AFL on CBC Radio this morning

AFL in Saskatoon Public Schools was featured on a CBC Radio story this morning. The comments are quite interesting too and the poll on the Morning Edition homepage is overwhelmingly against AFL. They also mentioned the Globe and Mail article I found in the staff room a few weeks ago!

After reading Mindset (Carol Dweck), The Talent Code (Daniel Coyne) and Drive (Dan Pink), the poll results don't surprise me. Science says one thing (intrinsic motivation works, carrots and sticks don't), but business and society in general has done what Pink calls Motivation 2.0 (carrots and sticks). It's going to be a tough sell I think.

2-4-D or not 2-4-D?

Sprayed 2-4-D broad leaf herbicide on my lawn yesterday.  The stuff really stinks and I wasn't exactly feeling too great after taking over an hour to spray the lawn.  According to the industry, this stuff is really safe and has been researched as such.  Here is the other side of the story.  Cosmetic herbicides are of course banned in a lot of Canada (Ontario and Québec for instance).  I heard Weed and Feed isn't going to be sold in Saskatoon anymore too.  I know the Turf Green Weed and Feed sold by Co-op in the past was really effective at controlling broad leaf weeds.  It's more convenient than spraying 2-4-D mix like I did yesterday.

Now, it would be nice if I could find something like this balanced reporting about the pros and cons of CFL bulbs.   This site also has some good information about CFLs and their dangers.

Playing DVDs in Ubuntu is a pain

I've set up playing DVDs in Ubuntu 9.10 before.  Today, trying to install with 10.04 LTS and it was a pain.  I finally found the page I looked at before about playing restricted formats.  Right now, I managed to install VLC (after running two command lines), but it still won't play in Movie Player.  So, I'm using the instructions on this page about restricted formats.  I had installed the packages for playing DVDs, but it still wouldn't work, so I got VLC.

Julia Fischer confirms that practice makes perfect

Yesterday, I got the Julia Fischer DVD I ordered from Amazon.ca in which she plays the Saint-Saen's 3rd Violin Concerto and the Grieg Piano Concerto.  Elisha really liked watching both performances, but he likes the Grieg Piano Concerto more.  Now, in the interview with Fischer, she said that she decided in the spring or summer of 2006 to prepare for the concert (which occurred on 2008 January 1).  She also mentioned how she decided as a child that she wanted to be a musician.  So, this is confirmation of the ideas mentioned in the Talent Code (talent is developed from deep practice - practicing at the edge of one's ability) and Drive (intrinsic motivation).  Another musician who could play piano and violin was Clara Haskil.  From the stories of her I've read, it would seem she's actually one of those once or twice in a century 'natural talents'.

2010 September 12

Well, the day started with sad news that Great Uncle #4 has passed on.  He was the first son of my great grandfather's 2nd wife (on my dad's side).  My great aunt from Edmonton had left for Taiwan this past week.

I heard Michael Swan play Bach's Air from Orchestral Suite 3 in church this morning.  This is of course very famous and sublime.  I guess given my Great Uncle's passing, it was kind of appropriate.

On a happier note, we went to Shaw Centre again. It was quite crowded today and we noticed that the diving section was open.  Samuel took quite a bit of coaxing, but he eventually tried out the 1 m springboard.  After about 30 tries on the 1 m board, he tried the 3 m board.  Again, it took quite a bit of coaxing.  There was a fearless little girl in a life jacket jumping off the 3 m springboard.  There was also a slightly older little girl jumping off the 5 m platform.  I saw a few kids jump off the 7.5 m platform, but nobody attempted the 10 m platform.  No pictures though - didn't bring the camera.  The pool is 5 m deep, so he wasn't very confident at first.

I give up on the Phenom II 940

Well, I got this huge Coolermaster fan today from Amazon.ca.  However, it was way too much of a pain to install (I would have had to take my motherboard out), so I decided to give up on the troublesome AMD Phenom II 940 Black Edition CPU I bought.  I took it out and packed away the new fan and put in the AMD Phenom 9650 I had also bought.  Hopefully, I can sell the 940.  What a difference 95W and 125 W CPUs are!

Next, I popped the Radeon HD4350 PCI Express 2.0 Video card back into the system.  The mainboard has ATI HD4200 onboard.  It was a bugger to configure dual display with two display adaptors!  You have to make sure the BIOS is set to surround view.  Also, when I attached my LCD TV, my DVI connexion to the LCD monitor disappeared (BIOS switched to initialising the TV (PCI-E card) first.

I'm kind of ticked.  This was a huge waste of time and $$$.

The Phenom 9650 is running cool with core temps of 20°C with light load.  The Phenom II 940 would be at 45-55°C core temp.