Author: Tim

Posted on

How To Plan and Shoot 360 Photography & Video

Originally posted on Dusty World.

This week I brought some 360° cameras to the 2017 ECOO Conference to show how (kind of) easy it is to make immersive media for virtual reality viewers like Google Cardboard.  I brought along my favourite 360 camera, the Ricoh Theta (physical controls, good shape, very intuitive to use, easy to manage and produce files), and some others:

  • a Samsung Gear360 4k camera (harder to access physical controls buried in menus, awkward shape, files that are such a pain to use in the Samsung software that it will take you days to turn out content)
  • a 360Fly 4k not-quiet 360° camera (awkward wireless controls over smartphone, doesn’t stitch together 2 180° images into a full view, water/cold proof and tough, easy to manage files, useful time lapse functions built in)
  • at the last minute I brought along the Instapro 360 8k professional camera, but it demands a special type of SD memory card so I couldn’t make use of it.  The software and hardware is also very difficult to manage – it’s going to take a while to figure this camera out.

360° cameras offer a unique opportunity to capture a moment in a way that hasn’t been possible before.  When combined with immersive VR viewers like Google Cardboard, full systems like HTC’s Vive or upcoming Google Daydream platforms, 360 video and photography allow the viewer to inhabit the media, looking out into it as a part of it rather thank peering at it through a framed window as we’ve always done before.

This is our presentation from our Minds on Media VR & 360 Media Station from #BIT17
This lack of perspective, framing or directional intent makes 360 video and photography a very different medium to work in.  The tyranny of the director’s eye is gone, leaving the viewer to interact with the media as they see fit.  This is both good and bad.  If you’re watching a film through Steven Spielberg’s director’s eye you’re seeing it better than you probably could yourself; you benefit from that framing of a narrative.  If you’re looking at an Ansel Adam’s photograph you’re experiencing what he saw and benefiting from his genius in the process.  That eye and the ability to effectively use a medium to demonstrate it is what makes a good film director or photographer, but 360 media tosses all that out.

.

The irony in all of this is that being a good 360 director has more to do with setting a scene and getting out of the way than it does with framing everything just so.  It also means that if your viewer has a trained eye they can find moments in your media that you might not even have intended.  It also means that if the viewer of your 360 media is technically incompetent or has the visual standards of an amoeba they won’t find anything of value in it at all.  Suddenly the audience has a lot of control over how effective your media is when you’re shooting in 360.

The examples above show just how 360 images can be directed like former ‘windowed’ media or left open and viewer directed.

When the media maker directs your view (these are screen grabs of the 360 image below the windowed photos), you see what they want you to see:

 

Or you can produce 360 media that the viewer controls that maybe tells the whole story.

Teaching visual intelligence will become much more important in the future if 360 media and immersive virtual media viewing become the new norm.  If your audience is too visually ignorant to make effective use of your media they won’t recognize the value in it.  I wonder if you won’t see directed views of 360 media done by people who can still provide the majority of people who aren’t interested in building up visual media fluency the chance to enjoy media at its maximum effectiveness.

Beyond the director/audience change in power there are also a number of challenges in producing effective 360 media.  The biggest problem is that the camera sees everything, so you can’t have a crew out of sight behind the lens because there is no out of sight.  We’ve gone to ridiculous lengths in producing 360 video for our virtual school walk through in order to try and let the viewer feel like they are immersed in the media without drawing their attention to the apparatus that is being used to create the media.

Tools like GiimbalGuru’s 360 friendly gimbal that minimizes wobbles that are much queasier in immersive VR viewers than on screen help the process.  This gimbal is 360 friendly because, unlike other camera gimbals that block views to the sides and back, the GimbalGuru 360 is vertically balanced and so stays out of the shot.  One of the issues with the Samsung Gear is that the short handle means you have a lot of hand in any photo.  The shape of the Ricoh Theta minimizes that problem.  A good 360 camera should be stick shaped to minimize hand in the shot.

The last piece on 360 media making concerns the audience.  At the ECOO Conference keynote the ever aware Colin Jagoe asked the obvious question, did you get everyone to sign waivers?  It’s a question you see on lots of people’s faces when they see you take a 360 photo or video.  The answer to this runs back to the idea of a director or photographer directing the viewer’s vision.

If I take a photo or video of a person I’m pointing the camera at them and they are the subject of it.  As the subject of a piece of media it’s fair to ask if that subject should have a say over whether or not I can make them the focus of my media making.  However, since the 360 camera isn’t taking a picture of them (it’s taking a picture of everything), they aren’t the focused subject of my media.

The assumption they are working under is one that has been drilled into us subconsciously by the directed, ‘windowed’ media we’ve had up until now.  If someone points a camera at you it is about you, at least mostly.  If someone takes a 360 image in the same moment you are just one of many possible focuses in that image.  If I had any advice for those pursed lips I see whenever I take a 360 media image it would be, ‘chill out, it’s not all about you.’

The law around this is fairly straightforward:  “when people are in a public space, they’ve already forfeited some of their right to privacy… Generally, as long as the images of people aren’t offensive, defamatory or unreasonably invade their privacy, you don’t have to get every person in the crowd to sign a release.”

360 media, because of its lack of point of view, is even less likely to invade anyone’s rights to privacy, especially if you’re taking an image in a public space with many people in it.  It’s going to take a while for people to realize that 360 media isn’t all about them just because they happened to be in the vicinity when it occurred.  The short answer to Colin’s question on Twitter is easy, “I don’t have to get a waiver from you dude!”

There are a number of production and social issues around 360/immersive media and I’m sure we’ll be working them out for years to come.  Spielberg is currently working on the VR futurist movie adaption of Ready Player One, coming out in the spring.  He is developing a lot of VR/immersive/360 content for that film – it may be the first big budget picture to really embrace immersive 360 media.  I imagine he’s working through a lot of these problems in post production (green screening out the crew in 360 shots?).

I haven’t even gotten into the technical requirements of 360 media production.  If you think hi-def ‘windowed’ video makes a lot of data, 4k 360 video will knock you flat on your back.  The 8k camera I’ve yet to get going requires such a strange, high performance SD card that I’ve had to special order it.  The camera is going to use tens of gigs of data to make even short videos and post-processing on even a decent desktop computer will take 15 minutes for every minute of footage.  Working in high def 360 footage is very storage and processor heavy work.

All of this will get sorted out in time and the benefits of immersive 360 media are obvious to anyone who has tried it.  We discovered that Google Street View is now available in Google Earth VR while we were demonstrating it at the conference.  It rocked people to suddenly find themselves standing on a street in Rome in 3D high definition detail.

In the meantime I got to experiment with this emerging medium at #BIT17 and really enjoyed both my time catching moments with it and swearing at how awkward it was to get working.  My next goal is to exercise my new UAV pilot qualifications and explore 360 media from an aerial perspective.  Hey, if it was easy everyone would experiment with emerging digital mediums.

Here is some of our 360° media from the ECOO 2017 Conference in Niagara Falls:

Using the time lapse function (one image every 10 seconds) on the 360Fly camera, here’s a morning of VR demonstrations at Minds on Media on the Wednesday of #BIT17

 

My 13 year old son Max takes you on a virtual tour of Minds on Media on Wednesday morning using the Samsung Gear360 camera and the GimbalGuru mount to steady it.

Pushing the limits of the GuruGimbal and Samsung 360Gear – a motorcycle ride around Elora.  If you’ve got the patience for how long it takes to process in the Samsung  Action Director software it produces some nice, high definition footage.

from Blogger http://ift.tt/2kS1hdG
via IFTTT

Posted on

Finding Parts & Service in a Pandemic

They ain’t kidding, but setting up online ordering without
actually setting up online ordering isn’t great business.

Trying to get parts in is never easy in Canada where no one likes to get their hands dirty.  It’s even harder during a pandemic.  The worst I’ve seen so far is Canadian Tire, who are a complete wreck.  Their web-page barely works and their online ordering system is in shambles.  It turns out aiming for the lowest prices on the cheapest Chinese made goods in the stingiest way possible doesn’t make for a resilient response in an emergency situation.  I’ve yet to pass by the local store without a massive row of annoyed customers standing in line out front of it (I’ve yet to bother going in), and the one attempt at ordering a simple, in-stock item has resulted in weeks waiting.  Don’t go to Canadian tire virtually or in person, they can’t handle it.


Amazon was also a mess early on in this with orders sometimes taking up to three weeks to arrive.  They seemed to improve recently when I actually got an order the same week I made it, but they still aren’t anything like as efficient as they once were.  I just ordered some spark plugs for the Triumph on Amazon (once you’ve got the tank off you want to do all the servicing because it’s a bit of a faff to get in there).  Canadian Tire didn’t have them or won’t let me in to find them.  That Amazon order sat there unresponsive for 3 days before it shifted to ‘shipping’, but in the 24 hours since there are no shipping updates and the shipment is still untrackable.


So, trying to get parts during this slow-burn pandemic sucks right?  Not always!  The other day the trusty Triumph Tiger actually stalled on me at a light.  I looked over every I’ve done on it (which is a lot) and realized I’ve never done the fuel filter, and I’ve put over 25k on it since I’ve had it.  If the Tiger is idling low and stalling on idle fuel starvation from a way-past-due fuel filter is a likely culprit.  But oh no, it’s a pandemic, I’ll never find parts!


The trickiest part was actually finding the fuel filter.  After searching around fuel lines under the tank I ended up looking in the Haynes manual only to discover that the fuel filter on a 955i Tiger is *in* the fuel tank.  This fully submerged fuel filter sits behind a panel on the side of the gas tank.

Finding a fuel filter for a 17 year old European motorcycle during a pandemic should have been a nightmare, but it turned out to be the easiest thing I’ve done parts wise, maybe ever.


Inglis Cycle in London is 140kms away, but they’re still my local Triumph dealer, so I fired them an email asking if they had what I was looking for.  For over ten years from the late ’90s to the mid zeroes Triumph used the 955i engine in the majority of their models, and they all used the submerged fuel filter in the gas tank, so they aren’t uncommon.


Within a couple of hours Ken at Inglis had emailed me back.  After removing the filter assembly from the tank I discovered a pretty beaten up gasket with multiple rips, so I asked if they could add that in with the filter.  Ken had both the filter and gasket in stock and said he could ship it out to me for $15.  Considering it’s a 280km round trip that would have taken me most of a day, fifteen bucks didn’t seem bad.  I thought that meant postal service and a week long wait.  The box showed up the next morning via a courier.  If you’re looking for quick, capable service during a pandemic, Inglis Cycle has their act together.




So the fancy gasket and new filter all went in flawlessly within 24 hours of ordering the parts, but I’m still stuck without a bike because I can’t seem to find anyone to safety the Honda and the spark-plugs I’d ordered from Amazon two days before I even began emailing Inglis are still in the ether.  The moral of this is I should have just ordered the spark plugs from them too and cancelled Amazon and their inconsistent service.  The other lesson learned is that once you find dependable service during a social distancing slow down, make sure you reward it with your spending power.

The trusty Tiger is in pieces instead of putting on miles thanks to Amazon’s hit and miss service.

from Blogger https://ift.tt/2U1KqqH
via IFTTT

Posted on

Beautiful Sunset Ride

T’was a lovely evening and everyone was napping or having quiet time, so I pulled the Tiger out and went for a cool, sunset ride up and down the Grand River.  Almost no traffic at the end of the day, but lots of bugs on my visor when I got back.

 Here are some photos of the ride.  If you’re curious about how I’m doing this, I’m getting an article on it published in Adventure Bike Rider, but in the meantime you can find the how-to on my photography blog here.


 All photos taken on a Ricoh Theta clamped to the wing mirror.  Screen grabs were post-processed in Adobe Lightroom.  The ‘little planet’ photos were uploaded through the Theta software to the Theta website and then it’s a one button click to get the tiny planet look:

Post from RICOH THETA. – Spherical Image – RICOH THETA

Post from RICOH THETA. – Spherical Image – RICOH THETA

Triumph Tiger sunset ride – Spherical Image – RICOH THETA

from Blogger https://ift.tt/2JH7Hdu
via IFTTT

Posted on

How to Resolve Poor Technical Fluency in Ontario Education

Originally published on Dusty World in April of 2018, two years before the COVID19 Pandemic:  https://temkblog.blogspot.com/2018/04/how-to-resolve-poor-technical-fluency.html

I’m revising my Computer Technology (TEJ) course offerings to encourage students of all technical skill levels to become more fluent with the digital tools used in pretty much every job these days. This has happened, in part, because of an article I read a few months ago about the atrocious technical skills human beings in general, and our graduates in particular, have.

Teaching computer technology has a number problems associated with it at a systemic level in Ontario education, but this is my local attempt to resolve some of those problems in terms of accessibility and functionality.

 

The presentation above describes how even a least a basic understanding of computer technology has become a useful skill in pretty much every pathway a student can take.  From straight into the workplace, through apprenticeships and college to PhDs, being able to make functional use of computers will assist you in many aspects of your Twenty-First Century workplace.


I was recently talking to a dairy farmer who was telling me about the computer network they use for milk capture and assessment.  This wireless system allows them to keep track of individual cow health and has produced a significant bump in the quantity and quality of their produce; he also thought it made for happier cows.  Last summer we gave a ride to a French PhD student from the University of Guelph who got stuck on a bicycle in a thunderstorm, he was a doctor of genetic engineering.  When I asked him if he wished he’d studied anything else he immediately said, ‘computer programming.’  When I asked why he said that all of the gene sequencing they are doing is taking place in computer simulations and not being able to program meant he couldn’t do it as well as he wanted to.  From farmers to gene sequencers – technical fluency in computer technology is influencing and redefining the work they are doing.

Individualized technology training for students at all
levels of experience and skill.

My previous approach in M-level (post secondary bound) TEJ (computer technology) courses was to focus on students looking to make a career in the field.  This intensity frightened away a lot of students who were just looking to increase their technical fluency.  I’d initially thought this might have been resolved by offering essential level computer tech courses, but the poor handling of students in this high school stream made for an expensive and frustrating semester dealing with several students who have been groomed by the system to expect zero consequences for bad behaviour.  My goal now is to make M level courses more accessible and engaging for all students, regardless of technical experience.  I’m hoping that this also brings in more female students as they are vanishingly few in our conservative, genderized school where digital technology isn’t considered an appropriate course of study for a girl.

 
I’ve changed my grading and assessment from an absolute skills analysis to a vectored improvement approach.  I don’t measure what students know, I measure how much their knowledge and skills have improved, and grade them based on that improvement.  In this way a student with no background in computers can still improve their fluency and get grades that don’t drive them away from the course.  Post secondary focused students tend to be marks focused, so holding them to hard standards when they don’t have the background means chasing people out of computer tech, but if I treat it like a form of literacy rather than a specialty, students of all experience levels can improve their technical fluency without worrying about grades.  


Research indicates that the general technical fluency of Canada’s population is abysmal.  Holding students to an absolute standard isn’t a way to induce them into voluntarily (unlike geography, history, phys-ed and art, ICT isn’t a required course in any Ontario classroom) improving this deficit.  If we believe the simple fact that information and communication technical fluency will help you in pretty much every job these days, then this approach focused on accessibility and empowerment should be the norm, not the exception.

from Blogger https://ift.tt/2EbDvjA
via IFTTT

Posted on

Ontario Education’s Neglected Computer Technology Curriculum

The primary function of Dusty World is for me to reflect on my teaching practice in order to resolve problems.  This one’s going to sound like a lot of complaining, but it leads directly to the following posts that suggests outlets and ways to manage this overwhelming curriculum.


***


I’ve long had difficulty managing the byzantine history and fractured approach to computer technology in Ontario high school classrooms.  Our subject council email is clogged with desperate pleas for qualified teachers to fill absences that, if not filled, will result in the closure of programs; most of them don’t get filled.  Meanwhile, existing computer-tech programs are treated as an afterthought, often overloading teachers and students with multi-stacked classrooms.

A colleague recently noted that less than 30% of Ontario high schools even offer the computer technology course of study.  In 2018, being able to make effective use of computers is a fundamental skill that will assist students across the entire spectrum of employment and post-secondary training, yet few students enjoy access to this vital Twenty-First Century skillset.  If you can get a computer to work for you, you immediately have a socio-economic advantage; fluency in computer technology is foundational skill in the Twenty-First Century, but only 30% of students in Ontario can access it?

Ontario technology curriculum is based around absolute skills arranged in a hierarchy, so as courses progress they become less and less accessible to students with no previous experience.  This is at odds with the TEJ3M curriculum that describes the course as having no pre-requisite, yet the technical expectations of TEJ3M are complex and wide ranging (starting on page 76 – give them a read, they’re astonishing).  In post-secondary programs and industry, any one of the strands in this curriculum would be its own course of study and most are degree programs, but in Ontario high schools they are all lumped together in a course with no previous experience required.


Many students, even those who have taken the optional junior TEJ course, struggle to grasp the wide range of knowledge and build the experience required to cover the 3M curriculum.  Senior TEJ M-level courses are the equivalent of asking a student to walk into senior advanced science with no previous experience and then study biology, chemistry, environmental science, space science and physics simultaneously.  All of this highlights Ontario education’s poor handling of computer technology.  Yet fluency with information and communication technology is becoming a fundamental requirement in pretty much every pathway a student can choose in 2018, while specialists in the field enjoy clear advantages in the workplace.  I feel I’m well within my professional scope to revise and make these poorly formulated requirements more accessible for my students.  In the process I hope to address, in a small way, the digital illiteracy that plagues Canada’s (and the world’s) population while also supporting my digitally focused experts.


The fractured computer technology curriculum is one of many reasons why there are a dearth of educators qualified to teach computer tech (less than 30% of Ontario high schools even offer the subject).  Our subject group frequently gets emails saying programs from ICT to robotics will be shut down unless a qualified teacher can be found, but there are none available.  This seems at odds with how many computer tech programs are treated in the few places they exist.  In our own board we have schools closing down irreplaceable computer tech labs in order to support subjects more designed to entertain than employ.


The few teachers willing and able to take on digital technologies are overwhelmed by the expansive curriculum they are expected to attempt.  My technical background was as a millwright and then a computer technician.  I am professionally competent in information technology and networking and have a considerable (though not equal) amount of experience in electrical work.  My experience in electronics is passing at best, but I make do.  My coding background, which I’m also supposed to be an expert in, is mostly self-taught (Ontario has been failing to provide an applied technical education for computer focused students for decades).  Finding a teacher who can teach the Ontario computer technology curriculum is the equivalent of finding someone who isn’t just qualified academically in multiple fields, but is also has working experience across multiple industries; if they do exist they are polymaths making millions.  We accept science teachers who have never worked a day in the private sector, but computer technology teachers are required to show years of industry experience in addition to academic qualifications.


Then there is cost of teaching tech.  I used to take home about $920 a week as a millwright in 1991, and that was with a full pension and benefits package.  As a senior teacher with 13 years of experience, 5 years of expensive university training and three additional qualifications including an honour’s specialist I had to spend months and thousands of dollars on, I bring home about $250 more a week in 2018.  I often wonder why I’m teaching when I could have been making a lot more doing what I’m teaching, and with a lot less political nonsense.

The vast majority of Ontario Education is
designed to feed that 10% unemployment
rate in the Canadian youth job market.

Then there is the split focus of Ontario education with digital technologies falling somewhere in between.  If you teach in academic classrooms you’re what the whole system is designed around.  If you’re teaching a hard tech like transportation, carpentry or metal shop at least you fall into another category, albeit one that is often treated like more like a necessary evil than a valid pathway for millions of people.  However, digital technologies get the worst of both worlds.  Hard techs have reasonable course caps of 21 students in order to ensure safety.  Academic courses in standard classrooms get capped at 31, but digital techs have no specific Ministry size limits and are capped at whatever local admin wants.  At my school that’s a class cap of 31 students, the same as a senior academic English class, which is absurd.  31 students might work (barely) when you’re working out of texts in rows, but trying to teach 31 students soldering with guns running over 400 degrees, or working inside computers with power supplies powerful enough to knock someone unconscious?  


Safety is a constant stress in the computer tech lab.  We’re expected to maintain all the same safety standards and testing as hard techs, but with a third more students.  On top of that, since my classes are capped at 31, if 20 students sign up for it (which would run as a section in any hard tech), my courses are dropped or combined into stacked nightmares of assessment, management and differentiation.  Classes that only load to 60% are usually cut.  Last semester I had five preps, four of them in one period.  If you think the breadth of computer technology curriculum is already too much, try teaching it in a stacked class with four (4!) different sections at once.  The majority of computer tech teachers experience this joy every semester.  Taking all of this into account, it’s no wonder there aren’t more computer technology courses running in the province.


With little hope of the curriculum getting sorted or computer technology being treated as anything more than an afterthought, I’m still working to try and make my courses as applied, effective and accessible to as many students as I can, because it’s important that young people understand the technology that so influences their lives.  If more people knew how it all worked, we’d have less abuse of it.


I spent time on March Break getting my heart tested because I’ve been having trouble sleeping and have been getting a jittery feeling in my chest.  My doctor tells me I’m strong and healthy physically, the nerves and jittery feeling are a result of stress.  I can’t imagine where that comes from.  He suggests I take steps to reduce it, but I told him it’s not in me to mail in what I’m doing.  I find teaching to be a challenging and rewarding profession and I believe my technical background is an important field of study.  I tend to dig my heels in when I believe that something is important, even more so when there is systemic prejudice against it.  I intend to keep fighting for what I believe is important learning for my students, but this is one of those times when swimming against the tide of indifference feels overwhelming.

from Blogger https://ift.tt/2Gs6xlm
via IFTTT

Posted on

Pandemic Reflections: Surrender as a Survival Technique

I’ve written a couple of pandemic teaching reflections recently that I’m not going to publish because staring into that abyss isn’t doing me any good.  What I have put out acknowledges the difficult situation we find ourselves in, how poorly it has been managed and what we can do to fix it, but I don’t know that fixing or improving education is on anyone’s radar in the Ontario government at the moment.

At best, our current government’s interests seem to be driven entirely by making education as cheap as it can be.  At worst I fear the intent is to drive public education into such a state of disrepair that private charter schools will suddenly appear as a solution to this managed failure, but privatization produces a whole new set of problems and charter schools often result in poorer performance at greater cost.  I always thought Ontarians deserved better, but perhaps we don’t.


Meanwhile, we stagger to the end of this absolutely terrible school year that began with the former minister of education telling us our children will learn resiliency by being abused in large classes and ended most recently with the current minister demanding the use of banned software that breaks a number of Canadian privacy laws.  In between this government has belittled and attacked my profession at every turn, and yet they still managed to lose the battle for public support, though that didn’t stop them from forcing a contract on us that degrades system performance in every way during an unprecedented health emergency.

With no end in sight frustrated teachers are rightly complaining about a lack of engagement in this remote learning situation where expectations change week to week, digital divide issues remain largely unaddressed and there are no consequences for a lack of participation.  But we shouldn’t be surprised, ineffective pass rates are the rule in remote elearning – making marks meaningless is the only way the system can push an entire generation of students through the system.


Ask any teacher who has done remote elearning and they’ll tell you that a two-thirds credit achievement rate is about as good as it gets – and that’s in a group of students who volunteered for remote learning and all have the ability to access it.  Attrition is more common in elearning than learning is, they should call it eAttrition.  This is the kind of false economy the repeated demands for mandatory elearning will give us – it’ll look cheap on the surface but high drop out rates will make it more expensive in the long run.  The fact that any Ontario students are still engaged at all in remote learning is a testament to the thousands of teachers doing back-flips to try and reach them by any means available in a system that seems intent on doing it poorly.


While all that’s going on, proudly trans-illiterate teachers are still sniping at the situation and blaming everything on the fact that the medium they grew up with isn’t the medium literacy is delivered in half a century later.  If you can’t navigate the medium, you can’t fully comprehend the message – this is one of the basic foundations of media literacy, yet there are is a majority of righteous teachers intent on protecting this dated idea of what literacy is.  Instead of putting their outmoded concepts of literacy on a pedestal, perhaps it’s time to learn something new and accept that the society you grew up in fifty years ago has moved on significantly.


We’ve always had a hate on for changes in medium, life long learning is just such hard work.  Instead of moving with the times, these Luddites will cling to their habits to the end.  That they’re usually senior teachers in leadership positions with the most secure jobs and highest pay says a great deal about how well our system is able to adapt and stay relevant in a constantly evolving media-scape.


As we stagger to the end of this absurd year I’m just trying to keep my head above water.  I had a momentary sense of traction the other week when we were finally allowed into our school so we could put together some computers that we had sitting in there and get them out to teachers who desperately needed them – over 8 weeks into this remote learning crisis.  Getting out and doing something felt good, maybe too good.  It reminded me of the multi-dimensional approach to teaching I’d always adopted, doing work both in and beyond the classroom, school and even my board to help improve our practice in as many ways as I can.  After getting a taste of it for a day it was difficult to go back to the do less with less mandate of remote learning.


Instead of engaging in this simple and inexpensive solution to minimizing the digital divide on a system wide scale, I’m back at home repeatedly hearing about a digital divide that no one in management seems to want to acknowledge.  Only about one third of our staff responded to our short survey of who needed tech at home.  Even though we resolved the digital divide for those staff members, two thirds of them in our building may very well be trying to remote teach without the right tools.  In other schools across our board and across the province we could be addressing the digital divide in terms of a lack of technology access for staff.  Suddenly finding myself back to doing less isn’t how I approach my profession and is a source of constant frustration that I have to let go of less it drive me mad!


Which is where I’m at on this lovely Saturday morning.  Not caring eases the anxiety and frustration, but it also means the clowns running this circus get to sell it off to their cousins who happen to be starting up charter schools.  In the process we will have sold Ontario’s children to these greedy bastards and made things worse for everyone.


Even though I’m exhausted and feeling defeated by this today, I’ll be back when I’ve had a couple of days away, because I have an important job that it’s important to do well.  I may be playing dead right now (and I’m not even doing that particularly well), but I’m just waiting for an opportunity to move when we have a chance of winning Ontario education back from the hands of this circus that a minority of mis-guided people elected.

from Blogger https://ift.tt/36rywuZ
via IFTTT

Posted on

Hot Weather Riding

I tend to run hot, body temperature wise, and find that I can ride well into the single digits without too much worry.  My people come from a cold, wet place and that’s what I’m built for.  Heat, and especially humidity, are my achilles heel.  I’ve gone to great lengths to try and find hot weather riding gear that will allow me to ride when it’s sweltering.


Currently my go-to hot weather gear is a Fieldsheer mesh jacket in the lightest colours I could find.  I’ve never understood why someone would go with a black mesh jacket.  It defeats the purpose of trying to stay cool, unless you’re just aiming for the other kind of cool.


This jacket is brilliant.  It keeps the sun off you while feeling like you’re not wearing a jacket at all.  I think I’m actually cooler wearing this than I am in a t-shirt; much less likely to burn anyway.


The pants are where I’m having trouble.  A few years ago I found the most ventilated pants I could from Twisted Throttle.  These Macna vented pants do a great job of running air over my legs, but do very little where I need it most around my crotch.  To supplement those pants I got some riding shorts with a crotch pad, but they strangely disappeared, leaving me to ride with regular cotton underwear which is not remotely up to the job.

One of the great things about the convertible Roof Helmet is that you can swing it open for some wind on your face.  Even in that configuration the visor covers most of your face protecting you from Canadian sized summer bug impacts.  I just wish Roofs were a bit better ventilated across the top (the newer models might be, but they won’t give me one to test).  An adventure/off road styled Roof with a roomier chin bar and more ventilation across the top and back of the helmet would be a must-buy for me.


A long time ago I found the Alpine Stars vented SMX-1 boots and have never looked back.  I’ve put tens of thousands of kilometres on them and beaten them senseless, but they still do the job so well that anything else on my feet doesn’t feel right when changing gears.  They also keep my feet cool and are even good for walking around in (though they are very broken in).  When and if these ones give up the ghost I’ll go get another pair just like them.  The lightest ones now have a touch of Valentino yellow on them, which is no bad thing.  They keep changing the colours, so maybe I’ll get lucky and have a shot at some Lucifer Orange ones when I need them.


I’m focusing on fine tuning the bike/bum interface.  The best time of year to buy summer gear is the fall, and this fall is no exception.  Klim gear is usually a bit too rich for me, but I was able to find some vented Klim Savanah pants for under $200CAD.  I’m looking forward to seeing if the Klims really are all that.


I’m also replacing the biking underwear that wandered off.  It isn’t cheap, but a good pair of technical underwear was the suggestion from many people when I asked.  Sixs makes a wide variety of riding focused sports underwear, so I went with the butt padded, seamless boxers.  The other pair I had looked a little less fancy, so I’m hoping this will be money well spent.  Their range of gear covers everything from top to bottom, so this might be the first of many purchases.

In order to keep the dreaded monkey butt from rearing its ugly head during hot weather riding you need moisture wicking underwear.  On my long ride last weekend my cotton boxers were soaked when I got back and I was so sore I couldn’t sit down.  You do not want to get sweaty and wet under there, but your butt is on a black, vinyl seat so it’s going to trap heat.  I’ve been looking into options to introduce some air under me.  Adventure Bike Rider Magazine mentioned Cool Covers a few issues back, but they don’t make a cover for my fifteen year old Tiger.


Another option is the Bead Rider seat cover.  I’ve heard mixed reviews on beaded seats though.  They work well on shorter rides but over a long day they start to feel like torture.  I’m still considering my options here but the Cool Cover’s futuristic look appeals more than the cabbie look of a beaded seat cover.


When I asked online, two super-stars who had just managed to complete a Bun Burner Gold very hard to do long distance ride had some hard won advice.  Everyone swears by technical sports underwear that wick moisture, so that’s an easy fix even if you just go for Under Armour or something like.  Wolfe’s suggestion of a Bill Meyers custom seat isn’t cheap but isn’t as expensive as I feared it might be (about the same as a new set of tires).  The old padding on my seat would benefit from a refresh and would go a long way towards making the Tiger all day rideable.


His other suggestion of the King of Fleece cover follows a popular bike habit of using pelts to separate your butt from unforgiving vinyl.  Sheepskin is a traditional choice, but I suspect some of the engineered solutions above might produce better results.


There are various new seat options, but not for my old Tiger, and spending that kind of money on a new seat for an old bike doesn’t make much sense.  If I’m going that route, I think I’ll be giving Bill Meyers a call.  A Canadian winter would be a good time to send the seat in.


I’m curious to see how the new undies and pants will do on hot future rides (which are only going to become more common).  The old, stiff seat may eventually get some attention, and I have a contact in mind in Bill Meyers.  You’ve got lots of options for finding ways to ride in comfort even in hot and humid weather.  Hopefully this helps you find ones that work.

from Blogger https://ift.tt/2DndSkW
via IFTTT

Posted on

Metacognition In COVID19 Isolation

The mighty Peter McAsh shared a link to Yale’s most popular course: The Science of Well Being, which is designed to address the psychological misconceptions we all labour under that have produced some of the worst depression in human history.  Laurie Santos, the professor running the course, describes the course (which has since become Yale’s most popular) as a necessary response to the plunging rates of happiness in her students.  It’s free on Coursera right now.


I’m only a day in and it has already raised a number of interesting questions around how I approach things.  I’m currently watching Martin Seligman’s TEDtalk on positive psychology:


It’s worth your time.  Seligman was a pivotal researcher into applying psychology to finding happiness rather than just treating illness.  I’ve since been sucked into Dan Gilbert’s The Surprising Science of Happiness.  Dan’s book was suggested in the course.  In his TEDtalk he’s hard pitching the idea that our reflexive over estimation of outcomes to our choices makes us select things that make us less happy – we overestimate the opportunities choice gives us and it seldom makes us happy.  He gives the example of Harvard students who select a course that gives them more choice, but those choices produced a lot of unhappy students.  This has some interesting ramifications in a world where choice is considered a sacred right, whether it’s choice of government, partner or anything else.  We’ve designed our society around choice, but choice is a mechanism that defies happiness.


If we’re pre-programmed to select for choice (which I suspect is another word for control), and more choice makes us less happy, then we’re pre-set to make ourselves less happy.  Our consumerist economic system and our democratic systems are designed to make us less happy – and they’re working.


That I’m looking at this at a time when everyone feels hard done by due to their individual freedoms being curtailed by the COVID19 pandemic is pretty ironic.  Perhaps people will find some happiness in their lack of choice, but soon enough that’ll all be forgotten as we struggle to restart all the social systems that are strangling us.






Some post apocalyptic music by Sturgill Simpson helps frame the situation…

Make Art Not Friends

Lookin’ out the window
At a world on fire
Flames see the end is near
Seen all the sights
Tired of the lights
So you can let me off right here

This town’s getting crowded
Truth’s been shrouded
Think it’s time to change up the sound

Yeah, the wheels keep turning
The flames get higher
Another cycle rolls around

Face in the mirror’s all skin and bone
Bloodshot eyes and a heart of stone
Never again, I’d rather be alone
Think I’m gonna just stay home
And make art, not friends

I love saying “No” to all the “Yes” men
Just to see the look on their face
I love how everybody knows what’s best
But nobody knows their place

Sucker every second, stack ’em up to the sky
For every winner there’s a hundred that die
So you get yours, stay out of mine
Here’s to the memories, where do I sign?

Face in the mirror’s all skin and bone
Bloodshot eyes and a heart of stone
Never again, I’d rather be alone
Think I’m gonna just stay home
And make art, not friends

Oh it’s getting hard to find a good friend
So close the door behind you
Falling when more come in
Nobody writes, nobody calls
Nobody bother ’cause I’m over it all

Face in the mirror’s all skin and bone
Bloodshot eyes and a heart of stone
Never again, I’d rather be alone
Think I’m gonna just stay home
Think about my friends




from Blogger https://ift.tt/2wDdgVJ
via IFTTT

Posted on

Escape

It’s that time of year again.  Dreams of escape surround me.  If I left right now I could get in and out of Tuktoyaktuk on Canada’s north shore before the snows arrive (just).  I might have to bomb up there in a van just to get out in time, but then it’d be heading south across the Americas for months, chasing the summer.


The west coast as autumn falls would be glorious.  As the snows start to fly in Canada, I’d be into Mexico and Central America.  An unrushed few weeks working my down through the many border crossings would be much less stressful if I didn’t have to be somewhere somewhen.  Crossing the Darien Gap from Panama to Columbia is five days on a boat and a chance to take a break from the saddle.

The boat lands in Columbia.  Once in South America I’d find somewhere to bed down over the holidays in Colombia or Ecuador before rolling south into the South American summer.  Spending Christmas on an empty Andean shoreline facing the never ending Pacific would be glorious.


I’d push south and see Machu Picchu after the holidays and then try and catch at least one stage of the Dakar Rally as it thunders around Peru in January.  A Peruvian desert stage would be awesome.

As summer wore on in the southern hemisphere, I’d continue south to Ushuaia on the southern end of Argentina.  After going from arctic to antarctic, I’d work my way back up to Buenos Aires and start the process of packing up the bike for a trans-Atlantic crossing to Cape Town.



https://adventuremotorcycletravel.com/listing/darien-gap/
http://wildcardsailing.com/motorcycle-shipping-to-colombia/
https://tkmotorcyclediaries.blogspot.com/2017/04/todd-blubaughs-too-far-gone.html
…for what it feels like to peer over the edge into a never ending ride.

from Blogger https://ift.tt/2QcHMLc
via IFTTT