What happens when you combine the Nigerian 419 scam and Monty Python? Something very very funny, that’s what. Just click the link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvyrzQldOKE

I have no idea what’s going on behind the wall next to me, but there’s been lots of drilling and banging going on for the past week.

Actually, that’s all that seems to happen - 20 minutes of drilling, followed by lots of hammering. At this rate there’ll be nothing left in their house to drill into. I half expect a drill-bit to pop through the wall.

This week has been half term for the school I’m at. So naturally my sleep patterns went wonky, waking at ten or eleven and going to bed at three.

What is it about coding and the night? Mornings are a complete write-off, but comme five pm and my brain shifts gear. Next thing I know it’s midnight. We all do it though. Some of my most productive programming sessions have happend in the wee hours, with nothing but the creaking of the house for company.

Going back to 6am starts is going to be awful.ful.ful.

I’ve just upgraded my main monitor from a 19″ Belinea CRT to a 19″ Widescreen Hanns-G HW191D.

It’s worth it just for the extra desk space So now I have the 1024×768 screen on my laptop and this 1440×900 screen.

Having used it for a few hours now I can say it’s a really nice screen. For some reason Windows made it run at 75Hz, rather than the usual 60. This caused all sorts of weird ghosting that made my eyes go funny.

Now that’s sorted and the brightness and contrast are to my liking it’s a massive improvement on my old CRT. The width really helps in text editors.

Well I went to my second interview and it went better than the last one. They still didn’t pick me though. The feedback given was more useful than the first though, they said in my lesson I should have given them more varied work, and that in the interview I needed to say more about the role of a form tutor. Apparently they’re a source of monitoring and progress, not just the pastoral stuff. Oh, and my skills in Excel weren’t that strong supposedly.

My god, working out what they find important is like trying to guess the lottery numbers! This school is evidently mad about monitoring the kids, and they use Excel quite a lot. Bit rubbish they placed such emphasis on MS Office since Excel’s not that hard to use and would only take me a few minutes to learn.

Anyway, it’s a handy tip for my future lessons and then some background waffle. Not knowing Excel or not knowing the “proper” role of a form tutor aren’t really the reasons I didn’t get the job, are they? The real thing they must have picked out was the way I did the lesson. Still, when your entire lesson brief is “teach spreadsheet manipulation to year 11s” it’s quite vague and hard to plan for.

It would be a big help if the school actually provided some background knowledge about the students.

I’ll get there. There were two others from my course and someone from Bradford. It really unnerves people when you tell them you’ve had an interview before, and there’s this strange air of “good luck, but not too much… if you get my meaning” as people disappear off to be interviewed.

Such a strange experience.

I just discovered DemocraKey, a mini installation of Firefox, Thunderbird and ClamAV virus checker for Windows. The idea being you install it to a USB pen drive, poke it into a PC and have access to a supposedly safe browsing environment.

It’s downloading at the moment. If I can manage to get Adblock Plus, Performancing and GoogleBrowser Sync installed as well I might just have found a way around my school’s dodgy network security. We’re not allowed personal settings on our PCs - no roaming profiles. Everything gets zapped when we log out so no bookmarks, favourites or even document templates in Word. It all goes.

Need to dig out my old spare USB pen drive, it’s around here somewhere…

This is more like it. As I left school there were gentle flutterings which increased to more substantial looking flakes the nearer to home that I got. Quite glad I bought that new windscreen wiper blade now.

The path down to our house is steep, smooth and is covered in a fine layer of snow, creating a passable interpretation of a luge run. It’s bad enough in the rain when a thin coating of green slime wakes up and begins breeding. Apply ice and snow to the surface and there’s the makings of something worse than Teflon or that black goo I found when ghyll scrambling. I had to go and find some grit from somewhere. I have just invented a new sport. It’s called the “half mile grit bucket carry”.

What you have to do is go for a half mile walk looking for a grit bin that actually contains grit. Not dogshit, rubbish or brown evil smelling water. Then walk back to your house, slide down the nasty alleyway ramp and get a mop bucket.

Take said bucket carefully back up the slippy alleyway ramp (the ultimate destination for your precious cargo of grit) and go back to the source of your grit - in my case the local cemetery. Fill bucket and carry back home, resisting the urge to stop.

Score points for every passer by who gives you a really odd look. Try to ignore the stinging pain in your hands from the cold and the salt soaking into your fingers.

Go visit the tableteer website, download the fm radio applet, plug in the headset and tune in!

FM radio tends to play crap, but it’s another cool thing this device can do. Wonder how it works. It’d be nice if it did shortwave or frequencies outside the usual FM range.

I like it

It’s begun snowing…

It’s a pretty weak affair, barely covering the grass. The flakes are too small and fine so nothing is sticking or building up. It’s enough to send the kids into total bedlam though. They run around outside in their short-sleeved shirts without a second thought, they must breed them tough around here or they lack the ability to feel cold.

Hey hey! Who wants a lesson in how to make a really crap first impression?

Step 1 - get lost going to the interview
Step 2 - arrive 15 minutes late

I knew where I was going, the only drawback being it was dark when I tested the route, and daylight when I actually had to do it for real, so that wrong turning I took without noticing really threw me.

… as did the level crossing that I got stuck at for ten minutes waiting for the train.

The interview actually went alright after that. The lesson I taught was the most contrived and artificial thing ever. The kids could have been rubber dummies for all the impact they made. It was like teaching a group of zombies, they were so… silent and compliant. I have never, ever had a group of kids where I can just say “log in and load Word” and immediately see 25 hands grab mice and do exactly what I wanted. I had my usual second line of “sometime today would be nice, get that webmail turned off Right Now!” all queued up and ready.

I didn’t get it though. They didn’t provide a very meaningful reason why either. Supposedly I didn’t stick out enough to leave a lasting impression or something. I don’t know, I think it just boiled down to “you’re fine and all, but just not quite what we’re after”.

Against me were two qualified teachers and another trainee. Fortunately they gave it to the other trainee. The other two teachers didn’t really deserve the post - they have jobs and only wanted this to make their journeys to work easier, it wasn’t promotion and head teachers don’t like people moving sideways.

Another interview on Monday… this one looks a bit more “interesting”. For a start the school has a 40% pass rate for the exams, and I have to teach a 60 minute lesson which is excellent. 20 minutes is just stupid, 60 is much better.

Stay tuned