Big break for GameLogs, mainly due to Uni assignments. Not sure how accurate my memory is going to be over 7 weeks, but here goes:
UnAngband (30h) - Competition run over June with many characters making the sacrifice in an attempt to finish in the least amount of moves. Was a little surprised how few people entered the competition as it was a great way of focusing on the game.
Pokemon Platinum (15h) - Kinda picked it up for Cameron, but it's still a little too wordy for an illiterate 4 year old. Bit dissappointed it was a rebadged Diamond/Pearl, but past where I got up to in tat one through ignoring most of the side games.
Trackmania Nations (10h) - one of the consistent games through the Uni period. A quick race after coming home to relax.
Baldur's Gate: (6h) Ben, Levi and Joseph come over on the weeken to restart the BG campaign again. Another 3 hours of setting up PCs for ~3 hours of play.
Bloodbowl (5h): Latest purchase. Turn based mode is INCREDIBLY frustating when your turn ends when failing to pick up the ball. used to playing Dark Elves in the real game and the agility meant I really didn't have to worry about that as often. Considering playing blitz mode purely for that reason. Have some Saurons about to win their first league.
Mount & Blade (2h) - Really need to get back to the Tales of Ymira storyline. Decided I my as well wait until I had a kingdom and restart from there.
World of Goo (2h) - Bit further through the campaign. Nearly completed now.
Guitar Hero III (2h) - Pulled out the old one on Cameron's request after he spent the day singing "I, wanna rock and roll all night! And party every day."
That'll do for now. I'll add more if I think of any.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Monday, July 06, 2009
Friday, July 03, 2009
UnAngband competition post-mortem
The UnAngband competition is over, and although it looked like I came in second, I really didn't have the time to fully get into the game with assignments and Uni bearing down on me.
To contribute to the post-mortem, here's a few things I liked / disliked about this variant:
+ stacking rules It really helps satisfy what you think you should be able to carry. It may not be practical to think of how you would carry 12 rods of cure medium wounds, but in a game sense they all serve the same function and are seen as equivalent.
+ Bags and quiver. These really help bring more use to lower level items once you're deeper in the game. It's a tough choice between bringing along a staff of perception or a bag of scrying, whereas scrolls of identify simply don't match the staff.
- Sometimes Bags of holding would be named instead of the item inside it. Eg: you walk over a mushroom and it says "you have picked up a magic bag of helpful mushrooms" instead of the type of mushroom it was. Minor code cleanup I'd say.
+ Rune system. It has the gottaCollectEmAll vibe going. I felt I had to hoard every rune I found purely for the promise they brought even though I only got to craft one item. I was also hoarding useless items in the hope that there was a way of extracting runes from them at a later date. Still haven't found out whether that is the case or not yet.
+- coating system. I really REALLY liked the coating system at the start, but I rarely used it once past the initial stages as you couldn't coat any branded/ego stuff. It certainly lifted the profile of detrimental items, but I didn't really see the negative impact of using up a resource on enhancing any weapon for a limited time.
+ Themed dungeons. I've never been that far into the game before, but the themed dungeons really give a better sense of realism to each area. I still believe that there's more room for improvement and I'd like to see the dungeon creation make levels with more meaning. I liked the change in intensity of some dungeons too. I really liked the towers as they reminded me of playing Lost Soul characters, but with the added bonus of having everything packed into a screen size, scryable shape.
- Weapon damage calc. I'm not sure what variant had damage calculations for monster types (might have been FuryBand?), but I really would have liked to have seen an aggregate damage representation somewhere to figure out whether a ring of damage (+8) was better or worse than a ring of Acid (x2). It used to be on examining your wielded weapon and would list the damage for normal monsters, resistant monsters, etc. I also never figured out what a good skill in throwing did for you instead of your skill in shooting apart from the throws per round.
++ ID system. I'm an info hoarder and most of my characters tend to value information gathering very highly. I really enjoyed the sensing of items and then the division of identification by gauging, sensing, IDing, Loreing, etc. Really played out well for the early stages and enhanced by bags of scrying later on. Also really well done was figuring out what something was by using it or being exposed to situations that could tell you what it was (like being hit by a fireball then figuring out that an unID'd item may be fireproof).
To contribute to the post-mortem, here's a few things I liked / disliked about this variant:
+ stacking rules It really helps satisfy what you think you should be able to carry. It may not be practical to think of how you would carry 12 rods of cure medium wounds, but in a game sense they all serve the same function and are seen as equivalent.
+ Bags and quiver. These really help bring more use to lower level items once you're deeper in the game. It's a tough choice between bringing along a staff of perception or a bag of scrying, whereas scrolls of identify simply don't match the staff.
- Sometimes Bags of holding would be named instead of the item inside it. Eg: you walk over a mushroom and it says "you have picked up a magic bag of helpful mushrooms" instead of the type of mushroom it was. Minor code cleanup I'd say.
+ Rune system. It has the gottaCollectEmAll vibe going. I felt I had to hoard every rune I found purely for the promise they brought even though I only got to craft one item. I was also hoarding useless items in the hope that there was a way of extracting runes from them at a later date. Still haven't found out whether that is the case or not yet.
+- coating system. I really REALLY liked the coating system at the start, but I rarely used it once past the initial stages as you couldn't coat any branded/ego stuff. It certainly lifted the profile of detrimental items, but I didn't really see the negative impact of using up a resource on enhancing any weapon for a limited time.
+ Themed dungeons. I've never been that far into the game before, but the themed dungeons really give a better sense of realism to each area. I still believe that there's more room for improvement and I'd like to see the dungeon creation make levels with more meaning. I liked the change in intensity of some dungeons too. I really liked the towers as they reminded me of playing Lost Soul characters, but with the added bonus of having everything packed into a screen size, scryable shape.
- Weapon damage calc. I'm not sure what variant had damage calculations for monster types (might have been FuryBand?), but I really would have liked to have seen an aggregate damage representation somewhere to figure out whether a ring of damage (+8) was better or worse than a ring of Acid (x2). It used to be on examining your wielded weapon and would list the damage for normal monsters, resistant monsters, etc. I also never figured out what a good skill in throwing did for you instead of your skill in shooting apart from the throws per round.
++ ID system. I'm an info hoarder and most of my characters tend to value information gathering very highly. I really enjoyed the sensing of items and then the division of identification by gauging, sensing, IDing, Loreing, etc. Really played out well for the early stages and enhanced by bags of scrying later on. Also really well done was figuring out what something was by using it or being exposed to situations that could tell you what it was (like being hit by a fireball then figuring out that an unID'd item may be fireproof).
Thursday, July 02, 2009
iPhone 3GS
So .. I got an iPhone. I've caught myself a couple of times wanting to talk about it in conversations and idly playing with it in the presence of others. It's not glory seeking, but because I'm finally seeing a device that can really track what's happening in my life. Multiple email accounts? check. Work and home calendars? check. Auto wifi preference? check. Twitter / facebook? check. Blogging from anywhere? next thing to check.It's like that Skype feeling. I've used a fair amount of phones to set up mail and calendars, but they all seemed to be a kludge. Finally it feels like it's easy to do, easy to check, like the phone is working for you as a tool rather than having to spend effort forcing it to what I wanted.
That said there have been some oddities that had me scrabbling for google to find the answer.
iPhone things I wanted to know:
How big is the video I just took?
- So far the only way I can find out the size is by hooking it up to a PC and browsing the DCIM directory. What if I wanted to MMS it on the fly? To me this is a problem of intentionally cutting off access to the real OS and just giving buttons as an interface. There are other things leading from this too. It asked me whether I wanted to location tag the pictures I took, but there's no way of seeing those tags in the picture viewer, or the time, or the size, etc.
How do I add another Calendar on the iPhone itself?
- I had initially linked up to my work exchange and was quite happy to see 2 different calendars appear (although one was a temporary one I use for tranferring bookings). Now I wanted to add another calendar for my personal stuff. In other apps there's an 'edit' button in the top right corner of the display to change things like that, but alas there isn't anything like that in the calendar. Not sure if it removed the ability to have multiple calendars because I had already hooked up to exchange? It also clobbered the existing calendar on the phone with my default exchange calendar too. Interesting assumption. Finally made up a personal calendar on google and linked it in, which in the end was my preferred solution, I was just a little miffed that there wasn't an alternative for people without multiple calendars already.
How do I change the colour of the calendars?
- After bringing in my Google calendar, it chose a maroon colour for its appointments. The only thing is that the existing calendars are red (main one) and orange. The colours are distinguishable when seen on the same screen, but close enough for confusion if there is an appointment by itself. In the end some troubleshooting revealed that the colour should be picked up by iCal. Sure enough Google's colour was red, and changing it to green synced up fine. Problem solved!
How do I subscribe to a podcast on iTunes on the phone?
Fiddling around with iTunes on the phone I realised that I could potentially do away with another annoying issue. Since I have both iTunes at work and at home and I susbscribe to slightly different podcasts from both machines, I've had to manually sync my iPod to each machine and take care not to overwrite a 1/2 listened to episode. If I can subscribe to the podcasts I want to listen to straight from the phone and gather the downloads over wifi, I don't have to worry about iTunes on the dsktop any more! Sadly I still can't find a way to do it.
More questions to come I'm sure ...
Layar: Augmented Reality
Andrew mentioned the compass as the biggest addition to the iPhone 3GS, and maybe it will be in the long run. I'm certainly all for augmented reality, but I'm guessing it's still a while off. Instead of house prices, I would have thought socializing would have been the first cab off the rank...
asl?
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
optimal packing of cupcakes in a box
Sandy had made cupcakes for Cameron's birthday today, and mentioned something in the morning that stuck with me: "The cupcakes perfectly fit into the container". By lunchtime the phrase had wandered back through the hallways of my mind to bear further analysis. Why was it perfect? How did she know? Were they packed hexagonally? I don't think so because a hexagonal pattern usually leaves gaps that seem inefficient with a cursory glance and I wouldn't expect it to look "perfect". More likely they were packed in a grid and it looked neat and tidy. What pattern is actually optimal?
Scott and I bounced around a couple of ideas before I went and pestered Hugh for a little more insight. I had an inkling that there must be a border condition where a square array becomes less efficient than a hexagonal array, and it could be stated with some simple rules like "Once there are more than 25 cupcakes, go hexagonal". Hugh confirmed the hexagonal pattern (and had even done some research on a theoretical problem close to this back in uni), but wasn't convinced that there existed a simple solution to the packing problem.
The first major step was to work out when an additional row could be added to the hexagonal array in the same space as the square array. Since they would start out with the same amount of cupcakes packed along the top, and the rows are parallel, it's only the height that changes. Since the hexagonal array has from centrepoint to centrepoint an angle of 30 degrees instead of straight down of the same length (as the centrepoint to centrepoint is the same as the circles are touching), the hex array has Cos(30) downward space taken, or roughly .866 of a cupcake length packed squarely. From this one can deduce that 7 rows in the hexagonal array isn't enough as it still takes up 6.06 of a square packed row, whereas 8 rows is as it gives 6.92 rows. So 9 rows of cupcakes packed hexagonally should fit into 8 rows of square packed cupcakes.
Since there are 4 rows with less cupcakes, and there is 1 cupcake missing from each row (regardless of how large the row is), there is 4 less cupcakes when hexagonal packing into a perfectly shaped box for square packing. So if the row size is greater than 4 cupcakes you will end up with a net gain by adding the additional row.
8x5
8x5 sounds big. That's too big an area for most storing boxes, too big for the oven and too big for the fridge. Might be better for things smaller than a cupcake, but for this experiment it seems that getting a whole row advantage just isn't going to happen. Therefore square packing is generally the way to go.
So what if there is enough space for 1/2 a cupcake on the edge of the tin? You can still hex pack them without reduction in numbers, but unless you are getting 8 or more rows in you're still not going to get any advantage. so maybe not a whole row, but would it b better to shimmy around some of the edge cakes to make room for possibly 1 or 2 more ?
When I got home I did some digging up on the net and it turns out that this is indeed a tricky problem. I found a couple of papers on the subject and they headed into some heavy maths pretty quickly. Markot (2002) promised a computable function to find the optimal solution, while it built on the groundwork by RL Graham (1996). Although both are looking at a slightly different problem (what is the biggest size cupcake you can make that will still fit X amount into a square box), the fundamentals are the same. If you have a look at Graham's optimal solutions from page 5 onward, it's clear that the solutions are not going to be a simple recipe like I hoped. I'll still dig a bit deeper though to see if there is any packing instructions that might help (Eg: starting in the corner and going along the longest side 1st as tight as you can, etc) but is seems like the general principle is going to serve all but the most persevering cupcake packer.
Scott and I bounced around a couple of ideas before I went and pestered Hugh for a little more insight. I had an inkling that there must be a border condition where a square array becomes less efficient than a hexagonal array, and it could be stated with some simple rules like "Once there are more than 25 cupcakes, go hexagonal". Hugh confirmed the hexagonal pattern (and had even done some research on a theoretical problem close to this back in uni), but wasn't convinced that there existed a simple solution to the packing problem.
The first major step was to work out when an additional row could be added to the hexagonal array in the same space as the square array. Since they would start out with the same amount of cupcakes packed along the top, and the rows are parallel, it's only the height that changes. Since the hexagonal array has from centrepoint to centrepoint an angle of 30 degrees instead of straight down of the same length (as the centrepoint to centrepoint is the same as the circles are touching), the hex array has Cos(30) downward space taken, or roughly .866 of a cupcake length packed squarely. From this one can deduce that 7 rows in the hexagonal array isn't enough as it still takes up 6.06 of a square packed row, whereas 8 rows is as it gives 6.92 rows. So 9 rows of cupcakes packed hexagonally should fit into 8 rows of square packed cupcakes.
Since there are 4 rows with less cupcakes, and there is 1 cupcake missing from each row (regardless of how large the row is), there is 4 less cupcakes when hexagonal packing into a perfectly shaped box for square packing. So if the row size is greater than 4 cupcakes you will end up with a net gain by adding the additional row.
8x5
8x5 sounds big. That's too big an area for most storing boxes, too big for the oven and too big for the fridge. Might be better for things smaller than a cupcake, but for this experiment it seems that getting a whole row advantage just isn't going to happen. Therefore square packing is generally the way to go.
So what if there is enough space for 1/2 a cupcake on the edge of the tin? You can still hex pack them without reduction in numbers, but unless you are getting 8 or more rows in you're still not going to get any advantage. so maybe not a whole row, but would it b better to shimmy around some of the edge cakes to make room for possibly 1 or 2 more ?
When I got home I did some digging up on the net and it turns out that this is indeed a tricky problem. I found a couple of papers on the subject and they headed into some heavy maths pretty quickly. Markot (2002) promised a computable function to find the optimal solution, while it built on the groundwork by RL Graham (1996). Although both are looking at a slightly different problem (what is the biggest size cupcake you can make that will still fit X amount into a square box), the fundamentals are the same. If you have a look at Graham's optimal solutions from page 5 onward, it's clear that the solutions are not going to be a simple recipe like I hoped. I'll still dig a bit deeper though to see if there is any packing instructions that might help (Eg: starting in the corner and going along the longest side 1st as tight as you can, etc) but is seems like the general principle is going to serve all but the most persevering cupcake packer.
Monday, June 22, 2009
GDLT Signing ... on ?
2 days.
A glorious 2 days to really get back to what I was missing in life. Games, beach walks, playing with Cameron and Rachael... I really thought I'd made the right decision to drop out of the GDLT.
When I got back to work on Tuesday, I phoned in to the uni to let them know of my desicion, but the more people I told the more resistance I felt coming back at me. " It's only another 6 months!", "It'll open up lots of doors!", etc. I'd considered all that, but the real clincher was information regarding the only real avenue for teaching I was looking forward to.
2 days...
I rung up Ricki and laid out the issues again, and he granted me more extension time for the 2 outstanding assignments than I was expecting. It all seemed achievable again. Now, after 2 weeks have passed and both assignments are in I can relax. Well, for 4 days I can until reso school starts again.
Ended up pretty happy with the Supportive learning assignment once I decided to ignore what the Uni would think of a well constructed classroom management plan and really just outline what I believe to be a fair reflection of my views on behaviour management and supportive learning environments in general. The management plan is presented as a classroom covenant between the students and the teacher where each sides promise to do an action to gain the action from the other party (EG: The teacher promises to create the safest environment they can, and in return the students promise to not intentionally put themselves or others in harms way). These reciprocal arrangements demonstrate practical examples of how to deliver the rights, responsibilities and respect needed for a properly functioning classroom.
On the flip side the Literacy and Numeracy report became more and more a hard slog. I was pretty ropable that the previous assignment word limit of 2000 words was more like double that in the examples, and I got pinged for brevity when the whole assignment was over 3000 words :(. This one was expected to be 3000 words, whereas some examples are pushing 70 pages! Every time I think about it makes me mad. In the end I just made the decision that whatever state it's in when I needed to drop it off is what I'm going to submit. Bits were missing but frankly I don't care. Nearly 5000 words and I know I'm going to get pinged for brevity again :/.
4 days ... 4 days to enjoy being me before it all starts again. I need another pep talk ...
A glorious 2 days to really get back to what I was missing in life. Games, beach walks, playing with Cameron and Rachael... I really thought I'd made the right decision to drop out of the GDLT.
When I got back to work on Tuesday, I phoned in to the uni to let them know of my desicion, but the more people I told the more resistance I felt coming back at me. " It's only another 6 months!", "It'll open up lots of doors!", etc. I'd considered all that, but the real clincher was information regarding the only real avenue for teaching I was looking forward to.
2 days...
I rung up Ricki and laid out the issues again, and he granted me more extension time for the 2 outstanding assignments than I was expecting. It all seemed achievable again. Now, after 2 weeks have passed and both assignments are in I can relax. Well, for 4 days I can until reso school starts again.
Ended up pretty happy with the Supportive learning assignment once I decided to ignore what the Uni would think of a well constructed classroom management plan and really just outline what I believe to be a fair reflection of my views on behaviour management and supportive learning environments in general. The management plan is presented as a classroom covenant between the students and the teacher where each sides promise to do an action to gain the action from the other party (EG: The teacher promises to create the safest environment they can, and in return the students promise to not intentionally put themselves or others in harms way). These reciprocal arrangements demonstrate practical examples of how to deliver the rights, responsibilities and respect needed for a properly functioning classroom.
On the flip side the Literacy and Numeracy report became more and more a hard slog. I was pretty ropable that the previous assignment word limit of 2000 words was more like double that in the examples, and I got pinged for brevity when the whole assignment was over 3000 words :(. This one was expected to be 3000 words, whereas some examples are pushing 70 pages! Every time I think about it makes me mad. In the end I just made the decision that whatever state it's in when I needed to drop it off is what I'm going to submit. Bits were missing but frankly I don't care. Nearly 5000 words and I know I'm going to get pinged for brevity again :/.
4 days ... 4 days to enjoy being me before it all starts again. I need another pep talk ...
Monday, June 08, 2009
GDLT Signing Off
EDIT: Not any more ...
Studies this year have been kind of odd. I have solidified my views on a learning environment of the future, helped Scot with an eLearning course I completed last year, and have developed my own sustainable Personal Learning Environment. All this with little or no input from the 2 subjects that I actually took this year. Supportive Learning Environments triggered a number of lively debates regarding "the right to an education", but overall felt a little too politically correct for my continued enthusiasm. Literacy and Numeracy had some practical models to follow, but didn't really grab me.
Assignments. Another reason to pull the plug. My grade 7 teacher introduced me to an interesting concept; homework was what you didn't finish in class. To me that was brilliant because I could really apply myself and get everything done in school time to have no homework at home. I continued this mentality throughout high school and by Uni I'd become an expert in not having work to take home. I purposely chose subjects with a greater than 70% final exam so that I didn't have to bother with assignments. With this course being 100% external and ~100% assignment based, it was rubbing me up the wrong way. Having 2 unfinished assignments hanging over me probably helped with the decision.
Teaching was way easier than last year, and with the flexibility to deliver my unit and webquest developed last year, IPT (especially 10 IPT) was a lot of fun. On the flip side, the maths subject felt constraining and stressful. With no wiggle room in the curriculum to do anything but the prescribed text, it felt like you were always pushing and pushing to get the work done. There was hardly any room to develop PLEs or classroom2.0 technologies.
Maths also exposed me to an issue I knew I didn't want to deal with; teaching students who didn't want to be there. I remember back in highschool when I first started thinking about becoming a teacher that senior (11,12) was way better because of this fact, only to be trumped by the uni philosophy a couple of years later. After a couple of talks with Bernie and Nick I realised that there would be very little likelihood of teaching only senior if I were to enter the general teaching population, so I know for sure that I'm NOT going to be a full time school teacher. That wan't my plan on starting this course; I was more thinking of being a supply teacher for St Luke's, but with IPT being the only thing I'd be interested in teaching, I'm basically cover for Nico if he ever got sick.
The volume of work in the course is also an issue. Even though it's been sooo much easier in 2nd year than last year, for the last month it's felt like I'm doing nothing but coursework, teaching and work. I knew my gaming would suffer, but it's virtually been non-existent as well as having to skip other regular events. I've missed being me.
So in the end the decision seemed pretty obvious; why bother doing something that the outcome is getting less and less desirable? The costs are outweighing the next 6 months of learning and the piece of paper on completion. In fact I'm not looking forward to the 6 week prac. I'd rather just work.
So what now? One of the pressures keeping me in the course is that it's safe. It's a decision I've made and it provided me with a framework of what to expect for the next 6 months. Now I need to deal with an uncertain future.
Upon reflection of the whole course, I'm glad I did it. I've learned a whole lot more about teaching through the course, as well as developing my own PLE, unearthing ideas from the past that are only now able to be implemented, being exposed to David's and Stephen's philosophies on summarizing thoughts for your own use, and generally taking eLearning issues more seriously. I'm still keen on pursuing some sort of teaching career, just not in a school. Uni's are still firing people rather than hiring, so that's still out. Maybe VET? I'd be much more confident going into the TAFE position I was interviewed for before starting with St Luke's. Hopefully there'd be a lot of concessions in a Cert IV from all the prac and study I have done. I'll need to research a bit more about the positions available and what feels like the best fit.
A big thing to take away from the course is my own personal development. I'd really like to continue following topics such as PLEs, games in learning, VLEs/CMSs, etc and hope to put at least 2 hours a day aside for personal learning, reviewing and contribution. Even focusing on things like Brainy Gamer and LO3 can keep the professional discourse going in other areas of my life.
With more dedication to summarizing and analysis, I'm also thinking that I'll need to learn touch typing; something I've put off for 25 years. I'm still hoping that voice communication would be ubiquitous at some point, but with things like Google Wave on the horizon, it's going to be at least 5 years before voice gains an appreciable foothold. It'll certainly be handy for the AAR Fiction stuff too.
In summary, plans for the future:
- Investigate VET
- Investigate Teacher training positions in eLearning
- Commit 2 hrs a day for PD
- Learn touch typing
- Revisit PhD work
Big list for a procrastinator...
EDIT: Not any more ...
Studies this year have been kind of odd. I have solidified my views on a learning environment of the future, helped Scot with an eLearning course I completed last year, and have developed my own sustainable Personal Learning Environment. All this with little or no input from the 2 subjects that I actually took this year. Supportive Learning Environments triggered a number of lively debates regarding "the right to an education", but overall felt a little too politically correct for my continued enthusiasm. Literacy and Numeracy had some practical models to follow, but didn't really grab me.
Assignments. Another reason to pull the plug. My grade 7 teacher introduced me to an interesting concept; homework was what you didn't finish in class. To me that was brilliant because I could really apply myself and get everything done in school time to have no homework at home. I continued this mentality throughout high school and by Uni I'd become an expert in not having work to take home. I purposely chose subjects with a greater than 70% final exam so that I didn't have to bother with assignments. With this course being 100% external and ~100% assignment based, it was rubbing me up the wrong way. Having 2 unfinished assignments hanging over me probably helped with the decision.
Teaching was way easier than last year, and with the flexibility to deliver my unit and webquest developed last year, IPT (especially 10 IPT) was a lot of fun. On the flip side, the maths subject felt constraining and stressful. With no wiggle room in the curriculum to do anything but the prescribed text, it felt like you were always pushing and pushing to get the work done. There was hardly any room to develop PLEs or classroom2.0 technologies.
Maths also exposed me to an issue I knew I didn't want to deal with; teaching students who didn't want to be there. I remember back in highschool when I first started thinking about becoming a teacher that senior (11,12) was way better because of this fact, only to be trumped by the uni philosophy a couple of years later. After a couple of talks with Bernie and Nick I realised that there would be very little likelihood of teaching only senior if I were to enter the general teaching population, so I know for sure that I'm NOT going to be a full time school teacher. That wan't my plan on starting this course; I was more thinking of being a supply teacher for St Luke's, but with IPT being the only thing I'd be interested in teaching, I'm basically cover for Nico if he ever got sick.
The volume of work in the course is also an issue. Even though it's been sooo much easier in 2nd year than last year, for the last month it's felt like I'm doing nothing but coursework, teaching and work. I knew my gaming would suffer, but it's virtually been non-existent as well as having to skip other regular events. I've missed being me.
So in the end the decision seemed pretty obvious; why bother doing something that the outcome is getting less and less desirable? The costs are outweighing the next 6 months of learning and the piece of paper on completion. In fact I'm not looking forward to the 6 week prac. I'd rather just work.
So what now? One of the pressures keeping me in the course is that it's safe. It's a decision I've made and it provided me with a framework of what to expect for the next 6 months. Now I need to deal with an uncertain future.
Upon reflection of the whole course, I'm glad I did it. I've learned a whole lot more about teaching through the course, as well as developing my own PLE, unearthing ideas from the past that are only now able to be implemented, being exposed to David's and Stephen's philosophies on summarizing thoughts for your own use, and generally taking eLearning issues more seriously. I'm still keen on pursuing some sort of teaching career, just not in a school. Uni's are still firing people rather than hiring, so that's still out. Maybe VET? I'd be much more confident going into the TAFE position I was interviewed for before starting with St Luke's. Hopefully there'd be a lot of concessions in a Cert IV from all the prac and study I have done. I'll need to research a bit more about the positions available and what feels like the best fit.
A big thing to take away from the course is my own personal development. I'd really like to continue following topics such as PLEs, games in learning, VLEs/CMSs, etc and hope to put at least 2 hours a day aside for personal learning, reviewing and contribution. Even focusing on things like Brainy Gamer and LO3 can keep the professional discourse going in other areas of my life.
With more dedication to summarizing and analysis, I'm also thinking that I'll need to learn touch typing; something I've put off for 25 years. I'm still hoping that voice communication would be ubiquitous at some point, but with things like Google Wave on the horizon, it's going to be at least 5 years before voice gains an appreciable foothold. It'll certainly be handy for the AAR Fiction stuff too.
In summary, plans for the future:
- Investigate VET
- Investigate Teacher training positions in eLearning
- Commit 2 hrs a day for PD
- Learn touch typing
- Revisit PhD work
Big list for a procrastinator...
EDIT: Not any more ...
Thursday, June 04, 2009
Google wave presence
Scott Wilson presented an interesting talk about presence and how the internet currently services these different aspects. In response to his comment about how Google wave is going to handle presence, I got 1/2 way through writing a response before realizing there's a diagram I could use to highlight the different points:
I've roughly coloured the slide with green for sections implemented in the current video, blue for where I think they'll want to be for release through integrating user's to google accounts, yellow for a harder implementation, mainly because it will rely on manual updates until the orange sections come online. It's alll possible with today's technology, but the strength of google wave's presence (as an email/IM replacement) will remain purely through a sense of activity.
Back to the question at hand about Google wave's ability to handle compartmentalisation, and I'm drawing blanks as to the most efficient method to implement it. The one technology that really had no issues with compartmentalisation was email as there was no presence to begin with apart from a diluted sense of activity. There was virtually nothing tying one email conversation to another apart from the time to respond. Once IM-like features are added into wave though, it feels like there should also be communication availability settings too as an adjunct to the immediacy of the conversation. Communication availability brings a much tighter bond between the waves though, and thus increases the issue of compartmentalisation.
Maybe the issue of availability can be broken down into separate specific goals? Availability can enhance the sense of activity by identifying to others when the user is focusing on their specific wave (not the wave client or the wave container). That would seem fairly simple using the 'wave reader' model where only one wave would typically be open at once, but what about a blog with 5 waves on the same page? IRC and IM have long forgotten the 'one conversation at once' mentality, so I would anticipate that even readers themselves would eventually have the capacity to follow multiple waves at the same time. Would writing in one wave indicate a loss of focus of the user on the other panes? Not necessarily.
When dealing with self-expression and facilitating casual interaction, compartmentalisation will really start to stick out. You want to have a cool looking icon for your buddies to see, but it may not be appropriate for the workplace. If waves replace forums, how many profiles would you have aggregated back to your wave reader? A status update might be possible to divert to a new wave sent to your 'distribution list', but that sounds messier. I'm not a big status setting person anyway, but one of the main factors is the simplicity of the action.
Maybe it's time we all donned a single identity? Maybe. Maybe it is part and parcel of who we are to express ourselves differently depending on the context and participants of the conversation? Maybe we just have multiple wave identities like we have multiple email and IM accounts? Lets hope not as I'd dearly love to have only one place to check ...
I've roughly coloured the slide with green for sections implemented in the current video, blue for where I think they'll want to be for release through integrating user's to google accounts, yellow for a harder implementation, mainly because it will rely on manual updates until the orange sections come online. It's alll possible with today's technology, but the strength of google wave's presence (as an email/IM replacement) will remain purely through a sense of activity.
Back to the question at hand about Google wave's ability to handle compartmentalisation, and I'm drawing blanks as to the most efficient method to implement it. The one technology that really had no issues with compartmentalisation was email as there was no presence to begin with apart from a diluted sense of activity. There was virtually nothing tying one email conversation to another apart from the time to respond. Once IM-like features are added into wave though, it feels like there should also be communication availability settings too as an adjunct to the immediacy of the conversation. Communication availability brings a much tighter bond between the waves though, and thus increases the issue of compartmentalisation.
Maybe the issue of availability can be broken down into separate specific goals? Availability can enhance the sense of activity by identifying to others when the user is focusing on their specific wave (not the wave client or the wave container). That would seem fairly simple using the 'wave reader' model where only one wave would typically be open at once, but what about a blog with 5 waves on the same page? IRC and IM have long forgotten the 'one conversation at once' mentality, so I would anticipate that even readers themselves would eventually have the capacity to follow multiple waves at the same time. Would writing in one wave indicate a loss of focus of the user on the other panes? Not necessarily.
When dealing with self-expression and facilitating casual interaction, compartmentalisation will really start to stick out. You want to have a cool looking icon for your buddies to see, but it may not be appropriate for the workplace. If waves replace forums, how many profiles would you have aggregated back to your wave reader? A status update might be possible to divert to a new wave sent to your 'distribution list', but that sounds messier. I'm not a big status setting person anyway, but one of the main factors is the simplicity of the action.
Maybe it's time we all donned a single identity? Maybe. Maybe it is part and parcel of who we are to express ourselves differently depending on the context and participants of the conversation? Maybe we just have multiple wave identities like we have multiple email and IM accounts? Lets hope not as I'd dearly love to have only one place to check ...
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
Baba Yetu - the fountain
Christopher Tin blogged about the Dubai fountain using Baba Yetu as their backing music. Looks awesome.
From the blog comments I saw something unexpected. Someone, after watching the fountain, dug up the music behind it. I know I've listened to the song a bajillion times playing Civ4 over and over, but it's really heartening that the music can stand on its own and be noticed like that. Gratz Christopher ...
From the blog comments I saw something unexpected. Someone, after watching the fountain, dug up the music behind it. I know I've listened to the song a bajillion times playing Civ4 over and over, but it's really heartening that the music can stand on its own and be noticed like that. Gratz Christopher ...
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