Getting enough sleep

Some of my students recently talked to me about not being able to get enough sleep. It’s a big problem because they can’t sleep till very late at night, and then keep falling asleep in class..even during tests! So I looked around and found this nice list to help insomniacs.

Me? I just don’t have enough time for sleep. Given the time, falling asleep is eaaaasy!

Goodbye ya WIMP!

Whew, almost half-way into January and I’m only doing my first entry! I must say, I never thought this new school year would be so much more fast-paced with new classes, new roles & responsibilities and…night-classes (yep, I’m working on getting a Masters..at last!).

Now, back to the subject matter – I can’t say I’m sad that I can finally bid farewell to the WIMP i.e. Windows Media Player on the Mac. It just feels so clunky..almost “unbecoming” of a Mac app! Seems like the reason is that Microsoft  would rather focus on other priorities. Well, power to them then – I, personally, have always preferred to use the likes of the (open-source and free) VLC or Mplayer which also have the added bonus of being capable of playing many other codecs such as DiVX, xvid etc.

But those  who might prefer not to muck around with third-party software may actually find Microsoft’s offered alternative more palatable – a free Windows Media component for Quicktime. This means that you can simply use Quicktime to open Windows Media files – including for browser-embedded Windows Media content. Quite a decent offering really, created by Flip4Mac.

NS

Spent two weeks doing National Service a few weeks ago. Unlike in previous years, this time I actually get to make use of my undergraduate training! It was really exciting hearing about life in the mental health services from my team members. Almost makes me wish I were in that line myself!

Very fun bunch of folks. Hope to see them again next year!

Marking madness

Completely overwhelmed by marking of examination scripts these few days, but that didn’t stop me from finding out that Palm has released the Palm Z22 and Palm T/X.

Or that Yahoo and Microsoft have agreed to work on instant messaging inter-operability.

Or that Apple has added some exciting features to the iMac G5, sent the eMac the way of the dodo and introduced an iPod with video playback capabilities (among other things).

And I didn’t even have to surf the web to find out any of this.

The power of the good-old grapevine (or rather, office “gossip”).

Ok, back to marking…will write more thoughts on all (or at least, some) of the above when the madness ends!

An example of extraordinary insight

“Screw the iPod nano!” said the Motorola CEO at a recent leadership seminar at California.

When news of this first came about, most people attributed it to the heaps of praise that Apple’s new iPod nano received, compared to the lukewarm reviews of the iTunes-synching Motorola ROKR E1. Motorola has, of course, since claimed that his comment was a joke, and that it was taken out of context.

That hasn’t stopped Joy Of Tech from adding him to the list of “all-time greats” though heh.

My take? Steve Jobs must have made a call and said one word:

“Nokia”.