Year: 2008

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Wrong phrases that sound right II

Ear

I blogged about this first a long time ago – people invent the phrase they think they heard, and their version has elements of ‘truth’ which are interesting:

‘without further adieu’ instead of ‘without further ado’

‘it isn’t a job for the feint hearted’ instead of ‘it isn’t a job for the faint hearted’

‘arranged eroticly’ instead of ‘arranged erratically’

‘top-draw collection’ instead of ‘top-drawer collection’

‘evil.com mascaraed as bank.com’ instead of ‘evil.com masquerading as bank.com’

‘to achieve the up-most pinnacle’ instead of ‘to achieve the utmost pinnacle’

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Making IT Work

making-it-work.jpg

I was pleased to present these slides at this international pre-BETT event organised by BESA and Steljes – it gave me a chance to glue together the thinking we have developed over the year in Core UK through our projects. Linking the National Archive of Educational Computing (hindsight) to our work to facilitate communities of curriculum innovation with QCA (insight) and to the meeting in Kronberg to consider the future of Knowledge Sharing and Acquisition which we helped to organise with UNESCO (foresight) gave me great pleasure – as did the first outing for my analysis of delight, in part based on John Heron’s work.

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Blu-Ray Christmas

Blu-ray disc
This was the year for me to invest in High Definition television and I decided on the Sony KDL-V3000 + Playstation 3 (PS3) – a combination Argos were doing a deal on. I wanted the PS3 anyway as the best value Blu-Ray player on the market, and the deal was extraordinary value for money. I am delighted with the outcome, surprisingly, because the sensitivity of the digital freeview tuner in the Sony TV has made terrestrial digital a possibility with weak reception. But what is really outstanding is the way standard DVDs are ‘upscaled’ to look brilliant on the combination of PS3 and Bravia display, and I still haven’t seen a Blu-Ray disc yet! The one downside is it exposes anything poorly recorded/encoded. The PS3 may also be the last moving-parts physical storage media for TV I buy – some think I am already investing in the walking dead ! Meanwhile I am enjoying finding out how The PlayStation 3 is not just a games console… too.