Sigh. The Guardian recently published an article “Do students know more about technology than their teachers?” here. Very disappointing. At our children’s primary school, Friday assembly often involves the use of a laptop and a projector, nothing too technical in this, the 21st Century I would have thought….yet, more often than not, a student is [...] Read more – ‘Teaching the teachers’.
As Observer Columnist John Naughton** pointed out, there was little fanfare to the passing of one of Computing’s greatest heroes last week. Maybe I am one of those geeks that did notice, and was saddened at the loss of someone I consider a grand-father of modern computing. Dennis Ritchie who died last week, along with [...] Read more – ‘Dennis Ritchie – we thank you.’.
I’ve been reading Eli Pariser’s The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You. It’s staggering stuff, with some real serious social implications. If you want to understand more about how the big search engines are using your data, and how it is effecting you directly, then this is a must read. If you [...] Read more – ‘We know what you want’.
Sometimes I feel like a real oldie, a case in point is the evolution of language. My parents were old school and correct English usage was impressed upon me as a child, “Yes”, never “Yeah”, and heaven forbid the “Yeah-nah”. I think of this as I lament how small our daily vocabulary has become, and [...] Read more – ‘Truly Awesome’.
Alfie just turned 3. We had a great party with family and friends the previous weekend, but for his actual birthday, we took him Kayaking from Kaiteriteri to Split Apple Rock and back. He sat, as happy as can be, in the bulkhead compartment, complete with spray-deck, and had, a whale of a time. Later [...] Read more – ‘Abel Alfie’.
Just over a year ago, my two eldest sons, then 4 and 6, each received an iPod touch in their Christmas stocking (Son number three, then just 16 months missed out). While we had some reservations about giving young children - a) an expensive gizmo and b) a gizmo that is capable of creating 'zombie child computer game addicts', our fears were unfounded. Read more – ‘iKids’.
If you don’t know about TED. You should. I was still living in Japan when I first came across TED, and like many thousands of people, it was the talk by Sir Ken Robinson that made me sit up and take notice. Read more – ‘Behind TED’.
An incredible time-lapse video by José Francisco Salgado now part of the sidereal project. Truly worth a look. I thought our night sky here in South Island New Zealand was impressive, but the high altitude in Chile is something else. As a side note, I recall wondering whatever happened to the Thompson Twins. One of [...] Read more – ‘Way More Milky!’.
I’m excited about the possibilities of the newer Digital SLR cameras, in particular their support for Full HD video. Although one these lovelies is still on my wish list, and not in my camera bag, I keep up with the rapid developments in the DSLR World, in particular the video’s that are now coming out [...] Read more – ‘DOF that is out there!’.
I’ve added a place to my bucket list. Ostrander Hut in Yosemite National Park. I had always thought of Yosemite as a summer destination, with dreams of big walls, and multi-day, multi-pitch climbs that would never come to pass. Then I saw Jonathan Burhop’s beautifully shot short film “Winters of my life”. Shot on a [...] Read more – ‘A winter tale in HD’.
