I'll write about what I like (except what teachers I hate, because that would be hypocritical)

Well, we finally figured out what that Doctor Who reference in The Simpsons Movie was. Both Homer and the Ninth Doctor believe that bananas are an excellent source of potassium. I can't remember the exact scene but I'm glad I finally figured that out. And a little creeped out by how exciting it was.


I'm not sure I can really be bothered writing about that topic I mentioned yesterday. Just so you know, I was going to write about this story, regarding the Professional Association of Teachers wanting sites like YouTube and RateMyTeacher brought down due to cyberbullying. There's not much to say about this other than that it's a silly idea (these sites aren't the root cause, most have systems in place to protect against such things, no one actually has the power to simply "close them down", such videos are an insignificant fraction of content, etc., etc., ad nauseam) but one with some good reasons behind it (bullying is a bad thing) that are simply being applied in a misguided fashion.

I decided not to write about it for two reasons; the first is that it ended up being a load of complaining that really didn't achieve anything and the second is that my whole argument can be summarised just as effectively in a single, if rather clumsy, paragraph.

I have this kind of gating mechanism for ideas. If, upon being reminded of something, I still have the same reaction after a day or so, I'll know that it's a good idea. If I'm still angry about something, it's something to get angry about. If a joke still makes me smirk after mulling it over, then it's a good joke.

Conversely, if I see something again and it doesn't affect me, I'll ignore that gut reaction. If I read in the morning a hastily written note I made while half asleep and wonder what I was thinking then I'll forget about it, however hilarious it seemed at the time.

The latter is what happened with this PAT/YouTube story. I realised that it would probably come to nothing, that it was just an organisation exaggerating to make their point and that the news was running with it because YouTube is currently hip and trendy. Anything I said about it wouldn't matter, largely because it was all common sense with added vitriol.


All this has been a rather topic-like explanation of why I'm not using my original topic. I've little else to mention today, beyond insights into how my mind works. I've been playing around with Picasa as a feature of my Google account. I've never really used it before but the little iPhoto plug-in made it rather useful. I only started using it in order to upload these photos somewhere in a hurry. They're of a big bundle of retro gaming equipment that Sam and I purchased a few days ago and I felt that laying them all out on the kitchen table and sending Sam a link to the photos was the funniest way to tell him that they'd arrived.

We'll probably be reselling the excess stuff (NES, SNES, a few Mega Drives) and keeping the best for ourselves. Until we can get them sorted out, I've used them to complete my annexation of the spare bedroom next to mine. Along with the NESi, a couple of printers I got from the school along with Lucy, the big CRT monitor for Linus and a whole bunch of cables, this has pretty much filled that wee room to capacity.

Corbett - 1, Floorspace - 0