Today was a bit of a busy day. It began with Art cover which, because of art exams, was shunted off into the Rural Science “building”. Amongst the chickens, giant snails, terrapins and rats that were in my classroom were some children. They alternated between being distracted by pot-bellied pigs and a cockerel with a really beady evil looking eye.

After that amusement I had maths, where I am a support assistant and usually end up learning more maths than the kids do! For example I now know the “grid method” for multiplication. It looks so much easier than the twaddle I was taught in Maths.

Then it was my year 7 group that I was being observed in. First though I had to spend break setting up the room. The projector’s bulb has gone, and the projector is so old it’s cheaper to buy a new one rather than replace the bulb. This is crazy and a reason why I’m not buying one myself. I put a spare projector on the centre table and shined it at a handy wall, using my laptop as the source.

The lesson itself went well. The kids giving every impression that they had learnt something. Whether they’ll remember it next week is another matter I had feedback from it afterwards, and the most helpful tip was that I should just let the more able kids whizz off into the distance without stopping them to check their work. What I was doing was splitting the lesson into tasks, and at the end of each task stopping everyone to check they’d done it correctly. However it turns out it’s totally fine to just let them get on with it and check each kid by themselves.

This makes life a bit simpler, and more “personalised” which is the current in thing for lessons. Rather than simply broadcasting knowledge to the room at large, it’s seen to be better if you shovel the information into the kids individually, or in small groups.

Great stuff And tomorrow is Thursday where I have one lesson in the morning, then not a lot else since it’s either Maths support or year 12s.

I’m being observed teaching tomorrow. I think I’ve worked out a half-decent plan, and the projector is still in the office where I left it last week.

I took my N810 for a walk to test its GPS capabilities. It’s been raining quite hard and I was hoping the river would be up and interesting to look at. Unfortunately the river was low, but my N810 worked very well. Having a built in GPS is very useful.

I have Maemo-Mapper installed, and because it was raining I sealed my N810 inside an Ortleib map case. I found this a really good combination, the map case being totally waterproof and yet flexible enough to allow the touchscreen to be used.

Locking onto satellites is something often commented on with the N810, with reports of it taking five minutes or more to achieve an accurate lock. While it did take a few minutes to find the satellites it wasn’t any great inconvenience - if I were driving and wanting to use my N810 for navigation a few extra minutes wouldn’t really be an issue; I mostly use GPS navigation for long journeys.

Once locked I noticed a strange thing. The GPS always thinks its moving at a speed between 0.1 and 0.3MPh. This is probably part of the way GPS works, but it’s quite odd watching the track drawn by Maemo Mapper. The track ends up looking like a random walk algorithm, centred around a midpoint.

This randomness doesn’t impede normal operation though, I followed a path and the track drawn in Maemo Mapper accurately followed where I was walking, right down to the junction of the path and a main road, and a canal. I followed the same route home and the return track was fairly close to the first.

The other new feature of the N810 is its slide-out keypad. Having experienced the amazing convenience of Skype and Google Chat from anywhere in my house on my N800, making these two things work on my N810 was the second thing I did. Skype text using the onscreen keyboard is just awful, its impossible to get any decent typing rhythm going. The slide out keypad of my N810 has sorted this, I can now tap away at a respectable rate, knowing the device is keeping up. I know you can pair bluetooth keyboards with the N800, but that isn’t half as convenient as having a permanent keyboard attached. OS2008 even has keyboard shortcuts too.

The screen’s “sunlight readable” (that’s transflective TFT to techies) screen really helps when trying to use the N810 outside. Often when driving it was very difficult to follow the map because even a dreary UK day could wash the screen of my old N800 out.

Originally I moaned that I’d have to bin all my memory cards and buy yet more, but in a different format. While this probably will happen, it’s not a complete negative point. Already I can buy a 4GB card for less than what I paid for a 2GB card last year. And since the N810 comes with 2GB internally (of which I have 1.5GB available - my Maemo-mapper cache and a swap file taking up the rest) I’ve not yet needed to buy a memory card. I found it hard choosing 2GB of music to take with me before.

This is really nice! Having a real keyboard makes a lot of difference. I can write properly and at a decent speed. Also no screen is lost to the on screen keyboard. Now some people have complained that the N810’s keyboard is too small or difficult to use. I have no problem typing. There are little bumps on the keys and it’s easy to slide my thumbs over to locate each key. It can also keep up with my typing speed.

Tomorrow I’ll try out the built in GPS.

On Friday I ordered a Gelaskin from UrbanRetro. What is a Gelaskin you’re probably thinking? Well, to put it bluntly it’s a giant sticker that is applied to the back of a laptop’s screen. They’re supposedly to protect it from scratches and damage, but their main purpose is to make your laptop look really really cool

They’re fairly pain free to stick on since the glue on the back is scored with lots of little lines allowing trapped air to escape. The glue doesn’t leave any residue when peeled off should you want to remove your Gelaskin (which would be an absurd thing to do).

When sticking mine on I had to peel the Gelaskin off a few times before it looked straight and wasn’t crinkled in the middle. My advice is to gently stick one edge on, peel off the backing and carefully smooth it over the rest of the lid. Don’t fret if it all goes wrong and the thing needs taking off, just gently start pulling and try to avoid touching the sticky side or letting it stick to itself. The vinyl is a bit stretchy so apply even force over an entire edge rather than just a corner or it might stretch out of shape.

They make them for iPods and normal laptops too, so go buy one

I’ve ordered my new, shiny N810. Sure it’s cost me £289 quid, which is quite a lot for a portable web browser doodad, but I’ve sold my N800 to my cousin for £100, making it £189. And where did I order this marvel of the modern age from?

Why, PC World in Leeds of course. PC World, that shop of cheap consumer electronics at out of this world prices. It’s partially “must have it now” tech lust, but also the result of ten minutes Internet Shopping. If you use Froogle there are some sites charging a mere £229 for the Nokia N810… but that’s a lie! a dirty lie! It’s the price without VAT and without delivery.

Curiously the cheapest place on the web ends up costing £8 less than PC World by the time you’ve added VAT and £15 delivery. It’s really not worth saving £8 and encountering the hassle of chasing couriers after work to claim new devices from them.

Let’s hope PC World Leeds is just as bored as the ones in Barnsley were. “Here’s your laptop mate, see you”.

Well I finally caved in. I now have a Facebook profile and have sent out friend requests to lots of people that I know. Some of them are even real people I know outside the internet!

This is a test post of the Wordbook plugin/Facebook Application.

What the hell! There I was, writing some prattle on the Internet when I heard a strange crunching sound from by my foot. At first I ignored it, then decided to investigate. A few shiny trails on the carpet caught my attention and then I had a major moment of disbelief.

Stuck to the top of the yoghurt carton is a slug. One of those brown ones that live in the garden and eat all your plants. Only it’s not in the garden eating plants, it’s in my house eating a yoghurt carton. It even made weird little chewing noises.

After staring at it in disbelief, having a little rant about it on the Internet I did what any self-respecting person does… whipped out my digital camera and took a picture. The slug is now outside again, I hope it finds plants nicer than plastic.

The weird thing is I can’t see where it came in. The slug trail stops at my settee, it doesn’t go underneath. Now if used car salesmen read this blog, maybe my landlord does too; in which case I also have a loose slate on the roof that needs repairing.

It’s nice and quiet in here. The school is shut to students, and anyone who’s a member of the NUT are on strike. I’m not an NUT member, so I’m not on strike although I do see why it’s happening. Want to see what we’re griping at? Here’s an Excel spreadsheet explaining how much we get paid… And a small excerpt for those allergic to Excel:

So as you can see, in six years time I can look forward to earning £30,000 a year before tax.

It’s an INSET day tomorrow that we’re being given back as payment for overtime worked previously in the year. I’m using today to get all my work for next week done, saving me from having to do it tomorrow or at the weekend. I’m having an observation next Wednesday so it’s nice being able to faff about in my classroom sorting out time-consuming things like random piles of paper and junk that accumulates over time.

And for anyone wondering, there wasn’t anything interesting happening outside the school gates. Those that are on strike are simply not here and it’s all calm and quite relaxing really. Bizarrely I seemed to have more time this morning before setting off. I wasn’t in any particular rush and still arrived on time.

I forgot to write a post today. Nothing of great interest happened anyway. I went to bed early too.