Thoughts on teaching, technology, learning and life in an era of change.

Archive for January, 2008

How our house was flooded
January 8th, 2008

Shao Ping and I have spent the last few days shifting furniture and preparing the home for repairs. The carpet on the first floor was ripped up yesterday and the old pine floors were sanded. We were intrigued to see that the original pine floorboards had once been polished. They were quite a different colour to the pine floorboards in the rear of our house. We thought given the shifting of furniture and everything else that has been happening we might as well use this opportunity to go back to the original pine floors on the upper floor of our home.

They hammered the nails down with a hammer and punch and filled each hole and crack with putty. The sanding then begun and later that afternoon that was followed with the first application of tung oil.

My wife and I have been staying in the spare room at our neighbour’s home. Tomorrow the floor specialists will apply another coat of tung oil. We will not be able to walk on the floors till Friday.

I will probably not be able to make a decent post till this weekend. Following this work I will clean up some more out the back of our property. Part of the garden in the top part of our yard was washed down to  the southern boundary and made quite a mess and with all the rains new weeds have sprung up. We lost two trees and a stormwater pipe was broken in our backyard.

With the drought for so long we were really in need of rain but to get nearly three inches of rain in one hour was probably too generous. That was back in December and now that we are on holidays we can really get stuck into tidying things up around the garden and in the garage.

Our backyard looked like a little creek during the storm and when the water came up around the piers and the main slab on which the ground floor was built and then entered the ground floor of our home from within the structure it was all a little too much there for a while. Given that the ground floor was tiled and there was concrete in the garage no damage was sustained although four holes were drilled in the southern brick wall of our garage with a masonry drill to assist with the run-off of the water.

We have to get an engineer to have a look at the place to make sure that there was no hidden erosion beneath the property. I have no idea how that will be verified. Cracks have appeared in the concrete floor of our garage. The water came up through tiny gaps between the walls and floor in the laundry and around the edges of the tiled floors of the study as well as the walls of the garage. It was a strange sight. The water bubbled up like small water fountains. Perhaps the clay on which the houses in our street were built is not that deep and we are in fact just above solid sandstone and the water table just rose to the surface as the huge amounts of water could not get away quick enough.

The study where I kept my books and LP records is no longer and that will be shifted upstairs to our living room once the flooring is finished. Not too sure how to use the free space downstairs now. We quickly moved all of the threatened books, CDs and records upstairs as the water rose during the deluge. Two neighbours came into help. That day one neighbour brought in lunch for us and that evening three separate neighbours brought my wife and I some dinner. We have an excellent neighbourhood. Priceless neighbours.

Some furniture including bookshelves, filing cabinets and a desk got wet but that was dried out. One old cupboard will have to go. How we use this downstairs space will have to change. Who knows when the next time a rain event like this will happen?

The bureau of meteorology said the storm was an one in twenty year event but given our peculiar weather of recent years and the impact of global warming on the climate I am not sure about that figure. We had a major storm in 1998. I will never forget. 17th August. Two low depressions settled above the Illawarra and it rained non-stop for almost 24 hours. They called that a storm an one in three hundred year weather event. We ripped up the carpet downstairs, sealed the floors and tiled everything after that. A new stormwater drainage system keeps the water out. It worked fine this time but what do you do when the water finds its way in via your construction piers underneath the upper floor of your home home and from beneath the concrete slab of your garage? We are built on a slight slope.

 So during the next few days the blog will be a little quiet. As I mentioned we are staying with our neighbours during the work on our home as we wait for the tung oil to dry and do ist wonder with the pine flooring. Tonight we are having dinner with my sister and her family so I thought I would jump on their computer and write this note.

The Perfect Corpse ~ just the thing for students of history
January 5th, 2008

One of the topics that I quite enjoy teaching in Year 11 Ancient History is Preserved Human Remains. The Year 11 students have just completed their School Certificate, not unlike the ‘O’ levels in the United Kingdom and they are preparing for their matriculation year, known here in NSW as the Higher School Certificate.

It is during Year 11 that we share with the students the skills of history. They discover how to interpret historical sources, gather together evidence, formulate convincing historical arguments and exhibit an empathy with the past.The Preserved Human Remains topic is an investigation into bog bodies, mummies and famous discoveries such as the Iceman.

During the course of the study students explore the following topics.

  • Lindow Man, Grauballe Man, Windeby Girl, Tollund Man – places of discovery, dating of finds
  • Events surrounding discovery of the bodies: preservation of the bodies in the peat bogs, possible causes of death, various hypotheses based on forensic evidence and other sources
  • Reconstructing the lifestyle of these individuals: physical appearance, clothing, evidence of the environment; possible cause of death; associated rituals
  • Comparison with other finds of a similar nature: Ice Man, mummified Scythians, Inuit boy, Peruvian mummies, Egyptian examples
  • Religious beliefs and customs associated with burial practices of this nature
  • Role of science and written sources in reconstructing the past.

There are a number of web sites that deal specifically with bog bodies and the Iceman. One in particular is quite interesting. The Perfect Corpse. This site was created to support a documentary that was shown on the PBS Network in the USA. This web site includes specific sections that include:

There is also a transcript of the documentary and a guide for teachers. Each section features excellent photographs and interactive components.

The site is not designed for students engaging in pre-matriculation studies however it is suited for Year 11 students to gain an insight into a variety of preserved bodies from around the globe and from a range of historical eras. The site is easy to navigate, well written and nicely illustrated. The site is also included among a set of links for my students that are focused on the study of Ancient History.

PQ Talking Photo Demo
January 5th, 2008

This morning I read a post by Silvia Tolisano on her Langwitches blog regarding PQ Talking Photo. I had seen this tool not long ago but Silvia pointed out a promotion by the developer, PQ DVD, which allows bloggers to receive a free copy if they promoted it on their blog. The details are here.

I attempted to make my own however both Safari (3.0.4) and Firefox (2.0.0.11) consistently crashed when I clicked on the Free Lite Version link. The full version is a Windows app. I think the lite version is Flash based. I will try it out on Shao Ping’s PC. Here is the PQ Talking Photo demo.

blogmyspacedvd to ipod video convertertalkingphoto, dvd to psp convertertalkingphoto, dvd to zunetalking photo album

 

Two teachers on holidays
January 4th, 2008

School finished up two weeks ago. Shao Ping has been posting stories to her blog during this time and I thought I would take a moment to link to some of her posts and pictures. [piclens-lite-link]

Merry Christmas. Shao Ping and I celebrated Christmas with my sister Clair and her family… husband Kieran and children David, Elizabeth and Lucy. Our cat Sootie got a look-in as well. Shao Ping and I celebrated Christmas with my sister Clair and her family… husband Kieran and children David, Elizabeth and Lucy.

Christmas get togetherChristmas get togetherChristmas get together

Boxing Day Get Together. We spent the day after Christmas with John Daley and his wife Pauline. We had a great barbecue with a number of friends. The weather was excellent, the wine was fine and a jolly good time was had by all.

Boxing day with the DaleysBoxing Day with the Daleys

Happy New Year! This year we celebrated New Year’s Eve with our friends at Wollongong Golf Club. I don’t play golf but the venue is quite good. It is by the ocean and there was cooling sea breeze that counteracted the humidity of the evening. I have been knocking about with some of these friends for 33 years or more now. My sister Clair and her husband Kieran came along as well. The night got into top gear when Kieran and I led the dancing during Dancing Queen by ABBA, YMCA by the Village People, Jump by The Pointer Sisters and a few other disco ‘gems’ of the 1970s.

New Year’s EveNew Year’<p>s Eve

Aya and her hair extensions. Our Japanese home-stay student, Aya, traveled by train up to Sydney today to have her hair done so that she could have hair extensions added. She looked quite fashionable upon her return so I donned my dreadlocks and Shao Ping took some photographs.

Aya and her hair extensionsAya and her hair extensions

Does WordPress remove your href and image links?
January 4th, 2008

I have been having trouble posting images and links in WordPress. When I switch between the code and viusal editor href links are stripped out and/or duplicated. Why I ask?

Linking to images using the Upload feature is cumbersome.There must be a better way. I will do some research. I just deleted a post that I have been working on for an hour or more. Have you experienced this problem as well?

Part Two: A solution is to simply use the code editor. Send the uploaded images directly to the editor in code mode. I find that sending the uploaded images to the visual editor is not reliable.