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My mobile’s broken, so don’t expect a reply to any calls/texts for a few days…

…’animals on the line’. The poor announcer woman was clearly embarrassed, as there was a long pause between ‘We would like to apologise to customers for the delay this morning, this was caused due to’ and ‘animals on the line’.

There was much rolling of eyes…

I’ve just bought an N95 (delivery Tuesday). I had considered waiting for an iPhone, but decided not to for a few reasons.

• iPhones are selling for $500 plus a 2 yr contract in the US. So in UK that’s going to end up as £450 plus an 18 month contract, since electronic goods don’t obey the usual exchange rates. And I’m just not going to pay that much for a phone!
• iPhones don’t have 3G. That’s just incredibly stupid really for any kind of modern phone, never mind one that’s sold on the premise of having the internet handy.
• iPhones don’t let you add a custom ring tone. That’s also kinda stupid.
• iPhones can’t use MMS. That’s kinda stupid.
• I don’t want to wait until October for a new phone.
• The N95 has GPS. I’ll sure I’ll get lost sometime in the next 12 months, and will truly appreciate it then. In the meantime I’ll just appreciate it based on it’s geek-like coolness.
• N95 camera has a (crappy) flash and autofocus. iPhones have neither
• The N95 has dozens of extra features, most of which I’ll never use but represent astounding value for money compared to an iPhone.

My entire office just shuddered – either something has just exploded or we’ve had an earthquake…

UPDATE – something belonging to BT exploded underground. It managed to blow one of those rectangular manhole covers out of the ground as well as rock nearby offices…

UPDATE – my office is being shut for the afternoon because half the building has no power, and we’ve got no running water. Most of us are off to the pub…

I’ve just found out that the charity I work for is looking to make 30-35 people redundant.

Crap.

Just before leaving work on Thursday night, I sent an email to approx 11,000 people promoting some new publications the charity is selling.

Upon arriving at work Friday morning I discovered 2600 bounce-back emails in my inbox. So I’m not best friends with the records department at the moment – I spent all day Friday going through the database and deleting wrong email addresses. And I still have 2200 to go.

And then when I got home Friday evening, I found 1100 bounce back emails in my personal inbox, because some fuckwad spammer had got hold of my email address and decided to send out adverts for viagra and a variety of diet pills in my name.

If I believed in God, I would think I was being punished…since I don’t, I’ll have to be content with being extremely pissed off.

Apparently not a single education reporter for the BBC, The Times, The Telegraph, The Sun or The Daily Mail actually know how A-level exam grades are awarded. And I suspect if I looked at other news sites, I would find the same (depressing) result.

A level grades are not given out solely based on percentage of marks gained in an exam! If this years A-level maths is truly easier than last years, then candidates will need to score more marks to get an A. If this years paper is harder than last years, then candidates will need to score less marks. It’s simply not possible for them to write papers of the same difficulty each year. Even in subjects like maths, they can’t simply take the previous papers and change the numbers in the questions, because then people would simply need to learn the techniques tested in the previous years papers, and not the entire syllabus.

The confusion arises because people do like to compare things from one year to the next. Most people would agree that someone getting 86% on an ‘easy’ paper has less knowledge than someone who got 78% on a ‘hard’ paper. In fact the 86% might have been a B, but the 78% was worthy of an A…

Because of this the exam boards map the raw marks onto something called the UMS (uniform mark scale). So someone who scored the minimum marks for an ‘A’ on their particular year’s exam will receive 80/100 on the UMS. Someone who scored halfway between the grade boundaries of ‘A’ and ‘B’ for their particular year, will receive a UMS score of 75/100. Students receive their UMS score, not their raw marks. IQ tests work in a similar way – the actual ’score’ given by a test depends on the difficulty of the particular test, and not just how many questions you got right.

You can’t say that a UMS score of 80/100 is 80%. The numbers just don’t work that way.

QCA even explain this themselves…

Whether or not the standards expected for a particular grade have gotten softer over the years is another matter entirely…

I spent yesterday at the Novotel West for my organisation’s annual event, which on the whole was a fairly dull (but complicated) event.

However the evening’s party more than made up for it.

P.S. Note to self: Mimosas are deceptively alcoholic

There was a letter from ‘Electoral Reform Services‘ waiting for me when I got home earlier. Confused as to why they were writing to me I opened the letter and discovered that because I am a member of T&G (joined recently) I apparently get a vote for Labour’s deputy leader.

Here’s the thing. In order for my vote to count, I have to tick a box agreeing to the following.

I support the policies and principles of the Labour Party, and am not a member or supporter of any organisation opposed to it and pay a political subscription to the body that issued this ballot paper.

I feel dirty for just typing out the words ‘I support the policies and principles of the Labour Party’, so I certainly won’t be ticking the box! (I support the Conservative Party)

So I’ve just spent 2 days at @media (at @ ??!).

Highlights

• Thursday night’s free bar
• Joe Clark telling us that it’s not our job to compensate for the fact that screen readers are shockingly bad at their jobs
• The London 2012 logo being used whenever a speaker wanted to highlight a bad design
• Mark Boulton’s tips on improving typography
• Jason Santa Maria referring to London’s street layout as a ‘clusterfuck’
• Toupeepal – Dan Cederholm is a genius for many reasons, but that was a particular stroke of genius
• Håkon Wium Lie brought an OLPC ($100 laptop). And let people play with it. It’s so small!
• Jeremy Keith’s Ajax talk – didn’t teach me anything new, but it’s incredibly reassuring to know that thing’s I’ve worked out independently match his ideas.

Lowlights/WTF moments

• Missing out on lots of interesting sessions, because I was sitting in another interesting session taking place at the same time.
• Fucktards asking the world-class, top-of-their-field speakers absolutely stupid questions. Some people were blatantly at the wrong conference
• Apparently Gill Sans is a ‘quintessentially British font’. Eh?
• The Business and Design Centre is laid out really badly
• Getting somewhat lost on my way home Thursday night. My journey was supposed to be ‘come out of pub, turn right, keep walking until you hit King’s Cross’. However the pub was on the corner of a crossroads, and the entrance to the pub was on a different street than the map indicated. So when I exited and turned right, I apparently went south, not west. Instead of retracing my very drunken steps, I decided to ‘keep walking, you’ll hit a tube station / bus stop eventually’. Probably not the wisest move I ever made, but it all worked out in the end (I found King’s Cross!). The blue in the map below shows the direct route, red shows the route I think I took…

Overall it was immensely educational, whilst being extremely fun and I am very, very glad I went.

See here

Rachel (one of my colleagues, and a genuinely nice person) is getting married next Saturday and today was her last day in the office before the big day, so we went out tonight to celebrate/wish her well/etc.

Not only did everyone have a great time (great people, great conversation), I have also committed to going into business with a friend of hers. She’s got a great idea for a website (including the name/domain), but needs a web developer – me! Commercial sensitivity (and plain being-nice) mean I can’t share specifics, but I think it’s got the potential for going far.

Whilst ‘upgrading’ the water pipes outside my house (iron->plastic), the ever-helpful workmen have sliced through the phone cable outside the house, and it apparently won’t be repaired until Sunday. Not entirely sure how that’s happened, because we’re connected to the the phone network via an overhead cable to a nearby telegraph pole. Not going to put too much thought into working that out though.

In the meantime I’ve connected my mobile to my PC and am using it as an incredibly overpriced modem – at £1/Mb, I’m expecting to end up with a £100 bill next month. The water company will be getting a copy of the bill…

Today is voting day – traditionally a day where you vote for politicians based on what they promise to do for your area/what they’ve done in the past.

However since I haven’t received a single piece of election literature, I don’t know who any of the candidates are for my area, which party they represent, nor why I should vote for them. Since none of them apparently want my vote, none of them will be getting it.

So much for civic duty…

Apparently I’m not too cynical after all…

Fuji sell a leather case for my camera, with an SRP/RRP of £19.99.

Jessops list this case at a price point of £39.99.

I emailed Jessops yesterday, pointing out their ‘mistake’ and got a reply saying they’d sell it to me for £19.99 (an offer I have taken them up on). But they haven’t amended their website, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they never get around to it..

Am I too cynical?

So (some) teachers don’t want to teach when it’s over 26°C. Diddums.

As much as I hate bank charges for being overdrawn, I think they are well within their rights to charge whatever they like. If you don’t like them, then you’ve got a few choices.

1) Don’t go overdrawn!
2) Arrange an overdraft for your account. That way if you go accidentally go overdrawn (I’ve done it a couple of times), then you only pay interest, and not interest + penalty charges.
3) Switch bank.
4) Keep your money under your mattress.

If you manage to run up £2500 in penalties on an overdraft, then I don’t have a lot of sympathy for you. I actually hope the cunt loses.

The student loans people caught up with me today, and so I am now £41/month worse off. Bastards.

I did however finish my 6-month new-starter probation period at work today, and I still have job to go to on Monday, so that’s kinda nice…

Last night, I had to say goodbye to Tracy, who is heading off back home to South Africa.

I may have only known her for 5 1/2 months, but I am going to miss her immensely – she’s one of those rare people who manage to effortlessly combine smart, sexy and sassy whilst being tremendous fun to be around. It’s a cliché I know, but I genuinely feel that my life is richer for knowing her. I’m actually a little teary-eyed writing this.

Tracy – I wish you all the best (and come back soon!)