One for the "must get" list

Thanks to Intelligent Artifice, I've found out about a book from Hiive Books, The ZX Spectrum Book - 1982 to 199x.

The Speccy was the second computer I ever owned (after a Dick Smith Electronics VZ-200). These two computers -- especially the Spectrum -- were the main reasons I learned programming. I didn't have a reliable tape recorded to save or load programs, so if I wanted to play a game, I'd have to type it in. Of course, the listings were often hard to read, and I'd make typos, so before I could play the game, I'd have to fix all the bugs first.

Ah, memories....

Nifty game

Thanks to ...on pampers, programming & pitching manure, I've stumbled across a neat (though slightly bizarre) game from indie developers Dejobaan Games, called The Wonderful End of the World. Give it a go, and support indie developers!

Exciting morning

Woke up early on Sunday morning (about 6:30 -- which is very early when you didn't go to bed until 3am) to the dogs barking, and what sounded like a truck running its engine. On investigation, found two police cars, two fire trucks and an ambulance attending a van that had somehow managed to roll onto its side.

Looking at the skidmarks on the road, looks like he lost control coming round the corner at the top of the hill. Only saw one person being taken away in the ambulance; hopefully, he's okay. Haven't heard or seen anything in the local news about it, which leads me to think that the driver didn't suffer any serious injuries.

Hey, I know her....

Techdirt is reporting on a story about a lecturer at the University of Brighton who has banned her students from using Google in writing their papers. Prof. Brabazon has claimed that too many students were taking the easy way out and regurgitating the first few search results for their assignments.

This seems to be another case of blaming the technology for what is really human laziness. If a student can't be bothered to research their assignments properly, then they should get poor grades. Then, they'll either fail the course or learn to research properly.

Banning Google and Wikipedia is not the answer. When I did history at Victoria University (in 1994), the first assignment was on how to use the library. We had about 20 questions, and in finding the answers to those questions, had to learn the layout of the library, the call number system, etc.

The solution to Prof. Brabazon's problem would seem to be an assignment designed to teach students how to use tools like Google and Wikipedia, making sure that students learn what these tools are not -- an alternative to thinking, or to proper research.

I was a little surprised when I read this story. Prof. Brabazon took the final third of Hist105 (waaaay back in 1994), and I always thought of her as a more technologically clued up lecturer (who once used an episode of Fawlty Towers to demonstrate a point).

Blame the interweb!!!

An article's turned up on Yahoo!Xtra news' Top Stories list, about a Fijian woman attacked by some scum she met on the internet.

Unfortunately, these kinds of assaults happen all the time, but this particular assault is apparently worth mentioning because the people involved met over the internet. I'm sure many other woman were attacked by men they met by "conventional" means -- in the pub, through friends and family, at school -- on the same day this particular woman was attacked, but because the internet was not involved, they did not get mentioned in the "Top Stories".

Yes, this was a tragedy for the woman. Yes, the scum should be locked up for a very long time.

But honestly, it shouldn't get "top story" status just because they met on the web. That's just wrong. It's not the internet's fault this b*stard decided to attack this lady. I'm sure that if he met her in the pub, she'd still have been attacked.