Geek Week

OK so first things first. Sorry for not letting everybody know how it went last week. So here's a quick recap. Shit happened big time to my desktop PC. Last weeks blog came from an incredibly Pissed off TQ working on the laptop. I was facing potentially hours of work and, what's worse, I had no idea why. My PC had just shut down and was refusing to recover.

The good news. I settled in for a marathon session. This required lack of cleanliness and old comfortable clothes. It helps when you're working with PCs if you can grow stubble as you work (sorry ladies but it's true). My first start had enough oomph to get into windows once I'd cancelled disk checking. First task therefore was to basically steal as much as I could copy before the blue screen could catch me. With every file my mood lifted. I may lose the PC but I was recovering the files.

Next, after several failed re-starts, was to try and defrag a drive that looked like it only ever surfed the net for Viagra. I honestly can't ever remember a defrag taking longer. When it finished the drive still looked rough so I started again. The PC seemed to be getting more stable plus I could take risks because I had the important files backed up. Yep it took two days and I have no idea why it happened but I'm back on the desktop and it's working.

It was just time consuming but, file by file, cluster by cluster, I recovered to the point where I had a stable PC. I'm still a bit disturbed because I can't find an event that caused this one. How do I know it won't just happen again? I'll just need to keep my fingers crossed because there's stuff higher up the list than a new PC. The dishwasher is broke for instance which is much more of a crisis because the temporary replacement is me.

10 Cheers for Binary

Ten past ten on Sunday should really be a big date for geeks and binary enthusiasts the world over. It will be 10:10 10/10/10. Actually my first phrase can't be right. There's no such word as should in the world of binary. It either is or it isn't.

I'm a Photo shop Pro
One way or another it's been a really geeky week. There was the PC to fix. At work I was trying to help someone use some HTML tags to add interest to an online presentation that they were putting together. Now I don't really understand much about HTML myself and the little I do know has been kind of self taught from editing my blog so I printed some stuff off from the net. It was from this that I heard about meta tags. Meta tags apparently help google to list your blog. Who knew? So I've added a couple of rows to the Head section of my blog. I'll check google analytics periodically and see if it makes any difference before I bore everybody with a how to.

I also had a couple of things to do in photo shop. Now I've had a version of this kicking about on my PC for ages but I actually find it to be one of the more difficult image editing software's to learn so I've kind of avoided it even though I know that it's supposed to be the best. The thing is I had a couple of things I wanted to do that the easier image editing stuff wouldn't do so I gritted my teeth and went in to photo shop.

I always make my wife's birthday card you see. It's not that I'm too tight to buy a card, honest, it's just that you want to do something personal. It started about 13 years ago when we got married (and coincidentally got our first PC)and I've made a card for every birthday, anniversary and Christmas since. My wife reads this blog so I'm not going to give away the details of the card however: I had found an image that would have been perfect except for two things. It was completely the wrong colour and it had stuff in the background that I wanted to remove. This is the sort of thing that photo shop was invented for and I have to say, after much googling and perhaps the odd swear word, it worked perfectly. Go photo shop. Actually I'm kicking myself because I did one image perfectly in photoshop and then (time was against me) I did another very quickly in PowerPoint and the difference shows.

Phone Home

So when I was working with photo shop I had an idea for the phone. Whilst searching for images for the wife's card I came across a picture of an old fashioned British red phone box. Wouldn't it be cool to use that as the icon for my phone? But then I'd need to redo the other icons on the dock at the bottom. A post box for SMS, a map for Tomtom but what about settings? Maybe the IPSW icon that apple use. I lifted and tidied the images using my new found photo shop skills and I think the results are pretty good (if a little bizarre looking). I have an idea to take this further but I haven't completely made up my mind yet. What do you think?

It's Raining It's Sn0wing the Whole thing is B0ring

My iPhone has now been upgraded to iOS 4.1. I finally managed it on Friday when Redsn0w released a windows version. It worked flawlessly and there were no scary moments except when cydia came up with a white icon. I clicked it and it did stuff and before you could say 'screw this I'm going back to HTC' it was fixed. I do have a slight concern that when I click the remove background program in SBSettings it crashes the phone but otherwise it all works.

Thank god it did work because the whole Jail breaking scene has gone off its head this week. I love the fact that these geeks help us to mess with our iPhones but they truly are a bunch of geeky divas. Greenpois0n was to be the jailbreak to end all jailbreaks. An exploit called Shatter was discovered before iOS4 had even been released and it was to be the first to break all models of phone for life. The problem is that they didn't release it. They kept telling everybody how good it would be and showing videos of how it broke various devices but they never released it. Up until this week that is.

This week they announced that it would be released at ten past ten on Sunday. 10:10 10/10/10. The bad news however was that it wouldn't jailbreak the bulk of our iPhones. Only the iPhone four and the iPad. Bummer. Given that Friday saw the release of Redsn0w for windows and that Sn0wbreeze should work on the 3gS I think most of us are actually already able to jailbreak our phones anyway but it was none the less disappointing given that we've been waiting for more than a month.

Geohotz Rains on Chronic Devs Parade
Now came the bit that no-one expected. Ahead of the greenpois0n disappointing release came news from someone who claimed that they had bowed out of the whole jail breaking scene. George Hotz released a jailbreak one day ahead of greenpois0n that worked on most types of idevice. Limerain instantly became the jailbreak of choice and no-one even wanted greenpois0n any more. So much so that greenpois0n hasn't released. They say they are keeping it to jailbreak 4.2 when it comes out next month. I for one won't hold my breath.

So there you go. What a week to be a geek.

More next week

T

Anybody can be a Trainer

Go on...Click the start button on the cartoon. It'll brighten up a boring blog. Once it starts playing click all the differnt buttons within to make stuff happen. If you want to reset it just refresh the page. Enjoy...

This a rant about training and probably of absolutely no interest to most of you. Have a glance over it but feel free to ignore it and wait for a better post. I wont be offended.

Almost everyone is capable at some level of teaching a complete novice how to do something new or to perform some task that the teacher is experienced at and hopefully enthusiastic about. Why?

It's complex but mainly it's because we like to show off. We love telling people how good we are at what we do and we don't mind passing on a little bit of that knowledge. Hopefully if it's something we know nothing about we either back off or we look for reassurance from others who we feel are experts. So teaching people should be easy provided you know what your talking about or, if you're winging it, you have someone to hand publicly or privately who can keep you right. Someone told me that the secret of teaching guitar is just to make sure that you are always always one page ahead of your student.

Utter shite. I am sooo sick of people who think training is just about knowing your subject well and being able to talk out loud.

Sorry to be blunt but nothing could be further from the truth. Think about it. There are few less scary things on earth than a husband, wife or parent teaching their partner or child how to drive without first seeking professional assistance. Are they saying the wrong things? Nope. Is it that they don't fully understand it themselves? Possible but that's not the main thing.

There's a lot of complex things going on when we try to teach. All of these things contribute to the very reason why most people shouldn't even attempt it. Here's some bullets. You don't have to agree but consider them before you discount them.

-The teacher wants to look clever
-The pupil does not want to look stupid
-The teacher does not want to look stupid
-The pupil wants to look clever
-The teacher wants to teach the pupil all of their experience and knowledge (shortcuts and workarounds so their pupil can shine)
-The pupil wants all that experience and knowledge. (so they can shine)
-Neither teacher or pupil have considered 'What is the minimum required to do the thing that you are trying to do?'. Nobody sets out with the aim of just getting by.
-Everyone has a vested interest in turning the pupil into an expert and that is where the training always falls apart.

A good driving instructor has a plan before he or she meets the pupil. The plan involves taking simple, logical steps to progress a pupil from ignorance to competence in, hopefully, as short a period of time as possible. They have no plan to create an expert. If it happens well that's just great but it's not in the plan. In certain circumstances a fast learner can actually create problems down the line.

What the instructor has done is break the task down into a number of basic competences: get moving, gears, left turns, right turns,maneuvers, hill starts etc. The instructor may even lie to the pupil. For about a year and a half after I learned to drive I always dropped to second to go round a roundabout because it was the only way I knew. Some that I now use every day can be negotiated in forth but to this day, when I don't know where I'm going, I take roundabouts in second. Imagine that. All that money and my instructor never even showed me how to cut ten minutes off my morning commute by rehearsing every turn of a route, driving aggressively and practicing how to barge through roundabouts. He never even showed me what roads you'd get way with doing 40 on though the speed limits 30.

Andragogy! Never heard of it? Don't know what it means? Not even sure how to pronounce it? That's just me and I practice it for a living.

Andragogy (Greek for 'man leading' apparently) as opposed to pedagogy (child leading)is all about what motivates adults to learn. The reason you don't hear about it every day is because people generally don't care. (Even some of the ones that think they do). Often the reason why an adult learns is because they either want to do something(hobby or interest) or have to do something(job or need). For that reason (need or want)most people invest very little time in thinking about: What will it be like to learn? Is there any way that this could be more engaging or interesting, or broken into bite sized chunks or quicker or just easier? Nope. When people design training (design implies more planning than most deserve credit for)they are often far too busy concentrating on what knowledge they must impart to consider whether anyone will want to listen to them or whether what they say will make any sense.

Think about your favorite teacher at school. (Yep that's pedagogy but stick with me) What did they do differently? What made them more interesting? Were they more enthusiastic? Did you feel that they were telling you about something they cared about or just teaching a subject? Did they make you go away and find out stuff yourself? Did they appreciate the work you did? (I once had an English teacher who used an opening line from one of my short stories in all his classes to show pupils how to grab the readers attention. Can't remember what that opening line was now but god did it make me feel clever. It made me want to do something else, something even better).

So why the sermon? No point having an anonymous blog if you can't use it to rant from time to time. I am sick fed up with people thinking that they can train because they know their subject or, even more scary because they are good with PowerPoint. How many newbies have I watched fall for that trap and wonder why they lose the room whilst they work through some 100 slide PowerPoint karaoke. They should be tied to a chair and made to listen to themselves. I wont even allow an expert in the room when I deliver training. The distance between them and a novice can only upset both expert and learner.

Then there's those that think I do nothing when I'm not delivering training. 'Now that you don't smoke you must be struggling for something to do when you're not delivering'. When the hell do they think I learn about all the systems I train? Do they think that I actually am an engineer, a labourer, an accountant, a salesman, a life coach and all round customer service guru? Where do they think all those user guides, web pages, e-learning courses, system simulations and, I'll admit it, PowerPoints come from? Those team building exercises, ice-breakers and quizzes, do they think that's just stuff I make up on the spot? And how do they think I get the confidence to walk in to a room full of directors, take charge and keep them entertained?

I would recommend training as a career to anyone. But only if they could understand why not everyone can be a trainer.

I feel better for that. Hope I haven't made you feel worse.

Cheers

T