No idea why, but the RSS feed of this diary is totally messing up my website’s front page. It looks like there’s an HTML tag that hasn’t been closed properly.

Hopefully this post will knock off the one that’s causing the problem as I have no way of finding out which post is breaking my site.

I’ve just configured the KDE remote desktop program on my machine. Having no other computers to test it on (my N800’s VNC viewer just dies, I don’t think it can handle a 2,000×1,000-odd bitmap that gets updated constantly ) I ran the KDE remote desktop client on my computer also.

You know the effect of standing between two mirrors? I thought the song currently playing in Amarok was quite apt.

You can’t really see it from this wonderful image my phone took, but there’s water spewing out the road. Combined with the half-resurfaced road it’s like trying to drive across a beach. Lots of nice deep holes to swallow unsuspecting bikes, the water doing a great job of washing out the gravel. The men from the water board arrived and seemed to just stare at it. One even ventured into the road and poked a small fountain with his foot.

I think it might be a while before they fix this one.

Keep reading…

Last night I set out to write a world class lesson plan for my interview today. Something different, something useful, something that shows I can make kids remember things.

Hmm… well group work goes down well, they can find me information about parts of operating systems, different types of GUIs. They can do a few past exam questions. We’ll discuss it at the end. Yeah.

Or with some modification I can take my laptop running Linux in, show them that and actually demonstrate the difference between a GUI, CLI and a menu based interface. We can then compare and contrast Windows and Linux, GUIs and command lines. Do a few questions and explain what the examiners are looking for. Even better, bonus points for doing something different.

So I set off at 6:15 - never arriving late to an interview ever again, I was due there at eight. I obviously arrived at 7:15, bang on the target time Google said. Oh well, half an hour of web browsing on my N800 helped to pass the time. And then in I went.

Laptop was connected to projector. Laptop didn’t like the projector. X config file was edited and the projector behaved itself. Then my USB drive didn’t like the school’s computer until a real teacher logged in. Right, objectives are on the board, lesson plan is on the desk. I know what I’m doing, I know who I am… go go go!

And the lesson went well, even with two people doing proper formal observations of me. The kids sat there in complete non-comprehension about GUIs. They couldn’t even tell me what kind of user interface Windows was.

Right… I see a problem here, can I fix it? Can I get the kids to at least recognise a GUI when they see one?

Well yeah, I can. It took an hour and a lot of repetition, and examples. Being able to boot my laptop and show them a real, live CLI was useful.

The lesson ended and I was given to the IT techies for a while with the comment of “he’s technical too, tell him about this place’s computers”. They have site-wide wireless networking with roaming capabilities, staff laptops, a new tape loader that isn’t working properly and people who ring up and moan about their pc not working. They aren’t BOFHs, give IT teachers higher privileges than regular teachers, and generally aren’t afraid to show off their system.

Eventually the school remembered I existed and asked me into another interview. This one was full of people very high up the school foodchain. I’m fairly sure there was a governor there too. We had a talk, I had more tea. They offered me the job, I took the job and signed some contracts.

Yeah, I got it I start in September.

So it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.

University want me to talk to the rest of the ICT trainees about interviews and getting a job since I’m supposedly the first person to do so. That’ll be another odd experience on Monday.

There I was, teaching year 12s about system testing and explaining the fineries of how to install stuff in PCs when my pocket vibrates. Being in the middle of my lesson, with a hand inside a PC I let the thing continue buzzing away in my pocket. “Yeah, that bit is the CPU, it goes in there… no, other way up” *bzzzzt* “and this is a graphics card, stick it in one of those slots there…” *bzzzt*

It was voicemail. Voicemail from a school I had applied to. They wanted to interview me. Heh, join the queue as I have an interview tomorrow and Wednesday. I can probably fit you in sometime on Thursday or Friday, right after planning my lessons, writing an assignment that’s due in on Monday and curing 3rd World Hunger.

How things change with a phonecall. The principal said he was very interested in my application and wanted to see me today, as soon as possible. Err… right… today… there’s short notice, and there’s turning up as quickly as possible. Fortunately I don’t teach Monday afternoons so after a quick chat with my mentor, something to eat and a quick go with Google Maps I knew where I was going and set off.

There was only me there. No other people being interviewed, it was strange. Lots of friendly staff who showed me around the school and lead me around more computer rooms than I’ve seen in one building before - every room I went in had at least five. Then the interview, which was also different there was the principal, assistant principal and the head of ICT. We had an “informal” interview which cunningly asked all the same questions as every other interview, but in a much better way. Being able to have a cup of tea in an interview makes a difference.

And then the day got just about as bizarre as it could without breaking the laws of reality. Really, it was one step away from monkeys flying past the windows. I was asked to come back on Tuesday to teach a lesson, which posed a slight clash with another interview. I was then told in no uncertain words “There’s a stack of applications over there that I’ve not even looked at. You’re in a shortlist of one, now what do you say?”. Well duh… “Yes, I have no problem at all coming back tomorrow. What time?”. Possible job by Tuesday vs a long drive to Rotherham for a standard tedious day of being interviewed? Hard choice.

I was given a year 11 revision class on Operating Systems to teach, and a revision guide to look at. More tea was applied and I was shown back to the reception, head all a blur.

So tomorrow then…

For the past few weeks I’ve been re-reading Neuromancer, a bit here and there - sitting on the bog, before going to bed, etc. Pick the book up, read a page or two, put it down again.

Then tonight I just hoovered up 142 pages to finish the book. I remember starting at about 5pm, and now it’s somehow 7pm. Thing is, when I read a book, it’s not words on a page - that’s just how the story gets into my head. No, my brain fills out the world of the story in a way that plugging my brain into my computer would have a hard time beating. I don’t see words, I don’t see letters, a film-strip plays inside my head complete with audio. Time also seems to match the story.

… and that’s the bit that totally screws me up. For those two hours I [i]was[/i] the story. I wasn’t sat on my settee listening to The Chillies reading a book, I was in the story, running around the corridors of Straylight. Then the story ended and there was a large jarring sensation as reality took over, followed by a few minutes of slight confusion. A bit like being woken suddenly from a dream. For a few minutes your brain isn’t sure what’s going on.

And like in the story when the characters jack out, I’m hungry and need a pee

Strange noises from next door have stopped…

No idea what it was, one of those mysteries that this place has, along with the water that runs into my bedroom if we turn the extractor fan on for a few seconds.

When looking for a new place to live I will be asking specific questions of the “so where does it leak?”, “Show me the damp patches”, “when does the funny smell appear?” variety.

I think next door’s hifi has gone a bit mental. There’s a rather penetrating low bass hum coming through the wall. It’s down in the 20Hz range so must be really damn loud next door!

Hopefully it’s making their speakers vibrate like crazy and doing all sorts of nasty things to the cones

It’s strangely soothing to listen to, and by moving around my kitchen I can find spots of total silence and really loud parts. The echoes mess with my ability to locate the sound’s source. It’s amusing

I went to the big market/car boot sale in Penrith today. The massive one just before the roundabout. Every weekend when coming home from walking in the Lakes I’d pass it in my dad’s car so, out of curiosity, I went to have a look.

My god, there’s so much crap for sale. Real, genuine crap. Anything from multipack toilet roll, cheap biscuits to lighters, DVDs and food. The real part is inside though where normal people set up stalls and attempt to sell all the crap they don’t want. The usual - plates, broken guitars, books and bits of shiny glass and metal.

I managed (quite easily) to restrain myself from buying any of these goodies and instead bought a bag of biscuits for a whopping £1 - which is good considering they tasted awful and got thrown in the bin - and a splitter for my car’s lighter socket.

Hmm… managed to break my new website…

While trying to upgrade MediaWiki this was spewed on my screen:

Quote: Upgrade errors

Checking environment… Please include all of the lines below when reporting installation problems. PHP 5.0.5-pl3-gentoo installed PHP server API is apache2handler; ok, using pretty URLs (index.php/Page_Title) Have XML / Latin1-UTF-8 conversion support. PHP is configured with no memory_limit. Have zlib support; enabling output compression. Neither Turck MMCache nor eAccelerator are installed, can’t use object caching functions Found GNU diff3: /usr/bin/diff3. Found ImageMagick: /usr/bin/convert; image thumbnailing will be enabled if you enable uploads. Found GD graphics library built-in. Installation directory: /home/james/public_html/wiki Script URI path: /wiki Environment checked. You can install MediaWiki. Generating configuration file… Database type: mysql Attempting to connect to database server as piku…success. Connected to 5.0.16-log Database piku exists There are already MediaWiki tables in this database. Checking if updates are needed… ...hitcounter table already exists. ...querycache table already exists. ...objectcache table already exists. ...categorylinks table already exists. ...logging table already exists. ...validate table already exists. ...user_newtalk table already exists. ...transcache table already exists. ...trackbacks table already exists. ...externallinks table already exists. Creating job table...Query "CREATE TABLE `mw_job` ( job_id int(9) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment, job_cmd varchar(255) NOT NULL default '', job_namespace int NOT NULL, job_title varchar(255) binary NOT NULL, job_params blob NOT NULL default '', PRIMARY KEY job_id (job_id), KEY (job_cmd, job_namespace, job_title) ) TYPE=InnoDB " failed with error code "Specified key was too long; max key length is 1024 bytes (localhost)".

Seems the SQL is either broken, or my copy of MySQL doesn’t like it.

Meanwhile, as you can see, the spambots are having a play on the current Wiki. Quite interesting. I’m off to see how to stop people editing pages without a user account.