Well, it is that time of year. The smell of freshly cut grass. The crack of leather apon willow. Scrubbing the grass stains out of white clothing. Or, so far this year, the sound of rain on the roof. Cricket season is here again.
Harry will be starting off in the Superstar Academy, James is year 6 playing hardball. At least the practices are both on the same day.
After Christmas, James's rules will change - and Out will mean Out. Unless it is the first over faced.
We've had one school game and one club game so far. The boys played well — won the school game but lost the club game — considering they've only had one practice and that was a fortnight ago.
]]>The local camera shop can print wrap around images on the cups, and they can be collected from the shop. This saves on the postage so the cups do not become extortionately expensive :-)
To make the cups, first I went through the years photos (I store them in a Piwigo photo album) and selected about fifty photos. Then I used the command line to resize them. Once they were resized, I had to narrow them down to about 25 — and I think 15 - 20 would be a better number.
for file in *.jpg; do convert -verbose -quality 80 -resize 500 $file.500.jpg; done
Some photos needed to be cropped and resized manually - or the sports ones would have a little dot of a figure in a field of green.
Once they were all resized and cropped, another command line command added the borders.
for file in *.jpg; do convert -border 10 -bordercolor white $file $file.border.jpg; done
Now, I could have used a command to create a canvas and place the photos randomly on it, but I wanted to be able to position the photos more accurately, so the best bits of each photo was visible. So I used Fotowall, a tool for making collages.
I like the result. Most of my photos sit in the digital equivalent of a shoe box under the bed. So some of the good ones do get seem — even if it is just by me as my eyes slowly open about half way through my first cup of coffee.
]]>The bike collection is getting a little out of hand — eight bikes for the four of us who ride. So did a bit of downsizing and put a few on Trademe. Now we only have $hellip; five? How have we still got five? And I'd like to get a mountain bike as well as the commuter bike I use most of the time.
I guess a bigger garage?
]]>In July, the Italian anti-establishment, populist parties Five Star Movement (M5S) and Lega Nord relaxed a rule requiring children show a doctors note to prove they have been vaccinated before they can enroll in state run schools — parents only needed to assure the school the children had been immunised. In August, the requirement to vaccinate was dropped altogether.
What happens next will surprise you! No, not the flood of measles cases — that wouldn't surprise anyone. No, what happened is the anti-vaxxers changed their minds! They actually revoked the measure just because kids were getting sick!
In the resulting confusion, children with impaired immune systems, who cannot be vaccinated, are staying home from school.
Italy, and much of Europe, was already in the grips of a measles epidemic. 41 000 cases were reported between January and June 2017, up from 24 000 in all of 2018. 37 people have died.
M5S politicians, who previously claimed vaccines were dangerous, have now called for mass vaccinations and for vaccinations to be required to attend schools, although the self certifying is still permitted.
I doubt M5S were that committed to the anti-vaxx cause @mdash; many of its leaders say they had vaccinated their children. So while it is tempting to think that evidence will change an anti-vaxxers mind, it is probably more realistic to view M5S as cynically pandering to a small, vocal group to get votes, and then dropping them when they become a liability. The people injured as a consequence are just collateral damage.
Italy's populist coalition renounces anti-vaccination stance amid measles 'emergency'
Italian upper house votes to overturn mandatory vaccinations despite surge in measles cases
Proof of Children’s Vaccinations? Italy Will Now Take Parents’ Word for It
Resurgence of deadly measles blamed on low MMR vaccination rates
Anti-vaxxers are still spreading false claims as people die of measles
Watch how the measles outbreak spreads when kids get vaccinated – and when they don't
Image credit: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)
]]>I have been having a go at a Lynda.com course called HTML Essential Training. I have been writing HTML since … well, rather not say. I have seen DHTML and XHTML come and go, and competing 'standards' from Netscape and Microsoft battle it out. So it is interesting to get an overview of current HTML best practice.
A couple of things I thought I knew a lot about … Accessibility and the Semantic Web.
An early web project I worked on involved a lot of Word documents, which were formatted in weird ways - some document headings would have a heading styles, others would have styles directly applied. And a lot of the formatting was inconsistent … font sizes, styles and faces would vary. Even things like phone numbers were named and formatted in a variety of ways. Every time I thought I'd got them all, I'd find a new variation.
These documents were being taken into a page layout program and then formatted all over again manally. I was using scripts to take the documents and put the data into a database, then outputting a static HTML web site. So the value of consistently naming and applying styles is painfully clear to me.
The Semantic Web is kind of like this … making sure the parts of the page are tagged so machines can figure out what they are.
This is not just so pages can be catalogued and displayed correctly, but also to make sure the content can be output in different ways. For example, so screen reader software can correctly identify the headings and subheadings and allow visually impaired people can navigate the page. Snippets of information … such as the authors name … can be defined and given a unique identifier … changing the web from collections of linked pages into a massive database.
The accessibility standards are designed to ensure everybody has access to this database. Although mainly aimed at disabled people, it is also hoped that new devices can access the data as well. We saw, with the introduction of smart phones and tablets, how the web needed to be reformatted to fit smaller devices using responsive design techniques.
These two areas definitely deserve more attention. But the whole course has been worth while. I have had to resist the temptation to skip the 'bits I know' and to jump to the newer or more interesting stuff. That way I am picking up a few nuggets I would have otherwise missed.
I'm also going over my themes to see just how accessible and semantic they are, and am bringing them up to code :-)
]]>Ready to go to cricket this morning when the rain started to come down. So I went to check the Canterbury Junior Cricket Clubs pages on my phone to see if there were any cancellations. See if you can tell which bits of the page are links.
I cannot believe that in this day and age designers are still so clueless about usability issues. Any usability site will say links need to be seen without the user having to interact with the page. On a desktop machine, at least you can move the mouse over the page and the cursor changes. On a phone or tablet - you just have to guess.
]]>In the recent squabble over electric scooters, a major point seems to be being overlooked. For sixty or seventy years, our roads and suburbs have been designed with only one type of road user in mind. Car drivers. Everybody else has been shoved off onto thin ribbons on the side of the road. While pedestrians, parents with push chairs, scooters, mobility scooters, kids on bikes are expected to co-exist with the parked cars and rubbish bins on a narrow strip of tarmac.
Meanwhile, great swathes of roadway are given to the car. More space is available for people to leave their cars while they are not using them - and apparently cease to exist as far as planners are concerned. Shopping centres seem to think cars must be funnelled past the front doors before parking - forgetting that the drivers must get out of the car and cross the main flow of traffic to get to the shop.
And woe betide anyone who dares to suggest these public spaces should be available to any other users. The howls of outrage that greet any suggestion a single car park should be removed are cacophonous. The provision of free services to shop owners is, it seems, the acceptable face of welfare. The sudden concern for less mobile citizens is laudable, but curiously absent when it comes to the provision of dedicated infrastructure, or when what little space is available is given to expensive toys.
This is not a new phenomena. The very people who, in the 1950's, planned the motorway network we are still constructing also planned public transport infrastructure that we have barely started to build. So we have an ever changing bus system that mixes with the increasing car traffic. Other forms of transport become increasingly dangerous and unpleasant, promoting more car use. Any provisions for other users, such as cycle ways, are vilified. Because the car already dominates the direct routes, other routes are tiki tours, further reducing their appeal. New shopping centres are built with no regard to existing transport routes, and public transport routes become ever more circuitous while trying to service them.
Nor is it being addressed. Since the earthquakes, new suburbs have gone in 'only 20 minutes from central Christchurch' that are inevitably followed by demands for more roads. If you fall for other forms of deceptive advertising, you have to live with it. Nobody would expect the council to fulfil the claims of those enhancement pills I bought. But if you believe a property developer, demanding someone else gets you a new road is perfectly acceptable.
There are new suburbs around here with wide, grass berms, wide swathes of grass and trees in the middle of the road, but with carriage ways so narrow cyclists have to go onto the foot path to let the cars past. And the footpath isn't any wider either, but at least it is there - some streets only have a foot path on one side of...
]]>I took Harry (3 years old) up to the Halswell Quarry Park this afternoon for a walk. The Quarry Park has a large dog exercise area, but in most of the park dogs are supposed to be on a leash. There are areas with walking tracks, picnic areas, mountain bike tracks and even a conservation area — where dogs are not supposed to go at all.
Of course there is was a constant stream of loose dogs, running up to us and jumping up on Harry. One dog after another. Some dogs running around with no owners in sight. I'm sure they kept track of the dogs droppings, though. I mean, they would, wouldn't they.
I asked a few people if they knew dogs were supposed to be on a leash. They basically said they didn't care. Their dog was okay. And they probably were — but a three year old doesn't know the dog jumping on them is 'just being friendly'. And when it happens every couple of minutes … anyway, then the owner gets angry. God help you if you post something like this on Neighbourly or Facebook — partly why I no longer have accounts on either platform.
Since I have been taking kids around the place, we've had dogs jump up and knock James into the mud in Westlake Park twice (James was two. One owner said 'Its all right - he's only playing'. The other said 'Its okay - he's just a puppy'), dogs poo right next to our picnic on a dog free beach (the owner laughed and threw a handfull of sand on it), had dogs try to pee on our bike helmets right next to the 'All dogs must be on a leash' sign (the owner laughed), seen a primary-school aged friend of James' being chased, screaming, across the park by a barking, snapping dog (the owners were laughing), seen dogs leave a puddle of urine on the bottom of the slide (the owners were holding the leash and just watched, barely pausing their conversation), people take their dog past 'Quarantine area - No Dogs Allowed' and 'Lambing in progress - No Dogs Allowed' signs, and other fun things. There is often poo on our front lawn, always poo in the park. You see the owners walking, eyes glued to their phones, headphones on their heads, no clue where their dog is, let alone what it is doing. Responsible.
It is ridiculous that you can't take kids to the park without dogs harassing you, and ridiculous that the owners just don't care. Parents are not known for objectivity when it comes to their darlings behavour, but if one child pushes another child over, even they will apologize. A dog owner will just laugh. Screaming toddlers are funny.
If you question somebody, you get vilified. Their dog is fine. They're responsible owners — responsible owners who let their dog knock kids to the ground and piss in playgrounds. Today we met around about...
]]>James, Rhyse and Cody represented Oaklands School in the South West Zone Cross Country this morning. Unfortunatly, they got 17th, 16th and 14th — the first 12 would have gone to the Canterbury Finals.
But a good effort. The boys finished around the middle of the pack, and as they don't do a lot of training, that's not too bad. Maybe next year they will see the value of training.
]]>James, Mehdi and Robert all competed in the McDonald's Youth Duathon in Hagley Park.
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