Learning Openly

It has been in the pipeline for some time now, but the Open University has now launched OpenLearn, a website which makes OU course materials freely available and provides "state-of-the-art learning support and collaboration tools" to boot. The selection of materials available at the moment is modest, and appears to be suffering from some teething problems (some courses have been noticed appearing and disappearing) but provides an interesting sample of the breadth of OU courses and looks like it could become a valuable site. I still have a year to go until I finish my degree, but afterwards I wouldn't be surprised if I look to this site for the odd extracurricular learning experience, as it were.

More broadly, I think this is great. Our tax pounds go to support the university system, including the OU (maybe not supporting it as much as it could, but that's a whole other story) and this has the obvious benefit of helping to educate the nation, but with the free distribution of these materials, I feel we are getting even more value for money. Sure, I still need to pay if I want to follow a course properly and get a qualification, but now I have the option of looking over the shoulders of the "real" students and get some benefit from well written study materials. I believe some other universities are also publishing course notes. Long may it continue.

On The Dangers of Having Too Many Legs

Poor little Forzie, it's not easy being a chicken with four legs, even in New Zealand. He lasted not much more than a month before he "got glugged up" due to complications involving what is usually found between and behind a pair of legs. The picture on the page at the other end of that link is dead cute.

Ryan's Crib

The last weekend was a good opportunity to unwind and smell the coffee a bit. An old friend of ours came visiting, ostensibly to drop in on Friday's pub session where he wanted to listen to the music and hopefully pick up a tune or two to play on his flute.

<3 was too tired to come out with us (less than 2 months until the due date, so no surprise really), so G. and I want to the pub and listened, chatted, and even managed to join in a bit. This month's session had a rather more eclectic selection of instruments than last time; alongside the usual fiddles, mandolins and squeezeboxes we had a hammered dulcimer and a didgeridoo. Some magic moments, including a rousing rendition of John Ryan's Polka, which the group plays as something of a game with musicians "tagged" in to play a few bars (almost) solo. Lots of Fun. G. then spent some time the next day learning the tune.

The following night, with <3 away elsewhere (I'm giving the impression that she wasn't around all weekend, which wasn't the case at all), G. and I sat chatting and playing cards well into the night, something I haven't done for far too long. It's the little things like this that make life worthwhile.

Legal Code

I don't want to lose track of this concise analysis of new US anti-terror legislation. The code looks sensible enough at first glance, but if you know programming in C you may well spot the logical error...

if (person = terrorist) {
            punish_severely();
} else {
            exit(-1);
}

More Hedging

So I've just submitted another order for plantage from Ashridge Trees. Most of last year's trees that I planted in our proto-hedge have done fairly well, so this order is largely to fill in a few gaps and also run along the bottom of the garden, where there is a bank of pretty much unsupported earth, so a new hedge should help keep our garden from escaping as well as improving our boundaries.

This order includes a new apple tree (Spartan, to go alongside our existing James Grieve and Bramley) and a heap of roses, some of which are wild roses to go into the hedge, and some being for loading into beds to make the garden prettier. OK, it all means more work, but it'll be worth it in the long term.

It'll be at least a month before we receive these goodies, so we just have to hope their arrival doesn't coincide with Asbo.