I’m a big fan of the site and forum.
( Flowchart made with FlowBreeze )
Feb
24
Edit : Looking for a Windows app
I am looking for an application that I can configure to pop up a reminder when I type in a certain word or phrase.
I want the reminder to appear regardless of which application I type the word/phrase into. It would also be great to be able to specify regexp type patterns to look for.
The reminder should be a little window that doesn’t take focus but does appear on top of all other windows (this might be tricky ??)
I don’t want the program to record a log of all my keystrokes but to merely be resident checking as I go whether I have just typed a trigger word/phrase.
I think this app, if it doesn’t exist, might have some commercial potential.
Imagine a government department that could pop up a security/privacy warning every time an employee typed in a passport number or customer id number.
There must be other uses… hmmm
Feb
23
Things I’ve noticed in my 31 years that surprised me:
I was surprised to find how unimportant knowledge is and how important practice is. I have found this to be the case in all the situations in which I didn’t expect it to be the case.
When I was at university I thought it was half-assed and the work was lacking in rigor, just play time. When i got out into the working world I was surprised to find it more half-assed and the work less rigorous.
I was surprised to see how many businesses are run based on relationships not product or service quality. I was surprised to find many business managers literally see product and service quality as tangential to their business.
I was surprised at how hard it is to play a steel string guitar and how fun it is to play a nylon string guitar.
I was surprised to realize that everyone thinks they are a little smarter than they appear to other people. I think this is because we experience our own thoughts directly but experience everyone else’s thoughts dulled by their ability to express themselves. It was frustrating to find how difficult it can be to communicate an idea that is easily conceived.
I was surprised to find Employers who provide training and ‘professional development’ simply ask their employees “what training do you want to do ?”. I had assumed they would all have a master plan for the organisation and would be the ones directing who was to be trained and in which area.
I had assumed that the most effective and honest way to deal with problem staff was to discuss the problem and possible solutions directly. I was surprised to find that managers with a deft hand can solve problem while appearing to do nothing. Often this route leads to less long term disruption all round.
I was surprised to realize that who is speaking is usually more important than what is said. Go and find some before and after images of people who have lost a lot of weight. Cover over the after picture with your hand, look at the before picture and imagine they have walked into a meeting at your workplace or you are talking to them at a party. Honestly think about the immediate assumptions you make about the person. Now cover the before picture and imagine the same scenario with the person in the after picture. I’m not saying these kinds of non-verbal value judgements are evil, just that they are more important than I realized.
The pace of change has been a lot slower than I expected. In politics and economics but also in technology. People talk about the amazing pace of change in technology but it has always seemed pedestrian to me.
Feb
18
Someone build this
Posted by SamH in Uncategorized on 02 18th, 2010| | No Comments »
I didn’t see why Stirling’s ideas shouldn’t apply to all areas, and in particular to writing: literacy was clearly of great importance, and anyway writing interested me, and I wanted to infect the children with enthusiasm.
I tried getting them to send secret notes to each other, and write crude comments about me, and so on, but the results were nil.
One day I took my typewritter and the art books into the class, and said I’d type out anything they wanted to write about the pictures. As an afterthought, I said I’d also type out their dreams – and suddenly they were wanting to write. I typed out everything exactly as they wrote it, including the spelling mistakes, until they caught me.
Typing out spelling mistakes was a weird idea in the early fifties (and probably now)-but it worked. The pressure to get things right was coming from the children not the teacher. I was amazed at the intensity of feeling and outrage the children expressed , and their determinate to be correct, because no one would have dreamed they cared.
Even the illliterates were getting their friends to spell out every word for them. I scraped the timetable and for a month they wrote for hours a every day. I had to force them out of the classroom to take breaks.
When I hear that children only have an attention span of ten minutes, or whatever, I’m amazed. Ten minutes is the attention span of bored children…
- from “Impro – Innovation and the Theatre” by Keith Johnstone
This idea isn’t perfect / complete but there might be something the kernel of something useful here.
www.improclassroom.com is available.
The Class can decide whether to publish their text to the public web or delete at the end.
The City and class age group could be published with the text but no identifiable info.
The class can view what other classes have written about the image.