Resources for Everything

Today I've been trying to get my head around how the US election tonight works.

Wikipedia is quite helpful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election

and I thought this slideshow was very good at explaining things:

http://www.slideshare.net/acordova/the-us-election-explained-presentation-695681/

A good website for those studying music and looking for help on extra notes etc ppmta.ie (post primary music teachers association) and exam papers and marking schemes available at the sec.ie (state exams commission)

Here is a nice little bit of bash snagging for you. You need to grab lines from a file, process each in turn, and then at the very end report whether or not there was a problem for any of them. Simple ? Not quite.

The following scripts are mangled to show how this works, so don't expect them to operate as-is.


#!/bin/bash

I have always been a bit confused by this one. Why does theme_node have both $page and $teaser as parameters ? Surely, if it's not a page then it is a teaser ? Not quite.


function theme_node($node, $teaser = 0, $page = 0) {
.....


The docs don't quite spell it out clearly, but once you know the difference, you can see what they are saying. However, if you have not quite understood the difference, the docs don't help one bit. Here is my attempt to clarify.

Whether it’s replacing car keys with complex wireless authentication technologies, or grafting endless functionality onto otherwise perfectly usable software - innovation is becoming synonymous with new things you can do, rather than doing what you want more easily. Can we have too much of a good thing?

Image from Rick Harris, via Flickr

The Web can be a great way to promote your teaching - as long as you keep it personal and focused, and remember to spend some time actually teaching, says Jason Priest, founder of guitar studio Little Rock Jams.

I love that you can get the lectures from top universities for free online now. Here's a great one about neuroeconomics from MIT: http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/598/

In a representative democracy, I think people will cede authority to a leader if they think they won't lose their power. But in social media projects, they will only allow someone to lead them if their power will increase.

The more active and engaged the population becomes, or needs to become, the more the task of leading them becomes about enabling and serving, and not setting directions or crushing dissent. Those dissenting energies are still valuable energies, and the direction is chosen by the crowd.

Please go to www.MyGuitarLessons.co.uk for more information.

I've been thinking a lot about my relationship with technology lately, which is a big deal for someone in my line of work. In particular I've really been struggling to keep up with my level of incoming mail. Every day my inboxes are fuller than the day before. I hate being rude to people, and e-mail seems to be the quickest way to stack up uncompleted tasks. (And don't even get me started on Facebook.)

http://thethirdmanifesto.com/

I've been really getting into QR 2D barcodes recently. Here's a link to a Youtube video explaining how to scan them on a Nokia N95: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=1GcEE2dD4GI

If anyone is interested, there is a language show on at Olympia in London today, tomorrow and Sunday, called the "language show" (logically enough).

It's free if you register in advance, else I think you can pay on the door on the day. I'm going to go and check it out.

http://www.thelanguageshow.co.uk/

I'm going away by car this weekend and I've just been planning my routes, which reminded me of something about learning to drive. When I first passed my test and found myself out on the road on my own, the thing I was least prepared for was not having someone constantly directing me! No one had taught me how to get lost, or what to do next.

Just stumbled on 8Notes, a UK-based social network for musicians. You can upload your own music, share and download sheet music, and talk to other musicians via a lively forum.

They have a good-sized collection of not very printable musician jokes too. When I was learning classical violin many, many moons ago it was always viola jokes - from a quick glance round it looks like nothing much has changed...

http://www.8notes.com/

I've been chatting to Pearl Blay, a beading craftswoman and teacher, about her passion for beads and how she uses the Web to pursue this.

http://schoolofeverything.com/blog/beading-gem-how-web-transforming-crafts

One of Pearl Blay's designs, featured on Jewelry Geeks

Last night I went along to a French meetup event near Charing Cross and it was great.
There were at least 50 people there and a good mix of nationalities.
Everyone was very friendly and after a few hours of speaking moderately badly in French, I was worn out(!)

Definitely recommend this group if you want to practice your French over a glass of wine or two.

http://french.meetup.com/32/

Great tutorials at http://www.creativecow.com!