Schinckel.net

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.

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.

I have five invitations to be involved in the Mailplane beta. Email me if you are interested.

I like using rwhod on my home network. It means I can see how long the various machines have been on for, but there is one issue. On my Ubuntu box, everything is hunky dory. rwhod starts at boot, and tells me the uptime of that machine, and who is logged in. However, on the Macs, rwhod, while started, doesn’t seem to work. If I kill the process, and restart it (both as superuser), then it picks up the data fine. I wonder if it has something to do with starting too early in the boot sequence. I’ve got it set up as a LaunchDaemon, and it ran last boot as process 58. Perhaps something else needs to have started before it will work.

Flyin’ High • Baja Marimba Band • Espresso Espresso

I’ve changed my default browser to Safari 3 beta, and I’m liking it a lot. It’s nice to use a Keychain aware application again (it makes it easier to find out what password I used for a site), but there is one issue with this browser on my site. I use a special character in CSS to get the stars in the top menu. The best way to do this is to use something like:

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    #topnav li:before { content: "\2729  "; }
    #topnav li:first-child:before { content: ""; }

Which works great in most browsers. Sometimes I come across a browser on a machine that doesn’t seem to have the right font installed, and I see a box there instead. And then, last night I noticed the same behaviour in Safari 3: Now, this does not appear like this in either Firefox, or WebKit on the same machine: So, the big question is, why is Safari 3 beta not able to display the font correctly?

I’ve been playing around a little with proxytunnel, a little program designed for allowing you to create tunnels through an SSL (HTTPS) proxy server. The only OS X instructions I found are somewhat out of date (the program’s arguments are now in a different form) and I haven’t as yet had much luck with actually getting a working tunnel.

With my new machine, it’s time to consider how I’m going to store data, and how I’m going to back it up. One thing I’ve wanted to do is have most of my data stored within an svn repository, so that I can have revision control on all of my documents. I’m not too sure how well this would work, since I’d have to remember to keep checking stuff in and out. Perhaps I’ll wait until Leopard with Time Machine arrives. Then I should be able to have revision control on all files, automatically, each time I save. In the meantime, I’ve set up a folder inside my Home directory that is called .SVN, and I’ll put all of my subversion repositories for my coding projects into there. Have considered having an external svn server, and might go this route. That way, I’d only be able to check changes in when at home, or over the internet. Might not be too useful, since I’m planning to spend lots of time coding in local Cafés, where I only have port 80 access. Perhaps I should make an ssh tunnel through port 80 at my home, so I can access my network anywhere, regardless of this restriction.

Well, my MacBook Pro finally arrived. Sorry for not blogging about it earlier, but I had to play with it, and get a heap of stuff installed. I’ve found a heap of cool things to do with Laptop specific things, but nothing is cooler than this: MarcoPolo, which automatically chooses the Location (an OS X specific method of allowing you to have sets of settings which change depending on, well, your location), according to a user defined set of rules. Not only can you change the location, but you can also have user defined actions. So, for instance, I can have it set so that it mounts my school home directory when I get to school, and automatically mount my iTunes library server directory when I get home. You can use more than just WiFi signals to determine ‘where’ you are, such as what other devices are connected, what IP address you have, and what Bluetooth devices are nearby. The only thing I haven’t figured out is how to automatically change the Firefox proxy, which I can do with a manual action, but not yet automatically. This is why I love OS X.

I’m still in the process of deciding which is better out of Parallels Desktop and VMWare Fusion. I’ve just started playing with the beta 4 of Fusion, and I’m liking Unity over Coherence from Parallels Desktop for one reason: bringing one Windows window to front doesn’t automatically bring the others. Parallels still has one cooler feature: the ability to open a Windows file in a MacOS X application. That is pretty neat. So, my mind isn’t made up yet…

That’s right, it’s up to around 4 weeks now, and I’m still waiting for my laptop. Getting fairly annoyed, if I say so. Still, I’m using a Dual CPU/Dual Core (therefore, 4 cores!) Mac Pro at work, with 5 Gig of RAM. Which is kinda cool. Except that trying to work from my iPod seems to be locking everything up. At least unplugging it restores everything. Looks like I won’t be able to use the iPod to take the disk image of Fedora 7 home. Might have to use a real DVD-R.