Lessons learned

OK so now my mums been on my case calling me sexist because apparently her phone can do stuff too. Not that I was ever aware of it because she's never used any of the stuff it can do (apart from filling the memory so full of photos that she had to delete them...downloading them is obviously a bit advanced)but I have been firmly told that it's a very good phone. I'd tell you what type it was but if I asked I'd probably be told 'it's a nice black one' or something like that. Girls, phones, I'm back to the original argument, anything more than text is wasted.

What's in a name?
Anyhow the phone blog for the week is done. This is the other blog. The one about the non smoker. One thing that did occur to me though is a complete opportunity missed. See between the car and the phone I've been having to use forums a bit recently. A lot of these forums don't want to share unless you create a log in. Rather than give them true details I've been using TQuittin.

When I first went to set up a blog about giving up smoking I was all concerned about being anonymous. Rather than give google my real email etc I tried to create a new email address. However as I was doing this through blogger rather than gmail I first created a web address. Tryingtoquitsmokingwithchampix was apparently already taken so I became tquittinwithchampix as suggested by the automatic site thing. So when I had to create an email google actually suggested tquittin.

Now sometimes when things want me to sign up I use tquittin as my log in. I even abbreviate it to TQ but a lot of sites wont accept less than three letters as being a valid name. In these instances I've gone for Tquit as a user name. Don't ask me why it's never occurred to me before but wouldn't Fquit have been so much more fun? Even FQ seems slightly wrong. You might have to say it a few times before you get it. Fquit, fquit fquit. See?

Car
Things have gone deadly quiet on the car front. I suspect this may be good. We were at the stage where I'd accepted a half price service but had asked about the cost of a replacement wheel. That wasn't Friday past but the Friday before. They got back to me the same day to say the service was reserved and that they'd get back to me with prices and answers to another couple of questions. Nothing since. Could it possibly be that he's gone on holiday????? How upset will he be when I copy in his MD querying why I've received no further contact? This wheel could still be mine.

Home
How many of you live somewhere that tourists love but you have never done any of the tourist stuff? I remember being quite stunned last year when we had visitors to our work over from India for about four weeks. At weekends they did stuff like visit London. That's about 600 miles away. For me you'd need a day to drive down, maybe three days to stay and a day to drive back up. Nope, these guys went down on Friday after work and were back at work on Monday. Their cameras suggested that they'd seen all of London. Next weekend they were off to the highlands.

In Britain you are rarely more than 50 miles from the coast and the whole country is about 850 miles from end to end. We forget that in other countries it's possible to live more than 850 miles from the sea. Subsequently we view any distance over about 50 miles as being a road trip.

Anyhow it's not even distance that made me ask about living somewhere tourists love. This week as a reward for a job well done a few of us took a boat trip along the river Clyde from Glasgow city centre to a shopping centre called Braehead. There really hasn't ever been a time I couldn't have done this. It's cheap and you could almost squeeze it into a lunch hour yet, not only I,but all the others had never been on the river that runs through the city. The picture is a picture of the river clyde as it looks in the evening.

It made me think. If someone was to visit and wanted to see the city that I love and call home, would I even be the best person to show them round? The trip was great but then ended with TGI Fridays and boring corporate food that is just about OK. I spend so much of my time, in common with others, getting out of the city that I've forgotten how beautiful it can be to just stay there.

The challenge to you all. Think about how you would show a stranger your place and then do it yourself.

More phones and nonsense next week.

Oh by the way...what about the brushed alluminium background for the blog? I was just experimenting to see what could be done so it will probably change but let me know what you think.

FQuit......

TQs' Theory of iVolution

Welcome to the weekly(ish)iPhone blog/update. Some regular readers will not be too surprised to see that I have now become obsessed with the iPhone. Not that I'm an addictive personality type in any way (fags, booze) but this whole iPhone thing has me hooked. I thought I loved my HTC but it wasn't true love. The problem with the HTC (mine is a Touch Diamond with windows mobile version 6)is that it's windows based so works intuitively, syncs with my PC and basically does what I want to do when I want to do it. What fun is that?

Apple have created a phone that is entirely designed around controlling what you can do and when. Not only controlling you but even controlling the developers. That's where the fun starts. Someone bought one of these iPhones but didn't like being stuck with a single network provider. Realising that the phone was just a small PC they found a way to view the file structure of the phone and remove the network provider restriction. Opening the file structure became known as jail breaking, whilst altering the default provider is known as unlocking.

Once you can see the file structure (jail breaking) it's a relatively simple matter to start changing things and adding things. It's no more or less complicated than changing the wall paper on your PC. What's more if you get stuck there are a million forums that will help. (remind me to get back to that) If you get really stuck you can just restore your phone to its un-jail broken state and start again.

The changes that you make to a jail broken phone will be completely lost whenever iPhone upgrade the software which, in my experience, is about every six - eight weeks for minor tweaks and every six months for major operating system type overhauls. The tweaks aren't that big a problem as they are mostly attempts to fix or speed up a process and the Dev-Team as the jail breakers call themselves tend to be ahead of apple on this constantly. The result, a jail broken phone on OS4 is just as, if not more, up to date as an non jail broken phone using OS 4.02 so there is no real need to upgrade. Jail breakers however can't take advantage of an update until the Dev-Team have checked it out and worked out how to obtain the file structure again. For owners of the new iPhone four this is developing into quite an issue. For owners of older cheaper phones like my iPhone 3g with 8gb memory this is no problem at all and an up to date break is usually available within the first 24 hours of an update.

When you upgrade you have to redo the jail break. That involves several things. You need to run software to jailbreak. You need to install software providers known as 'repos' (I need three of these) and then you need re-install the apps that those programs provide. I use Appulous which allows you to install apps without using iTunes (perhaps apps that cost money that you might like to try before purchasing), my3g which makes my phone treat 3g reception as wifi so that I can watch TV on my phone even without wifi, iAddkiller which beats off pop up advertising that you should be forced to suffer according to apple, Finally you need Appsync. What Appsync does is allows you to view your iPhones file structure in the same way that you would view the C drive on your PC with folders, subfolders and files. After this is done you can also re-install your, perhaps, unpaid for apps which will still show against your phone but wont work until the jailbreak process is complete.

The final app I install after a jailbreak is known as winterboard. It's basically a skinning or theme app. Google it and you'll quickly discover that you don't need to be some sort of iClone. You can pretty much change the appearance of everything to suit yourself. There are off the shelf packages that will make loads of changes for you or, once you figure out how it's done, you can make changes yourself. The pic on the right in the ivolution image above is my phone as it presently looks. I downloaded a theme known as iElegance which gave me the background and changed some of my icons to the new look that you see. This theme had a clock and date function that I didn't like it so downloaded another theme called HTC springboard. I copied the files from the second theme and pasted them over the clock files from the first. I then searched google for iElegance type icons. There were loads of them and someone had even made a down loadable zip file so I downloaded this and set about altering my remaining icons. I removed the new folder icons by changing their file extensions and replaced them with new ones that matched my theme. Learning and doing took about three days.

The result shown above is exactly what I wanted. To be clear. If you had just wanted to transform your iPhone to look like an HTC there's a winterboard theme that will do that with weather and calender etc. What I wanted was the appearance of an HTC with the functionality of an iPhone. Thanks to jail breaking, Winterboard, theme developers and the dev-team that's exactly what I've got. If Apple allowed HTC to create an OS for their phone I doubt that it would look to much different. I prefer apples Icons and folders to HTCs menu bars but I prefer the HTC look. I've got it and it works.

In around two weeks there will be another apple update rumoured to be called 4.1. The upgrade will fix an issue with 3g reception. Will I upgrade? Yep. What I have done differently this time is that I have copied folders such as themes and jailbreak apps directly to my computer. My hope is that I can restore my jailbreak fully within 3 hours of an upgrade. If I can then it will be worth it.

Finally, for the most part the jailbreak community are pretty helpful. Loads of how to guides, loads of sites to help you keep up to date. I was surprised therefor with Modmyi.com. I posted three posts there as a newbie and did not get a single response. There was lots of help on the site but I think us newbies with our specific questions may be a bit simpleton for them.

Normal blog to follow and more of the 'iTry' next week.

Cheers
T

Mayhem returns to the cities streets

First up I have to tell you that my wife gave me a row this week. She went to catch up with the blog on Monday to see if there was anything that I was sharing with the world but not with her and, lo and behold, found that all I had blogged about was my bloody iPhone (as she affectionately calls it).

I'm going to be very general here and use some stereotyping. Women love mobile phones. There can't be too many gadgets that my wife craves more than I do but the phone is definitely up there. She even quite likes the house phone (though she'd probably deny it) where you would have to nag me before I'd use it to call the fire brigade during a fire and even then they'd have to ask very specific questions or I'd somehow relay the message wrongly (So I'm told). Some women even like the iPhone. Sleek lines and a look that makes you not too ashamed to carry it about in the handbag. The thing is, it appears to me, that women like phones for precisely the purpose for which they were originally designed, a phone.

In a woman's world it would appear that a great phone must be able to do two things: Phone and text (so they can send friends a text to say 'call me' and their friends can text back 'OK' before they call). If a phone has a camera it's considered high spec and if it has an MP3 well....That must be what they mean by ultra mobiles.

There appears to be little or no recognition for the fact that many of today's phones rival the PC in everything but memory capacity. It's my SatNav, my newspaper, my Internet, my email. It has train times and a dictionary and encyclopedia and thesaurus. It's a calculator, spirit level, ruler, unit converter, for gods sake it can even translate several languages. Mine has games, TV (live and recorded), notes, still camera, video camera and oh by the way....Great phone, text and about 300 mp3s. At the moment I'm spending a considerable amount of time hacking into it so that it can maybe even do more and will have a way cooler screen. Anyway I can hardly break the computer when I'm spending all my time trying to screw up the phone. Enough said....

So on this blog I wont mention the phone.

This blogs title may give you the clue that today all of the schools where I live returned after their summer break. Some started yesterday but today was the biggy. Like most of those kids, I assume, I wish their holidays lasted longer. I can put up with small crowds of them hanging around the park drinking cider and looking bored. It's so much better than hordes of them packed in to a school and looking dangerous.

My real reason for wishing their holidays lasted longer however is the trouble they cause on my journey to work. Parents on the school run must be the biggest scourge to normal traffic known. Forget roadworks and speed cameras and traffic lights. They fade into insignificance when dealing with the distracted lane control of a parent trying to stop three kids in the back seat fighting. The 4x4s and people carriers parked three abreast with their hazards blinking whilst half the city comes to a standstill to watch the kiddie winks disembark.

Today I was behind the slowest Suzuki ever made. Quite a nice one as well but way slow. Trundling along at between 24-26 miles per hour in a 30 zone at rush hour. Not bothered by the traffic snarling up behind, let's face it, completely unaware that there was traffic behind. I swear I heard a green light trying to speed them up. 'Come on, it said, I can't stay green forever you know. If you could just get up to thirty you'd make it before I changed. Look it's more than my jobs worth, it continued, but as it's you I'll hang on for another couple of seconds but you better hurry. Nope! OK then I'm afraid I'll have to turn red and hold all the other motorists up for another five minutes'. And so five or six of us who would have made not only that light but the next six waited till the Suzuki was ready to move slowly on.

To be fair work wasn't worth the rushing for this morning anyway. There's a delay in a system that I'm about to deliver training for so I've went from frantic rush to casual, Suzuki like, saunter for a week until things catch up. Doesn't mean they don't appreciate my being on time though parents.

I'm sure I also told you that I've been offered a half price service for my car. I've also been told that they'll change one of my other wheels that has started to oxidise but they still haven't caved in to the front wheel. My tack now has been to enquire about the cost of the front wheel and whether (out of warranty now) they will still honour their original offer of paying half that cost. If the answer to that is yea then I'm going to try and trade the value of my half a service against the wheel. I've probably got no chance but I'll keep pushing them. I can live with it if they end up giving in because they think I'm an arse.

Aside from that there isn't much to tell. There are berries on the trees and the maples are even beginning to shed a bit so I think autumn is fast approaching. Unfortunately the garden is still growing so last week was spent cutting grass and trimming the hedge. Hopefully only one or two more goes at that before it gives up for winter.

Anyway, stuff to do... Need to go and play with my phone. It will be the subject of another update within the next few days once I've finished what I'm messing around with so I'll apologise in advance.

In the meantime

Don't quit quitting you quitters

T

Jail break IOS 4.02 withRedsn0w

For the second time in just a few weeks really I am putting up a quick blog to the jail breaking community for iPhones before my normal weekly blog. Apologies to those with no interest in the phone.


This week I did a stupid thing. Fortunately for me on this occasion I got away with it.

As I was reading on Redmond Pie that a new version of iPhone software was coming on to the market I was also being asked by iTunes if I wanted to downoad only or download and install. I selected download only but, as I did so, Redmond Pie confirmed that for iPhone 3g the original Redsn0w jailbreak would still work. Given that it worked so well when ios4.01 turned up hot on the heals of ios 4 I took them at their word.

Don't update

How many times in life do I need to be told, never buy the newest thing until you know that it works? Is that the first generation of a car that your driving? Does it have any problems that have been sorted out on newer models? Did you really pay £400 for that camera just before SLRs became the rage? Does windows mobile really beat iPhone?

I felt quite smug as the jailbreak was applied. I may have the old iPhone but mine would be up to date and jail broken. If the iPhone 4 brigade (who have waited months only to get a jailbreak and then have it shut down)think they are cool. Who's cool now with their 3g? The jailbreak worked. As I understand it it will work with 3g and below and iPod touch 2gs and below but for god sake check that info before you do it. The jailbreak did work but, because I was so far ahead of the game on this one Cydia etc weren't up to date. In other words I was jail broken but had very few of the real advantages. It's taken three days for everything to get caught up but now my phone is comfortably back to where it was.


The official line from all the jail breaking communities is hold your fire. ios4.02 Is simply an update that prevents nasty folk from hacking your iPhone using an exploit that was discovered by the jail breakers. The jail breakers needed a way to load software onto the phone and found one. In doing so it exposed the fact that there was a way that nasty people could do the same but for bad reasons. Given that iPhone hold bank details etc this was not good. Believe it or not the jailbreak community, realising the potential problem, had a fix out at the start of the week and have upgraded that to a proper patch for all phone variants before apple got to market with their solution.

So why did I update and why are so many people hopping from foot to foot waiting to hear when they can update? Simple, you can't fall behind with this stuff. Even as you read this there's software being created that will only work on ios4.02. Apple probably have a team working on a release for ios 4.03 whilst another team will be designing some major changes that will be called ios5. You need to be up to date.


Testers Required


To some extent it's really the jailbreak communities own fault. Apple should be paying these guys. The dev-team (jail breakers) are way ahead of apple in what they want their phones to do. The dev-team create apps that push the functionality of the phone to the limits. Sometimes they push beyond the limits and phones slow down or batteries drain too fast but none of us complain. If a development isn't what it should be delete it. IOS4 delivered folders. Jail breakers already had those. IOS 4 delivered multitasking. Jail broken phones had been doing that with varying success for at least a year. As before Jail broken phones had customisable lock screens and wallpaper. 3g and lower had already had video and camera zoom was taken for granted. All of these things had been available and were working with the jail breakers long before apple caught up. A suspicious person might think Apple monitored this activity with a keen eye to see what would be the popularity and impact on performance before packging them up into ios4.

A genius in the community known as Comex has pretty much launched a working flash application. IPhone has been stongly criticised for not having this and was even taken to court over an advert because of this. Apple was told to stop saying it's phones could access 'all of the internet, because without flash it could only access parts. You need it for a lot of movie and animation formats.

What Comex has launched is not yet perfect and he or she will probably work tirelessly until they get it perfect. Within 3-6 months of the the jail breakers launching Apple will probably package it and launch to the world. The jail breakers seem to be apples own research and development lab. And folk like me have no objection to being the lab rats. My 3g is almost equal to an iPhone 4 with the exception of memory. In terms of hardware it will fall behind but for the moment it's doing pretty well.


Jailbreaking also gives users applications that neither apple or the phone providers want you to have. I may not be able to use Frash on my 3g but one thing that I do use is MY3G. A fantastic little piece of software that can only be used on a jailbroken phone. What it does is makes your phone believe it has a wifi connection when it actually only has 3g. As a result your phone will attempt to do things like stream live tv when normally it would say that this could only be done through wifi. It doesn't actually increase the 3g signal but sometimes the signal is strong enough and the phone is just refusing because of data capacities.

DIY

Don't update
Given that I got my phone in May and have now jail broken it for about the fourth time I'm getting a bit pissed off. It's not difficult to jailbreak but jail breaking and then reapplying all your settings takes time and is annoying. For this reason I'm thinking about researching my own jailbreak. At the moment I'm not too sure what that means but I'm planning to find out. I'm not a programmer so I'm not talking about creating a jailbreak like the guys do with new functions and everything. I'm thinking much more simple. Is there a quick, button click, way of upgrading your phone and keeping all the programs and settings that you got from your jailbreak? A way of being on the newest version but maintaining functionality until the real geniuses at the dev-team work their magic.

The dev-team solution would always be better but this would offer a fix that would give them the breathing space to do their stuff. I know people would use that. Can I figure out how to do it? At the moment certainly not. If I do do it will anyone be interested? Maybe. Problem is I'll then need folk to test it as well because I'm stuck with my 3g till 2012.

This could become extreme jail breaking....

Stay hooked

T

Like, Comment, Add to wishlist, Ignore

Comment

Ok so I've spent a fair bit of this week trying to decide what I really think about this facebook lark. The whole thing is puzling me a bit because it's not really a blog as such. You don't really keep a diary or tell a story. Also it seems to work differently based on your age.

For folk my age and above it all seems a bit random. It's like some sort of bizzare tourettes. Someone posts a comment like: 'My dishwashers broke and I've got no dishes' and then all the friends of that person swarm on to the site to either 'Like' this bizarre proposal (which I am taking as a form of support)or comment with something tongue in cheek like 'I thought you only ate fast food anyway'. What do you need dishes for? (Oops forgot to put the LOL at the end). Imagine sending a text message to everyone you know just to update them that you are now shopping and you've got the idea.

I am however now 'Friends' with my teenage nieces and they seem to use it all differently. Not quite so under pressure to make sweeping statements they seem to be going more for the full on conversation. We've been friends for two days and I've learned more about them in those two days than in the past 16 years. They also seem to spend a fair bit of time sending out quizzes to all their pals. What did you think the first time you saw me? Who would you secretly like to snog? If I died tomorow what would you say? I have to say it seems innocent enough and even quite a good way to get into others thoughts but is this not wide open for the bullys to attack individuals?

Like

Then there seem to be some sites set up with no other intention in life than to be liked. What's that about? One said that if it could get 2000 people to 'like' it by a certain date then their dad would give up smoking. I didn't 'like' it by the way. leave the guy alone. Pressuring him in that way is poitless. Find a site like this and let him read it. that would work better.

Add to wishlist

In her most recent blog Poet talked about house prices where she lives. Well house prices are pretty high everywhere but there are always bargains if you search. A two bed flat in the city where I live will start at over 90k however look at this one that I discovered:



On the market for 162k. 162k!!!!! That's something that a normal couple could afford. Granted the estate agent describes it as needing modernisation inside and out but 162k. Take a look at what you get by clicking here. You would feel like the lord and lady of the manor. If three or four rooms were OK you would live in them and then get the place watertight. That may take the price through the 200k barrier but, theres more than an acre of land, you could sell some land to a developer to pay for some of the repairs. Provided it's wind and water tight then you can take years to do the rest a room at a time. It makes me feel good that a pleb like me could realistically one day own a place like that.

Ignore

Yep it turns out the car dealer had been ignoring me. They had the cheek to do one of those courtessy calls to say they thought it was about time for a service but had no idea what I was talking about when I mentioned my complaint. I went via 'Contact us' on their web-site and asked when I should expect an answer. I got an email straight away to say there was no record and that I would be contacted shortly. Within about half an hour the directors PA had contacted me to say that she had been on holiday and then the director had been on holiday. My complaint had gone missing but was found now.

So what now???

Watch this space...

T

When a Horse is this Sick. They should Shoot it

Lloyd's reports 1.6bn profits.

Would that be Lloyd's that was bailed out to the tune of 17bn in 2008? The bank that has only managed to repay something like 3bn? Yet they are arrogant enough to be basking in a glow of this so called success despite ripping all of it's customers off in every way possible.

It charges it's customers £1 per day for every single day that they are into their AGREED overdraft and something ridiculous like £5 per day if you go outside the agreed overdraft (this can happen when your agreed overdraft charges take you above your agreed overdraft.)

It forced customers onto fixed rate mortgages around 7% when the interest rate was only 0.5% yet offered savers something paltry like 1%.

I recently asked them to turn a credit card balance into a loan. (Always a difficult one for the banks because they have already given you the money so effectively can't say that you don't warrant the credit.) They offered me a loan at 27% interest.

So basically whether your a saver, investor or borrower you are being ripped off. Who says you can't fool all of the people all of the time?

Remember this bank is only in business because the taxpayer (it's customers) bailed it out and still effectively own 41% of it. What I would like to see is some sort of hardship imposed on it the way it imposes hardship on us. It should be paying every taxpayer £1 per day for every single day that it continues to survive on our money. It should be paying 27% interest to the government. Prior to the banking crisis had a bank behaved this way the government would have stepped in to stop its operations all together. There are people actually in jail in this country for a crime called Money Lending. Some of them have not behaved as badly as this bank has. Someone worked out that there was the potential to pay 3650% interest on a ten pound overdraft.

The government is turning a blind eye because they have no answers to this. If the bank went bust then the liquidator would seize all of it's assets to recover money. That would mean millions loosing their houses, their cars etc so that doesn't work. In their current state they aren't turning a worthwhile profit when compared with their debt so no-one in their right mind wants to own them. So they sit there, free to turn the screw because nobody can quite figure out what to do. Protecting the jobs, allowing those who can just about make the repayments to be screwed whilst trying not to mention the ones who cant and lose everything seems the safest way.

To grudgingly give the bastards, (oops meant banks) some credit: Citizens Advice a UK Consumer Group and a number of MPs recently went to parliament to raise this matter. As a result Lloyd's have said that they will be reducing this overdraft rate for all of their customers come December. Why December? Why not now?

We'll wait and see if it happens. I'm sceptical because I remember when this money was being dolled out to the banks and the government were urging the banks to 'boost' the economy by helping businesses and encouraging the housing market. They claimed they were doing this however what they were doing was offering loans and mortgages at a shocking rate. Lloyd's is the parent company but it owns several brand names, Bank of Scotland, TSB, Halifax, etc. When they say they will cut charges to all Lloyd's customers do they mean everyone who has a bank card that says Lloyd's on the front or do they mean all the customers of all the brands of bank that they own?

Watch this space....

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