So what's a couple of weeks between friends? I do have half a good excuse for no blogging activity. I went away for a week to catch some surf in Devon. Sadly, the surf had other ideas and insisted on breaking up underneath me for the whole week. Sadder still, the damn place is so remote that wi-fi does not exist. On the positive side, it did give me a chance to step away from doing work and spend some time actually thinking about what I was doing - the results of which will filter out over the next few days. ...and the other half of the excuse? I meant to do a catch up blog, but then I realised that nobody actually cares, so I'll just come back to the table and plunder today and yesterday for stories.
Found myself most disturbed by primary school mathematics today. Trying to help with simple homework is harder than dealing with homework you don't understand! To do simple multiplication these days, you have to "partition". Bear with me!
To multiply 12 x 3, you have to identify the tens and units, then you times the ten by the number and then then unit by the number, add them together and you have your answer, but you can't do it like this anymore:
12 3x
and do it in simple columns that you can see - and therefore use when you're faced with a sum like 4,564 x 7. Instead, you do them in a line. I think I am being stupid. Obviously the answer to that sum is 36 but if you do the tens multiplication it comes to 3 and the units then comes to 6, but when you add them together it makes 9. The only way I can see that it will make 36 is if you simply sit the numbers next to each other!
This, I know cannot be right, but trying to explain this to an eight year old is even harder than grasping what they're actually trying to teach! I can see I will need to go to into school and have it explained to me - which is all rather embarrassing because I am not really that stupid! To make it worse, Rhiannon knew what the answer was as she did it in her head like me but she couldn't show her working out. Absolute hell is still to come: if I remember correctly, the chunking method of division is the most stupid tactical assault on dividing numbers I have ever seen. Google it... it's full of holes I guarantee.
Anyway, we walked away from that and went to see Monsters vs Aliens - which is excellent fun. Not essential, but if you're badgered to go and see it, it's pretty damn good. Kind of like Monsters Inc, but better. The rest of the day then disappeared in a mess of PhotoShop files and other design type stuff.
I also notice that I'm due to post chapter one of The Wasteland tomorrow - and this time I'm ready for it! It's all here ready to roll out. I've not looked at it for a week now, so one last proof read tomorrow evening and that can go up. The Wasteland project is growing on me and more ideas keep coming in to build it. I will try to keep my head with it, finish it and make it into something decent instead of it sitting around unfinished for a change.
I've spent 90% of the weekend working, 5% sleeping and the other 5% catching up on Lost, 24, Fringe and Supernatural - I think I might be quite tired now so apologies if there are bigholes here. Oddly though, I'm not tired - merely enthused to keep going, but I'm making mistakes more than I normally do, so it really is time to walk away.
Currently listening to: Sea Hags, Electric Angels, Junkyard and Jetboy. I blame Steel Panther...
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5tl2_K-d-g]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMSEeNJpHrk]
Currently reading: Ian Rankin: Exit Music - I know I was reading this before but I got waylaid by Bret Hart's Hitman and some back issues of a cool magazine.
