Uncategorized

I just heard that the sheep I rescued the other day is pregnant with twins, so that’s an additional two good deeds I hadn’t accounted for. I’m allocating them to tomorrow and Saturday, so if you need a good deed from me then I’m afraid it’s going to be Sunday at least before I can fit you in.

I’m going to keep with my tradition of filling in what I’m listening to, even though at this moment it’s quite embarassing. In case you don’t recognise it, it’s from the Bugsy Malone soundtrack. I hate all musicals, with a passion, and without expection. With the exception of Bugsy Malone. Unless The Blues Brothers counts as a musical, in which case that’s another exception. I can’t think of any others though off the top of my head.

I haven’t done a good deed today, so perhaps yesterday’s was a one off after all. Then again, I’ve barely left the house – too much work, not enough time, today.

The closest I came was being polite and respectful to a call-centre droid, when what was really called for was an unrestrained tirade of abuse. I don’t really buy the “just doing their job” excuse though – there comes a point where you have to take responsibility for your own actions, and if you work for an immoral organisation, you’re immoral too. Otherwise, where do you draw the line? If I’m the guy who comes round and says “nice shop you’ve got here, it would be a shame if anything happened to it”, can I shrug that off if I’m just a salaried employee of the real gangster. No. And of course, the Gestapo were just doing their jobs. There, I’ve come up against Godwin’s Law in a conversation with myself.

So why the uncalled for manners? I suppose deep down I realise that the call centre droid doesn’t know any better – a successful product of the school system if ever there was one. Also, if I’m honest, then in a twice-removed (via a couple of contracts) sort of way, I’m guilty of exactly the same thing. Isn’t hypocrisy great.

I’ll leave it as an excercise for the reader to work out what particular kind of call-centre droid I called. Wait a minute – I am “the reader”, and I know already. That was easy.

This Wednesday sees the offical launch of OpenLearn, a project to make content from The Open University’s courses freely available on the web. Most interestingly, the content is available in XML format, and can be downloaded, used and modified under a Creative Commons license.

The site is available now at http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/, though I hope the content there currently is a work in progress, as it is rather thin on the ground. The site doesn’t give much information on what they intend to make available, but perhaps I’m jumping the gun* a bit.

They’re using the open-source “course management system” Moodle as a platform. It’s the first time I’ve come across it, and first impressions are good. I am left wondering though, having slapped this on a server and populated it with some data, what on earth they are doing with £5.65 million over two years. Either there’s a lot more to come (fingers crossed) or the price of green suits with leather patches on the elbows has skyrocketed over the last few decades. Flippancy aside, this is a very interesting development and I hope it goes well.

*I’ve found three contradictory but seemingly sound explanations of the origins of this phrase so far.

Though usually immune, I have caught a disease of the mind…

For the first five (more if I feel inspired) people to respond to this post I promise to produce a small work of art. This might be a painting, a musical composition, a card or even a poem. It will be written/made with you in mind. If you want it to arrive by post in real life you will have to email me your address and I swear not to divulge or misuse it. (Though you might get a Christmas card as well). Otherwise I will be limited by what I can post online.

The only other stipulation is that you repost this message or your own version of it on your lj.

So here is my first post to LiveJournal. I’ve signed up primarily to test out the OpenID interconnectivity, so don’t expect anything exciting to appear here.