i am sparticus: Words

The Traumatising of Mark Walley

Today as part of my ever confusing training to become a fully qualified youth worker, we looked at 'where morals come from'. We had to start by thinking of situation where in the 'days of our youth'™ we either did something and got away with it and then felt we shouldn't have had, or got told off for something that we didn't do.
Thinking back, I couldn't really think of anything that traumatic. I mean, there were small minor things, but nothing that really stood out. Then, it all came flooding back to me. The great injustice of year five.
You see, there used to be a boy called Mike (well, that wasn't his real name but it'll do) and poor Mike was very bullied. He was in year four as I remember, and nobody ever seemed to want to stick up for him. If ever someone was oppressed, it was he. Now, I too got a fair amount of torment off certain people, but nowhere near the level that poor old Mike got. So anyway, being a moderately bullied ten year old boy, I sucummbed to social pressure of kicking downward. Not regularly, or even particularly hard, but occasionally I'd see the opportunity to vent my frustration.

Anyway, one day Mike obviously had enough. He went to a teacher, and said that he was being bullied. The teacher forwarded him to the headmaster where upon he laid the blame for every single act of bullying ever committed against him on me. He did not mention any of the year sixes who bullied him, he did not mention any of the year threes that bullied him, he failed to mention the entirety of years four and five.

So I was called into the headmaster's office, told off for my terrible behaviour and warned that if it did not stop, there would be terrible consequences. My year teacher then looked hard at me, turned to the headmaster and said 'and this was the boy who was complaining about being bullied'.

Near tears, I was sent back out to play, whereupon Mike came up to me and apologised for blaming me, saying that he was afraid of getting anyone else into trouble. Before I had the chance to hit him (and I'm not saying that would have been the right thing to do, but I was ten) my year teacher came outside and said 'shouldn't you be playing somewhere else Mark?'. And so the rest of the week was spent avoding Mike for fear of being told off, and avoiding everyone else for fear of being teased because Mike made me cry. It's a wonder I'm the responsible member of society that am I.

Altering Google For The Purpose Of Coursework (Part II)

I wrote a few weeks ago about altering google for the purpose of coursework and last week I submitted that piece of coursework. The reference I used looked like this:

www.google.com (2004) Google: Perfect Pop Song Length [online] Available from http://www.google.com/search?q=perfect+pop+song+length [Accessed 26 April 2004]

Nobody pointed out that the reference should really point to the website, and not to the search engine that found it. Nobody even asked what website the search engine was pointing too. Google was seen to be the providing of my information, not some unqualified blogger.

I should say at this point, that I only used this method to back up something that is already generally held as true (that the best pop songs are around 2:30 to 3:30 minutes in length) but is not referenced anywhere. This fact was also not the hinge of my argument, it was merely supplementary evidence to prove that things can be effective because they are short (TV adverts, random speeches and psychological studies were other ones).

Mr. Moony Asks About Triangles

Mr. Moony Asks:

"What's the size of a right angle on an equilateral triangle drawn by a gentleman with one eye and poor depth perception without a protractor ?"

One of the things about being an young, untrained and entirely useless question answerer, is that you learn to recognise when a question is actually a cry for help. The poor gentleman in the question isn't concerned about angles, nor is Mr. Moony concerned about angles! Instead Mr. Moony is trying to raise awareness about the plight of this poor human being. He cries "What sort of a society is it, that allows a grown adult with monocular vision to live without a protractor and a basic knowledge of trigonometry?" What sort of society indeed.

Any attempt to change society to make it less dual-sighted-ist is going to require a lot of effort; what can one website do? Provide examples of other figures from history who have had to deal with the pain of monocular vision, that's what!

Polyphemus the Cyclops

Perhaps history's most famous, and indeed most tragic, one eyed person. While the first generation of Cyclopes were revered because of their metal working ability, Polyphemus (a second generation cyclops) was treated as an outcast because he lacked another eye and had to survive as a shepherd. He was cruelly blinded by Odysseus after a misunderstanding over Odsyessus' crew. A depressing story of how society treats those different to itself, but there is hope, as seen through the fitting in of the first generation cyclopes.

Leela from Futurama

Possibly the most successful person with one eye careerwise ever. She stands as a testament to what is possible, regardless of any depth-perceiving ability. Unfortunately, her use as a role model is somewhat limited, seeing as she is a cartoon character from a thousand years in the future.

Dr. Mind Bender from GI Joe

Proving that people with one eye can work in all sorts of areas. Dr. Mind Bender is an evil genius of epic proportions. Creator of Serpentor and many other terrifyingly evil weapons, Dr. Mind Bender just goes to show that having only one eye is no barrier to working in high level science jobs.

I'm sure there are many other role models, but I hope that these few enable Mr. Moony's poor one eyed friend to go out into the world and become a fully functioning member of society!

The Beta Poll

As of 1:00pm, the poll over on the right/left hand side shall be closed for voting. Normally, I'd let it stay open longer, but as I've found a list of bugs longer than my arm, and as I've found at least two security holes (not major 'W3 h4v3 h4x0r ur s1t3' holes, but minor 'hahaha, look what I can do with this!' holes), I think it's best that I fix it all before I head back to ipswich.

Oh, and for the sake of Google, which has yet to index, let alone rank; Chris Walley and Alison Walley.

Amusing Thing Old People Say

Old Lady 1: Returning from the phone You'll never guess who that was.
Old Lady 2: Elsbeth¹ about the milk?
OL1: No! Don't be silly! Audrey from Australia!
OL2: Oh, of course!

Footnotes

Footnote 1: And Elsbeth climbs to number one in the top five names I'm going to call a child of mine if, a)I get married, b) I have any children, c) if they are a girl, and d) if I feel that having one name that'll cause endless teasing in the playground isn't enough.

The Honeymoon + Simple Kid

Last night I headed over to the Cardiff Barfly to see Simple Kid supported by The Honeymoon. If I was interviewed after the gig I imagine this is what I would have said...

Interviewer Hey, can I ask you what you thought of the gig?
Me No, I've got a train to catch in ten minutes.

Honeymoon where quite good really, in a acoustic-y mellow way. The tunes were catchy. However, after seeing the way the lead singer plays up her attractiveness and viewing their website, which looks far to sleek for a 'we've just started out' band, I'm a bit suspicious. If they turn out to be robots devised by an evil genius working for a even eviler media company, I won't be suprised.

Simple Kid was awesome; I don't know whether it's because I'm going to less gigs I'm picking them better, or because I'm going to less gigs they all are unique enough to be awesome, but frankly I don't care if they are this good. He was playing a stripped down acoustic set, which consisted of him playing one of two guitars, one of eight (eight!) harmonicas (He even had a seperate harmonica case!), a drum machine and a very snazzy ibook. He played pretty much everything off the album (which you should buy) and some rather random Johnny Cash tribute stuff. He also played 'Average Man' to the tune of 'Paranoid' by Black Sabbath. Respect.

Update

I've just realised that the female singer's name in honeymoon is 'Thorunn Magnusdottir'. I take every bad thing I said about them back. With a name like that, they can't fail but to go far.

Ask Sparticus A Question

New feature alert! Look left (or right depending on the design you're looking through) and you'll see something in the side bar saying "Ask Sparticus A Question". It's very simple really, you ask me a question (in the space of 160 characters), the first five go into a vote, and the winner of the vote gets answered.
At the moment it's beta; the code that behind it should work fine, however I haven't fiddled with the design yet, so it will look a bit queer. Bug reporting will be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Merc

One of the pleasures of spending a week with kids from a completely different culture to you, is that you can get to learn a whole new vocabulary. Possibly the best new word I've heard in a quite a while is the word, "merc'd".

Merc: To be beat someone thoroughly and comprehensively at something, especially when the other person doesn't even come close to you.

So for example, when I beat a young person 61 - 0 at othello, I merc'd him. Those ghosts in Lord Of The Rings, they merc'd those Oliphaunts. Neo and Trinity were mercing those guards in the hotel lobby.

Back From The Moor

Hello everyone! I'm home! Seeing as I've travelled from Dartmoor to London, then from London to Swansea today, I'm understandably a bit tired. Lots of exciting things to blog though. Hooray!

Away for a while

I'm away for a week or so. Sorry. I'll be back soon though. Remind me to do stuff when I get back.

Altering Google For The Purpose Of Coursework

I feel I need to explain the last post. I had to write a piece of coursework the other day about a talk I had to do. I thought I'd be clever and put in some vague figures about average times and attention spans and stuff. So I timed a few commercial breaks, found out how long some famous speeches where, and tried to find out the length of a good pop song. Google wasn't much help on the last one, so I decided to rig the results. Now my coursework contains the line "When you search on Google™ for the perfect pop song length the first result says it should be between two minutes thirty and three minutes thirty." Mwahaha! There is endless potential here! Just think, whenever I write a piece of coursework, I can back up what I say by saying that Google displays it prominently when you search for related terms. You can endorse what you are saying, by saying Google links to you endorsing what you are saying. Genius.

Perfect Pop Song Length

Question time everyone! What is the perfect pop song length? I'm currently leaning towards 2:27 (Teenage Kicks by The Undertones and Communication Breakdown by Led Zepplin). It's either that or somewhere around the 2:55 (Monkey Gone To Heaven and Debaser both by the Pixies, and Pop by N*Sync). This is an important question that needs answering!

Where we're going we don't need

Mark Pilgram pointed this out the other day... Search google for famous quotes or taglines for things with parts ommitted and see what people have come up with. He used the example of Crouching *, Hidden *.

In the same vein...
Where We're going we don't need...

• Pilots!
• Facts
• Archives
• Eyes
• Rogues
• Rhodes
• Pants

And similarily....
May The * Be With You

• Source
• Shorts
• Chad (?!?)
• Frock

And finally...
Dude Where's My...

• Ship?
• Permit?
• Estrogen?
• Hydrogen?
• Double Necked Guitar?
• Teddy Bear

Other suggestions welcome

American Football

Continuing in my series of 'Sports That Suck (That Just Happen To Be American)'... American Football.
As George Will once said (and I have no idea who George Will is, but it's a good quote) "[American] Football combines two of the worst things in American life. Violence punctuated by committee meetings." And that's pretty much all it is. Everyone lines up, someone yells out some numbers, they throw a ball backwards, everyone runs into everyone else and the ball gets thrown (or if you are lucky, kicked) forward. Four things now can happen. The ball is caught and run with up the pitch, the ball is caught and run with down the pitch, the ball is dropped or referee randomly blows a whistle. Either way, the game stops after five seconds and everyone huddles around for about half an hour, while the coachs shout and point at complicated diagrams. Then everyone lines up again slightly further forward or backward to where they last where, and repeats the procedure. Eventually someone crosses a line, puts the ball down and does a little dance. The wikipedia entry for American Football states that a game typically lasts for "one hour of game time, which translates into three to four hours of real time". That's right, up to three quarters of the game involves people huddling around and talking. Genius!