foolfillment: the blog

You can help me (and my pupils) by filling in this form!

I’ve been toying with the idea of using Google Docs for a while. It is possible to get a class to populate a spreadsheet with complex data by filling in a really simple and easy form that anyone can access.

One way of using this would be a cheap interactive voting system. Another way that I was hoping to use it for was getting a sample of data so that pupils would understand anthropometrics better. I have a couple of classes who are about to design their own chair and need to understand the importance of getting the sizes of their chairs to fit the sizes of people.

Earlier today I spent a wee while setting up a spreadsheet that took data from a 5 question form and created some tables and bar charts showing the spread of hand sizes across the sample.
The form took about 5 minutes to create, and it set up the bones of the spreadsheet too. After that I set up a few extra sheets that munched up all the data and returned some graphs showing the spread of results. I fed in some fabricated data to check it was all working but soon realised I was going to need results from a lot more people than my 40 pupils for the sheets to really give a decent curve.

So, I turned to twitter and asked for people to fill in the form. As more people answer the questions the spreadsheet fills up and the charts become more refined – in real time, which is cool.

I’m hoping to find time for all of my classes to add their own data to the spreadsheet so that when it comes to the time my 2 design classes will be able to see a near perfect bell curve – and the process of gathering results.
Then I can explain the idea of using the 5th to 95th percentiles. The really nice thing is that the spreadsheet updates in real time as new values are added so I can show them the graph refining in front of their eyes.

For this spreadsheet to really make an impression though it needs as many results as possible, so please take a couple of minutes to fill in this form. Fill it in twice if you like – after all you have two hands! Now, I fully admit that this is not a scientifically rigorous experiment and that there are a lot of variables that mean the values in the spreadsheet could be wrong or inconsistent but I think this will give a reasonable idea of the spread of sizes.

I’ve just got in from town. Town being in this case the centre of Glasgow, but you can use it for any city centre with the same rough meaning – a horrible, built-up, seething mass of people with no awareness of what’s going on around them and laden down with bags. Going to town is such a tiring, distressing thing to have to do but there comes a time at Christmas when it is just about unavoidable. If I had been more organised I could have got away with not going.

I went in search of: a lemming, a tiny table and chair, and things that symbolise cheerfulness and enthusiasm. How many of them did I manage to find? One, almost.

I’m tired now and am very glad that tonight is a pub night. I need to vent some anger about people who can’t walk.

Untill yesterday I was able to proudly say “I have never been to Ikea” but then, yesterday afternoon, it all went wrong. During the worst possible time (October break from schools – parents want to do nicen up their houses but can’t escape the house without taking the brats with them) I ventured inside looking for photo frames. And what a horrible experience it was. Nasty cheap stuff that’s mass produced to poor standards with lack of imagination/innovation and what a horrible store layout, what is wrong with having aisles? Even some prices on the products would have been nice, or some logical pattern to where stuff is on display, dreadful.

It was everything I expected and less.

Now, I do accept that they have come up with some reasonable items, some good ones too I’m sure, but on the whole the stuff they pump out is rotten. Everything I hear about the place just makes me amazed that it’s so popular. Anyway, we did get two photo frames, but not the ones we liked because there was no price on it and the only similar one was around ?20 and I refuse to pay that much for a piece of tat that won’t withstand being hung up on a wall with the extra weight of a ferw photos.

The only good thing I can see that has come from Ikea is a undiminishable supply of pencils to give out to pupils.

I got this email today from someone who is in a reasonably important role within the Glasgow Uni Sports Association, someone who you might think would be able to draft a decent email.

hey guys,
[name] past you’re e-mail addresses on to me to ask
if you could e-mail round you’re faculties and find
anyone who is interested in being a faculty rep for
recreational sport for gusa. It is basically just a
contact for me to e-mail all of teh recreational
leagues, competitions and events that are happening so
that more people can get involved, If you could get
back to me with these before friday wed 13th Oct this
would be great
Thankyou

There isn’t much excuse for not knowing which your/you’re to use, or not knowing what the difference between past and passed is, not for someone who is studying for a degree*. Or am I being a bit harsh? Also when does she want it back for? Wednesday, Friday or the 13th? None of those things match up, at least not until next year.

*For anyone what spots mistakes in this post, their deliberate, okay?

Let me decide! If you want me to read your website then don’t impose your browsing habits onto me. If you link to something then you’d better have a very good reaon for opening a new window. If I wanted a new window I’d have opened the link that way myself, I do have that option you know.

If, like me you want more control over your browsing use Firefox and the Open Link in… plugin

Also, why would anyone disable the right button on a website? Only a useless twunt would do that, it doesn’t gain anything because everything can still be accessed throught the toolbar (everything except the open link in… plugin). Tool.

And stop saying ‘like’! If you feel the need to punctuate your sentences with, like, extra words then use, you know, good ones an’ tha’. You linguistically impoverished fool.

BBC NEWS | Scotland | Row blows up over kilt ban move

They’re just jealous because they would look like this in National Dress:

‘March 13th’! What a stupid way of putting it, the default setting for the dates in Wordpress (now altered on foolfillment) is the stupid (American?) format that makes it look like you’re talking about the 13th March of 2005. Why are so many people so happy just to accept things that are incorrect because they often see them like that.

Maybe you don’t get what I’m saying, maybe I’m the stupid one, but look at my argument:

‘March the 13th’. Taken to mean the thirteenth day of March. Should really be ‘13th of March’
‘Henry the 8th’. Was the eighth King of England to have the name Henry. Henry the 8th wasn’t the eighth part of King Henry.

Now, go forth and and write what you mean, and anger me no more

• missing out on a free first aid course worth ?180 because you only find out about it on Friday morning before it starts, not leaving enough time to arrange missing lectures and hand-in dates
• having to replace your shoes because the heel falls off and your feet get wet and the laces snapped a while ago and there isn’t really enough left to tie them with and people are laughing at them
• the doctor not being open when you want to find out about the vaccinations you need for going to South America
• the battery running out on your electric shaver halfway through shaving in the morning and not being able to find the cable to charge it

Well today I recieved a letter from the debt collectors! Apparenly o2 are looking to take money from me for no apparant reason, thieves! The woman on the phone fom the debt collectors pretty much said so too. Following months of them taking money they said they wouldn’t and failing to give it back, as they had promised, I cut my losses and left. My last bill from them was a credit to me, which incidentally never turned up…

Even though I’m no longer a customer I’m forced to carry on fighting with them.

Last month they charged me for things they said they wouldn’t. I shouted at them and they said this month I’d be credited with the amount they took.

This month comes and they send me a bill, not only was the credit missing but they want to charge me again for things that they said they wouldn’t.

So I send an email asking what they’re playing at and get a very quick response saying that I have to pay. I send them a copy of an email from them last month that says I don’t and they’ve gone very quiet. Now I’ve also posted off an official complaint letter to them and arranged a new deal with Orange. I still have about a month to run on my contract with O₂ but seeing as they’ve broken their terms then am I able to break it off early?