1114: Amazing Discoveries

Amazing discovery of the day: my Nespresso "Aeroccino" milk frothing device not only heats and froths milk suitable for both lattes and cappuccinos (it's all to do with how wibbly-wobbly your whisk is, apparently), it also makes a killer milkshake.

I've had a pot of Mars milkshake mix lurking in my cupboard for months now — it even moved house with us back in December — but I've not had that much of it despite it being yummy because apparently I am crap at mixing powder-based milkshakes by hand. They almost inevitably come out either lumpy or not actually tasting of the thing they're supposed to taste of, and are thus infinitely more disappointing than a milkshake you'd pay well over the odds for in a single-portion bottle. (I say "single portion" — most of the nutrition info in the side of bottles of things like Mars milkshakes and Frijj seems to imply that a "normal" person would drink no more than half the bottle in one go. Who does that?)

As an experiment, then, I decided to use the Aeroccino, because I knew it had a "cold" mode that does all the stirry-stirry business, but doesn't do all the heaty-heaty business like it normally does. I plopped in the appropriate amount of milk and a few scoops of the Mars milkshake mix, then pressed and held the button until it went blue rather than the usual red… then sat and hoped that it didn't blow up. There's no reason why it should blow up simply from having a bit of powder in it as well as the usual milk, but, well, I was still doing something with it that you're not really supposed to.

What do you know? It made a perfect, lump-free milkshake that actually tasted like Mars milkshake without being all powdery and horrible. I call that a victory. It didn't even gum up the stirry thing with goopy half-dissolved milkshake mix, meaning it could just be rinsed out ready for the bajillion cups of coffee I will almost inevitably consume over the course of tomorrow. (I'm having a bit of a caffeine crash as we speak — I've largely been drinking strong black "Lungos" today and thus have been a bit wired for most of the evening.)

I find it oddly satisfying to use culinary implements for purposes other than that which they were originally intended. (Get your mind out of the gutter, you filthy pervert.) That and doing weird things with stock foods. Adding hot sauce to reheated bolognese. Layering a slice of beef under the cheese of cheese on toast. (I call this "Deluxe Cheese on Toast".) Dipping Bovril on toast into tomato soup. (Seriously, try this, it's delicious. Assuming you like Bovril on toast, obviously.) Making weird sandwiches. (I put a whole roast dinner — well, the leftovers thereof — in a sandwich once, and you really haven't lived until you've had a pie sandwich.)

I have no idea where I'm going with this post, to be perfectly honest. I think it's probably best that I just stop writing here as it's nearly 1am and I'm quite tired. I seem to have fallen into habits of staying up quite late again. I should probably try and kick that, because it makes it difficult to get up in the morning. Oh well.

See you tomorrow.

#oneaday Day 155: Shop Shop

Shopping's a bit rubbish in the 21st century, isn't it? You have to drive all the way somewhere, pay a billion pounds to park and then walk around a bunch of shops that don't necessarily have the thing you're looking for in the first place and you just know that you should have phoned ahead to see if they had that thing and you didn't and blah.

In the age of the Internet, of course, there's really very little need to go out to the shops. Internet stores are much cheaper, don't require you to interact with sullen shop assistants (who are probably just as non-enthused about interacting with you as you with them) and have a selection of everything in the world. (You can also get pornography shipped to you in discreet, plain packaging as opposed to a plastic bag proudly emblazoned with "Bounty Bob's Big House o' Porn" on the side of it.)

Very little need, of course, but for one thing: you still can't beat the convenience of actually walking into a shop, handing over some cash (or your plastic of choice) and walking out of there with an item. The quickest somewhere like Amazon can get stuff to you is the next day, which is pretty good going, but still not quite as good as thinking "I want that thing" and being able to go and get that thing immediately. (Also, if Amazon decide to ship your shit through Home Delivery Network, you can forget about seeing it for at least a week. Free Super Saver Delivery is free for a reason.)

Going to the actual shops can be a social event, though. Some people enjoy the experience of wandering around small, cramped spaces that have never heard of air conditioning, rummaging through thirty-seven almost-identical products until they irritably state that it's just not right and go off to have a half-caff frappucino mocha with extra foam.

And then there's the shops which are specifically designed to be hands-on. You can order an iPad from the Apple website, sure, but you can go in and fiddle with one before handing over your money if you walk into an Apple Store. That's kind of cool, and in an era where more and more sales are moving online, it's sometimes difficult to imagine why more "brick and mortar" (ugh, hate that expression) stores aren't moving to a more interactive system. GAME, for example, would be awesome if you could pick up a game you were curious about, try it out for a few minutes and make your mind up. Better than buying something whose pack art looked great/had massive tits on it and discovering that it's actually a load of old bollocks when you get home. Of course, this plan is inherently flawed by the fact that if you let people sit and play games in your store, they will sit and play games in your store. All day. Just ask anyone who works in an Apple Store.

#oneaday, Day 338: English-American Dictionary

In honour of my being in America, I thought I would clarify some of the strange words that I use in order that we might understand one another a little better. I'm also away from a Mac with Comic Life Magiq installed, so our friends in the panels above might look a little different for the next couple of days thanks to the idiosyncracies of Windows Paint and the Windows version of Comic Life.

But anyway. Here we go. In no particular order:

Chips: French fries.
French Fries: A brand of chips that look like fries.
Crisps: Chips.
Jam: Jelly. Also, a line of traffic.
Jelly: Jell-O or equivalent.
Queue: Difficult to spell. Also, a line of people and/or cars.
Herb: A word with an "H" at the beginning.
Erb: A little-used verbal non-fluency feature.
Aluminium: The correct way to spell "Aluminum".
Wanker: A person who masturbates. Also a synonym for "asshole", when used in reference to a person who is an asshole, not an actual asshole.
Wankered: Drunk.
Arse: Ass.
Ass: Donkey and/or mule.
Rat-arsed: Drunk.
Trousers: Pants.
Pants: (n.) underpants or (adj.) not very good.
Trousered: Drunk.
Fucking: Verbal punctuation.
Fucked: Drunk. Also, screwed over. Sometimes at the same time.
Bollocks: (n.) testicles or when used as the object of a sentence, nonsense, clearly a lie. "The things Mat Murray said on his blog were bollocks."
The dog's bollocks: Really good. "Mat Murray's blog is the dog's bollocks."
Itchy scrot: Venereal disease.
Scruttocks: Compound word, meaning unclear. Component words suggest that it might refer to the perineum. More often used as a mild, non-offensive expletive.
Fanny: Vagina. Also, to mess around: "to fanny about".
Faff: See "fanny", but remove the vagina reference.
Bum: Butt.
Tramp: Bum.
Slag: Tramp.
Bumming: Engaging in anal sex.
Poof: A homosexual male.
Pouffe: A footstool.
Sod: Multi-purpose mild profanity. Can be used as a noun or a verb. ("Sod off, you sod")
Bugger: See "sod". Also, to engage in anal sex.
Buggered: Broken or messed up. Also, to have been the recipient of anal sex.
Shag: To have sex with. Also, carpet.
S: a letter we use instead of "Z".
Zed: Zee.
U: a letter we use after the letter "o" for no particular reason.

Clearly British English is a ridiculous language. The sheer number of synonyms we have for being drunk should probably tell you everything you need to know about our culture.

Still, you know what? I'm a big fan of our stupid words. There are few words more satisfying to mutter under your breath than "bollocks" when something goes wrong. And calling someone a "bloody bastard stupid buggering bugger-head" (or similar) if they have infuriated you is similarly satisfying.

Also, the number of alternative meanings for many of these words can lead to a wide variety of entertaining double-entendres and ambiguities. The cast of the Carry On series of films made an entire career out of this little language trick, after all.

So there you have it. I hope all you Americans out there feel suitably enlightened about the best way to use the English language now. I shall expect you to all be talking the Queen's English the next time I hear from you.

Because of course, the Queen is always banging on about how rat-arsed she's going to get before shagging her husband and throwing him out on his arse. In fact, that's all her Christmas speech normally consists of. It's actually quite embarrassing.

#oneaday, Day 322: Chinese Whispers

Goodness me. Thank you to everyone who read yesterday's post, including the unprecedented 602 of you who showed up today. Whether or not you agreed with the sentiments therein (and whether or not you were polite about it), thanks for reading.

There have been some interesting developments in the whole thing over the last 24 hours or so. On the whole, the whole thing can actually be said to have had a positive outcome, though not quite through the means the originators of the meme intended.

In fact, the originators of the meme had nothing to do with the NSPCC, as predicted. Fellow blogger, Commodore 64 enthusiast and all-round fine, upstanding gentleman Glen McNamee did a bit of research on the issue and uncovered the fact that the whole thing had actually originated in two separate places in November as a bit of fun, with no charity links whatsoever. Read Glen's blog post about it here.

Dave Gorman also wrote an excellent post on how this sort of thing can undermine genuine fundraising attempts with honourable intentions. Also worth a read.

The interesting thing about all this, though, is the whole "Chinese Whispers" nature of it. By looking at people who had changed their avatar/status throughout the course of the day, you could see the gradual evolution of the whole thing. To start with, it was a "campaign to end child abuse". Then it was a "campaign by the NSPCC to end child abuse". And by the time people like me had written posts on the topic pointing out the flaws in the whole plan, people were taking great pains to explain that as well as changing their avatar, they had, in fact, donated, too. There were also a few people who were up-front about the whole thing and said they changed their avatar purely because they thought the cartoon characters were cool. Fair play to both parties; at least you're being honest. There was also a considerable proportion of people around Facebook who tried to convince everyone that the whole thing was a scam by a bunch of paedophiles aiming to lure children in with cartoon avatars. This last part is bollocks, by the way, in case you were worried.

So on the whole, the whole thing had a positive outcome. It provoked discussion (or rather, argument) and had the net result of shaming at least a few people into tossing a few quid the NSPCC's way, which I'm sure they're very grateful for, though they probably wouldn't have chosen to go about promoting it by people yelling at one another.

The thing is, though, couldn't the whole thing have been resolved without the need for drawn-out arguments in the middle of it? Probably. It's ironic; Web 2.0 is full of narcissism and vanity, but is also a breeding ground for sheep mentality. Some people copy and paste things or blindly follow instructions without considering the implications. Think before you post!

Let's leave it at that. The matter's over and done with. Resolved. Until everyone forgets about it and it happens all over again. When that does happen, just remember that famous and rather offensive comment about arguments on the Internet and the Paralympics.

Also, don't be a dick.

One A Day, Day 48: Freewriting #2

[Here's another in my occasional series of "Freewriting" articles, where I start the clock for ten minutes and write without stopping – or really thinking as I go along. As a result, the output produced is sometimes not of the finest quality, but it can offer some interesting insights into my own brain.]

Start the clock!

I'm in Costa Coffee. Does the place you're in when you're writing affect what you write about? Well, of course it does – the proof is right there. I said "I'm in Costa Coffee" and then started to write about being in Costa Coffee and whether or not that made any difference to what I write about. So yes, yes it does.

I'm having the same trouble as last time with this freewriting lark – being too well-trained means that any time I make a mistake, be it typo or clumsy word formation – I automatically backspace and correct it. It's an automatic reflex action. I can't help it. I actually can't stop myself from doing it. I suppose in so far as bad habits go, there are worse ones to have than an anal attention to detail when it comes to spelling, punctuation and grammar.

I wonder how much I'll write today? Last time I believe it was in the region of 800 words, which would be consistent with my semi-inhuman typing speed of 85wpm. Can you be semi-inhuman? I don't know. I'm sure that inhuman things might have more difficulty typing, though, unless they're intimately familiar with the English language.

One of the toilets here at the coffee shop is closed. The barista has just asked for a "wet floor" sign. One can only imagine the terrors that have undoubtedly been unleashed in the lavatories here. To quote Simon Pegg from Black Books, "One of our valued customers had blocked one of the toilets with Monster Munch! How can we, as a team, get that sorted out?"

Not sure why that popped into my head. I think it's the sight of a smug Simon Pegg handing a bucket and rubber gloves to a bemused-looking Bill Bailey that is the thing that stayed with me from that episode. Black Books is excellent, incidentally, if you've never seen it. It's completely off-the-wall batshit crazy (and Americans don't seem to get it, or at least my American sister-in-law didn't quite seem to get it) but I find it completely hilarious. It's a very different kind of humour to something like Spaced – absolutely my favourite TV show of all time – but it's still great, and it introduced me to Dylan Moran, whom I'm constantly confusing with Chris O'Dowd from The IT Crowd. I can't help it – angry Irish man with curly, wayward hair? Roy from the IT Crowd and Bernard Black have a fair bit in common.

I pressed Shift five times while I was thinking (and typing) there, and Windows decided to do that helpful popup about "StickyKeys". It's ironic, really, isn't it, that the so-called "Accessibility" features of nearly every operating system I've used are actually inconvenient to the people who don't need them. I guess that's not so strange really.

Three and a half minutes to go, and I haven't touched my coffee yet. I can't really touch it while I'm typing though, can I? Not unless I did a very undignified "bend forward and slurp it" sort of manoevre (or however the fuck you spell it – it's one word I always forget) – but I've decided against doing that. Besides, it's probably too hot anyway.

Hot coffee. Wasn't there a story a few weeks back about some chav in this country spilling tea over their crotch from McDonalds and attempting to sue, much like the case from America a few years back? Why would you bother to do that? Actually, I know the answer – to get some "free" money. I wouldn't sue someone if I'd poured hot tea over my balls having been holding the cup between my thighs (as this person had) – I'd be screaming in agony, probably, and refusing to do anything useful for a few weeks, but there's no way I'd think it was the fault of the person who sold me the damn tea. If they didn't throw it in my face, it's my fault for anything that happens once I've taken hold of that cup.

Under a minute to go. I wonder if I'll finish a sentence, or indeed a paragraph in time? I'm up to 734 words… No, 742. WordPress' word count doesn't update immediately, so that figure may be off. But still, that's not bad work for ten minutes non-stop typing, is it? Ten seconds to go. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Bye bye!

One A Day, Day 18: Another Education Rant

Today I was told by someone I'd never met before that I was "inadequate". Of course, this is nothing unusual to me, as my romantic history prior to meeting my wife will attest, but for someone to come in, watch you doing your job for twenty minutes and then make a summary judgement about your competence (or lack thereof) smacks of… well, bollocks, frankly.

This is one of the (many) things that is wrong with the education system. Ticklists of criteria that need to be followed. Nonsense feedback that doesn't help in the slightest (I "didn't teach enough" but I "talked too much", apparently – gee, thanks, that really clears that up). The fact that you are deemed to be a terrible person if you forget to give the children a formulaic ticklist of their own to copy into their books on the board.

Today's lesson was the first session of a new topic on poetry. The children hadn't done much on poetry previously, and what little they had done was some time ago. So the plan which the Year 4 team (two other teachers and me) had come up with was to give them an opportunity to look at a poem and give their immediate responses, and demonstrate those responses through drawings, movement and drama. Bullshit, I know, but apparently reading a poem and talking about the language in it isn't enough for children these days. Or maybe it is, given that not only I, but also my colleague who taught the same lesson at the same time was also judged to be "inadequate".

Still, fuck those ratings. Doubly so because just a month or so back I was judged as "satisfactory with some good elements". Don't let that faint praise hit you in the ass on the way out, Ms Inspector.

I can't have changed that much in that time. I'll tell you what can change, though – the behaviour of children. I briefed the kids before the observer arrived today that I was expecting their best behaviour and they still decided to be little fucks and whinge and moan and complain even when trying to do the simplest possible thing.

As always, there was absolutely no helpful advice given whatsoever to deal with this sort of thing. The usual advice is "you need to develop some strategies". Thanks. Those would be…? "Develop some strategies. Build an action plan." Fuck off.

I may be ranting about this, but I'm actually less pissed off about this than I would have been before I'd put in my resignation. Now I know that these sort of ridiculous judgements don't mean anything to me I can shrug them off. It doesn't make the education system any better, however, because these same judgements are applied to all schools, whether they're the posh school in the country village that is filled with nothing but children who have been able to read, write and add up since the age of 3, or a school with a largely transient population like where I am now. You can't compare the two things. You can't compare the amount of progress an upper-middle class child with a perfect home life and parental support makes with that of a Nepalese immigrant whose parent(s) don't speak English, or that of the kid whose Dad beats the crap out of his Mum on a regular basis.

These backgrounds don't excuse behaviour, as I've said previously, but they do affect how good their work is going to be. Kids develop with parental support. It's not just the teachers' job to instill knowledge and discipline in them – lots of that needs to come from the parents, too – and it doesn't. And when it doesn't, guess who gets blamed? That's right, the teachers.

So fuck teaching. If you're considering going into it, just don't, unless you particularly enjoy someone you've never met calling you "inadequate" to your face and expecting you not to punch them very hard in the neck.

One A Day, Day 12: It's pronounced B-O-LL-O-CK-S.

Good evening! Since my wife's viewing of televisual car crash Popstar to Opera Star precludes my playing of Mass Effect and its sequel on the TV, and Star Trek Online has decided to update itself with a patch that will take 5 hours to download on Steam (despite the fact I was playing it earlier with no problems), now's as good a time as any to get today's entry done.

Today I would like to rant about phonics, since I had a long, boring, pointless and patronising training day on this very subject today.

For the uninitiated, phonics is the theory which suggests that children should learn reading by sounding out individual phonemes in words, then learn how to "blend" them together where appropriate. It also suggests that it's sensible to teach six-year olds the words "morpheme", "phoneme", "grapheme", "digraph" and "trigraph" – words which I didn't come across until I studied English Language at A-level (age 16-18) and again at university.

The flaw, in case you haven't spotted it, is that English isn't a phonetic language. We have so many different ways of pronouncing each letter in our alphabet that using phonics to teach reading quickly becomes useless – and in the meantime, it fucks up spelling ability.

As if to emphasise this point, the official materials for teaching phonics from the government include an appendix of the most "high-frequency" words in the English language. Out of the thirty most-used words in the English language, fourteen of them are designated "tricky" words, which means that the phonics rules don't apply to them. Well, if the phonics rules don't apply to almost half of the most common words in the language, exactly what use is it to anyone?

The funny thing is, I can't remember how I learned to read. I imagine that's not an uncommon thought – childhood memories fade over time, after all – but I'm pretty sure it didn't involve phonics at any point. I can tell this because I can spell, and don't think that because "rough" is pronounced "r-u-ff" that it should be spelled that way too, which is what I see kids doing on a daily basis.

It's difficult to know what to suggest, though. Phonics is fashionable. Someone somewhere said it was "good" and it stuck. As with most fashions, this is nothing to do with how good it is. It is simply the "in" thing at the time.

It doesn't help, of course, that the leader of today's training day was a patronising, aggressive middle-aged harpy who clearly had a chip on her shoulder about something. Her holier-than-thou attitude towards phonics and teaching reading and her steadfast refusal to consider any alternatives (even doing an arrogant "shaking head" movement whenever anyone raised a point she didn't agree with) made everyone resent the process even more than its inherent stupidity already did.

This video pretty much sums up the problem:

(Thanks to Jeff Parsons for bringing this to my attention.)

Here's a poem, too. Don't say I'm not good to you.

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, lough and through?
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead: it’s said like bed, not bead –
For goodness sake don’t call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there’s dose and rose and lose –
Just look them up – and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart –
Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive!
I’d mastered it when I was five!

Quoted by Vivian Cook and Melvin Bragg 2004,
by Richard Krogh, in D Bolinger & D A Sears, Aspects of Language, 1981,
and in Spelling Progress Bulletin March 1961, Brush up on your English.