foolfillment: the blog

Lordy is letting me work on his PHP project*, which is very nice of him as I break it a lot. I add bits of code here and there and try to make it look a little prettier, while he builds it all and makes it actually work and has ideas about what it should do and how it should do it. I’ve been working on the actual code that makes the site run (it is running, those of you who know the site know this already, those of you who have no idea what it is don’t need to for this story, but I have written about it in an earlier post) and making changes happen ‘live’ as it were, this is fine as long as I don’t break it. Anyway, Lordy has been working on the code that he has running on his machine, this is fine because if he breaks something then the real site still works.

And that is where the problem lies, you see now that lordy has completed a little bit he was working on he’s uploaded the new files. And now all the bits I’ve been doing recently have been overwritten. Bum. We need to find a better way of each separately working on the same files.
*Of which you may hear more in time

Little.red.boat turned five yesterday, yet still feels like she’s nothing to show for it.

I have never quite learnt what a blog is, or what one is supposed to do with it, but I like having one

This blog, albeit in its original form turns 4 next Wednesday, and reading that makes me ask the eternal question, why do I keep a blog?* I feel kind of the same as Anna, I’ve only ever been an occasional blogger, certain topics I can write about for a series of posts but keeping up a regular output just isn’t my thing - other than a daily summary kind of thing, and let’s face it that’s of no interest to anyone except me.

I do see the value of that sort of thing though, and if I’d had easier internet access while I was in New Zealand I probably would have made an online journal with photos and lots of links, after all I kept up a similar handwritten diary. It still remains that I didn’t do that, so why do I keep a blog. It isn’t, and has never been, about attracting lots of readers and garnering comments, although I really enjoy it when it’s apparent that people do read the blog and I appreciate each and every comment more than it might appear - I really should make the effort to reply to more - no, the reason I keep it up is it’s a place to put my thoughts down, to clarify my position. I am the prime user and always have been, is that selfish?

I’m going to try to be more prolific, what’s always stopped me is that I don’t want this place to be boring for those that do read it, so I don’t post each and every thought I have; in a world where there is so much information and so much of it is disregarded as being unnecessary I don’t want mine to be bulking up the excess, and maybe that is like cutting off my nose to spite my face. Anyway, from now I plan to post more. Maybe you’d like to suggest some topics and that way it’d be more interesting for you.

Enough rambling it’s almost time for Neighbours.

The fact that I can’t bring myself to use blog as a noun maybe means I’m just not cut out to be a real blogger.

The Herald reports today on a new course offered at Intermediate 1 in a few schools in a small trial. It aims to make pupils aware of the dangers of the internet. I don’t know details of the course content but the report mentions the usual suspects of chat rooms and internet grooming; spyware and viruses.

It’s an important issue and this course is probably a good way of making people more aware. My concern though is that in schools this sort of thing should be taught alongside any subject that uses the internet (ie. all of them) not as a separate course but as an important integrated part.

In the main I suspect teachers will teach internet safety in the same way a CDT teacher stops pupils losing limbs on certain machines - they only let pupils use certain sites. Whereas pupils should be given the knowledge to go off and discover sites then make informed decisions about whether it is safe or not.

It’s also important that this course stays relevant too, it’s no use if it sets itself up to say bebo is bad (it isn’t any way, if anything it’s just a bit rubbish) when in a year this could be wrong or irrelevant, and in five years totally obsolete.

teaching, internet, safety, SQA

I’m back, a little tired still nut back to work tonight, and with the weather as good as it is I’m not going to be spending much time blogging for a while.