No they are not!

It happens every year, It’s easy journalism you see, every August you get to recycle the stories you used last year, with just a few numbers changed. Well it’s lazy, and irresponsible. People work very hard for A Levels; I would say you can work harder during those two years then you do for your degree.

So you’ve put a lot of effort in, worked a massive amount of hours (& your only 17 remember), you wake up on the morning of the results, and are confronted by a story by some lazy old hack who has just cut and past last years story into his news paper, telling the world how you’ve been gifted your A Levels.

Well if they are easy, you try completing some of these questions from the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance

For any easy question why don’t you try, question 6 from this Maths paper. I’ve printed this paper off, and any one if anyone tells me they are easy they will have to answer the questions.

my take on why the pass rate goes up:
Maybe, just maybe the education system in this country is getting better!

The viral infection thing seems to have gone as quick as it came, and Daisy has been all lovely today. The impressive news today was Daisy using me as a ladder and trying to pull herself up. It didn’t quite work, but we got very close to standing from sitting. The supported walking is still quite wobbly (both hands being held by mummy), so proper walking could be a while off.

I’m quite proud of me. As Ruth points out I am a man of momentum, so I have to work very hard at keeping my mind going on one thing, so it’s with great pride, that I can say I am still working on the dining room, even after taking the weekend off.

I’ve finished stripping wall paper (well all but I tiny bit behind a radiator, that I plan to do when I have to replace it), and now I am ready to start filling holes and painting gloss. Filling holes is easy, I just need a tool, and some filler, gloss however is my least favourite thing, which may explain why I’m so bad at it. Given my complete lack of skill when it comes to gloss, we have decided it would be best if we do the gloss before the wallpaper goes up, that way we can hide all of my awful mistakes with wallpaper and paint.

if you are wondering how we are going to decorate the room, then so am I. I am happily going along stripping the wallpaper, ready to put lining paper up, then we are going to paint the room, now we do have the paint, we bought it at the same time as I painted the hall which was over three years ago, so there is a good chance that we will get the paint out, and then decided to paint it a different colour.

The idea that I could take a week off and paint both the hall and the dining room was a silly one, this house has huge rooms. Given that I am now only doing the room in my spare time, I think it’s going to take the best part of three months to do just the dining room, and if I remember rightly the hall took over a full week.

when I get around to the front room*, I’m going to make it easy on myself, I have decided that we will get that room skimmed, and then we can just paint without all the faff of lining paper.

*no plans as yet,I’m very cautions about mentioning to many changes at once, for fear of making Ruth curl up and hide.

Daisy was out of sorts over the weekend, so Ruth took her the doctors this morning, apparently she has had a mild viral infection, which explains it all. from itchy ears to strange poos (more information than you required i know).

So it’s calpol to the rescue, and we’ll just ride it out.

It’s more driven by my laptop, showing signs of age than anything but I think I’m going to jump the shark on the internet for a bit, well OK not totaly thing just scale back really.

The problem at night so often revolves around the fact that I am tired, and sitting at a pooter and mindlessly surfing the internet, seems like an easy option (not as easy as watching Phil and kirsty trash hull). Now my pooter is on deaths door, (dodgy processor, fan, and or hard drive) I thought I would just unplug for a bit.

Work is a bit more complex, you see I’m paid to use computers so, I can’t stop. I can however scale back on the amount of information I try to plough through each day, to that end I’m reducing the number of RSS feeds I read, currently RSSBandit shows I have 171 feeds which this morning had 290 unread items on them. This is to much, so I’m going to cull hopefully I will cull the chaff and trash and leave the feeds that actually have useful information. For a start I plan to keep the following

• BBC News [rss] - Without this I just will have no idea waits going on in the world, I don’t read newspapers and I don’t watch TV News. At least the beeb are fairly balanced when it comes to reporting.
• Joel on Software [rss] - Joel is my hero, he doesn’t post all the time but when he does they are usually very good.
• The Old New Thing [rss]- this is the blog to read if you want to now how software works
• Eric.Weblog() [rss] - in the mold of Joel (it may be older I don’t know), infrequent but useful
• The Average Joe [rss]- Not that I am ever going to write a book, but this blog from a publisher, is really very interesting.
• The Guardian Online Blog [rss] - at least at first I’m going to let the guarding keep me upto date on technology.
• Flickr Liverpool Tagged photos [rss] - this is an interesting look at all photos posted to flicker from Liverpool.
• The Channel 9 [rss]- short videos from Microsoft talking to the people who actually make the stuff.

feeds I once felt important; but I’ve gotten rid off

• SimpleBits [rss] - A fab web site with lots of web design stuff, but the blog doesn’t bring me any value
• Scobleizer [rss]- to much of this is fighting anti-microsofties, which is his want if not job, it’s not that I don’t have time for scoble I just don’t have time for the Microsoft black helicopter league who follow him around
• Slashdot [rss] - see above, why is everything a conspiracy theory against you? Also contrary to popular belief this site is hardly ever the first place with the news.
• The Register [rss]- now this is harder, but recently the register has just become a more moderated version of Slashdot. They have a couple of reporters who are loose cannons, there credibility has taken a dive recently with some off the wall stories.
• You Had Me at EHLO [rss]- the exchange blog, it’s fantastic. Tells me lots about exchange, but I don’t actually work on the exchange servers her so I’m reluctantly calling this chaff.
• Adam Curry [rss] - Podcasting is a cool idea, but I never got in to the routine and while Adam is the farther of it all, his podcasts tend just to be all about podcasting (just like those blogs about blogs) - sadly chaff.
• Reuters - Oddly Enough [rss] - all the stupid stories from around the world, I know this is silly, that’s why I’m getting rid, but it’s the most likely to return.

So that’s it, while writing this post I’ve reduced my reading list from 171 to 8. of course the aim was to reduce the amount of time I spent doing silly stuff, you have no idea how long this post just took to write.

Now You can see my new lean and mean set of feeds on bloglines

We had a lovely weekend visiting friends over in Beverly near hull. The weather was nice, and we got to go see animals on the farm. Daisy being the people person that she is thought that the other children running around on the bales of hey where much more interesting than the horses or the pigs.

My love affair with our car continues. It’s just so much better than the Rover for motorway driving, I particularly love the fact that just pulls itself up hills even when traveling at ‘Motoway speeds’. We did the Beverly to Liverpool trip in just under 2 hours which when you work it out, is jolly fast. Not that we’re speed freaks just that when the motorway is empty you drive at the same speed as everybody else.