dryfly.ca started as a website for sharing one of my DIY projects, a stitch and glue kayak. Since then I've added several more projects including a skin-on-frame kayak, cedar strip canoe, kayak paddles, canoe paddles, building a spey rod, and an antenna for receiving OTA HDTV. I also occasionally ramble on about politics, technology, bike racing, product reviews and last but not least, our kids.
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Archive for January, 2011
January 30, 2011 at 2:45 pm · Filed under Just Stuff, Politics
I read a funny story in the Vancouver Sun about some results on a quiz on religion in the USA. I attempted the quiz myself and didn’t do that good on it, although I was in the 80th percentile compared to the USA population that had taken the quiz. I pretty much had to guess on a couple of questions about the Sabbath and about US Supreme Court rulings on religion in USA schools. The rest was pretty easy.
The funny part about this quiz is it reveals that US atheists and agnostics, as well as Jews and Mormons, know more about religion than do most of the strong majority of Americans who are Protestants and Catholics. Apparently one-third of Americans falsely believe that evangelist Billy Graham delivered the Sermon on the Mount! An earlier poll showed that 1 in 10 Americans believe Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife, and another 1 in 5 believe that Sodom and Gomorrah were a married couple.
I sort of suspect that similar results would be found in Canada, minus the Billy Graham bit. The part that I find the funniest is that Mormons do better on the quiz than Protestants and Catholics. Mormons, you may recall, are the ones that think some dude living in New York state during the 1820′s was given a bunch of gold plates scribed with sacred text from God. (these are the same plates which said the men should have multiple wives, ie Bountiful BC).
January 25, 2011 at 5:07 pm · Filed under Education, Technology
If you’re like me and interested in using math notation in Moodle, I believe you have 2 options. The first option is to use the TeX filter that is in Moodle. This is a LaTeX type editor. To enable, go to site administration -> plugins -> filters
TeX in Moodle: http://docs.moodle.org/en/Using_TeX_Notation
And more notation info: http://docs.moodle.org/en/Using_TeX_Notation_2
The big problem with TeX in my mind is that it is a bit awkward to use. However, if the range of notation that you want is narrow, you can quickly learn how to input what you need.
I think the better option is to use ASCIIMathML because it is easier to use, is more intuitive and also looks better. However, one of the big problems with ASCIIMathML is that it only works with Firefox. No other browsers are able to display its notation without other plugins. There are two workarounds for this. First, you can demand that users use Firefox. Secondly, you can use a version of ASCIIMathML that has a “fallback.” How the fallback works is if the browser does not display the ASCIIMathML correctly, it automatically switches to displaying LaTex images.
First let’s start with the ASCIIMathML. You can find a bit of information about it here, including a link to download: http://docs.moodle.org/en/ASCIIMathML
I found this thread on the Moodle forums to be very helpful:
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=153697
For my examples below you have to include a javascript file inside your Moodle installation. I am assuming that you are putting the ASCIIMathML.js file in the folder:
http://www.yourdomain.com/moodle/lib/asciimath/
Adjust this url with your own domain.
To get asciimath working in Moodle 2.0, go to site administration -> Appearance -> Additional HTML
In the “Within HEAD” section, paste the text:
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://yourdomain.com/moodle/lib/asciimath/ASCIIMathML.js”></script>
What this does is ensures that the ASCIIMathML javascript is inserted into the head of every html page.
If you don’t have Moodle 2.0, you have to find your config.php file for your theme and insert the text there. For example, if you are using the theme FormFactor, go to the file: http://yourdomain.com/moodle/theme/formfactor/config.php
Open the config.php file in an appropriate editor (I use Codelobster) and somewhere between
<head> and </head> insert the line:
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://yourdomain.com/moodle/theme/formfactor/lib/asciimath/ASCIIMathML.js”></script>
In firefox you should now be able to use ASCIIMathML notation. I had an additional problem and had to edit my asciimathml.js file. Somewhere around line 50 in this file I had to change
var avoidinnerHTML = false;
to
var avoidinnerHTML = true;
Okay, now that it’s working you can try a fallback version. I used ASCIIMathMLwFallback2.js from http://dlippman.imathas.com/asciimathtex/AMT.html
I edited the same “avoidinnerHTML” in the .js file, uploaded it to the same /lib/asciimath folder, and edited the “Within HEAD” section to use the new javascript file name. I now have ASCIIMathML working on all browsers. More info on fallback can be found at this Moodle forum link: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=134706
January 15, 2011 at 11:18 pm · Filed under Just Stuff, Technology
A couple of weeks ago I bought a Patriot Box Office media player. It was a pretty sweet deal too, only costing $60 after a mail-in rebate. Since getting it the amount of music that I’ve listened to has, like, quaddriggled. For those of you that don’t know what a quaddriggle is, let me tell you something: it’s a lot. I have the PBO hooked up to my Bryston in the living room, and I’m mostly streaming flac files from my NAS. Flac is lossless, so theoretically it is the same as CD quality. While I can’t say that the delivery method is perfect in terms of sound quality, the two most important parts are the amp and speakers, and I’m doing pretty good in that regard. The nice thing is that I can now quickly flip through my music collection and pull up anything within seconds. That is entirely different from the old setup where I had to pull out a CD, put it in the CD player and press play. That whole rigamaroll took, uhh… seconds. But more of ‘em. Yeah, more.
January 15, 2011 at 9:11 am · Filed under Sports
Since about May of last year I’ve been trying to get some consistent exercise. I’ve mainly focused on biking but it has presented it problems. First, I’m kind of lazy. That’s not a particular problem with cycling though. My second problem has been free time. I found it hard to grab 2.5 – 3hrs to go for a ride. It shouldn’t have been that hard really, looking back at the summer I guess I just had a mix of homework, school, kids and family trips to deal with. Near the end of summer I got back on the bike trainer in the garage and that started off pretty good. By the end of October though, I was again swamped with work, homework for the MET program and kids. With Mercy working night shifts, I didn’t have an opportunity to duck into the garage in the evening or morning to do a workout. So a couple of weeks I decided to try running again.
One of the biggest problems I’ve had with running is pain in my shins. Years ago I saw a sports med doctor and it was diagnosed as chronic compartment syndrome. Anyways, I went for a couple of walk/runs (1min run, 2min walk) and sure enough I had quite a bit of pain in shins. I then thought back to some things I had read on Joe Friel’s blog, and how he is a big proponent of mid-foot landing. Thinking a bit about this, I recognized that I run with landing on my heel with my front foot extended forwards of my body. It seemed reasonable to try and run landing on my mid-foot and reduce some of the stretch in my ankle (ie pointing my toes up or down). A little bit more research led me to the Pose method of running, which seemed to focus on landing on the balls of the feet and keeping the landing underneath the runner’s center of gravity.
I’ve borrowed the Pose running dvd from the library and have looked over the technique presented and some of the training exercises. One of the most interested bits about it is that they say that research shows that forward running speed is not dependent upon forces that your foot pushes forward on the ground. I think this is intuitively what we think: we move forward by pushing our bodies with our feet. Instead, the research indicates (apparently) that our forward movement is created by the torque created as our center of gravity falls forward, pivoting about the point where our feet touch the ground. So with the Pose method of running, the idea is that the leading foot should stay underneath the center of gravity, and speed is created by leaning forward and quickening the running pace. From my perspective, I was more interested in the techniques which I hoped would reduce the impact and strain on my shin.
It’s been about a week and I’ve done 3 runs, going up to a 1.5/2min run/walk split, without having any pain in my shins. I’m not sure I have very “Pose” technique yet, but so far I am cautiously optimistic. We’ll see what happens as I increase the time and intensity. I’m still finding it tricky to find time to run. My day typically starts at 6:30, then it’s work until 4:30ish when I have to take the kids to some type of activity (soccer, swimming, aikido, playdate), then dinner, help the kids with reading and then it’s 8pm and I’m pretty tired – and I might have homework to do.
January 12, 2011 at 7:50 pm · Filed under Education
Shortly after I put up my previous post I came across a discussion about merit pay for teachers on CBC’s The Sunday Edition. The discussion was between Peter Cowley, who I have blogged about before, and Ben Levin, a former deputy Minister of Education in Manitoba and Ontario.
Peter Cowley seemed much more reserved in this interview than in the previous one that I had heard. The fact is that both Cowley and Levin seemed to agree on all issues other than whether governments should move forward with merit pay (and their respective support for unions in general). Cowley is a proponent of it, even though he didn’t actually state any reasons why he thought it is good or works. Levin pointed out studies that have shown that merit pay does not work, as well as a few other bad things about merit pay:
- can cause internal strife and tensions between the haves and have-nots
- no other industries use merit pay (as I had pointed out)
- if 25% of the workforce achieves merit pay, there will be a huge economic cost to the system
- if less than 25% of the workface achieves merit pay, there will be disenchantment and demotivation
I hope government policy makers and stakeholders take a listen to these types of debates and discussions in order to come up with a reasonable reaction to the question of merit pay.
You can follow my musings on education via Twitter @bcphysics
January 9, 2011 at 2:01 am · Filed under Education, Politics
Last week Kevin Falcon went on record with adding merit pay for teachers as part of his platform for his leadership bid. Seeing as it comes from Falcon, it’s no surprise that I have a few issues with his ideas.
To begin with, I don’t know Falcon’s motives for merit pay. Is it to save money, to get better teaching, or something else? From the reports I’ve seen summarized, research has shown that merit pay does nothing to improve teaching or learning. Making matters worse is the concept that merit pay would at all be tied to standardized test scores, or that better standardized test scores would be achieved if teachers were on merit pay. I’m not clear if Falcon has either of these on his mind but I suspect that they both play a role in his thinking. I think that standardized testing has a valuable role to play in education, but more in terms of specific tests designed for specific purposes and goals relating to policy and research. In terms of ranking students, schools or teachers, standardized testing makes little sense to me.
One of my biggest gripes with merit pay is the myth that this is how the “real world works.” As someone that was a mechanical engineer for 15 years, I think I can offer some insight into this. While merit has some influence on pay scale, my experience is that it lags behind other factors quite significantly. Supply and demand is a much stronger determiner for salary. A specific skillset that is desired but rare will fetch higher pay, regardless of one’s ability to master that skillset. The other factor that greatly influences salary is level of responsibility. The more things you have to do or be responsible for, the more you get paid. One can argue that levels of responsibility are based upon merit, and in some cases this is true. However, “in the real world,” promotions and employment are often products of nepotism, popularity, politicking, negotiating, timing, poor management and poor methodologies for employee evaluation. For teachers, this whole issue is moot since responsibilities are extremely even across the board with flat organizational structures. Falcon would also be surprised to learn that most companies give out annual raises to their employees. Yes Kevin, it’s true. Teachers aren’t the only ones that get paid more just because they’ve been working longer. Read the rest of this entry »
