2007-10-31 20:22:00
This year's second semester will start in about a week. In preparation for my new courses I've been ordering books left and right. Luckily I already own the most expensive book on the list, so I won't have to get that one.
On the pile on the left you see:
* Identity development and student counseling
* Maths for students between 12 and 16
* Teaching effectively: learning maths
* A pamphlet entitled Don't touch me!
The last two items weren't on the official book list, but I decided to get them anyway. Learning maths because it will make a nice addition to my current library. Don't touch me! because I am very curious how one would handle a situation where kids are harassed by others.
This leaves two syllabi that I should buy at school. After that I'm all set.
kilala.nl tags: school, studying, reading, teaching,
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2007-10-31 00:00:00
Feh! I've gone and done it now :(
I've painted myself into a corner, insofar that I've made things too hard for myself. For Statistics 1 I'm supposed to create a so-called GWA (Geintegreerde Wiskunde Activiteit, aka Integrated Maths Activity). GWAs are assignments that mix various subjects from maths and possibly other classes. They're supposed to help kids understand the place maths has in real life. So far so good.
I've done a few things wrong though and it's too late to turn back.
The subject I've picked contains nearly no maths at all. Also, since the subject has been used for GWAs before, so I find myself reinventing all of the subject matter and rewriting the assignment. If I didn't, it would be too easy for kids to cheat.
The GWA I'm writing is also way to big for my first try. I could've gone with an assignment that would take the kids about an hour to finish. But no! I had to go for one that would take them ten hours! And of course, since I'm such a bloody perfectionist, I want everything to be absolutely right, so I spend way too much time researching and hammering things down.
It's my own fault though. I should've seen the problems when I was about two or three hours in. Now I've already spent about fifteen hours on the report and it's almost done. I've about two hours of work left. It's better to get it done and over with. Then there's nothing but hoping for the best.
To sum it up, here's my pitfalls:
* Too damn perfectionistic.
* Too stubborn in picking subject material.
* Too late in seeing a dead end.
kilala.nl tags: school, studying, meh,
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2007-10-30 21:02:00
DreamHost.com have always had a referral program in place for their members. For every customer that you refer to them, you'll get a bit of money deducted from your bill. I always thought it was a neat little feature and I know that at least Clint has been racking in the rewards. However, I never expected to even refer one person.
Imagine my surprise when I checked my control panel and found that I had one active referral! ^_^ I have no clue who user petbos3, but I'd like to thank him/her for using my referral link when they signed up for DreamHost. That'll be $47 dollars I can deduct from my next bill /o/
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2007-10-28 11:28:00
Well...
I slept in 'till eight.
I've watched The guns of Navarone (great movie!) to relax a little.
I've had breakfast.
I've read part of John Siracusa's in-depth review of Leopard.
Now it's time to stop slacking and get my ass into gear again!
UP AND AT'EM, ATOM ANT!
kilala.nl tags: work, studying, school,
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2007-10-28 02:04:00
*yaaaawn* So, it's about two AM now and I'm still up, hacking at a report. Lemme tell you, that's one F-ing big assingment.
The course in question is Didactics in maths 2, a second-year class. Sweet Jeebus, do they pile on the work! Dossier report 6 (out of 12) alone is at least twelve hours of work. For this assignment I'm given a maths test and the answer sheets for five students.
I'm expected to:
1. Take the test myself, to find out the correct answers.
2. Define an initial scoring sheet for the test.
3. Score each of the students' results against my sheet.
4. Analyse the crap out of my scoring method.
5. Adjust my scoring to suit the best practices seen in high school.
6. Re-score the students' results.
7. Re-analyse my scoring, to see what has changed.
8. If need be, re-re-adjust everything.
9. Go over the test itself to see if it follows the best practices.
10. Write an analysis of the test and its shortcomings.
11. Determine how I would discuss the test's results in class.
12. Draw conclusions from the test's outcome. Have we reached all of our goals?
Good grief! Don't get me wrong: I'm loving every minute of this. It's just that this assignment is H.U.G.E.! More like sixteen hours, than the twelve I mentioned earlier.
Ah, fuggit... I'm going to bed. I've reached a point at which it is alright to save my work and close up show for the night. I'll work a bit longer tomorrow.
kilala.nl tags: school,
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2007-10-25 11:41:00
It's such a shame, but Marli didn't get the job she was after.
The past two weeks she's been part of the dutch national railway's recruitment process for railway inspectors. She got through the first meeting with flying colours. The interview and the roleplaying sessions all went off without a hitch. The second and third meetings went quite well as well, so she was about 75% along the way.
Unfortunately the board decided that she would probably not handle hostile situations very well (buckling under stress), so they decided not to take her on. Damn! I think she was more disappointed about the fact that her past has caught up with her again, than that she didn't get the job. Nine years of being picked on and shunned at school will get most people to buckle under hostility ;_;
Still. She has every right to be proud of herself! Apparently there was a lot in her that the railways -did- like, so there's no reason to think that other companies won't. Better luck next time!
kilala.nl tags: work,
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2007-10-25 10:46:00
*sigh* You know how sometimes things can get cross-wired in your brain in a permanent fashion? So that every time you want to do A, you do B? I've one of those and I've already made the mistake twice at $CLIENT. One of my colleagues already suggested the idea of making a Sluyter-check monitoring script ^_^;
Here's what happens. For about a year now the commands "nslookup" and "hostname" have been mixed up in my head. I -know- what each command does, but I always type "hostname", when I want to do "nslookup". In most cases I quickly backspace and type the right command, but so far I've fscked up twice :/
For those not in the know:
* Nslookup is used to find the network address for a computer.
* Hostname is used to change the actual hostname for a UNIX computer.
Renaming a server on the fly can lead to some serious problems, especially if it happens to be part of a cluster. Well, guess what I did yesterday and -didn't- notice? Yea... ;_;
I'll start working on that monitoring script now... *hangs head in shame*
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2007-10-25 08:05:00
Wow, am I happy that I hung onto my Ubuntu and Knoppix live CDs! Once every year I seem to need to them to rescue someone's ass ^_^
In a sort of copy-cat maneuver of last year's debacle involving Marli's laptop my sister Luthien's external disk decided to die. It'd started to make the same seeking noises (whirwhirwhirwhirCLICK), which is never a good sign.
So, we have yet again:
* A windows formatted disk (NTFS this time).
* An unreadable disk even, one that crashes Windows once it's attached.
* Lots of important, irreplacable data.
* And no backups ;_;
Actually, this used to be her backup drive, until she ran out of space on the laptop. Seriously, a lot of people do this very same thing, so I'm not blaming her. Too much... :3
Anywho... Just like last year, booting from a Linux live CD let me mount the disk and copy data off of it. Because the disk seems to be broken it's going horribly slowly (to the tune of 40MB in 5 minutes), but at least we're getting to the data.
o Huzzah for Linux! /o/
(I guess it can be useful after all)
Now... I need to get to work in about an hour, but before I go I'll need to reschedule my school work. All of this has cut into my working hours well hard, so I'm going to have to drop some parts of my planning. 't Should be okay though.
kilala.nl tags: other tech, snafu,
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2007-10-23 22:46:00
Ho. Ly. Crap.
O_O
This is the first anime that I knew I -had- to own after seeing only five minutes of it.
Imagine if you will a drama loosely based on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, set in a Renaissance fantasy setting. A story of treachery, of cruelty and of impossible love. A story of warring families and of fantastical scenery.
That is Romeo X Juliet.
I watched the first episode without any subtitles. I didn't care! The characters are so vivid... They speak to you. Or at least to me. The designs are very clean, but never boring or harsh. It's all rather overwhelming. Or maybe I'm just tired :D
But seriously, if this stuff ever comes out on DVD with english subs... I'm -so- getting it. It's beautiful.
kilala.nl tags: anime, tv, japan, awesome,
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2007-10-23 12:35:00
After finishing HanaKimi I searched around for some new series to put on top of the "to watch" queue. One of the new bunch is Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann (Wikipedia).
I've never been much of a mecha fan. While I do enjoy one or two series, I won't go searching out any and all mecha that I can get my hands on. After reading some rave reviews of Gurren-Lagann though I had to give it a shot. So far I've watched the first three episodes and I have to say that (so far) I like it :)
The animation's done by Gainax, so that ought to be quite alright :) I like all of the artwork and designs: they seems polished and contain an abundance of colour. The musical score's pretty damn good too!
The story line? Eh... I can't say too much about it for now, but I reckon it could be cool. Kind of like Mad Max, but with robots ^_^ I like that they're not taking themselves too seriously. The series contains enough jokes for the occasional laugh.
One thing though... In episode 3, while watching Simon, I was getting flashbacks to Eva's whiny, pussy Shinji Ikari. Luckily the authors decided that Simon would be much more fun if he grew a pair :D Hopefully the whiny brat will be whiny no more :)
kilala.nl tags: anime, tv, japan,
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2007-10-21 11:11:00
Ah! *sigh* *wipes nose on sleeve* *sniff*
I love a good ending. Especially if they're sappy and drawn out and happy lovey-dovey :D I usually don't like giving out spoilers, but I doubt that anyone ever doubted that Hanazakari no kimitachi e (HanaKimi) would have a happy ending.
I just watched the season finale, a two-hour double episode. The story might not be a great work of literature, but I still loved it ^_^ Just what I needed to get me started on a good day of work!
And I am -so- making the picture on the left my new background. It's just too good to pass up :D Besides, those glasses actually looked quite good on Nakatsu. *cough*
EDIT:
As requested by Ben, I've uploaded the background. Download it here. It's in 1280x800 widescreen format though.
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2007-10-20 23:04:00
Eric S. Raymond. I may not agree with everything the guy says or thinks, but he's still a living legend in my book. The guy's done some great things for the hacking community at large, one of which is preserving the Jargon File.
JARGON.TXT, otherwise known as The new hacker's dictionary, is a huge collection of information about the hackers' culture and folklore.
You can browse through the dictionary on my mirror, by starting here. That link puts you at the beginning of the book and skips most of the "less interesting" stuff.
So why put up a mirror? Well, for starters I'd hate to see all of this stuff to get lost in the streams of time. The more copies of it the better. And then there's the fact that I've loved this book for almost ten years now. I love helping out a little bit and it's great to have both the digital and the treeware versions at my fingertips ^_^
kilala.nl tags: geeky, internet,
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2007-10-20 13:36:00
Oh me, oh my... Clustering software does not always guarantee high uptime :/
At $CLIENT we've been having some nasty problems with our development SAP box. The box is part of a Veritas cluster and actually runs a bunch of Solaris Zones. The problems originally started about two months ago when we ran into a rare and newly discovered bug in UFS. It took a while for us to get the proper patches, but we finally managed to get that sorted out.
Remco installed the patches on Thursday morning, though he ran into some trouble. As always, patches can give you crap when it comes to cross-dependencies and this time wasn't any different. Around lunch time we thought we had things sorted out and went for the final reboot. All the zones were transferred to the proper boxen and things looked okay.
Until we tried to make a network connection. D:
None of the zones had access to the network, even though their interfaces were up and running. We sought for hours, but couldn't find anything. And like us, Sun was in the dark as well. In the end Remco and Sun worked all night to get an answer. Unfortunately they didn't make it, so I took over in the morning. Lemme tell you, once I was in the middle of all the tech and the phone calls and the managers, I found some more respect for Remco. He did a great job all through Thursday!
Just before lunch both Sun and one of the other guys came up with the solution. That was an awesome coincidence :) Turns out that the problems we were having are caused by timing issues during the boot-up of the Solaris Zones. Because we let Veritas Cluster handle the network interfaces things turned sour. Things would've worked better if we'd let the Zone framework handle things.
The stopgap solution: freeze all cluster resources to prevent fail-over, then manually restart all virtual interfaces for the zones. And presto! It works again!
Happily we went to lunch, only to come back to more crap!
Turns out that the five SAP instances we were running wouldn't fit into the available swap space anymore. Weird! Before yesterday, things would barely fit in the 30GB of swap space. And now all of a sudden SAP would eat about 38GB! o_O WTF?!
A whole bunch of managers wanted us to work through the whole weekend to sort everything out. Naturally we didn't feel to enthused, let alone the fact that the box's SLA doesn't cover weekend work.
In the end we tacked on some temporary swap space, started SAP and left for the weekend. We'll have to take more downtime on Monday for granted. It also leaves us with two big things to fix:
1. Modify the cluster/zone config for the network interfaces.
2. Find out why SAP has grown gluttonous and fix it.
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2007-10-14 13:00:00
Feh! I'm stuck in a rut again and it's been going on all week!
I keep getting distracted by all kinds of other chores and shiny things, while I should be focusing on my homework. It's like high school and college all over. Wait... I -am- in college all over :D
Anywho. I managed to finalise my summary for Statistics 1, though it still needs some polish. And now I'm staring at a pile of reports and books that need to be finished by tomorrow.
Slowly, but surely... That's the only way to get through it I guess. *churnchurnchurn* Scratch one item off the ToDo list at a time. I'll start off with Statistics - Didactics. That seems to be my favourite subject this semester.
kilala.nl tags: rhythm, meh, work, school,
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2007-10-12 10:46:00
Back in August my father and his special lady-friend took a holiday trip to Finland. Coming back they brought at least two trays of Kopparberg's Cider with them. Last night, over a great family dinner, they were sweet enough to donate a few cans to me. Result! ^_^
Seriously, I love Kopparberg cider. That's one of the only beer-alikes that I could get drunk on 'cause it's just so damn tasty! It's almost like drinking alco-nade, or something :)
The default flavour's pear, but I also adore the forrest fruits and the blueberry flavours. I just read about a blueberry/lemon mix that also sounds lovely.
It's a shame this stuff is so expensive in the Netherlands, if you even manage to find a shop that sells it. Ikea sells the non-alco variation, but even that comes at a premium. ;_;
kilala.nl tags: finland, holiday, drinks,
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2007-10-11 13:05:00
At precisely 13:00 this afternoon the builders started removing the windows at the back of our apartment.
We are currently in the process of replacing all wooden window sils in our building with plastic and steel ones. The wooden ones are almost completely spent and the plastic ones will last us at least a few decades.
In about four hours the workmen should have everything replaced and built. By sundown the back of our apartment should be weatherproof again.
Update @14:12:
In a litte over an hour the guys have completely removed the old windows and their sils. They're now cleaning up and sizing up the various parts for the new windows.
Update @16:30:
They're done! Wow, they're fast. The new windows look great and feel much more solid than the ones at the front side of the building. Good stuff :)
kilala.nl tags: house,
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2007-10-09 22:44:00
Thursday's recycling day, so a lot of people have already put out their papers for the pickup tomorrow. Unfortunately there's always some punk-ass kid who enjoys wreaking havoc in the neighbourhood. About fifty meters from our house someone set fire to a big pile of paper.
Since I feel co-responsible for our community I dashed out of the house with our fire extinguisher. Luckily, someone else was already dialing 112. Unfortunately the fire extinguisher didn't help much. The foam had settled for too long, there was too much paper crammed into a small area and the capacity of the bottle was too small. I'm trying to recall how big the bottle was... I guess something like two liters.
Now that the extinguisher's spent I'm going out for a new one tomorrow. And you can bet good money that I'm getting a bigger one. Probably a six liter one and maybe a smaller, second one. Just to be safe...
Schmucks... As long as they leave the building materials for our apartment building alone.
kilala.nl tags: house,
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2007-10-07 13:07:00
I'm researching some high school maths projects online, for Statistics 1. In a few cases some actually useful stuff pops up on YouTube. However, when following a few of the YT links I quickly stumbled upon movie on movie of kids misbehaving in class.
It's not the usual tomfoolery like wisecracking or being allround noisy though. No, it's the constant mucking about with cellphones that gets to me. Snapping pictures of each other and messing around with the video camera, trying to be as silly or cool as possible. It's horrible how distracting those gizmos can be!
If I can find the time I'll try and read some teachers' fora, see what how the pro's handle cellphones in class. If it were up to me I'd build an EMP box and just fry the lot.
Then again, I should also keep in mind that not every class is going to be like this. It's only the silly, annoying kids that pop up on YouTube :)
kilala.nl tags: other tech, teaching, school,
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2007-10-07 11:44:00
Wow, last night was quite amazing! :)
It's Snow's tenth birthday this year and management thought it'd be nice to take everyone out for dinner and a show. So off we went with over 170 people, to watch Afrika-Afrika in Amsterdam. Snow being the cool employer that they are got ring-side seats for everyone. And wow, were they worth it!
From the first minute onwards, the show comes at you relentlessly with music, dance and acrobatics. At times the pace may ease a little, only to come back with more vigour. The musical score is uber-versatile, mixing traditional African music with hiphop and jazz.
It's impossible to list all of the acts in the show in a short blog post, so I'll just list my favourites ^_^
* The sword jugglers from Egypt
* The contortionist from Angola, with a great sense of humor
* The strap acrobat from Martinique, whose shadow was even prettier to behold than the guy himself.
* The unicyclist basketball players
Seriously, that would be one bad-ass sport to watch and play! Basketball on unicycles :D Fscking awesome!
I cannot be more enthused about this show than I am now. Ring-side seats ring in at eighty euros a piece (that's about a hundred bucks for you USAdians), but I have to say that they're worth it. Seating in the stands will probably be a lot cheaper, but you'll be farther away from the action.
The Afrika-Afrika website has a bunch of pictures and trailers, if you're interested.
kilala.nl tags: snow, work, fun, art,
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2007-10-06 10:43:00
Oh glee! Today I got to use those wacky nihilists from The big Lebowski in a forum discussion :)
It was along the lines of: And if you still can't bring yourself to care about anything, why not become a nihilist? It's great! You walk around with a ferret on a leash and extort old hippies.
While I didn't think the movie was great, it sure was filled with great characters and quotes!
Nihilist: We believe in nothing, Lebowski. Nothing. And tomorrow we come back and we cut off your chonson.
The Dude: Excuse me?
Nihilist: I said
[shouting]
Nihilist: We'll cut off your johnson!
Nihilist #2: Just you think about that, Lebowski.
Nihilist #3: Yeah, your wiggly penis, Lebowski.
Nihilist #2: Yeah and maybe we stomp on it and squoosh it, Lebowski.
The relevant scene on YouTube.
kilala.nl tags: movies, geeky, fun,
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2007-10-03 21:31:00
Ouch, this week's going to be killer.
I've a boat load of homework, that sums up to about 45 hours if I'm correct. I also have night work planned for my day job, which is going to suck. And finally there's a big party at Snow to celebrate our ten year anniversary. I guestimate that all of this leaves me with about seventy hours for eating, sleeping, travel, household chores and personal time with Marli.
Something's gotta give.
I've already decided that I'll delay the finalisation of Vak Didactiek 2 (Didactics in math, year 2) until the next semester. I guess -that- is what's going to give this week. It's a shame that I cannot finish all the work needed for the next class, but I have to weigh my options.
In case anyone's curious, here's my To Do list for this week.
Student career counseling
* Run a quick scan of my capabilities, 1 hour
* Write report #4, 3 hours
* Ponder the direction our group as a whole needs to take, 1 hour
* Read up on the process involved with ECTS exemption, 1 hour
Statistics 1 - Math
* Paragraphs 2.1 - 2.4, 6 hours
* Paragraphs 2.5 - 2.6, 2 hours (possible to drop these until next week)
* Coach one of my classmates, 4 hours
Statistics 1 - Didactics
* Prepare for the class on ICT in didactics, 2 hours
* Read through three required articles, 4 hours
* Prepare a report on GWA, 4 hours
* Prepare report #7, 3 hours
Didactics in math 2
* Report #6, 4 hours
* Fix report #1, 2 hours
* Fix report #2, 2 hours
* Fix report #3, 2 hours
* Report #10, 3 hours
* Report #11, 4 hours (required for the exam on general didactics
* Short assignment on language issues in education, 1 hour
kilala.nl tags: school,
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2007-10-02 15:36:00
For a while now I've been lusting after the Panasonic Lumix TZ3. It's a great little camera, with an uber-huge analogue zoom. Unfortunately the best price I can get it at in the Netherlands is around 300 euros.
Thanks to the greatness of teh Intarwebs and its plethora of fora and Price Watch pages I've learned that this camera can be had quite cheaply in Japan.
This means that I'll definitely join my mates when they travel down to Akihabara (a district in Tokio). It's a great place to just browse around all day... Or so I've been told ;)
EDIT: Hmmm... The price seems to have come down in the Netherlands as well. It's down to 260 euros at specific dealers. That makes it less worth it to get it in Japan. By buying in the NL I'll be able to take pics with it during the -whole- trip for only a few bucks more.
kilala.nl tags: japan, other tech,
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All content, with exception of "borrowed" blogpost images, or unless otherwise indicated, is copyright of Thomas Sluyter. The character Kilala the cat-demon is copyright of Rumiko Takahashi and used here without permission.
