A student who has let us all down.

I feel deeply let down by this student and his attitude to work, and our response to him. He attended the first class, and the last two classes of the year(part), did not hand in his assignment despite the fact that the hand-in date had been delayed. He raised Mitigating Circumstances after the assignment was marked at '0' and now has an extension on the hand-in until January 10th. I feel that this is not fair to the other students on this unit. I feel so strongly about this that I would like to get someone else to mark it as I do not think that I can mark it in the same spirit that I marked the others. I think that allowing mitigating circumstances under such situations does not reflect well on my university.

We are all experienced in handling the excuses that students give. One excuse is acceptable, but when a person makes many excuses for the same thing, they are lying/ dissembling/ playing us for a fool. Every time that I have spoken with him I have been given a different variation on the story. Doesn't he realize this, or does he think that we are stupid.

I feel that even though this student's parents phone in and support him, they are not giving him the right support to make sure that he attends and get the degree that he could obtain. They are making excuses to support his non-attendance.

He thinks he is a big cheese, but I know that he is performing the same stunts in his other units, and letting down his partners there. It won't do any good in the long run, as he now has extensions on hand-ins until January, when he also has an exam to prepare for.

A last effect is that he will never get a good reference from anybody who has taught him. All he will ever get is the minimum that we can give. Many references that I do ask about attendance, performance in class, how well he gets on with others, and truthfulness. I can't give a positive answer to any of these.

The new Kingdom of America and Britain

I have just been reading Bernard Cornwell's latest 'The Fort' which takes place in the American Revolution, and I wondered about writing a book about what might have been if this revolution had not happened.

I suppose that I would start the book about 1779, when the provinces and The United Kingdom came to an agreement. Do I start it at about the time of the Boston Tea Party or before?

The agreement – The Americas stays British, and becomes one country/state incorporating everything from Florida/Texas to the Arctic Ocean. Where would I place the Capital City – Boston perhaps, because it needs river access. Or Montreal, because it is further inland, yet still has river access – No -The St. Lawrence freezes over.


The French and Spanish declaring War on Britain to side with the colonies would not happen. (Investigate history further.)

Discuss the removal of the french from the Americas, and agreements with the Spanish over the west coast.

1785 Americas sends MP's to Parliament?

For the sake of simplicity, keep the states and provinces as they are, and eventually each one sends an MP to Westminster.

The Battle of Trafalgar will not happen. How does Nelson occupy himself?

1860 ish Isambard Kingdom Brunel visits america, likes what he sees, and builds a railway, builds other great things?

1867 - Does Russia sell Alaska to The United Kingdom?

Treatment of the Indians. Judging by what happened in Canada anyway, no change there.

Most of 19th Century is peaceful. The slavery question is resolved much as it is in Jamaica (The Long Song), except that there are some ructions as Blacks seek free land.

20th century – WW1 is a short blip, as Americans join in, landing at western beaches in France, and circling the German Army. ( Not really relevant?)

Irish question resolved – Does it even blow up, or is the UK much more accepting of the differences.

1975 - Her Majesty opens another royal castle, this time in Kentucky, and sells off Sandringham.

1988 - After much Petitioning, Parliament moves to Boston, as that is a reasonable central point for the people of the United Kingdom. Boston is one of America's oldest cities and therefore has a claim to be the new home of the Mother of Parliaments. The America's has a population of 350 million, the islands of England etc barely 60Million. Discuss the relationship of the United Kingdom with the EU.


Many American Authors have different tacks – Last of the Mohicans for example.

Books to think about in writing this – New York, by Rutherfurd

Thanks to Wikipedia as a reference to find out rough information.

If I was to try and write it, I would have to have a list of basic characters, probably most from the military, And have a chapter for every fifth year to show the development. (Or other notable date)

I can't do it myself, I don't have the time to do all the research. Anyone want to help?

One man can do so much, and another do so little

Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenon

I have just read a tremendous book that makes us all feel that we haven't done enough with our lives when we see how this young man has helped so many. Greg gets lost after trying to climb K2, gets rescued and ends up in Pakistan Village. He promises to build them a school. This book tells the trials of dealing in Pakistan to build the school, then how he goes on to raise money and build more, creating a foundation to continue the work. Each school only costs about $12,000 because the village donates the land and the labour. It is an excellent story of one man, with a few friends, starting something that gives him a focus for his life, and helping so many others. I visited the site of the Central Asia Institute and saw how many more schools, principally for girls, that he has built since this book. It shows a much nicer face of Muslim people and I can only believe more truthful, than we see in the news every day. It gives me great pleasure in retrospect for the teaching of the two young Pakistani women on the top-up course at University.

What spoils it all was the item in the news last week that there are three presidents of countries in the world who are billionaires, and the president of Pakistan is one. Why should it be necessary for the likes of a lone American to have to do so much for the underprivileged of these other countries, while their 'upper class' ignores them?

Ballista, Warrior of Rome

Many years ago, one of my Christmas presents was a book called 'Ribbons of Time'. It had four or five rows for Science, Medicine, Politics, World, etc and a column for each year from 1492 to the date of publishing. It has always been one of my favourite reference books and a first call when I need some information about what happened on a specific date.

As I read the third volume of the 'Warrior of Rome' books written by Dr. Harry Sidebottom, which covered the period from 260 AD into 261 AD, I thought that I should have one for the period of these books. So I created it, but after I had finished the book, and made it public so that anyone who is reading these books or has an interest can add things. When the next book comes out ( Will I have to wait until next September?) I will add columns on a monthly basis for the period of the story. There will be a problem here as I think that they did not use the 12 months as we know them today in those times.

Here's the start:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Aup29CJdvj4tdF93WEtfV3ZlMU5iTDBDSm9NaE5aN3c&hl=en

smart computer or what?

After my problems caused by my injudicious running of Computer Janitor that removed OpenOffice and I don't know what else, I have been having problems getting my old parallel printer reinstated. I have installed hplip, uninstalled it, installed an earlier version, and finally managed to do a manual install that gave me the capability of adding parallel devices. Then I had the problem that the program couldn't find any printers to install, even though the printer database was there. It wouldn't give me any printers to select. That's taken me a week of my free time.

Finally I gave up and from the Hplip pages, decided to install cups. Did that – apt-get install cups. And then to configure a printer via cups I had to browse to localhost:631, where I found the printer already existing. What the heck?

I went back to the hp-setup program and lo-and-behold, The printer showed up. It was there!

I wondered how to get back the capability of printing to a PDF, so googled that and then installed cups-pdf. Didn't bother with the remaining command to install this as a printer device, but went to the document where I was logging my notes, and vazoom- I had both printers, the Laserjet and the pdf.

Is this intelligent computing? Or just that computer janitor did not clean up everything when it deleted stuff?

I don't care. I have it back.

Timmy Harris

It's the kind of thing that every parent will hate. Just over two weeks ago I got a message from an old friend from university who is holidaying in Europe, to say that his son had been in an accident. Timmy is 22, had just finished 5 years of an engineering degree, and had fallen 6 metres from some scaffolding. Since then we have been getting updates on Timmy's condition from Gordy, and from Timmy's sister. Gordy has returned to Canada and is now in Victoria. Timmy has been kept in a coma and we wait everyday. Our prayers are with the family.

It once again shows how young men think they are superhuman and invulnerable, and in many cases they will get away with it. Alcohol was involved as this was after a university sponsored pub crawl.

I hope that nothing like this ever happens in my family. I feel worried enough about Gordy and his family. His daughter was at the bedside for most of the time as far as I know. What a thing for a young girl to go through.

We were looking forward to seeing Gordy again, but that is so trivial. Now we hope that Timmy recovers, and this keeps me awake at night.

Our prayers are with you all.

decluttering

Churchill – Complex Variables and Applications

Davis – Vector Analysis

Jordan & Balmain – Electromagnetic Waves and Radiating Systems

Lance – Intoduction to Microwaves

Burr-Brown – Operational Amplifiers

All books that I cherish from my university studies in 1970's, that have been on my bookshelf ever since. They are all going to be part of the decluttering of my life. I cherish them, but I haven't used them or their topics, for years. The other week I threw out my notes on these subjects that used these textbooks, and I must confess that I didn't understand them any more. I would have to start learning again from scratch if I wanted to do anything.

Life has moved on, I have moved into other pastimes and interests.

After university I was involved in circuit design using CMOS medium scale chips. Things like 4011, 4013, 4049 chips. I have a collection of these in my workshop, and even though it looks like somebody still is interested in them judging by their availability on ebay, they are for the bin.

And I was looking for a Power supply unit for a PC the other day, and have decided that all those 150 watt, 250 watt PC PSU's can also go. Those are a simple decision.

Reasons:

I'll never use them again.

If I need the information I'll look it up on the Internet.

When I die it will make life easier for my children to clear out the stuff.

I hope that getting rid of all this stuff doesn't make me a shallower person, with fewer interests.

On Having Grandchildren

Funny, I thought that I had written this.

I am now a grandfather. Have been for five months. My little grand-daughter has captured my heart. Luckily she only lives about 60 miles or an hour and a quarters drive away so we see her nearly every week. I wouldn't want it to be longer than that. My neighbors have their grandparents only about 15 minutes drive away, and they are always over, but they do do a lot of looking after their children.

I guess the thought behind this note is the fact that I emigrated from Canada back to England and then we had children, and the thought now about what this did to my parents, who only came to England every other year and missed so much of their grand-children's growing up. I would not like that. How it must have hurt them every time they had to leave, but I didn't think of that at the time.

Of course, having those children also made it difficult to go back to Canada for me so that they could be closer.

Grand-children are real treasures.