General Rants

  1. What's a Folder?

    There are complaints from college teachers that young students either don't use or can't even grasp the concept of file directories. I didn't believe this at first, given that the terms file and folder are sort of there to help understand the slightly abstract notion of directories, and that operating systems are mostly visual (GUI) anyway. [URL]https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-directory-structure-education-gen-z[/URL]...
  2. Proportional Investment

    Or: just why exactly Thanksgiving is unbearable, and how it's your fault as much as it is Aunt Jones's. The too long, didn't read version of this is that critical evaluation needs to scale with emotional investment or you're just another dunce. Onward to the weeds... You know about weaving then attacking straw men. It's disingenuous at best, lazy at worst. The term is also now shorthand for 'I don't like your argument,' unfortunately, which is a shame but that's how language goes with...
  3. Save Our Sci-Fi

    [Copied and pasted from my external blog. Please do take a look. I'm trying to update regularly, every few days or so] So, earlier this week BSG spin-off series Caprica was cancelled. I’m not going to spend this blog entry moaning specifically about that, for two reasons. Firstly, I’m quite behind on the series, only a few episodes in, and thus haven’t decided whether it will meet it’s potential (but rest assured, the potential is there). Secondly, there are plenty of other people across...
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  4. On 3D

    [Copied and pasted from my external blog. Please do take a look. I'm trying to update regularly, every few days or so] When 3D first started rolling along and becoming the latest cinematic bandwagon, I was a bit uncertain. Avatar being the first 3D movie I saw probably didn’t help matters too much. But my opinion of it has, for a long while, been that it is nothing short of a gimmick, an excuse for cinemas to charge more for tickets, and for uninteresting and derivative films to be able...
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  5. One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

    [Copied and pasted from my external blog. Please do take a look. I'm trying to update regularly, every few days or so] The Coalition government has today proposed introducing a graduate tax to fund higher education in this country, rather than the current system of loans that sees graduates leaving university with crippling amounts of debt. If this sounds at all familiar, it’s because it’s something that has been suggested many times, by many people- most recently by shadow secretary for...
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  6. Putting the “Dem” in “ConDem”… Sort of

    [Copied and pasted from my external blog. Please do take a look. I'm trying to update regularly, every few days or so] I was going to call this “Putting the Liberal in Libservative”, but after the deeply regressive budget the coalition have put forward, that seemed a little too oxymoronic. So this weekend, the coalition has announced the date for their AV referendum. 5th May 2011. It’s a big moment, because it’s the only meaningful concession that the Lib Dems got out of the Tories....
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  7. The Doom of Our Time

    [Copied and pasted from my external blog. Please do take a look. I'm trying to update regularly, every few days or so] So, it’s happened. Chancellor of the Exchequer, The Right Honourable George Osborne (MP for Tatton), has stood at the dispatch box, and delivered his “emergency budget”. And despite some speculation in the press, pretty much everything that was feared has come to pass. Now, I know there are a lot of blogs on the budget already going up on the internet, and I’m going to...
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  8. Bloodied, but Defiant

    [Copied and pasted from my external blog. Please do take a look. I'm trying to update regularly, every few days or so] So I watched the season finale of Stargate Universe the other day, and I was blown away. I09 has (in a lot of cases rightfully) criticised many points about the series, but it started with a lot of potential, and for all the missed steps it has been slowly marching towards fulfilling that potential. And the final moments of the cliffhanger left me decidedly annoyed that I...
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  9. Meet the New Politics...

    [Copied and pasted from my external blog. Please do take a look. I'm trying to update regularly, every few days or so] …same as the Old Politics. So it’s happened. For almost a week, we have been living in a ConDem Nation, under a Libservative government, led by (coined by the Mirror in a surprising, if simplistic, show of wit) Dick Clameron. The government that loves a good contradiction started with that now-famous love-in in the garden of Number 10, and made half of the country feel...
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  10. Up in the Air

    [Copied and pasted from my external blog. Please do take a look. I'm trying to update regularly, every few days or so] Okay, so in less that 12 hours, Gordon Brown has invalidated more or less everything I said in my last post. So here's an emergency update. Given Brown's resignation, and the apparant likelihood of an anti-Tory coalition, everything is now uncertain. In order to have a majority, a coalition would need pretty much all of the smaller parties in addition to Labour and the...
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  11. Coalitions, Treason and Political Suicide

    [Copied and pasted from my external blog. Please do take a look. I'm trying to update regularly, every few days or so] So Thursday's election didn't go too well. I don't think any of the parties were particularly satisfied with the outcome. I know I wasn't. But thinking on it, depending on how this is handled, Labour (and, in my opinion, the country) could actually come out of this in a good position. Allow me to elaborate. Labour is beaten. The acceptance of that is paramount, and...
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  12. A Call to Arms

    [Copied and pasted from my external blog. Please do take a look. I'm trying to update regularly, every few days or so] This is mostly for readers in the UK, so I apologise to any international readers. But hey, you never know, you might find it interesting anyway. Today is election day. At time of writing, the polling stations have been open for about an hour. And I am begging every single UK citizen, who is over 18, reading this to go out to their polling station, and cast their vote....
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  13. The Geek shall Inherit the Earth

    [Copied and pasted from my external blog. Please do take a look. I'm trying to update regularly, every few days or so] I did it! Six Star Wars films, 12.8hrs of film (according to iTunes), watched in one day. Okay, so I finished about half an hour after midnight, but that’s just because I overslept yesterday morning. The point is that I watched them all in one go, the only breaks being the necessary ones for food, toilet, and showering. So what was my overwhelming impression of the...
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  14. May the Fourth be with you

    [Copied and pasted from my external blog. Please do take a look. I'm trying to update regularly, every few days or so] Happy Star Wars day! Yes, it's a bad joke, but a good enough excuse for me to do something daft. My project today, is to watch all six Star Wars films consecutively. Why yes, I am a complete geek. I'm going to start with the prequels, partly for the chronological value, and partly because I want it to end on a high note. As I write this I'm about midway through Episode...
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  15. Why the Lib Dem Surge is a Good Thing

    [Copied and pasted from my external blog. Please do take a look. I'm trying to update regularly, every few days or so] The immediate answer to this is obvious: because a vote for the Lib Dems is a vote not for the Tories. But I promised myself (and now am promising you) that this won’t be an anti-Conservative rant. I’ve done enough of that in the nineteen-and-a-half years I’ve been on this earth, and will no doubt do a hell of a lot more before 6th May. No, this is about something...
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