LPOD - biltong and jerky

Ever since I was a kid, watching American movies, I had heard about jerky or jerked beef. When I asked my parents what it was, they said it was what Americans called biltong. I guess that was a fair enough answer to give to a kid.

Then I went to the US and tasted jerky and, I'm sorry, but it isn't biltong. No offence to any American readers, but I found it vile.

We can get both jerky and biltong in the UK, albeit not readily, but I only buy jerky for the dog. Largely because of its convenient flat strips.

Some of our South African friends who have emigrated to the USA have explained biltong to their new friends as being 'like jerky - only nicer.'

So today I decided to look into what the difference is between the two.

Both are dried, spiced meats, but...

Jerky is prepared by cutting meat into thin strips and soaking it in a sweet, spicy marinade (this is what gives it its sweetish taste). Thereafter, it is cured by drying near a smoky fire.

Biltong is made in much larger pieces, following the grain of the muscle, which are spiced (a key ingredient being ground coriander seeds) and then dried. Sometimes they strips are soaked in a vinegar solution before spicing. Saltpetre can sometimes be used in the spicing.

Both are available in an increasing range of flavours as makers experiment with different recipes.

Both owe their origins to a need to preserve meat. Jerky traces its origins back to native Americans and Incas. Biltong has more recent origins in the Afrikaner voortrekkers who struck out to find a place where they could live free of the oppression of the English.

The name jerky derives from the Quechua term Charqui, which means "to burn (meat)". The name biltong derives from the Dutch 'bil' (rump) and 'tong' (strip, or tongue).

The most common meat used for both is beef, although both have been made from a wide variety of meats. Jerky has been made from as wide ranging sources as wild game, venison, elk, caribou, kangaroo and moose, even turkey, ostrich, salmon, alligator, tuna and horse meat have been used. Kudu and ostrich biltong are both very common, but I have tasted hippopotamus biltong (bleagh) and heard of it being made from all sorts of other meats, including elephant. Dried fish are also available in South Africa, but they tend not to be called biltong.

Nowadays large industrial steel cabinets/ovens exist for the production of both.

Lessons we don't teach

This evening our elder son is at a birthday party. The birthday boy invited him to sleep over so, instead of fetching him at the agreed time, we dropped off an overnight bag. When he texted us to tell us that he had been invited to sleep over and we hit on the idea of packing a bag for him, our younger son volunteered to do the packing. I found him standing staring tearfully into his brother's wardrobe.

"What's up?"

"I can't believe I complain about my clothes! There's nothing in here! HE HAS NO CLOTHES!"

Now this is not entirely true. Our elder son does have clothes, but he has struggled to find a job since we moved and his allowance isn't enough to secure a plentiful supply. We buy the things our boys need to wear to school, but their casual clothes are officially their own problem. Of course, every now and again, we take them somewhere and augment their wardrobes, but we deliberately keep the leash fairly short, because (a) we want them to appreciate what they have and take care of them and (b) we want them to earn their own money and appreciate the amount of work each new pair of Nike trainers represents.

The thing is our elder son never complains. He just gets on with it. He makes do with what he has. Unlike his brother, he won't throw a strop and refuse to go out because a particular pair of jeans is in the wash.

Our younger son was so convicted by the evidence of his own eyes, that he has spent the entire evening - of his own volition - washing and ironing every item of his brother's clothes that he can find. Now we didn't teach him that... not in so many words, anyway. But people don't only learn what they are explicitly taught. They learn all sorts of stuff along the way. What a neat formal/informal study!

When I saw him heading into his brother's room with a massive pile of stuff, I said "What a sweet brother!"

His reply?

"Yeah, he is."

My heart is full to bursting!

LPOD - glycogen

So there I was having my feet done, and I explained to the technician about my pic of the day and learning point of the day features. "What can you teach me that I can share?" I asked.

Without so much as a pause for breath, she began to explain the characteristics of glycogen - a key ingredient in the product she was using on my feet. She explained how it was made from sugar cane, was a completely natural substance (and before I could say, "So's the venom of a black mamba"), she explained how it occurs naturally in the human body. How it exfoliates, softens and rejuvenates skin - hence its popularity in anti-aging products.

She said a lot more, but my brain wasn't really in gear. Hey, my feet were being massaged and there was soothing music on... I was floating away somewhere!

But I did check it out when I got home and discovered:

• The uterus stores glycogen during pregnancy to nourish the embryo
• Glycogen is the storage form of glucose in animals and humans which is analogous to the starch in plants
• Glycogen is synthesized and stored mainly in the liver and the muscles
• Structurally, glycogen is very similar to amylopectin (another substance hot in the anti-aging product market)

Will that do for today?

pic of the day - pedicure

I don't have very pretty feet (to my deep regret), but I do like to take good care of them. Since I injured my shoulder (coming up for 4 months ago, now), just the simple act of putting on socks is sheer agony, so my Sunday night foot pamper ritual has gone out the window. Today I decided enough was enough and I betook myself to my local salon for a deluxe pedicure. Just check out the hot bootie thing on my right foot - I reckon that might just be next season's must have footwear item!

LPOD - glass teeth!

My learning point today arose out of the belated research into the kind of filling my dentist recently used in two of my teeth. My dentist pays me the respect of assuming (a) that I care about what he is doing in/to my mouth and (b) that I will understand what he is talking about. He encourages me to google things.

So I do.

The fillings he recently gave me are a semi-permanent solution which will probably have to be replaced by crowns in about 4-5 years.

They are called glass ionomers and are made, believe it or not, of a "mixture of acrylic acids and fine glass powders". One of the major benefits is the additional protection they offer by releasing a small amount of fluoride. Another is that less of the tooth needs to be drilled away than is the case with amalgam fillings.

The reason that they are only semi-permanent is that they take a bit of a battering when used on chewing surfaces. They mimic tooth colour, but they are less translucent than enamel. In very rare cases, there can be an allergic reaction to them.

I'll spare you a picture of my teeth to go with this post!

There are days...

... when I am particularly homesick!

Recently a young friend of ours got married. She is the director of a programme called Won Life, which we visited on our last trip to South Africa. They do some pretty amazing work among people with HIV/AIDS.

Today, I got to see the photos online.

She was walked down the aisle by her grandfather, because her Dad conducted the service. He married us, too - nearly 21 years ago!

The song item was sung by one of South Africa's foremost singers.

My husband's sister and brother-in-law were in attendance as were my best friend and her husband, and several of our close friends from Cape Town. The magnificent photos were taken by one of Cape Town's top wedding photographers who happens to attend the same church as all these much loved and missed aforementioned people.

It was with mixed feelings that we looked at their smiling faces in the photos.

There are days...

pic of the day - cruga

As often as I can think of an excuse to do so, I pop into this unprepossessing looking place. As you can tell if you know your flags, it stocks South African and Zimbabwean goods. It started life as a biltong and droeëwors (DREW-uh VORCE) factory and grew organically in response to customer demand into the haven that it is today. I go there even when I don't need anything. It's the one place in the UK where everyone sounds like me, everyone is forthright, and everyone 'gets' me. What's not to like?

LPOD - body language

Today's learning point is more of a thinking point.

I attended an online session of the AACE group today. The presenter was Teemu Arina who was challenging us to consider new ways of engaging learners online. But the point I want to bring out actually arose from the back channel.

Sidelight: it's quite often the case that the most interesting conversations arise out of tangential exchanges on the back channel, which is why I don't understand why anyone would object to its existence - after all, the presentation is recorded and you can always come back to it. The back channel is immediate and spontaneous as people don't tend to have the time to editorialise their thoughts before the conversation moves on. Of course, it is also recorded, but when you're reading this stream of out-of-context text, it loses a lot of its punch.

Anyhoo...

The discussion was round body language. There were those present in the session who felt that f2f presentation would always have the advantage over online presentations because of the advantage offered by body language. One attendee made the very valid point that body language can also be a distinct disadvantage. This challenged several people's thinking and divided the responses. One person flatly disagreed, saying that 'body language is truth', to which I responded 'Whose truth?'

Let's think about this for a moment. In many parts of Africa, it is considered very rude to look into the eyes of a person you don't know well. In the western world, you would consider someone who didn't make eye contact rude, or perhaps shifty.

In some parts of the world, we nod to say yes and shake our heads to say no. In other parts it's the reverse. I forget whether it's Indians or Pakistanis (maybe both) who waggle their heads from side to side in the vertical plane, and I have no idea whether that means yes or no.

Some cultures poke themselves in the chest with thumb or forefinger to indicate 'me' or 'I'. Others point at their faces. There are enormous cultural variations in the way we say 'come here' or in the way we insult one another.

Some body language - both deliberately communicative and subliminal - can be very culture specific and can be confusing to people from other cultures.

There are also issues of personal body language habit. A person with a tic can, through no fault of their own, prove quite a distraction from their own presentation. I have a habit of twirling my hair around my fingers. I have done it all my life and it drives my mother scatty. No doubt it drives a few other people scatty, too - especially when I use my right hand, which results in the clanking of my millionty five bangles (mind you, I usually remove those for a f2f workshop). If you were sitting in on an online presentation I delivered, you would be spared that irritation.

While I can see why people like to see the body language of the presenter, but I would argue that it is not always an advantage, and it certainly doesn't always foster improved understanding!

And I would urge caution before calling it 'truth'.

McDonalds - an economic cockroach?

Before I start, let me say that I am well aware that Mythbusters (what a great show!) has proven that it will be fruitflies, not cockroaches that survive a nuclear holocaust, but the idiom persists.

On the way to the mall today, my sons and I noticed that the premises of the erstwhile knick-knack shop had been taken over by a modestly priced dress exchange-type place (although they had confusingly not changed the signage). Everywhere we go in town, we see boarded up shops and pubs.

Later, as we were sitting on the mezzanine floor of our local shopping centre, eating junk food (see today's pic of the day), I noticed that one of the stores below us was empty. It had been the premises of the last bastion of the B income group in our little mall - everything else is distinctly aimed at the C and D income bands.

My elder son made a remark that will stay with me for a while. He joked that, when the economic crisis was over, McDonalds would be the only survivor - a bit like Taco Bell in the movie Demolition Man (don't diss - I like that movie!). He decided (and he also saw that episode of Mythbusters) that they would prove to be the economic equivalent of the cockroach.

It doesn't bear thinking about!

pic of the day - junk food

I'm not really a fast food fan, but every now and again, we go and grab a burger. When we do, it has to be Burger King, because they flame grill their patties and we like our barbecues! No McDonalds' fried patties for us, thanks. We just can't handle that much grease!

Bravery

Today I met a very brave woman. She was walking in the park with two friends and their dogs. She was an elderly woman and suffering enormous pain from arthritis and a bad back. There wasn't anything about her outward appearance that attracted attention. Well, maybe the fact that she and one friend were each holding the end of a short piece of knotted rope. She was holding very tightly onto her end, as if afraid to let it go.

As she and her attached friend moved away, I asked the third woman if the lady used the rope in some therapeutic way to cope with her bad back.

It turns out that the lady suffers from agoraphobia, but is determined to beat it. So she ties her wrist to her friend's and they take a short walk through the park every day. Each day she walks a little further.

I have never suffered from agoraphobia, but I am both claustrophobic and bathophobic (so submarines are pretty much out of the question) - and I am not much good with heights, either. I know how utterly debilitating it is to suffer from an irrational fear, and I absolutely tip my hat to this frail, arthritic old lady, determined not to become a prisoner to her own fears.

The time may have come...

Twice since the beginning of the year, South African Airways crews have been found to be smuggling large quantities of drugs. Normally this would just up the amount of teasing I come in for.

But today I heard from a cousin who also lives in the UK that, in 2007, no fewer than 6000 Chinese nationals entered the UK on genuine South African passports for which they apparently paid £5K apiece.

When I consider the lengths I have to go to to renew the passport that has been my legal right since my birth, my bile rises. I must take at least one day off work. I must pay to travel down to London. I must stand in long queues. I must provide my thumbprint and a range of other proofs that I am who I say I am and that, as such, I am entitled to a passport... which then takes 4-6 months to arrive.

Once I have this passport in my hot little hands, I have the privilege of being on the high alert list with the officials at UK Customs and Immigration. Oh yes. We're right up there with Bolivia, Nigeria and central Asia, it seems.

Perhaps the time has come to finally shrug and get a UK passport. This means taking an exam to prove that I understand the concept of Britishness. An exam, by the way, that I have tried out on British friends and colleagues, all of whom failed it!

I know I will never really be British. After 10 years in the UK, I could never regard myself as such, and British people will never regard me as such. There are those among them who never miss an opportunity to say so. For this reason, I always thought it would be somewhat hypocritical to get a British passport. I am now rapidly approaching the 'what the heck' stage.

Sigh

pic of the day - guilty pleasure

This is my regular Tuesday night date with Gil Grissom (William Peterson) of the original CSI. Such a pity it's gone all soap-opera-esque since Sarah did a bunk! I watch all the flavours of CSI - even repeat episodes. I do stop short of organising my life around the TV schedule, but the rest of the family knows that only under exceptional circumstances will they get to watch what they want during the first UK screening of any episode!

I confess that I do find the Sunglasses of Justice of Horatio Caine in the Miami version somewhat tedious, but I still watch.

At last I can reveal...

I am so excited! Yesterday was my husband's birthday. I was so pleased with myself regarding the gift I got him, that I was hopping from foot to foot for days beforehand.

So what did I get him?

I bought four tickets to see Jeff Dunham (or Jeffaffah Dun-HAM for those in the know) live in London in April. We're going as a family, which is a significant aspect of the gift - my husband loves doing things with his boys and is delighted that each passing year opens new possibilities of things we can do together. Up until comparitively recently, we could never have entertained the idea of taking our kids with us to something like this.

I am crazy about Jeff Dunham's work. And let me tell you, I never expected to become a fan of a ventriloquist in my middle years! But this material is not kids' stuff - not because it's particularly profane, it's just a different level of humour. I am especially crazy about Peanut, who you can see in this clip, which has got to be one of my all time favourites. I love the fact that Peanut demonstrates an awareness of the relationship between them - there's a neat tension between his expression of 'independent', unflattering views of Jeff, and an acknowledgement of his dependence of Jeff as his manipulator/vocaliser.



You may have noticed that Peanut wears only one shoe. There's one clip where Jeff comments on this and asks him if he lost one, to which Peanut replies "Nope. Found one!"

LPOD - history of the Internet

Thanks to Clive Shepherd (via Twitter) I came across this today - an animation of the history of the Internet. Much of it was stuff I knew already, but there were several bits and bobs that I didn't know.



Quite nicely done, I thought.

Big question: making it up as I go along

This month's big question from LCB is around the economy.

What is the impact of the economy on you and your organization? What are you doing as a result?

You will notice that we are more than halfway through the month and I am only just getting around to answering. This is due to the nature of the response!

You see, I am my organisation! Up until September last year, I was one of 28K people working for a blue chip corporate. Then I found myself peremptorily unemployed. I have been advised by more than one person who is in a position to know about these things, that I had a strong case for constructive dismissal. But that's not really how I roll. I preferred to look on the situation as being a case of divine intervention. I had been thinking about striking out on my own for a while, but I just couldn't pluck up the courage to jump ship. I guess I needed a push, and I got one.

Had I been working within the blue chip corporate, when this question came up, I wouldn't have been able to answer it, since I never got to see more than my little patch. it was a bit like being in a glass bottomed boat: I only got to see the patch of sea in my immediate environs.

Looking at the timing of the start of my solo venture, just as the economy went into freefall on a scale that made a blip on Everyman's radar, I can adopt one of two stances.

On the down side, L&D is always (foolishly, to my mind) the first thing to go, so organisations cut back on the learning provision to their staff. This means there is less work to be had, so the outlook might seem bleak.

On the up side. As the L&D budget gets cut, so - often - does the L&D headcount. Many companies choose to outsource instead. This is where I come in. Those companies with foresight look at ways in which they can encourage their staff to minimise the impact of the crunch on the bottom line. Sometimes they bring in people like me to help them. So the outlook might seem quite rosy.

I am not an economist. In fact, if there is such a condition as dysfinancia - I have it. I can't trot out models and forecasts and all that malarkey. I have to stick with things like ethos and values and all that intangible stuff.

One thing I have promised myself: no matter how tough it gets, I am not going to start being stingy with my advice and suggestions. I am not suddenly going to start charging people for sharing the benefit of my experience. I am not going to stop contributing to discussion forums where my perspective may be of help to people desperately trying to develop learning solutions on tighter budgets (or even no budget at all, in some cases).

And another thing (I am going to take a deep breath and say this 'out loud', because I have been through a rough patch in which my confidence has ebbed):

I am damned good at what I do!

I understand learning. I understand learners. I am unafraid to ask the difficult questions. I am unafraid to push back and say why a thing should be done differently (or not at all). I am ever ready to champion the cause of the learner and his/her perspective.

Hopefully, all these things will count in my favour. Hopefully, so will things like the fact that, when a client recently approached me for a quote for Articulate training, I told them that if I were making the call on behalf of their (non-profit) organisation, I would opt for the wealth of free resources available from Articulate themselves instead of spending money. And, if I were to spend money, I would opt for the training they provide, since they do so at a price I can't hope to compete with.

Hopefully my integrity will become a hallmark of my brand.

Hopefully I will weather this storm, because I have no desire to find that my principles have a price tag, after all!

Better than that, I hope to be able to help a few others weather it too.

Unemployment rises further

Unemployment has been creeping steadily upward in the UK. We are approaching the 2million mark.

Today, BMW laid off 850 people in the Mini plant in the UK. Every day we hear yet another story of people being laid off.. and the blue-collar workers often seem to be the hardest hit. We live in a pretty blue-collar area and one can almost see the change in people's demeanour. Every new story is like another physical blow. Today's was particularly tough because the workers were given only 1 hour's notice. The announcement was made an hour before the end of a shift and it got pretty ugly.

The first time I heard this, I huffed and puffed in indignation. Then I did a little research and discovered that the majority of the people affected were from an agency. They were not employees and therefore not entitled to a redundancy package. In effect, BMW did nothing illegal.

Sadly, in these uncertain times, more and more companies are going the route of engaging agency personnel, rather than committing themselves to employees... and all that that entails.

I understand that BMW needs to think of their bottom line. But I am saddened that there seems to be no middle ground. That the bottom line is pursued at the cost of many people's livelihoods. Where are these peremptorily unemployed people going to turn?

For us in the field of L&D, there is no distinction. When we provide learning solutions and performance support, we do so for everyone equally, because productivity levels need to be consistent across all contributors.

Just imagine this scenario:

Company X, like so many others, is facing a dry patch. But they understand how economies work. They know that the tide will turn. They know that all their staff members have families to feed. They know that people are being laid off left and right, and that any workers they lay off will have little chance of finding other employment.

So they sit down with their staff. They lay their cards on the table. They discuss ways that they can all weather the storm. Together.

Staff members are challenged to use this period to hone their skills. To broaden their skillsets. To examine their process and systems to see where they can be improved and optimised. Those who want to take early retirement are permitted to do so. But no-one is laid off. Everyone is in the same boat and everyone busts a gut to row in the same direction.

When the storm passes - as all storms eventually do - imagine the loyalty of the workforce to a company that demonstrated that, when it said "Our people are our greatest asset," it meant it! Imagine the buy-in of a team of people who have helped to bring the company through. Imagine the bonds that have been forged between people who have had to bear one another's burdens is a way they hadn't been called on to do in generations. Imagine the increased skill sets. The honed processes.

And...

Imagine the readiness to take full advantage of the newly buoying economy, while other companies are frantically recruiting and up-skilling.

Or am I just dreaming one of my idealist, Utopian dreams again?

LPOD - Articulate, temp folders and caches

Something I have learnt the hard way about Articulate is its stubborn adherence to older versions of Engage interactions and Quizmaker quizzes when you amend and republish a module. I learnt long ago to empty my browser cache before republishing an amended module.

What I have had to learn to do today is to track down all the temp folders on my computer, and empty those, too. For some reason, one single temp folder has not been enough for my computer. It has created several of the blighters at various levels of the folder structure.

I have also had to empty the caches in all my web browsers, not just Firefox, because I use other browsers for testing, and, blow me down if Articulate doesn't hang on to all that stuff, too.

I never knew an application with such stickiness!

pic of the day - wheelchair

Today was our first session at obedience school. Since my sons are on half-term, they opted to come along with me to learn what they could. My elder son (face smudged deliberately) gave up his chair to an older person, which impressed the facilitator so much that she offered him the only other seat available.

pic of the day - groan!

With the problem with my shoulder now reaching about the 4 month mark, and the pain showing no signs of abating, my ironing pile is getting out of hand. This isn't even all of it! We all have our chores around the house, and ironing is one of mine. We have reached the 'emergency ironing only' stage, which is done by the person with the emergency!

LPOD - vitamin B

Today I was advised that vitamin B complex is very helpful to those of us of the female gender in that stage of our lives when we are subject to hot flushes. I have not yet tried this therapy, and may have some trouble doing so, because the use of vitamin supplements is increasingly regulated in the UK. My mother-in-law, who recommended the approach to me, used to nip down to her local pharmacy and buy the serum and then take it to the GP who would inject it for her. If she had had the stomach for it, she could have injected it herself. In the UK, we are probably far too protected from ourselves for this to be an option, but perhaps I can pick up some vitamin B in tablet form.

LPOD - knitting needles

I discovered today that a 6mm knitting needle is the equivalent of a UK size 4.

After my dog kindly rendered some assistance with my knitting a while back, I went to a local haberdashery to replace the knitting needles (her knitting technique left toothmarks on the ones I had) and discovered that the sizing system was different from the South African one (shows how long ago I last bought new needles!). I took a guess which turned out to be wrong and wound up getting the wrong size. Today, I went back with one of the damaged ones, and had it sized up in English money, rather than the metric system I know.

I then found this handy chart showing the conversions for all sizes.

Sadly, the delay meant John's scarf wasn't ready for Valentine's day, but he should have it for Monday.

pic of the day - love me, love my dog

I toyed with the idea of a picture of something traditionally Valentine-y today, but decided that love takes many forms. I hope I'm not breaking any rules by getting my son to take the photo for me, but if I am... tough!

I've never really been a dog person. I like dogs in theory. I admire them. I like other people's dogs. But I am a cat person. My husband is not a cat person. Yet he loves our cats. Iwas never quite sure how that worked until we got Jessie. I suspect I am still not really a dog person, but I am a Jessie person. And Jessie is a Karyn dog. She loves (if that's what dogs do) everyone in the family, but she loves me best.

I've never been anyone's favourite before, and it's an interesting experience!

LPOD - a few extra Earths!

I've been working on some material for World Wildlife Fund, and I've been learning a lot about this planet of ours.

Today's learning point is something I discovered a few weeks ago, but which made a fresh impression on me as I reviewed the resource today. It's something I feel is important enough to share here, even though I didn't strictly learn it for the first time today.

I suspect we all know that we are using more natural resources than the Earth can replenish and releasing far more CO₂ than can be reabsorbed by ecosystems.

BUT...

Did you know that if everyone on the planet lived like the average European, we would need three planet Earths to live on?

AND

If everyone lived like the average American, we would need five planet Earths to live on!

Scary thought, huh? I'm not aware of any spares lying around.

pic of the day - I'm a winner!

You could have knocked me over with a feather when a recent email arrived from TrainingZone magazine telling me I had won a prize at their stand during Learning Technologies 09. I hadn't even known I had been entered into a competition! For a moment, I even thought it might be a hoax.

But sure enough, my prize arrived today: a Kensington SlimBlade presenter media mouse and a copy of Tony Buzan's iMindMap software.

Cool!

LPOD - Ecuador

Today I attended a presentation about a proposed school trip to Ecuador for my younger son. I had always known that the country owed its name to the fact that it straddles the equator.

But today I learned that, in this one small country, it is possible to see glaciers-and-volcanoes; hot-and-humid forests, and dry-and-dusty zones.

The country contains a volcano called Chimborazo, the summit of which is the furthest point from the centre of the earth (due to the equatorial bulge of the planet). It also boasts the world's highest active volcano, Cotopaxi.

I had seen pictures of some of their crafts before, but those we saw tonight made me wish I was going along, for the markets, if nothing else!

pic of the day - adventureworks

My younger son is hoping to join a field trip to Ecuador next year. It is being organised through Adventureworks, who sent one of their staff members to do a preso to the parents. It's snowing again, so very few pitched. But it looks like a wonderful opportunity, and very well organised.

Women in technology: Randice-Lisa Altschul

Those who have been reading this blog for a while will know that I'm not a great one for women-only awards. Nevertheless I have agreed to participate in this pledge. Suw Charman-Anderson has pledged that if 1,000 other people blog about a woman in technology, she will blog about Ada Lovelace on 24 March. I agreed because (a) I think Ada Lovelace is a noteworthy person in the history of technology and (b) because there are more noteworthy women in the history of technology than many people appreciate, and I am more than happy to cast a spotlight on one of them.

The woman I have chosen is Randice Lisa Altschul, who patented the disposable mobile phone in 1999. She is attributed with the quote "We've printed a phone." The phone is about three times as thick as a credit card and (and this is cool) made from recycled paper.

Altschul is not your typical techie. She is a toy inventor. The story goes that, one day in 1996, she was talking on her phone while driving along the highway (tsk tsk - not acceptable behaviour) and getting really frustrated that her phone signal kept fading in and out. She wanted to hurl the phone out of the window, which was what heralded her epiphany. Why not design a phone that you can use up and throw away?

She worked with an engineer to develop the super-thin circuitry that was required, but was unable to achieve this at an affordable price. She was therefore forced to file for bankruptcy. As a consequence, competing companies were able to take the realised concept to market before her. Nevertheless, she is credited with the original idea.

She attributes her mentality to her toy-design background:

''The greatest asset I have over everyone else in that business is my toy mentality. An engineer’s mentality is to make something last, to make it durable. A toy’s life span is about an hour; then the kid throws it away. You get it, you play with it, and — boom — it’s gone.''

There are some claims that the phone was named product of the year 2002 by Frost and Sullivan, but I have been unable to verify this.

Altschul is addressing the inventor gender gap, encouraging young women to explore ways to turn their ideas into reality.

A lesson in humility

I've always been pretty good with words.

As I have mentioned on this blog before, I have been playing Scrabble since I was about 8 years old. My mom taught me, because in those pre-TV days (South Africa only got TV in around 1975), the long evenings were lonely for a divorced woman - especially one with children to consider. She also taught me how to do cryptic crossword puzzles.

So, over the years, I have grown accustomed to being considered something of a clever-clogs when it comes to word games. Not that I am stellar, or anything, just somebody not to be taken lightly. I have played several word games on Facebook, and usually feature in the top 3 among my friends. In particular, there is a game called Word Challenge where I had been enjoying top spot for some time with a score of 22,503. My closest rival was my good friend Frank with 21,554.

Then, at the recent Learning Technologies conference, I met Ben Chai. He sent me a Facebook friend request and so began a series of the worst hidings I have ever had in my life!

It's true, my injured right shoulder has meant that I have avoided playing any of the mouse-controlled games for a while (for some reason this is the most painful thing to do - I can shovel snow, but I can't make sustained use of a mouse), so I am a tad rusty. Nevertheless, being ludicrously competitive, I have accepted all his challenges, in spite of the fact that they have me moaning in pain. I tell myself that I could do better if only my shoulder were not an impediment. But I have to accept that, even at my best, there is no way I can match Ben.

Scramble is my weakest game, so the fact that Ben's scores there are double mine is hardly surprising. I'm not great at WordTwist, but I have at least been giving him something approaching a run for his money, there. He trounced me at Pathwords, which I'm pretty good at, but the biggest humiliation has been Word Challenge. How on earth does anyone muster a score of 64,402?

I know when I'm out of my league!

Learning point of the day - outsourcing health

Closely related to my pic of the day, my learning point today was that in order to address the backlog it faces in many areas, the NHS is outsourcing a proportion of its MRI service to a contractor. I had heard fragments about the outsourcing of administrative functions in the past, but was quite surprised to learn about this. Bear in mind that the scans are conducted by radiographers. They then have to be assessed by radiologists. The contractor is not permitted to use UK-based radiologists for this purpose (well, this would hardly clear the backlog, I suppose), so these are being sent to mainland Europe and South Africa.

I have many frustrations with the whole process, but they are not pertinent to my learning point, so I'll leave it right there before that soapbox forces itself under my feet!

pic of the day - mobile MRI

After three months of agony, I spent an hour on Monday refusing to take no for an answer and working my way up the NHS food chain until I finally got to speak to someone who could make me an appointment to have an MRI scan done today. Note: this is the first scan/x-ray/anything that has been done on my shoulder!

The staff members in the mobile unit were sympathetic, gentle and professional, but the receptionist in the hospital outside which it was parked today handed me a slip of paper advising me that "it may be 3-4 weeks before your consultant reviews the result of your scan... if he/she finds something that requires urgent attention, you will get an appointment soon after that." Apparently the scans will be sent to South Africa to be assessed by a radiologist. Sheesh. If only I'd known - I could have given them the names of several!

I think my poor liver flinched at the realisation that it was going to face another 4 weeks of the barrage of painkillers I'm currently throwing down my neck!

So where was yesterday's learning point?

I learnt a lot of things yesterday. Little things. Big things. But none of them seemed suitable for including here. I have made it an unwritten rule that I will not share any learning that only has personal relevance.

I also learned a lot about the internal workings of one of my clients, but I don't have their permission to share that, so I thought it prudent not to.

Mostly what I learned about yesterday was pain. On a scale of 1-10, I was up at about 9/9.5 for much of the day. As I said on my Facebook status, the last time I was in that much pain, a nice man gave me an epidural... and I got a baby out of the deal! However, I didn't think it would be much use to you to hear that I discovered that Lamaze breathing doesn't help with neurological pain in the shoulder.

I hope to get the learning point of the day back on track today. I have enjoyed writing those, and I have found that I pay more attention to things as I keep my eyes peeled for something to share with you. Hawthorne would be proud!

pic of the day - instruments of torture

I went to the dentist today. I'm not frightened of the dentist, but I get panicked by all the implements in my mouth and the sense that I can't breathe properly. I have to keep asking them to stop so that I can regain my equilibrium. I also have a ludicrously sensitive mouth and wind up having enough shots to down an elephant. My dentist is a nice guy and very patient with my panic issues, but it hurt just the same :o(

When the solution becomes a problem

Due to the snow we've had over the past week or so, there have been a great many school closures in the UK, including our county.

On every hand, there are pointers telling us to visit this website to find out if our kids' schools are closed. How great that they have this facility. I'm assuming that the headteacher of each school is able to access the site directly to indicate closures. Great. So parents can go there instead of all frantically trying to ring the school and getting the engaged signal. Wonderful.

Except that, as soon as all the parents in the county tried to access it, it fell over! So the local radio station stepped into the breach and began announcing school closures. So good that they have a plan B.

Except that the radio was getting its information from the website, and the traffic on the server meant that the school representatives responsible for updating the website couldn't access it. So the information so kindly being supplied by the local radio station was not up to date.

We do know that the school bus service isn't running. This is a private service, paid for by parents. So we know that a good proportion of the students won't be there. Usually, under these circumstances, the schools are closed, but the problem with the server has made it impossible to find out.

For goodness' sake, when you build a solution, make sure that you have considered the logistics, and that it is actually going to be able to cope with the demands for the service it offers!

This is not the only example we see like this. The A&E (accident and emergency) services are in a similar position. When you hurt yourself, every signpost points to your local A&E. When you get there, you are likely to sit for 3 or 4, maybe even 7 hours waiting to be seen. While you wait, you can read the posters on the wall that tell you all the other places you could have gone - your pharmacy, your GP, the NHS helpline - all of which will no doubt have told you to come to A&E! Left hand, right hand.

When the millenium (foot)bridge was built in London, it had to be closed for repairs almost immediately because of the extent to which it swayed. The engineers announced that this was due to a phenomenon known as simultaneous footfall. When the designed the footbridge, they apparently didn't take into consideration the fact that people would be walking on it. Lots of them. All at the same time.

When we're designing solutions, let's consider the implementation aspect. The practicalities. The logistics. This is where it is very useful to have a friend on the inside (of the IT department). Unless the IT department knows what is envsiaged, they can do nothing to accommodate it. They also can't alert you to possible barriers to implementation.

It's also a good idea to include some load-testing in the battery of user tests you carry out on a solution before implementing it.

bonus pic of the day - hearts

I couldn't risk waiting until morning, because the steadily falling snow is likely to have obliterated these tracks made by one of our neighbours pulling out of his driveway. I hope the light is good enough to see the result! Pity this didn't happen in 5 days' time!

Jumping back up on the 'mandatory' soap box

Last time I addressed this issue, I got into serious trouble and wound up having to delete the post. But a presentation at the recent Learning Technologies conference has once again raised this matter on my radar, and I'm sorry, but it has to be said. Again.

In the L&D business, we are dealing with adults!

"Well, duh!" I hear you say. Except that it's nowhere near as well duh as I would like.

One of the primary reasons I didn't become a school teacher (in spite of an aptitude test that returned a massive spike for teaching) was because I didn't ever want to be faced with a group of people who were there against their will. I wanted all my learners to be there by choice.

So why oh why do we try to force adults to complete our learning programmes?

The presentation I am referring to covered the learning support provision around a change programme within an organisation. They made it mandatory.

Now, I don't know about you, but my experience of making things mandatory with busy adults is that they have the power of veto. They just say no: either explicitly or tacitly. I have been in several meetings over the years when I have pointed out that the worst culprits for not completing 'mandatory' programmes is senior management. I have asked what they plan to do do address the fact that the SMT might simply opt not to complete the learning programme and have lost count of the number of times the response has been of the order of "Well, they just must". Oh yeah? Or what?

Well, the answer in this particular organisation is that they linked completion of the training programme to departmental budgets. No training completion, no budget approval. And for good measure, no bonuses either.

The presenter seemed to see this as a good thing and referred to it as the 'carrot'. Sorry, but to me, that looks like a stick. A carrot would be an increased budget, a team weekend away, an increased bonus, new laptops... something along those lines. A carrot is a reward, not the threat of loss of standard affordances.

But surely the best thing you can do is develop a resource that is worth their while to use? And by involving the user community/target audience along the way, the resource is already on its way to being owned by the community by the time it is launched. And if you build in ways for the community to contribute to the material, it becomes even more theirs.

Now I'm not that naive. I have built facilities for user generated content into solutions I have designed in the past, and they have been used very little and then fizzled out. But I don't believe that this reduces the validity of the approach. We simply need to sell it better. To get more buy-in. To get the comms people on board. To have a few evangelists out there among the general populace. And the issues we address need to be important to the community. We will only identify those with any accuracy if we involve them in the solution itself, instead the whole 'done to' thing.

Making a thing mandatory is not the way forward. Think about the longer term. You might be able to claim a 98% take-up rate for your solution, but how much learning actually went on? How much change will you see in the workplace? And how much damage have you done to people's attitudes to learning solutions? As if our jobs weren't tough enough as it is!

I know that you could stop reading this blog at any time. You have that freedom. And I wouldn't deprive you of it. I'm thrilled that you're here, but I'm not going to force you to stay. I simply have to work hard to make sure that you want to stick around and see what I have to say tomorrow.

I like to approach learning solutions in the same way. There are going to be all sorts of recommendations to you to swing by. All sorts of signposts that tell you this is a good place to come for help. And when you do, I'm going to bust a gut to make sure that your experience is such that you'll stick around. That you'll come back. That you'll tell the guy at the next desk about it.

Because you're a grown-up. A busy one. And I respect that.

pic of the day - happy dog

Closely related to my learning point of the day. This is where Jess and I start 'school' next week.

Learning point of the day - hand signals

Today I went along to watch a session of the obedience class where Jessie and I start next week. Jessie was unbelievably good. Better behaved, in fact, that some of the dogs coming to the end of their training. She didn't try to go after the ball that the lady was playing with as a deliberate temptation the dogs had to ignore. She didn't go after the broom. She didn't bark at the wheelchair. She socialised most politely with the other dogs present and, in the only situation that degenerated into snarling and snapping, she wasn't the aggressor.

I watched the hand signals used to teach the dogs to sit, stay, and 'down' (lie down). The general rule is to hold your hand at the height you want the dog's head to be (which was a bit tricky for the older lady with the tiny border terrier). So to get him to stand, you use the verbal command and hold your hand at his standing head height. To get him to go down, you use the verbal command and drop your hand to the height his head will be when he lies down. The exception is 'sit', for which you bend your arm at the elbow and raise your hand to shoulder height, palm towards you, back of the hand towards the dog. I guess because, when a dog sits, he feels as if he is raising his head.

When you want the dog to stay, you show him a flat palm, as you would if you were directing traffic to stop.

The ideal is to reach the point where they obey the spoken command without the hand signals.

The lady who was running the session is training up a dog to be used by a person in a wheelchair and she showed us a few of the extra commands that such a dog (also called Jess) needs to learn. For example, she needs to learn to take up her place behind the wheelchair, so that she can respond to either side as necessary, without crossing in front of the chair and endangering herself and the occupant. Even at 7 months old, she was so obedient and so willing it was heartening to watch.

Jess and I start at 10:30 next Monday, but, after all the conflicting messages we have been receiving, it was a real boost to hear that we might have to be shunted to the 11:30 class because the 10:30 class is for beginners and Jess might not need that level of training! The 11:30 class is for those who have graduated from the 10:30.

Way to go informal learning for dogs! Way to go, Jessie!

pic of the day - snowfall

We have more snow falling here at the moment. It's a bit slushy so it might not settle, but the forecast is for more snow overnight. I love the way the flakes catch the light of the flash, but, in case you're ooh-ing and ah-ing as I did over the large orange one - that's a street lamp in the background.

Learning point of the day - ELVs

No, not elves. ELVs. Experimental Law Variations. This is something that's happening in rugby at the moment.

The powers that be are experimenting with the game to see if it can be improved, so they tweak this or that law and the variation stays in place for a couple of seasons to see if it does, in fact, improve the game.

The one that was being mentioned during the Wales v Scotland (through which I confess to have slept due to extreme exhaustion) was the law about kicking out from within your own 22 yard section of the field. It used to be that this was permissible, but the ELV in place at present means that if the ball has been carried (passed) back into this area, you may not simply kick it straight out.

I realise that I am something of a hypocrite. I embrace change in the workplace. I recognise that my entire career is built on change.

But, when it comes to sport...

Do. Not. Mess. With. Perfection!

Let's look at it like this. Most of the soccer fixtures were cancelled this week because of frozen pitches. Soccer is a game in which full body contact is not permitted, and in which the players spend almost their entire time upright. The Six Nations rugby fixtures, on the other hand, went ahead as scheduled. Rugby is a full contact sport in which the players spend much of their time being pulled or knocked to the ground, often ending up under a pile of other players.

Rugby is not a game for fashion icons or the precious. It is a rough, uncompromising game. And I love it.

No doubt my objection to their existence will not bring a halt to ELVs, so I expect to spend some time being confused by the ever changing rules in a game I used to know like the back of my hand.

Sigh.

pic of the day - a shady character

This here is my rock. The love of my life. My bedmate of 20 years plus. The father of my sons. The donor of my surname.

This picture was taken while we were buying snow boots for the boys (and I, of course, wound up with a pair, too - never let it be said that I passed up an opportunity to augment my shoe collection!). John was mucking about trying on sunglasses. I think this pair looks rather good on him.

Learning point of the day - RP

So my elder son is turing into a geek, what of it? He has recently joined the ranks of World of Warcraft players. Under the tutelage of an experienced friend, he has made excellent progress, and we hear all about his adventures as an undead.

He has been explaining about RP - roleplay. I would have thought that all these games were RP, and that this was how they were distinct from virtual environments like Second Life, but I would have been wrong. You have the option to control your avatar, but remain aloof from it, or to play AS your avatar. In the case of the former, your dialogue represents what you as a person have to say. In the case of the latter, all dialogue is in character as your avatar, unless you prefix it with /o, which means officer speak.

There are specific servers given over to this mode of play. Those who opt not to immerse themselves to this extent have the option to complete quests and the like.

So, in Second Life, my avatar is virtual projection of me - it takes on my character, and allows me to interact with others through their avatars. In WoW, my avatar is either a plaything (like a doll, in many respects) or I, conversely, take on its character. No doubt, there are people who role play in Second Life, too, since it affords them an opportunity to become something they're not: a different gender or race, thinner, more beautiful, a fairy, an (anthropomorphic) animal.

My husband and I were listening to our son talking and reflecting that RP wasn't so very different from the improvisational games we used to play as kids. Most of the time, you spoke in character, but, every now and again, in order to manipulate the way things were going, you could slip out of character and make an announcement.

In WoW, there are strict rules about RP. You may not play God. You may not say that you are killing everyone... or even inflicting some harm on them. You can only say that you are trying to do so, in order to give them the opportunity to respond. I'm not sure we articulated it as clearly when we played cops and robbers, but any child who declared that he had just killed us all would get shouted down by everyone else present - just as in life, everyone gets a say!

The line between controlling an avatar to complete a quest and playing as an avatar is a fine one, but very distinct. I only hope that I have explained it clearly!

pic of the day - you don't say!

Right in the middle of the driveway to our local supermarket, standing proud in the slush, are these two cones warning us of the wet floor. What next?

Ken Robinson - who inspires you?

Hat tip to Jeff Utecht for posting this video in which Ken Robinson describes how his father inspired him: "Not only did he give me life, so to speak, he gave me a life." Fantastic.

He ends the video with a challenge. Who inspires you?

Actually, Sir Ken, I'm way ahead of you... for once! I blogged about this over a year ago.

But I'd like to extend the challenge.

Who inspires you?

belated pic of the day - personalised sandwich

I can't believe I forgot to post this on Tuesday!

It was a snow day and I asked my younger son to make me a cheese and mayo sandwich for lunch. When he was little his Dad always cut his sandwiches into a T shape and his brother's into a B for the first letters of their names.

I was so tickled with my sarnie that I sent this picture to my husband who can take credit for setting the precedent. As you sow, so shall your wife reap, apparently.

Dog training - who do I believe?

You would have to be either a first time reader or very forgetful not to know that I have recently acquired a dog. I have learned a lot since becoming her owner. She has learned a lot since becoming my dog. Not all of what I have learned has been enjoyable. Not all of what she has learned has been my choice.

I would like to take her for obedience training, to make sure that she and I are learning the right things. The trouble is, the dog training people are telling me such conflicting stories, I don't know who to believe. One lot say that you have to teach your dog to see you as pack leader. The other lot say that your dog shouldn't see you as part of the pack at all, but as a human. One lot say that when you walk with your dog, you must hold its head up high so that it can't sniff everything. But dogs do sniff. Why is that a bad thing? That same lot says holding the dogs head up makes it feel proud, like in a dog show. But maybe dogs in shows are doing what people think makes them look good rather than what dogs think looks good. After all, dogs roll in the most unspeakable things and, having done so, seem rather pleased with themselves.

At the first obedience school we went to, a German Shepherd barked rather fiercely at my dog. One of the trainers grabbed him fore and aft, flung him onto his back and shouted profanities into his face. If she had done that to my dog, I'd have been likely to bite her myself! The second woman we spoke to said all this 'dominance' stuff is nonsense. She spoke calmly to my dog and rewarded her when she responded. I liked her.

Then we started watching Cesar Milan, the genius dog-whisperer chap. He seems to support everything the first lot said. And he certainly achieves an unprecedented level of obedience in the delinquent dogs he works with.

My dog is not delinquent. She is pretty obedient and seems happy. But that is likely to change as the various members of the family adopt the methodologies that make sense to them:

• I like Happy Dogs' approach
• My older son will do anything Cesar Milan advises - even if the behavioural problem being addressed is not applicable to our dog
• My younger son thinks as long as she's happy, why bother with anyone's approach? But he's the first to complain when she gets a bit rough and uses her teeth on him in play
  
• Because my husband's long working day means he doesn't spend that much time with her, she does not mind him at all. This annoys him and he communicates that to her. He needs the intervention of an expert to help him build a more mutually rewarding relationship with her.

Jessie, poor girl, needs a consistent message. So we need to pick one and stick with it.

But whose?

A long time ago, in my early days of blogging, I attracted some criticism by saying you need to pick your expert on a topic. It's in cases like this that I maintain that one message is needed.

Learning point of the day

I have always maintained that, as learning professionals, we should always be learning. Of course, those of us who inhabit this space are doing exactly that, but we are by no means typical. I meet altogether too many corporate trainers who see it as their job to know and to impart what they know. Being seen as a learner is to expose your underbelly - a position of vulnerability altogether too many are not prepared to adopt.

It occurs to me that posting a pic of the day allows readers a glimpse into my life. What it seldom does is afford you a glimpse into my learning journey. And that, after all is what this blog is about (hence the name). So I thought I'd redress that. I'm not sure how long I'll be able to sustain it, but I thought I'd have a learning point of the day post. Some days it may be something significant about learning and/or technology. Other days, it may be something trivial. But my learning journey is both life-long and life-wide, so I am just as likely to learn something about dogs as I am about technology. In fact, the issue of learning about dogs is looming so large at the moment, that I shall afford it a separate post today.

My learning point of today concerns snow. For you Canadians, this is going to seem very 'well duh!' but if you bear with me, I promise not to make fun when you have a learning experience about sunshine ;o)

What I learned is this - snow melts ice.

Immediately outside our back door is a wooden deck. Just beyond that, is a small lawn. The lawn is higher than the deck and is held in place by a retaining wall made of railway sleepers. On Tuesday, I tried to clear a path across the deck to the lawn because our dog was slipping as she tried to make her way to the grass for... well, you know what for. The trouble is, the snow had melted and a thick sheet of ice had attached itself to the deck, and, short of gouging great scars in the wood, I couldn't achieve my goal.

Today I was able to clear the path I wanted. Why? Yesterday's heavy (by our standards, okay?) snowfall formed an insulating layer which melted the ice enough that I could scrape it loose without damaging the wood.

Mind you, I don't know how long it will last - the snow is still falling.

I also learned that, if you're clearing a flight (do you call it that when there are only three of them?) of steps, you start with the top one. Now that I kinda figured that out before I started, but it would have meant going up the icy steps initially because, as I said, the deck is lower than the lawn. Being afraid to slip, I started at the bottom, where I could stand securely on the cleared deck. It did mean that I had to do the whole job twice, but... meh.

You may be wondering why I was doing work like this at all when I have (a) a damaged shoulder/neck and (b) two perfectly healthy teenage sons. The answer is that I felt like it.

pic of the day - a boy and his dog

The quality of this photo is really poor, but it absolutely had to be pic of the day. My dog is off the leash for the first time, and she and my younger son are charging around the park enjoying the freedom.

On our way home afterwards, my son offered to help an elderly lady who was shoveling her driveway. He worked very hard and chatted politely to her all the while as he did. When he was done and she thanked him, he said, "You're welcome."

Some days you realise, with all your faults, you must be doing be doing something right!

A snowy day

Last night, we had by far the heaviest snowfall we've seen in the UK in the 10 years we've been here. It had never occurred to me that snowfall was inconsistent. Our back garden has about 15-20cm, but a field near our house was easily under about 30cm.

My younger son and I took the dog for a walk this morning and, feeling very daring, let her off the leash for the first time ever. She was ecstatic! She made friends with other dogs and raced around the park at a speed that wouldn't disgrace a greyhound. But she came back when she was called. One of the dogs she met was a pedigree Akita and the likeness between the two of them was unmistakeable.

I made this little video clip at one point:

pic of the day - cleaning crew

These are the two young Korean students who clean my house for me once a week. When the head of their language school approached me to ask if I could offer them a cleaning job, he was slightly embarrassed to be offering me male cleaners - in the UK, domestic cleaners are still almost all female. I was happy to assess their efficiency on the work done rather than their gender.

Minjun Kang (left) has a dust allergy - hence the mask, and Kiho Yun (right) yelps every time one of my cats appear - although he insists that he is not afraid of them, merely startled by them!

They work very hard and are sweating profusely by the time they leave. Every few weeks, they come and ask me if I have "any commentary" on their work.

What's not to like?

Growing up - those penny dropping moments

Mild profanity warning.

Several of my Facebook friends are the contemporaries of my sons: school friends, kids from church, girlfriends, ex-girlfriends, etc. Apparently, I am a legend. I'm fairly sure that my legendary status is not unique. Perhaps they befriend all their contemporaries' parents in a bid for higher friend counts.

Be that as it may, I love reading their status updates. This is because I find teenagers so fascinating. They swing from moments of crystal clear, mature observation and insight right back to complete self absorption in a heartbeat. They fly high and swing low. They crow in delight at an astonishing achievement and then slump into the Slough of Despond because person X called them a name. All in the blink of an eye. I am aware that they're quite fragile at this age, and (when I can) I try to offer encouragement and support.

For example, one girl - let's call her Ivy - has generated the following status stream over the last while (names deleted, but no other corrections made):

Ivy is on msnnn (:
Ivy is depresseeddd.. i hate januray :(
Ivy is the only person alive to not like [name deleted]. (:
Ivy 's arm hurts. i hate injections. yes i cried at school. Cringeeyy,
Ivy thinks hes so weirdddd- LOL
Ivy should of kept her mouth shut
Ivy s in scienceee- [name deleted] (:

and then suddenly - with complete coherence:

Have you ever noticed that the people that tell you to calm down are the people that pissed you off in the first place?

That's one of those real 'you know what?' moments, and a perception that is unlikely to change any time soon, because I have to agree with her. And I told her as much. When kids are little and their worlds crash around their ears, you can scoop them into your lap and hold them there for a bit until they have recovered their equilibrium - providing them a safe space in which to feel broken.

When they are in their teens, your hugs aren't enough any more. Their problems have moved beyond the scope of a hug as a repair mechanism (and chances are, they think you're to blame for the catastrophe anyway).

Our elder son is in a bad place right now, being victimised at school. Recently over his monthly 1:1 breakfast with his Dad, he said "I thought I had moved on from this. I thought I had left this behind. How come I'm back here?" He was piecing together the realisation that chapters once closed may re-open and that long-healed hurts have a way of resurfacing. He announced that he doesn't like this growing up business and that he doesn't want to turn 18 this year, after all. When I later asked him what he planned to do instead, he reverted completely to mischievous imp and said "Dance!"

Well I hope he does - both literally and metaphorically. So, in the unlikely event that there are any teenagers reading this while going through one of those uncomfortable moments of being grown up, may I dedicate the words of this (completely uncool) song to you. I am aware that this is actually a Lee Ann Womack song, but her version on YouTube is not embeddable, so here's an alternative:

The benefits of enablement and empowerment

I came across this story via a Facebook group this morning. It is the very moving account of a young girl with severe hearing impairment and her hearing dog. The change in this little girl's life is enormous... and it's all about empowerment. About enablement.

• She has gained independence "she felt safer with Gem".
  
• She sleeps better, "before we had Gem, Evie had never, not even once, slept through the night in her own bed. Now she goes to bed at 7.30pm and gets up the next morning at 7.00am," with the knock-on effect that her parents, now do, too.
  
• Her behaviour has improved "her improvement in behaviour has also been noted by her grandparents and her teacher"
  
• Best of all, she has grown in confidence "In the past, Evie has been very reluctant to speak in front of others and on many previous occasions when her teacher has asked her to talk about something she has said no. However, a half day was recently dedicated to Evie at school for her to tell the children about her new dog. Evie stood at the front of the class, and spoke non-stop for a full five minutes." I confess, I welled up when I read that. I am a sucker for stories of empowerment!

Not all enablement involves a learning solution. Imagine if someone had sat down and said, right, we need to send Evie on a training course to improve her behaviour!

Women in charge? Consider all options!

Euan Semple shared a link via Twitter to this post by Leon Benjamin this morning, which cites (but does not link to) material by Paul Harris and opines that the world should be compelled to put women in charge because we are apparently

more honest, more loyal, more caring, more thoughtful, more trustworthy, and much less dangerous

He goes on to point out how, if women had been running the show, there would have been

no Hitler. There is no Mussolini. There is no Napoleon. There is no Hirohito. There is no Attila. There is no Genghis Khan. There is no Inquisition. There are no Crusades. There is no Robert Mugabe. There is no Ariel Sharon. There is no Stalin. There is no George Bush; Wouldn't that be a safer and happier world?

Well, this is all well and good, but, if we're going to consider the extremes of one gender, we must weigh them up against the extremes of the other. Not every women is a warm motherly, altruistic, nurturing type. Of course, there are not a great many examples of women in positions of extreme power, so this is tricky. However, there is Jezebel. And would you really want to be governed by Imelda Marcos? Let's remember that Margaret Thatcher was behind a time of great unhappiness among blue-collar workers in the UK and is unlikely to have won personality of the month award in the Falklands. Let's consider names like Catherine the (ahem) Great, Bloody Mary and the less-than-merciful Isabella of Spain.

Have a look at this (admittedly hatemongering) site, which mentions these and a few others I hadn't heard of.

In case it seems as if I'm arguing against the case for women in positions of power, I am not. However, I am arguing against the current fashion for a blanket male=bad/old fashioned/outdated; female= good/wise/the way to go.

All humans are flawed, and neither gender has the march over the other. People should be elected to positions of power on their merit, not their gender.

Oh, and one last point to consider in the light of this quote in Benjamin's post:

I am proposing a political movement whose sole purpose is to convince all the nations of the world to change their laws so that only women can hold political office.

Sarah Palin.

I rest my case.

Disaster recovery plans

I recently got an email from someone who expressed disappointment at my husband's flash-in-the-pan blogging. I communicated this to him, and it must have encouraged him because yesterday he produced no fewer than three new posts. Two of them deal with the issue of disaster recovery. You might not quite get his quirky humour, but I reckon that he offers a few useful take-aways.

This is not only an issue that affects large corporates - we solo acts are possibly even more dependent on our data, our apps and our operating systems, and need to know that we can retrieve them if a crisis strikes.

On an obliquely related note, I found it interesting that I had to teach him how to create href codes in html. I often think of myself as a bit of a technical numpty, but I guess if I have something to offer an IT professional, I'm not doing too badly!

On another obliquely related note, his nom de plume is not pronounced 'john is cream', but 'john i scream'. The reason for this is that our surname (row-MACE) sounds very much like the Afrikaans word for ice cream (roomys: ROO-uh-mace) and, among our friends in Cape Town, we were known as 'the ice creams'. It was useful to have such a memorable name when I was freelancing!

Social media - the 'can't be arsed' brigade

Apologies if, in your neck of the words, the phrase is more than the mildly crass epithet it is here.

Steve Borsch of minnov8 has written an interesting article which looks at why execs who don't get social media, well... can't be arsed. Hat tip to Robert Scoble for the link via Twitter.

I'd be interested to know whether it's an accurate reflection, but of course, the people who could tell me aren't reading this!

I must be doing something right!

So it snowed, like two inches here yesterday. Then it rained overnight and much of it melted away. Nevertheless, the schools are closed today... even though there is less snow around than there was when the kids came (safely) home at the end the day yesterday.

What do you suppose the first thing was that each of my sons did on hearing the news that there was to be no school?

My elder son, vanished into World of Warcraft.

My younger son (unasked) ran me a deep, fragrant, hot bath, surrounded by candles and furnished with beautiful music from his iPod which he popped (complete with speaker dock) nearby. I have just stepped forth from said bath and, in spite of the teeth clenching pan in my right shoulder (yes, still!), all is well with my world.

There are some days...

pic of the day - sunrise

I was sitting in my office a few minutes ago when this sight caught my eye. No matter how often I see a lovely sunrise, it never fails to stir me.

The social side of Learning Technologies

On the first night of the conference, Donald hosts a bash at a pub near the conference venue. There are caricaturists, magicians, pool tables and lots of booze. There is also quite a crush and a high level of noise. This year - perhaps because it was the 10th anniversary - the free bar stayed open until long after I had left. Not that my fruit juices were going to break the bank anyway!

So what's the point of this? Is it just a jolly?

During coffee and lunch breaks at the conference, it's heartening to see the networking that takes place, but I suspect the social adds an extra dimension to the conversation. Stopping to watch one of the card tricks, you might find yourself next to someone you've never met before, and, as you speculate on how your signed card found its way into the locked box that was on the floor the whole way through the patter, you have an opening for a conversation. While you may feel a little reticent about introducing yourself to someone whose face looks vaguely familiar, the fact that the person is holding a caricature of him or herself provides you with another conversation opening - "That's pretty good, actually" or, in my case "Gee, that could just as easily be Sarah Palin!"

The fact that many of us speak with longing of having the chance to meet face to face is an indication that this conventional medium has value beyond what you learn in the presentations. There is such a long list of you I want to meet in person and, not being shy, I would have absolutely no reservations about starting up a conversation with you. In fact, you might find yourself being thoroughly hugged! You have been warned. We meet so often in this space, that some of us have become friends. In spite of my rude foot-in-mouth announcement, I felt no awkwardness about hugging George Siemens at our first meeting last week (fortunately, he seemed unfazed).

But I'm not typical, and the ice breaking quality of a drink or two, some snacks, light entertainment and a game of pool, really help to cement the relationships begun during the conference or online beforehand.

So here's my caricature. Whaddya think?

pic of the day - snowy tree

I came across this sight today on my to the dentist. As you can see, the tree is incredibly close to the wall of the house - perfectly placed for a chick flick elopement scene. Add a sprinkling of snow and Bob's yer uncle - a lovely scene.

Sled envy!

A twitterfriend known to me only as Documentally - a rich source of personal perspective material - has just posted this video of himself driving a dog sled. I would love to have a go at this. And I think my half-Akita puppy could easily be trained to do it - she's a strong girl who loves to be out in front, pulling me behind (except for walking, I'm teaching her that this is not how it's done).

The thing is, we've had 354 flakes of snow here today, so I'd need wheels on my sled.

pic of the day - every tribe and tongue and nation

We attend a church with a very culturally diverse congregation. This is the first thing that people see as they enter.