I’ve got a strange issue at the moment where Mail.app only downloads one email message at a time from my Gmail POP server.
Fairly annoying.
I haven’t been able to find anything on the Google about it, and I don’t know if it’s an issue related to Gmail, or to Mail.app. Might have to try another email client. Or another service.
I think lots of people I know are shocked when they hear I am stopping teaching at the end of this year, and going back to Uni. For those that do know me, and haven’t heard, I’m heading back to Uni, and intend to complete a postgrad Bachelor of Computer Science at Flinders Uni. After that, I may or may not return to teaching. I’ve written this essay from the point of view that I won’t.
Many people, when I mention I am a teacher talk about the endless holidays, and the short work hours. Whilst to some extent I will miss these (having a nice long break at the end of the school year, plus another three lots of a fortnight off at a time are pretty nice, and being able to escape at 3:10 like I did today is also kinda cool), there are lots of reasons for me not to remain a teacher.
For starters, I get bored very easily if I am not doing stuff that challenges me intellectually. Nothing against teaching woodwork and metalwork, and I really do enjoy making stuff with my hands, but I’m really glad that I just finished teaching kids how to create a cake tin. Never again will I have to go through that process.
I’m not really sure why I became a teacher to begin with. It was probably a bit of an accident. I started out doing a Computer Systems Engineering degree, but at 16 I really wasn’t mature enough to handle independent living and study. I was clever, but perhaps not as smart as I thought. After doing miserably in some subjects that I should have breezed through, I had to look for alternatives. I worked for six months, met the love of my life, and decided to become a teacher.
Because I had spent more than one full year at University already, my entrance into another course was based solely on my achievement level in the previous course. Whilst I had some High Distinctions (including Programming in C, and Discrete Mathematics), I had an awful lot of failing grades, and the only teaching degree I was offered a place in was Technology Education. In some ways, I’m really glad I got into that course. If I hadn’t put it on my list, then I really don’t like to think where I’d be now. And, I learned some fantastic skills in that course, that I use in my home life as well as at work.
I’ve never fully enjoyed teaching. Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of things I do like about it, like getting to know some great people (kids as well as teachers), but I was never satisfied. I probably wouldn’t go back and change anything in my first few years of work - discovering Touch Football for instance totally changed my life - but towards the end of my five years at Windsor Gardens, I was really ready for a change. I thought a change of school was all I needed, but I was wrong. I needed a change of occupation.
So, making another wrong decision I moved to my current school. As with a new job, everything was okay for a little while. I had some new challenges, and some new opportunities. Around this time last year I was offered the chance to teach Stage 2 (final year of High School) Information Technology Studies. Perhaps, I rationalised, this was what I needed to do. Teach another subject, something I might find a little more interesting and exciting.
But this too, wasn’t the right decision. I was gung-ho at the start of the year. I’d done some preparatory work, but the amount I could do was limited since I didn’t want to do stuff that wasn’t relevant (the Curriculum Statement was in flux at that stage). I was like a man possessed, writing assessment tasks and the like. And I quite enjoyed it.
But, as the year dragged on, I realised I still wasn’t happy. It wasn’t until I re-did Jaq’s website that I realised what was missing. I’d been writing about coding, and doing a very small amount (but all the time limiting the depth of stuff I was doing, since I had to try to teach concepts to kids, and get them to do the coding), but redoing the website made me realise: I want to do stuff, instead of teach stuff.
This was something, when I look back, I’ve been subconsciously doing all along. At times, when I’ve got a group of kids doing something practical, I’ll create a project too. If they are getting me down, then I’ll focus on what I’m doing. Whether it’s a cake tin, or something more substantial, I really enjoy making stuff. Turning up bowls on a wood lathe, writing a computer program, it’s all good.
When I built Jaq’s website (credit where it is due: she designed it, I just made it work!), I had a couple of tasks that required some serious thought. The first was the actual page layout code, including the JavaScript that controls loading of new images onto the page rather than a complete reload. This is designed to reduce bandwidth, but also make for a more seamless user experience. This wound up being a fair bit of work, but most of that work was getting it to work in Internet Explorer.
The other thing I ended up doing was writing a pair of application programs. One of them attached tags to image files (using xattrs, which work on OS X and some other platforms, but don’t copy from machine to machine very well at times, so I’d rethink before using the same system). The other one generated HTML code from a folder full of images and text files. This was planned so that Jaq can just replace an image, set of images, or textual content, including making significant changes (like changing the number of items), and the program creates the whole website from the templates.
This was an interesting solution, and if I were to redo it again (which I may at some stage) then I would probably consider using PHP, and having all of the HTML data generated on the fly, rather than in advance. Doing it all in python was a piece of cake, and it helped me realise that I really do love coding.
I’ve done plenty of coding for myself in the past decade-and-a-bit that I haven’t been doing anything much work-wise that has been related to this. I can’t remember exactly when I taught myself python, or javascript, or AppleScript. I know that at least some of these had to have been in the past decade, but I do recall doing some python a long, long time ago. Version 1.5.2 rings a bell.
I could conceivably find myself a job now in this industry, but I’d much prefer an opportunity to go back to study, and ensure that I have the right sort of skills. Even though it will result in me having to learn Java, which I’ve put off for ages, I think that it’s the best approach.
Deep down, I’ve known this is what I should have done. I just wish I’d made the decision earlier.
In a comment to ongoing · Pantone’s Missed Chance:
“Pantone 7547 is the new Pantone 7413.”
That would be one of the funniest isthenewisms I have heard. By the way, I just made that word up. They feel a bit like a metaphor, but I think with the humourous context to which it is applied, that no longer makes sense. In many cases, isthenewisms are paralogisms. Yes, I looked that up, too. It got me thinking, though, and I did a bit of Googling. Leisure Arts has a pretty cool diagram from 2005, which has a whole range of these. Some highlights:
Apparently, and I’m quoting Wikipedia here, the catch phrase started in 1963 with “Pink is the black of India”, and by the 1980s, it had become “… is the new black”. Also, according to Wikipedia, these are called Snowclones, where they are misquoted, abused and so on. As well as … is the new …, there is also “All your … are belong to us”, and “… or bust”. Man, this millennium is great. It would have taken me all day to find that out when I was still at Uni, let alone at school. Google is the new, well, Google. •
Okay, this one has me stumped.
I have all of my iTunes music stored on a local server, along with the remainder of my media files (Movies, TV series, copies of Digital Photos). This has been working pretty seamlessly, until I noticed something odd.
I knew I had some files there, but they weren’t displaying. Logging into the server using ssh, or for that matter SMB showed me the files were indeed there. But whenever I logged into the server via AFP, they don’t.
Most files do, but some of them aren’t there. But if I access the share using a parent share (/home/media, instead of /home/media/music), then the files are visible again.
I am at my wits end here!
Not so much a bug, more of a big omission.
With Numbers, the SpreadSheet included with the new iWork 08, you aren’t able to rotate text inside a cell. I use this feature all of the time, so I can have compact columns with long titles.
Other issues: no AppleScript support. I’ve looked through the bundle, and there isn’t anything helpful there either. Interestingly, you cannot load up the .nib files either. Or at least, not in my version of Interface Builder, which I think is up to date.
Playing with ecto 3 alpha - looks pretty good so far.
Hopefully it handles the RTF/HTML conversion process a bit better than ecto 2.
Paint the Tiger, Carve the Swan » Spam Galore:
Testing Trackbacks.
I’ve had lots (and I mean lots) of Spam comments lately. Akismet has nabbed most of them, but a few have gotten through. And I keep having to moderate those snagged by Akismet. Tempted to try another, additional level of Spam protection.
I have five invitations to be involved in the Mailplane beta. Email me if you are interested.
I’m loving my new Nokia E65. It works with Salling Clicker (which I will register, it is just great!), as well as the Nokia-downloadable iSync plugin. I’ve also bought nova media’s program for installing support for a wide range of phones SMS from Address Book. This too is very cool. I can now send (but not, unfortunately, read) text messages from the comfort of my keyboard. I may write some scripts to automatically send the same SMS to a whole Address Book group. That would be fairly neat. In terms of Salling Clicker and phone events, I’ve fallen in love with call notification (although, that may be also provided with the nova media plugin I’ve installed, I’ll find out when someone calls me), and proximity notifications. Such as being able to have Adium put me Away when I walk away from my machine. Autolock is also pretty cool.