What I Learnt Today

My friend Willo has a question……..

Nagasak 1945, after the atomic bomb

Nagasaki 2011, following earthquake and tsunami

Willo’s question –  What the flock is that arch made of!?

JK Rowling admits to being very nervous before she delivered the Commencement Address to the Harvard Alumni Association in 2008.

No wonder, its a big gig.

‘The Commencement’ is the American term for the what we call a Graduation Ceremony. The Harvard Alumni Association have only been organising the Harvard Commencement since 1867! The year before Rowling, William Gates III was the speaker. Others to have been the Commencment Speaker include Kofi Annan, Alan Greenspan, Mary Robinson, Al Gore, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, John F. Kennedy, Thornton Wilder, and even our own Robert Menzies (1960).

“Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, the law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.”

Joanne “Jo” Rowling studied French and Classics at the University of Exeter. (she had no middle name, and so made up the ‘K’ in her penname). Confronted with speaking to graduates of the prestigious Harvard, whose ‘conception of failure might not be too far from the average person’s idea of success’, she comes up with two themes.

“On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.”

J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.

The full text of this speech is well worth a read and is available in Harvard Magazine. Thanks Michelle for the tip.

“Will, get out of bed, for goodness sake”. Repeat every minute for 10 minutes.

On these cold mornings, we need some evil alarm clocks.

Maybe one of these will do the job.

1. Clocky, and his new hi-tech little brother Tocky, jump off the bedside table and run around the floor when they raise the alarm, beeping and generally being a nuisance until you get up and catch the blasted things.

2. Wake up to the smell of animosity. Every time you hit the snooze button on the wifi-enabled SnūzNLūz Alarm Clock, a donation is made from your bank account to an organisation that you can’t stand. Perhaps we could set Will’s SnuzNLuz to donate to the All Blacks retirement fund.

3. I’m sure this next evil alarm clock would work. The Money Shredding Alarm Clock starts to shred your hard-earned notes if you don’t get out of bed in time to turn it off.

OK. Once out of bed, how do you extract victims from the very strong attractive field surrounding the ‘kid magnet’, also known as the gas heater.

What I Learnt On 21st June in other years

21st June 2015 FitzJones and the FezTones do the Lismore Lantern Festival

Animusic is music-driven animation. 

This is best illustrated by example. Thanks to Stefahn who showed me ‘Pipe Dreams’ today

Wayne Lytle is the producer of these amazingly detailed videos, each of which can take some months to create. He and partner Dave Crognale have developed software that enables the music to drive the animations – the ‘artists’ are created first, and then the music dictates what they play.

Animusic has released two DVD albums. You can watch low res versions of their 14 videos on YouTube.

Wayne and Dave also describe the creative process on the animusic youtube channel.

In the ‘old days’, if you dressed well and smiled nicely at the check-in counter, you may have been offered the choice of a window or aisle seat.

Now with self service web check-ins, you have the chance to pick the exact seat you’d like for your flight. (on Jetstar and Virgin, this now comes at an extra cost).

The new Airbus 330s that Qantas have in service have 300 seats. How do you know which one to select?

Http://seatguru.com to the rescue. This web site is from the folks that produce Trip Advisor. It can display the configuration of the plane for your particular flight, and indicates the seats that are recommended – extra leg room, double seats – and which have drawbacks – draughty, noisy, equipment under the seat.

It also knows what facilities are available – wifi, laptop charging, USB charging, personal entertainment units.

Now, I wonder if seatguru can find me a recommended seat on Tiger.

What I Learnt On 19th June in other years

19th June 2015 House Rules – Byron Style

Here in North Coast NSW, we get a surprise when it gets cold at night. We get the same surprise every night for 6 weeks every year.

Our houses are designed for summer. Open spaces, wide verandahs. No central heating because ‘it never gets cold’. In fact, in June and July it is colder inside the house than outside. Consequently, each June there is a scramble for firewood.

Around here I’m known as Smokey the Bear – I can put any fire out, especially if I’m actually meant to be starting it. Perhaps if I watch this video from monkeysee videos I’ll be able to rehabilitate myself. Looks easy enough.

If you need to start an outdoor fire, lifehacker this week shows the way.

What I Learnt On 18th June in other years

18th June 2015 Vocation

We were talking recently about the playground equipment of our youth – much of it undoubtably sponsored by the Australian Orthopaedic Association. My favourite was the Rocket at Dobroyd Point.

Dick West is the godfather of fancy playground equipment in Australia. In 1961 he acquired some plans from America and built a 30 foot high ‘Moon Rocket’ slippery dip, which was erected in Blackheath, Blue Mountains. It was so popular that over the next few years he built 37 more all over Australia – including Elizabeth, Mooree, Broken Hill, Taree and ‘our’ one at Dobroyd Point. Over the years Dick built a variety of interesting shaped play equipment including a stage coach, submarine, old woman’s shoe, elephant slippery dip, HMAS Endeavour, a space capsule, a Tiger Moth biplane, a vintage car and a dinosaur. A number of these were sponsored by the Blackheath Rotary and started life in the Rhododendron festival procession and then would be installed in the Blackheath Memorial Park. Go Dick!

Mike was pretty keen on the Maypole – a medieval looking set of chains and handles attached to a tall pole. If you wound one chain around and around the others, and then everyone ran out in a coordinated way, you could just about launch someone into space.

At the school  bus stop under the harbour bridge was a roundaabout. 20 boys sprinting clockwise could create much more centrifugal force than the Coney Island ride at nearby Luna Park.

It was a monkey bar like this that lead to my broken arm in 2nd class.

Trampolines are the greatest source of serious backyard injuries. Perhaps unfortuantely, they themselves are almost indestructible. This one is going strong at our house 16 years down the track.

These standard slippery dips had two weapons at their disposal. If the child didn’t fall off quickly, on a hot day they would invariably get 2nd degree burns. We could often get 15 kids per slide.

Swings were made of hard wood. Perfect when lined up in a row. Watch out innocent bystanders walking by.

Addendum: Cathy reminded me about the seesaw. The standard NSW issue had a fulcrum that could be moved, which meant you could balance with your little brother. Bad news for him, however. The favourite trick was to edge back on the seesaw until he was at the highest point, and then to slide off the back. A spine tingling crash to the ground would result. Sorry Damien!

What’s your favourite memory of playground equipment? And your greatest memory of the injuries it caused?

What I Learnt On 17th June in other years

17th June 2015 I don’t have bad handwriting…

17th June 2012 Benjamin Franklin’s Schedule

There is a collection of epic kludges and jury rigs at ‘There I Fixed It‘.

What I Learnt On 16th June in other years

16th June 2015 Blooms Day and the Hawking Index