BASE level speculation

2023 October 21 Saturday 15:39

A few weeks ago was some vague announcement about some new "advanced British standard" (hereby referred to as "British Advanced Standard Education"; geddit?). Seems that T-levels (remember, registered trademark!) are doomed, similar to the "diploma" and other vocational qualifications in the graveyard of previous attempts at "parity" with the "gold standard" that is gce a qualification. Since the natural trend in grade inflation for gce a-levels will probably continue, the "plan" for replacement would be expedient. Of note is the claim that teacher contact hours will increase by over 15 % and include mandatory study of English and maths (further details within the policy document). At least the government recognises that many years will be needed to attract enough teachers to make the qualification a reality. Of course, if there is a real desire to attract more maths and sciences teachers, show us the money! :)

Computers designed to crack

2023 October 25 Wednesday 16:20

Ever since females were pushed out of the computer software business and commercialisation of said industry began to take shape (!), software quality has seemingly declined inexorably. Apparently, a certain usa amgaf company used to have a motto: "move fast and break things".

Unfortunately and annoyingly, another amgaf company continues such a mentality, with a recent change which has made routine use of this writer's chromebook computer, no longer possible (the so-called "work aroundquot; has been tried and failed (if interested, see the following bug issue)).

After much time reading, gave up trying to revert to an older version of chromeos (the usb recovery tool failed too many times to persevere) and will try to use the 'crostini' tool to access gnu/linux. Observations so far:

• easier to start using gnu/linux and immediately install software using debian apt command;
• not sure how to access specific files within tar archives. Previous usage in the 'crouton' system was to connect to removable storage media via usb with a typical command:
  

  							tar -f /path/to/removable/media/archive.tar -x filewithintararchive.xyz
  						

  Archive files were historically about 500 mb and would be tedious to copy such archives to the command terminal before/after extract/append individual files for tar archives;
• unable to change name of shared directory /mnt/chromeos/MyFiles (personal preference to use lower case names);
• unable to personalise desktop to xfce4;
• unknown how to save the gnu/linux environment (software installed, software configuration files, etc.) in a single reserve copy, for subsequent re-installation if when the software is broken again;
• unable to change the clock to analogue style.

An annoynance, but the benefit has been from the past, importance to save your work away from amgaf infrastructure...