tonygoodson

Ting Tings for Pop Connoisseurs

Being old, there's very little music I take to nowadays and being old, I'm a bit slow on anything new, but I tell you, just read about the Ting Tings in the Guardian, and watched them on YouTube.  Excellent.

It's like the first time you saw Debbie Harry and Blondie (or Wendy James and Transvision Vamp).  The music is incredibly derived from every other song you've ever heard.  Very Very catchy.  I haven't bought or downloaded an album for years, but I could listen to this trash time and time again.

And this one as well, Shut Up and Let Me Go

I thought it was just me who noticed the difference in class between Man United and Chelsea, after we'd won the European Cup this week.  When Chelsea went up to collect their LOSERS medals, Peter Kenyon ("life long Manchester United supporter") the traitor who defected to be Chelsea's Chief Executive, went up to front the team and collect the first medal.  When United went up to collect their medals and cup, they were fronted by Bobby Charlton who refused to wear the medal.

That's the difference between the clubs, and it's now in Peter Kenyon's Wikipedia entry about going to collect the medal.  In fact, David Gill's (Man Utd Chief Exec) wikipedia entry looks classier than Peter Kenyon's!!  I wonder if both are being edited by Man United fans.  It's that kind of passion and detail that shows the class and long term success.

Oh the joy of winning the third European Cup.  It flows through my veins, from the first cup in '68, 10 years after the Munich air disaster in '58 (same date as my birthday), to winning the third cup 50 years after the Munich disaster, via the win in '99.  Bobby Charlton collected because he's associated with all three wins, and survived the plane crash.  And Ryan Giggs broke Bobby Charlton's appearance record in the game. Oh, and George Best's birthday as they collected the cup.

I grew up with the rich history in Manchester.  So it's the one to win.  Just two more European Cup wins to get that Liverpool (Scouse Scum) Monkey off our backs.

I'd predicted 0-0 and Chelsea winning on penalties.  1-1 and John Terry running in to win it for Chelsea was as close to my prediction as it got.  He fell over and we won.

Parkinson's Disease and Pesticides

How very interesting. Pesticide Parkinson's Link Strong

There is strong evidence that exposure to pesticides significantly increases the risk of Parkinson's disease, experts believe.
It comes as another study, published in the BMC Neurology journal, has made the link to the neurological disease.
The US researchers found those exposed to pesticides had a 1.6 times higher risk after studying 600 people.
Experts said it was now highly likely pesticides played a key role - albeit in combination with other factors.

This starts to point in Mark Purdey's direction.  Who is Mark Purdey?  He's the guy who suggested that Mad Cows Disease may have come from pesticide, by causing a high manganese and low copper environment.  And he was then starting to look into other neurodegenerative diseases which may each have a high/low mineral signature.  Alas, Mark Purdey died in 2006, but watch out for his legacy which may end up being one of the greatest medical breakthroughs.  Not bad for an organic farmer.

Imagine if the causes of diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, BSE/CJD each had an  identifiable  mineral signature, and hence could be prevented.  It makes sense doesn't it?  What I don't know, is if these diseases have become more prevalent over the last hundred years, and can they be linked to the change/increase of minerals in the environment.  And finally, can someone prove the mineral signature of each disease?  There are hints of it say for Alzheimer's with Aluminium bad and Zinc good, just as Manganese bad and Copper good with BSE (Mad Cow's Disease).  But they're not solidly proven yet, and may only be a co-factor in the cause.

It's a simple and elegant theory, I've been following for years, since I found out about Mark Purdey and his theories.

Fun with Peter and Jane!

This reading thing with Jay (aged 4) is getting serious.  It's very clear to me that he's whole word reading and not Phonic reading words.  Phonics which has been all the rage for decades it seems, breaks words down into their constituent parts, and identifies the variations in short and long vowels, as well as different sounding letters.

Jay is lapping up the individual sounds.  He wants more and more.  However, he has almost no ability to run the sounds together into words.  That's ok, he's 4 and I'm starting him a year early.

However, once I realised this, I picked a word he'd love, and let him learn that one word whole, so he has an anchor for other words.  The chosen word is...."cat".  Now he's identifying "cat" throughout the book, and of course his own name "jay" if that were in the book.

But get this, c...a...t, "Yes that's right Jay, cat.  Now this word is similar." r.....a.....t.  What do you think he read the word as after he sounded the r,a, and t? He said, "similar"!!  Very funny.  But I suddenly realised he can't see the relationship between cat and rat.  No idea, even if I rhyme them, or cover the c and r.

So I started to delve into how I learned to read.  In the UK in the 60s we had the Peter and Jane books or Janet and John, which are whole word books now out of fashion.  But get this, the research for the books was based on the fact that 12 words account for a quarter of our language, and 100 words account for half our language so it makes sense to learn those words, especially if like Jay you seem to like whole words.  I'm really tempted to buy Peter and Jane books, and Go Dog Go as a learning to read book, and let's see if he can learn in weeks as opposed to months.  I'm betting he can.  He loves it.

Let's soldier on with phonics, which to me seems easier for the teacher to teach than the reader to learn, which is maybe why it's been "successful"

Teaching Kids to Read

I'm far from being an expert on teaching kids to read, but having taught my older one Georgia, who is now 6, to read, and now starting with Jay who is 4, I noticed this article in The Guardian today, Union reading guidance to move away from phonics 

Citing mounting evidence of a crisis in children's happiness and mental health, the National Union of Teachers will today debate calls to scrap the most restrictive elements of the national curriculum and reverse a government order that literacy be taught through phonics.

The book I used to teach Georgia is Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons by Englemann Haddox and Bruner.  This is definitely a phonics book, which breaks words into their constituent sounds. It worked at first, and we got to page 300, and then Georgia gave up when the orthography was removed.  Orthography is additional signing and closing of letters together to give kids an idea of how words like "sh" sound or variation in short and long sounding vowels.

It was also very clear to me that whilst phonics is a good way for anyone to teach someone to read at the beginning, in reality we as humans use pick up "whole" words.  I can see it with Georgia, who recognised the whole word, not the breakdown of it, just like us, as adult readers.  If she or we come to a word we don't recognise, we use a number of different strategies, of which I reckon phonics is a small proportion of the tools.

So now with Jay, I've started him on the phonics book, but I'm recognising, that just like Georgia, he wants to move around the book, he has limited attention, he likes to "cheat" by memorising or guessing the whole word, which suggests that phonics isn't natural.

So my advice.  Start with phonics, and move very quickly away from it, especially if your child isn't taking to it.

WAV your hard drive goodbye

I had a look at my hard drive capacity on my laptop. 900 MB left.  Yikes, what happened, that was a close shave.  Making podcasts burns up your hard drive if you're recording WAV files.  I record a WAV file for each voice on a Skype interview, and an mp3 of both voices. so that's nearly 600MB of recording for each podcast!!

Of course, after I've published the file as an mp3 podcast, I probably don't need the WAV recording, but that's like getting rid of the master recording for when I'm world famous.

I had no choice but to move the master recordings to my external hard drive and delete them on my laptop.  I don't like the idea of just having a single copy, not that they're the most important files.

So it prompted me to do something I've been meaning to do for years; buy a second external drive and have a fire copy placed at another location.

Done.  Sent my current external hard drive to the mother-in-law's, and bought a cheapo 320GB external drive and backed up all my stuff, either by dragging, or using the excellent freeware SyncBack for synching files that change in time.

It's a great relief to have an off-site copy of my data, now let's see how often I exchange the discs from house to house!

Sex Records of Rudd's people

Sensational!  The 300+ ministerial and electorate staffers in the Rudd government have to reveal their sexual history/preferences, financial history, and drug habits.

MINISTERIAL staff in the Rudd government are being forced to list their history of sexual partners, before gaining security clearance.

Now you can debate wether or not they should, but how safe are those records to prying eyes.  100% safe?  Want a bet!!

300+ staff now are at risk of having their private lives revealed either to the nosey and voyeuristic, or vengeful.  You can prosecute the people who do this, but that won't stop the information getting out eventually.

You could argue that if you've got nothing to hide then it doesn't matter, but the media can make something out of what you would consider is nothing.

Good Luck to the 300+ form fillers!!  Big Brother is now watching you.......and so are the rest of us!!

I want my new ticketing system now!

Grrrr, why do public transport things get me so wound up and passionate.  Passengers Face $500m Ticket Chaos. 

MELBOURNE is facing a public transport ticketing disaster, with the ageing Metcard system close to collapse and the state's transport officials considering abandoning the troubled $500 million myki smartcard system.

How difficult can it be to implement a new public transport ticketing system?  Brrrring Brrrrring....Hello London Transport, can we copy your Oyster ticketing system please?  Or Hong Kong or Singapore, or any number of matured systems.  I can't believe Melbourne/Victoria's ticketing needs are so unique.

I guess one problem must be to take advantage of the latest technology, which maybe no current ticketing system uses, but you might never get a system implemented if you look for the latest technology.

I remember reading about and following the British Army's Bowman communication system.  It's taken them nearly 20 years to procure and replace their battlefield communication system.  Amongst other problems, is every time they procure the system, the technology moves faster than the procurement procedure, hence Bowman stands for "Better Off With Map and Nokia!".  And they want to pack in the latest technology which sometimes makes the system inoperable in the field.

I'm not sure what you do to incorporate the latest technology and have it usable and operable, quickly.  I'm grouchy about it, because I'm excited to use it.  I want a card I put credit on which lets me travel easily on a public transport system, and calculates the lowest price.

Sansa e260 mp3 player V1!

I bought a Sansa e260 mp3 player a few weeks ago.  My previous player, also a Sansa, has stopped connecting on the right channel, it's the connection inside the player and not the headset.

The Sansa was a bargain at 4GB for $128, colour screen, can also play video and hold photos, if converted via the Sansa media converter.

I'm a big podcast listener, which is my main use for the Sansa, so it's a great player to have for that purpose.  For the first time, I'm synching my mp3 player using Windows Media Player, not sure if I can synch both ways but it's working from PC to player, where before I just copied and deleted straight to disc.

I've always been one to run manual downloads, by spotting the new podcast on RSS, but not automating the file download, so maybe it's time to automate and use iTunes or something.

A few things I can't work out yet.  When I delete a podcast from the PC playlist and then synch, it of course updates the playlist on the Sansa, but as far as I can make out, it doesn't delete the actual file on the Sansa, which means my player is filling up, and using a playlist means each song is in it's own folder, which is a pain to clean up.

And other thing that has really irritated me, is I bought the Sansa e260 thinking it was the most up to date version, only to find out there is a Version 1 and Version 2.  I think I have a v1, because it won't work with Audible which only works with v2.  A firmware update, doesn't load the latest v1 firmware, and certainly doesn't update to v2.  Bloody hell; just a minor irritant to a good value for money player.  No wonder the price was so good for 4GB, they're getting rid of the V1s!

Blackberry Heaven

I'm using a PDA for the first time in my life, a Blackberry.  I'm loving it.  Not because it's a Blackberry, but because it's a PDA synchronised with Microsoft Exchange.  I'm amazed at how quickly my desktop updates the BlackBerry.

Funnily enough I'm not interested in the email bit.  I can read my email on a Blackberry, big deal, but can't really reply on the keys.  I'm a touch typist not a thumb typist.  So unless I get a keyboard for the Blackberry, it's not much use to me for typing purposes.

However, it acts as a great task manager, contact list, and diary, using Outlook synched to my Blackberry.  The first thing I had to do was go back to using Outlook which meant exporting my Thunderbird contacts.  This is not so simple, and the same with mail.  I have to somehow get it into Outlook Express from Thunderbird, and then on to Outlook.  Neither Thunderbird or Outlook make it easier, and leaves Outlook Express as the intermediary.

My Blackberry had been set to synch both ways with Tasks, Contacts, and Calendar, but currently one way on Email, from Outlook to Blackberry.  I may change this, so I can delete emails from my Blackberry.

I'm not out and about enough, and away from the office for the Blackberry to really count, so let's see how we go.