Mobile Dr Who and Red Dwarf

Interesting idea from the BBC: Can we sell video on a (presumably read-only) MMC card in a format suitable for mobile phones? Let's try it out on Dr Who and Red Dwarf fans! �16 for one or two episodes seems a little steep, however, and I'm not sure I'd be tempted by any of the proposed episodes at that price. Nokia only? Hmmm... not sure about that at all (automatically incompatible with my PDA, for example.) I wonder how many takers they'll have?

Clearing

It's clearing time for us here in the UK -- the process whereby people who applied to study at university who didn't meet the required grade have the opportunity to re-apply. At the fabled institution where I am a lecturer we academics spend a few days glued to telephones answering queries, supposedly screened by other trained personnel, but the majority of which could be answered by an automated system:

Press 'C' on your phone for computing courses ... Press '1' for the Computing With Bungee-jumping degree ... The entry requirements are a minimum of two A-levels at grade C or above and GCSE grade C or above in Maths and English. If you meet those requirements, which will be verified through UCAS, and have no outstanding offers from other UK universities please key in your UCAS or UCAS Clearing number followed by the pound/hash button now ... Thank you. You will receive notification of any offer via the UCAS web site within 24 hours. If you have any other queries please press pound/hash now.

The reason that this could so easily be automated is that there aren't that many judgment calls to be made at this time of year and those applicants that need intervention can easily be called back. Why do we do it manually? One thing's for certain: It's not so that abusive parents can accuse us of racism when we reject an applicant because he or she does not meet the minimum requirements (I kid you not! But her school says she's within 2% of a C so why is her D not good enough? You're just being racist in rejecting her... No, we're being selective in rejecting people below the minimum requirements and if you have a problem with selection then please feel free to apply to the University of Bums on Seats. It is you who is prejudiced. Trying to play the "race card" only works for Johnny Cochrane!) No, it's done manually because <cynical>academics are cheaper than IT systems or expensive administrators</cynical> or, possibly, we're old-fashioned enough to think that the personal touch matters when dealing with the future of these applicants ;-)

Neat web app: Gvisit is cool...

Google Maps is such a neat web application and the applications like Gvisit that are springing-up are cool too! Visitors to this blog are mapped here...

A funny side to trying to cheat in exams

A Russian youth wearing a drag outfit which gave him improbably large breasts has been caught trying to sit an entrance exam for a female friend.

<grin>

You have phrased your question ... poorly

I know I've been there (usually more than once a week) and am sure everyone else in a "support" capacity has been too ... today's User Friendly cartoon suggests the perfect response from an educator to a poorly-phrased request for help ;-)

DOM inspector, slayer-style

Found on SitePoint, MODI is an excellent tool (CO2013/CO3013 and CO3060 students take note!) that shows you details of an element's representation in the DOM in your browser window -- kinda like Mozilla's DOM Inspector with bits of the Web Developer Extension but wrapped into a favelet that works in Internet Explorer v6! (As well as Opera & Safari.) Kudos to Steve Chipman for a really useful cross-browser tool :-)

Movie: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Saw "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" last night and it was excellent <grin>
It's rated PG and is quite suitable for kids (bright colours, simple, vicious humour, bad people suffer/good people triumph etc) but it's very funny for adults too (although maybe not for parents of spoilt kids...) I vaguely remember reading Roald Dahl's books at around junior school age but my impression of the story is really based on the 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (which is also a good film). Johnny Depp's portrayal of Willy Wonka is very different from Gene Wilder's, but Depp's portrayal suits the era -- less camp, still weird but even funnier (no way is it based on Michael Jackson!) The Oompa Loompa's were excellent too, by the way ;-)