stored away to answer questions. This can be a simple regurgitation of facts, but the ability to do more than that should be what distinguishes the top grades from the average.

If I'm employing someone, I want that person to be able to think on his or her feet. Though there may not be total recall of every fact related to the matter at hand, that person should at the very least remember enough to have an idea of possible solutions rather than being able to do little more than stare blankly at me until they've had a chance to dive onto the computer.

We are, surely, in danger of creating a generation who are data-rich, but information- and understanding-poor.

Perhaps I'm just getting old and reactionary, but then maybe experience says otherwise.

I must have been about 14 when we started to use calculators at school. While I was pleased to be able to leave log tables and slide rules behind, I had already learned a solid command of mental arithmetic that still stands me in good stead.

Now the level of numerical illiteracy is shocking in this country and I cannot help but wonder how far the early introduction of calculators - not, please note, the use of calculators as such - is responsible for that.

I guess we'll find out in the fulness of time. And I really hope I'm wrong.

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Amazon Gets Mean

I quite like Amazon.

I even quite like the fact that it remembers what I've done there, and uses that information to suggest things that might be of interest.

The fact that I've bought things for other people does tend to skew the suggestions somewhat - I really don't want pointing in the direction of, for example, new volumes of manga or Biology textbooks.  Even so, Amazon does often manage to pique my interest.

However, no matter what Amazon thinks, and despite a certain respect for the man as a presenter of gardening programmes, I really have not, ever "purchased or rated books by Alan Titchmarsh" and have no interest whatsoever in this weeks special offer, "Knave of Spades".

What I find most disturbing, though, is the fact that what they've offered me is the "[Large Print]: 16 Point" version.

I know I'm getting older, but even so ... what on Earth should I expect next? This, perhaps.

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Because I'm Worth It

Normally, when people say something went with a bang they mean that it was a success.

Perhaps that doesn't apply when referring to a television although, in all fairness, it was more of a crack than a bang.

Either way, at 6:15 on Monday evening, my television had the electronic equivalent of a major stroke and, seriously crippled, was left able only to communicate with me through flashing of the front-panel LED.

Eleven flashes. That, it seems, translates into "You're pretty much buggered, matey".

I still have hopes that I won't have to dump the old beastie. There's always Freecycle after all. Either way, though, after five or six years of loyal service my Sony Trinitron is no longer much use to me.

Old Faithful

The obvious next step, then, was to buy a new TV. And that's where I hit the buffers.

It's not that I couldn't afford to get one; no, it's simply that I find it very hard to buy things like this for myself.

I agonised for an age before finally buying my netbook, Eeenid, a little over a year ago. Apart from in the immediate aftermath of the purchase, I've never regretted it.  In fact, it's been incredibly useful and it's probably not overstating things to say it's been a life-changer.  At the time, though, it felt like a real extravagance, a totally unnecessary luxury. And now, the thought of spending so much money on a half-decent TV for myself made my head spin.

Don't get me wrong: I like to have nice things, and it's not as if I'm tight with cash in other areas of my life. At least I don't think I am - others can probably judge that better than I can. It's just I get hung up on buying large-ticket items for myself.

I was discussing this with The Beloved and I mused whether it might be something to do with not feeling that I deserve nice things. After all, when I stop to think about it, this inhibition only seemed to start when my marriage broke up. The Beloved got a little cross about such foolishness!  Rightly so, I guess, but it was only idle speculation.

Still, these things tend to lurk below the conscious mind and it can be hard to identify them; and even if you do so it can be hard to root them out once they find a cosy corner to hide in.

Still, knowing there's an issue is the first step to overcoming it. I have to be sensible about this: I work hard for my salary (despite any indications you may have seen to the contrary) and I'm damn good at my job; I deserve the occasional treat. Even the occasional, expensive treat.

So today I ordered my new 32", LCD, HD television. It should be delivered tomorrow. And while I still have slight irrational feelings of guilt, I'm going to bury them and look forward to playing with my new toy. So many new buttons, so many things to fiddle with, so many clever little tricks to try out.

The New Toy - Artist's Impression *

As L'Oréal used to say: "Because I'm worth it".



* I never said it was the impression of a good artist, did I?

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Time Marches Onwards ...

The weather has changed. The temperature has plummetted. It almost seems as if the year has jumped from Summer to Winter without all that tedious mucking-about in Autumn.

And I seem to be preparing to hibernate.

I'm finding a need to sleep rather more than I'm accustomed to, and instead of settling down in front of the computer of an evening, as I'm used to doing, I'm far more likely at the moment to pull up the drawbridge and settle down with a good book.

Having exhausted all my unread books, I'm working through the works of Jasper Fforde. I'm currently on book two so, as there are seven volumes in my collection, they should last me a little while.

How to describe these books to someone who doesn't know them? Science fiction? Fantasy? Thriller? Comedy? Yes, all of these, and more.

It's not often that I come across a series of books that deserve their own genre, but I think these probably qualify. I can accurately describe them as fiction, set in an alternate England where literature has taken on the sort of status currently enjoyed by the likes of X Factor, where Wales is an independent, socialist republic, where genetic engineering has reintroduced the dodo and the mammoth, and where England itself is something of a police state, dominated by a single omnipresent corporation, and where an octogenarian George Formby is President For Life. Oh, and the walls between fact and fiction are a little less rigid than one might expect.

The humour is reminiscent of Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams and works at many levels.  I'd say it's intelligent humour, but that might seem a little self-serving.  Perhaps I should just say that I'd risk recommending them to anyone that likes a good, light-hearted read.  I'd recommend them especially to fans of "Jane Eyre" who like a good, light-hearted read (too) as they might particularly appreciate the first of the series, "The Eyre Affair".

---

I haven't been off the computer completely, of course. Quite apart from anything else, I'm still wading through the mass of old photos I've had stashed away all these years, scanning them onto the PC.

I knew, as I said a couple of posts back, that this would be a time-consuming task to take on. I hadn't realised, though, quite how it would strum on the strings of my emotions.

And yet I should have done: it's a walk through my past, a task which confronts me with old relationships, friends long since lost, happy times and sad alike.

I find myself smiling one moment as a happy memory surfaces over the years, only to have it replaced the next moment by a sense of loss or regret.

I can't help but think of the things unsaid that I wish I'd said, the hurt I've caused - usually, I'd like to think, inadvertently - that I would rather have avoided, the friendships I would have preferred to have retained.

Even though I know - I know - that regret is useless, that we couldn't change one decision without the ripples changing everything and quite possibly wiping out the things that, now, we have come to value ... even though I know all of this, I'm finding it impossible to review all of these memories without that regret and those wishes.

Perhaps the most bitter-sweet of all are the photographs of my young family and I, back in the days when I was happily married. Even though I know that away from the camera things weren't always sweetness and light, I can look at the happy, smiling faces, at the children playing in the garden or on the beaches, and walking hand in hand with their mother, at the reminders of visits to woods, and farms, and zoos, and castles, at the antics in a Spanish pool frozen for all time, and feel a warm echo of that old, simple joy.

It all came to an abrupt end and, even if I divorce was the right way to go, I can't help feeling a sense of loss.

Still, at least I was lucky enough to have enjoyed several years of family holidays and have the good memories, as well as the photographs. And, once that period of my life was over, I was lucky to retain a good relationship with Son.

It makes me feel sad for those parents who, for whatever reason, never have such opportunities. And it makes me feel amazement at those parents who, despite having the opportunity to spend all sorts of quality time with their children, don't seem to bother to do so. I can only hope that they don't end up regretting the opportunities squandered.

After all, if there's one thing that this task has shown me, it's that time marches inexorably onwards. Children grow, become adults, and move on themselves. And at that point, the very last thing I would wish on any parent is regret.

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Ro Is Miffed

Who remembers the days before debit cards and ATMs?

Who remembers the careful planning that had to go into making sure that there was always enough cash causing the wallet or purse to bulge? There was always the knowledge that it would be necessary to go to a bank branch to draw out more money. And then there was the need to carry a chequebook around, and the cheque guarantee card.

Oh, things are so much simpler now.

Except when things go wrong.

The bane of my life at the moment is the debit card. I seem unable to hold onto one for more than six months at a time. And tonight saw my latest one bite the dust.

An ATM decided to take my card, promised me cash, and then refused to give back the card or the cash. And not due to problems with my account either; the card-slot mechanism was faulty.

I went into the shop which houses the machine to warn the owner. His response: "Yes, I did put a notice on it but someone must've removed it".

Gah! Is it really beyond the wit of mankind for someone to fit these things with a screen that can be lowered by someone inside if the machine's failing?

I phoned my bank who were, as usual, polite and helpful. To a point. No problem ordering a new card to be sent out to me. Five to seven working-days lead time. And it would be delivered by courier to my home address, requiring a signature. Strangely enough, I can't guarantee being there during likely delivery times.

I pointed this out to the helpful lady on the phone. In the past, the courier has left a card, I've phoned the number on the card and arranged, instead, to collect it from a local bank-branch. Couldn't I just arrange that now? No, they have to try at home first. So that's another couple of working days wasted for no obvious reason. Gah!

If I'm lucky I'll have my new card in a couple of weeks.

In the meantime, I can't buy anything online. I can't buy anything with my chequebook because (a) most stores no longer accept personal cheques, and (b) in any case, my debit card is also my cheque-guarantee card. I can draw cash from a branch with my chequebook (and my passport and driving license as proof of identity) as long as I can arrange it in advance. Except the banks are all closed now, and it's extremely unlikely that I'll be able to get to a branch tomorrow due to work commitments.

I have no other debit cards, and no credit card. I have seventy-eight pence in my pocket. Plus, for some reason, a safety pin. And, oddly enough, I'm feeling a little miffed. And oddly vulnerable.

I think the machines are ganging up on me. It was only a matter of time until The Terminator became harsh reality. Be warned.

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Scanning The Past

I'm writing this during a break in another of my self-imposed chores.

Perhaps "chores" is the wrong word. That seems to imply some sense of reluctance and I'm certainly not reluctant; then again, it is consuming a substantial amount of my time at the moment.

I'm digitising all my old photos and negatives.

I might not have chosen to do it right now but I was pleasantly surprised to be offered a loan of a rather nice flatbed scanner (with an attachment for negatives) by a colleague and that forced my hand rather. That said, it's not particularly difficult to do as the scanner generally performs well on default settings, but I'm having real problems with static: my room seems to attract dust at the best of times so I end up having to clean dust specks off the scan surface far too frequently.

But even so it's a task that dominates my time. I can't just set it going, spend ten minutes browsing blogs, and return to it for the next stage; I need to be constantly there to change photos, to press buttons, to check images ... To clear off the dust specks.

I've scanned about five hundred images so far. I'm probably about a fifth of the way through. And then I can start working through the negatives.

Even to me this seems slightly masochistic, and especially absurd given that I was writing not so long ago (but twice!) about the challenge of settling down to sort out the 11,427 digital photos that I'd already accumulated; it's not unreasonable to think that this process could easily add another six thousand images to my collection, many duplicated, most in need of a little touch-up or three.

But I am, despite all of this, enjoying it.

Because I want to get the scanner back to its owner as quickly as possible, I'm not organising, editing, or even unduly contemplating the photos that I'm scanning. It's like watching a montage of huge chunks of my life pass before my eyes in anything but chronological order.

And it's all rather thought-provoking:

1. I wish I'd not avoided having my photo taken as I look back now and it's like seeing the story of a life, but a life in which I make only the occasional cameo appearance!
   
2. Son has always been a good-looking devil (albeit a dribbly one at one time). And there was a time, I am forcibly reminded, when he was happy and carefree. I wish he hadn't lost that freedom of spirit. That may be a natural part of growing older but ... well, do I feel guilty? However irrational it may be, yes, I do.
   
3. Life hasn't always been kind to me. On the other hand, there've been many good times and many reasons to smile. I start to wonder whether true happiness is really based upon the ability to set aside the bad times and simply remember the good times. Even relationships that ended in divorce, after all, started in hope.
   
4. A lesson: never let someone else keep photos that you don't have copies of. It may not always be possible to go back and retrieve copies later.
   
5. My previous proper camera, was a half-decent Pentax non-digital SLR. It had no auto-focus option. I notice, looking back over the photos I took then, that having to concentrate so explicitly upon what was in focus meant that I took some quite stunning photographs where selective focus made all the difference. My current camera is a pretend SLR with auto-focus by default ... and, like most people, I'm too lazy to switch to manual. And, in this one sense, the results have definitely suffered.
   
6. There is nothing unduly anal about noting on the back of a photo where and when it was taken. Twenty years ago I would have disagreed with this sentiment. Twenty years later, as I sit puzzling over the where and the when of so many snaps and realising that my memory isn't quite that good, I realise the truth.
   
7. There's something about physical photographs that storing them on a computer will never replicate. It's something to do with them being there in front of you, easy to access, without even really thinking about it. Maybe there's even something in being able to physically pick up a photo and sit looking at it. It's making me wonder if my position on digital photo frames was wrong (I was always mildly against them for a number of reasons), and I'm even thinking of putting photos into albums (a sure sign of maturity/age). On the other hand, I notice there are increasing numbers of companies who will publish your photographs into books which gives an element of creativity that tempts me. One thing is clear, though: I've missed looking at these memoirs of a life. Something Must Be Done.

Who'd have thought a simple chore could cause so much fylosoff ... philloss ... philosso ... thinking?

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Orcs: The Misunderstood Species

Warning To All Pratchett Fans: Contains Spoilers!

What, if anything, does "Orc" mean to you?

To misquote Terry Pratchett, anyone who knows anything about orcs would know that orcs are members of, as Wikipedia succinctly puts it, "a race of evil, humanoid creatures".

The orc came into being in Tolkein's "Hobbit" but has subsequently become a standard fantasy race, almost as if it had an existence of its own, to be trotted out whenever an author needs an evil hoard to call his own.  The stereotype that Tolkein created has pretty much stuck through the years too.  In short orcs, have had a bad press.  As I don't read a lot of serious fantasy literature, Tolkein (and, I admit, an adolescent fling with Dungeons and Dragons) has been pretty much my only influence and I'd bought into this stereotype lock, stock and barrel.

But I'm just coming to the end of Terry Pratchett's latest novel, "Unseen Academicals". One of the main characters is revealed to be an orc (that was the spoiler if you're interested). Pratchett has his characters regurgitating the received wisdom: orcs are nasty little buggers that'll tear off your head (not to mention your arms and legs, though after losing your head you probably care less about that) as soon as look at you, untrustworthy, evil killing-machines that are stronger and faster and more vicious than you.  Fighters you simply can't stop.  They are man-eaters that ... just kill.

But he also reveals that the orcs were created by evil men to do their evil will. They are indoctrinated into hatred, forced into battle, and driven unto the unspeakable deeds of which the race was undoubtedly guilty.

This was true of the Tolkein originals too: while there are various versions of quite how the orcs came to be, we are left in no doubt that they were created, magically, to be vicious, destructive, warlike creatures who exist to kill.  If there were no other races handy to kill, they'd happily fill the time by killing each other.  They were tools of destruction and death and, once created, their creators used them to bring such destruction and death upon Middle Earth.

Yet, as Pratchett has one of his characters say point out that none of us can help how we are made and that if "made" applies to anyone, it certainly applies to the orcs.  "Men drove them into battle", she adds.  "It changes everything ... if all that people talk about are the monsters and not the whips.  Things that look very much like people, well, a kind of people. What can you make from people if you really try?"

I'm sure it's no coincidence that the word Orc was originally Anglo-Saxon for foreigner, monster, or demon.  It was the term used for the Normans during the invasion of England in 1066. Tolkein's love of language was second to none and he would not have chosen this name lightly.

Terry Pratchett has never seemed to shrink from injecting a little social commentary into his books, has always seemed happy to try to teach us something from in between the humour.  I think the lesson here is that we appear to be programmed on some fundamental level to suspect and fear those who are different from ourselves, and that we are too eager to judge others because of what their forebears or contemporaries have done, rather upon what they, as individuals, have done.

And the leopard can, indeed, change its shorts.

And the other lesson is undoubtedly the fact that football is very important. Important in the way that only religions can be important.

---

Perhaps this is just coincidence: I've noticed an intriguing book on the shelves recently called, simply, "Orcs". I've wondered about buying it a few times.  By Stan Nicholls, one of a seemingly long series, it purports to tell the story of orcs from the orc perspective, without the "bad press".  Yes, they're warriors but warriors with a sense of honour, who keep their word, and are loyal to their friends.

And warriors who get truly pissed off at being labelled bad guys by the humans when, all along, the orcs have been caught between the humans and the really bad guys, and through whose suffering and loss the humans have been prevented from encountering the aforementioned really bad guys.

No, I don't read a lot of fantasy but I think I have to give this a try.

I blame Terry Pratchett.

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