Bits about the Bullet.

I do promise I will get a better pic than this one. Note the carrier on the rear.

I've had a Royal Enfield Bullet since April.  It hasn't been a smooth ride, and although I enjoy it and I'm not quite at the point where I wish I hadn't brought it, at times it has been close. This has not been an easy purchase. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and I thought I would give anyone who cares the benefits of my hindsight.

Bullets have faces. Or at least eyes and a big nose.

Importers/Makers/Dealers

You should understand whats's written on the RE website is lacking in precision. Just because it says something on the RE website, don't take this as something you can rely on. For example is the first, second and third service free? Website said three free services. Dealers one and two said one free (first) service. Other dealers said no free service. I ended up paying £100.
This is what two of the manuals on the RE website say:

Now try getting that to happen, although to be fair this page is missing from the manual that you get. According to the dealer I brought it from they are very strict about warranty, and the terms and conditions in the manual/warranty I am pretty sure are not enforceable under english law - they are full of get out clauses.

After many years of dealing with HD dealerships, dealing with RE dealers was an eyeopener. HD dealers are usually anxious to please and have shine showrooms, whereas RE  dealers tend to be harder to deal with and have minimal showrooms. 

Actually the dealerships fall into three categories: 'gentlemen' dealers, older, middle class who will lump it with concours classic British bikes if they could. Pride themselves on service - other than they are not open much at the weekend - or as I found, shut up shop before christmas and don't open until well into the new year. 

Then there's the guys who also sell Chinese brands you've hardly heard of, have little in the way of servicing or spare parts facilities. 

Finally there's the odd one in the middle. A traditional motorbike shop if you like. That's the type I went for.
All the dealer websites I went to had one price on the site and another in the shop. Most were not up to date. Only two out those I tried to make contact with replied. 

Build quality. 

OK. Just. Most bits fit, some only just, I spent 20 mins wishing I'd never opened the side panel... The finish is only OK, the instruments are ever so slightly not straight. Export versions are supposed to be better than the domestic market.

Oxygen sensor stuck on (Tricky to see here) not silver paint falling off.

Some bits are so bad they are almost comical -like the silver paint on the oxygen sensor. There's little in the way of slick trim. Infact there's almost not any trim, it's all very functional. I like that. Almost no plastic either

Highly sophisticated electrics. That's the fork lock, a token nod to security. Helpfully, the ignition switch has a large nut around it, making it very easy to get out. No need to jam a screw driver in. Think I might investigate getting an ignition that you can remove the key from when it's running. Liked that on all my glides.

Mine is on it's third exhaust heat shield in 300 miles. The first and second fell off within 100 miles. The third, so far, has held on. Apparently it's a known issue, probably down to the two crap pop rivets they use to hold it on.

It also leaked petrol. Intermittent fault. Fault never fully traced to my satisfaction, dealer says it's a split pipe on the fuel pump. We'll see. Would have thought it would have leaked all the time if that was the case. 

There's a single supplier of parts other than RE themselves. Hitchcock's motorcycles. They appear to have a comprehensive catalogue of British, Indian and other sourced parts. Every dealer that I've seen uses them as a wholesale supplier. Their catalogue states that some Indian parts need 'persuasion' to fit and equally many parts will 'need painting again'. I suppose they are cheaper than HD bits.
Having said that, the luggage carrier I got from them didn't fit - even through it was British made and quality. Either the instructions were wrong or RE had modified the rear; I eventually had to ignore them and figure it out for myself.
Turns out the loading is only 7.5 kilos, so hardly worth it anyway.

Top quality horn.

Things I would like to do is fit alloy wheels, proper luggage, pillion seat. Alloy wheels because presumably I could then use tubeless tyre - which I figure are safer. Hitchcock's do alloys, but not for this bike.

Riding

It's frugal. At the moment I'm getting about 60mpg, I struggle to put a tenner's worth in the tank. Now it's run in a bit - I'm still being careful at 600 miles, it is running a bit smoother and it's accelerating better. 40-45 seems to be the sweet spot, above 55 and it's vibrating and by 60 it's painful. People who know me will know that I can do long rides, but I would't want to to do too many 200 mile journeys on this. The sprung seat is comfortable.
I can't stand having indicators that don't self cancel. Been spoilt for 35 years and keep forgetting to switch them off. Foot pegs don't shake that I've noticed, nor the handle bars. Mirrors are completely useless.
If all this sounds negative, it's great for blatting around town, which is what I got it for.

Good bits

It's ahead turner. People stare at you. The satin green paint is nice, and the wheels are painted so there's not much indian chrome to fall off.
It's not a Harley. Riding HD is almost an embarrassment now. Jibes of "Mid life crisis" and "Born again Biker" (OK, but *not* that way). And HD are so common now. When I first got the FLT in 1981 or 2, I had the only one I knew. Now days, have a ride on the motorway and I will guarantee most big bikes you meet are HD.
It makes a proper motorbike noise.
You can flick it through the rush hour traffic.
The brakes are better than the Electra-Glide.
Maintenance and parts should be cheap.
It's cheap to buy; there not any other 500cc bikes other than one or two Chinese ones anywhere near the price.
It's fun.

Gamification of the classroom. A bit of a ramble...

In my department in my college we teach to the UAL specification. That is there's a unit of learning, which has a number of criteria and then pass/refer markings are applied to them. I have been reading recently on gamification in business and other areas and wondered if there were any merit in using these techniques for teaching. Of course there's a major difference I believe between a classroom and a business. On the whole business is about being competitive while education is is more about co-operation.

We are all told that our students today are digital natives. This has been repeated so many times it is now accepted truth by everyone including the students themselves. By comparison their teachers are lowly digital immigrants. I'm going to call that hogwash. Students are no more 'natives' than their grandparents were. Students spend hours staring at small devices and communicating, their grandparents spent hours staring at the telly and on the phone. In both cases it's consumption of media and chatting. It's just the size, portability and content has changed. Students on the whole and their grandparents are both consumers of content, they neither make or create content. Most students won't ever program the device they are using - nor be able to fix it. If there's a difference, then it's the older (non-teenage) audience is more likely to give up as soon as they are faced with a problem.

Much is also talked about attention spans. Received wisdom is that young people have short attention spans.  I'm not sure it's that easy. I teach mature adults. Most times they don't have huge attention spans as well, it's just that they hide it better, and in a classroom situation they can be worse, not better than a group of engaged teenagers. However, that observation aside, we need to keep them engaged, and using game mechanics may be a way of doing that

Engagement is what this is about, and that is where gamification may help."Some researchers are now exploring what children can gain from electronic games, often emphasizing their potential to teach academic skills."(Olson, 2010)    

There have been a number of studies which have looked into the games industry to find out why games are so attractive to both children and adults. Many have focussed on addiction, as this is now being recognised as a social issue. Essentially young people can spend hours on games while maybe only short periods for study. In a similar way some groups of adults**, more likely male (30+) will negate other things for games. 

Players may play hours upon hours whereas they are not willing to spend more than 15 minutes on doing homework or studying for exams. 

However, people confuse gamification with playing games; these two are different things: 

• Playing a game is the actual action of playing, i.e. consumption. 

• Gamification, on the other hand, looks into games’ mechanism and how those principles can be applied to other things. 

Typical game elements

Elements that are often found in games include:

• Challenge.
• Chance.
• Competition between player/machine.
• Cooperation between player/machine.
• Player feedback.
• Incremental rewards.
• Winning.
• Progression through levels

How can we apply these elements to teaching?

There are small changes in style, wording and marking that may make changes. You should note that these comments refer specifically to my own practice.

Marking

An issue with the UAL specification. In my opinion is the pass/refer marking for Units 1-7 and the enclosed criteria. Also there's an issue with the whole university spec of "refer". While the FMP aspect (Unit 8) can't be tampered with (and is marked differently); I believe that the rest can be adjusted to suit us and our students better. I think we should be marking like a game:

Start with zero points. That is everyone starts at a the bottom. The first screen in the game. The easy one. For a task/brief with typically four criteria they can  score one point for each criteria, importantly and differently these points are graded 1 (Pass), 2 (Merit), 3 (Distinction)., although they are not explicitly written as such.  When they have all four points they can either move onto the next task/brief or (2) they can repeat the task/brief  to try and improve their score. Obviously at some point they will ahve to move on, but it gives high flyers a chance to improve their marks and slower movers a chance to complete. 

Personally, I would use big numbers - like pinball machines, so 100, 500, 1000 - or something like that.

Bonus points for almost anything could be added - for example lose points for being late, extra points for extra work. A system of rewards for high flyers or random(-ish) bonus rewards could also be considered. An element of chance, not just skill rewards slower players and is an element in most successful games.

The Unit is a quest with challenges

Students should be challenged by the quest to achieve the unit. The challenges, briefs and tasks, are routes to complete the quest. Their first attempt at learning something should be treated like, and as unimportant as, "Game over" if they struggle. Not a reason to give up or fear failure but a challenge to start over again. A way of increasing motivation.
As the quest has several challenges - possibly from different lecturers with different tasks - then it will be possible for them to score the points on different tasks, i.e., not pass/refer on one task only. Special attention should be paid to enable slow/disadvantaged learners earn points. For example turning up having completed outside tasks or even just turning up on time and equipped correctly. 

Tracking learning

It's likely that a different method of scoring their achievement will be required. It would be in everyone's interest to make this as centralised, easy and visible as possible.

• Centralised, so that lecturers and students (..and EVs) can easily see how they are doing, both in comparison with others (increase competition) and also their own achievement.
• Easy, because marking systems have in the past been prescriptive, arcane and difficult to navigate. 
• Visible so that everyone can see at a glance how they and others are doing. 

Conclusion

Is this worth a go? What do you think? Probably it needs more work, would it work in Maths/English where some of our learners struggle?

What do you think?

**Me, I don't play games, have never done much - other than board games - and don't do sport. So I look on from outside.

Bibliography: Olson, C.K. (2010) Children’s Motivations for Video Game Play in the Context of Normal Development. Available at: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/gpr-14-2-180.pdf (Accessed: 7 July 2016). In-line Citation: (Olson, 2010)         

"What was the most complicated Illustrator drawing you ever did?"

Last week when I was teaching Advanced Illustrator elsewhere, I got got asked "what was the most complex Illustrator drawing that I’ve ever done?” Interesting question since they (here at least) tend to grow. 

But there could be two or three answers to that which came to mind immediately:

Miss-Information. A where’s Wally style festival spotters guide. Had to draw - or more accurately produce about a 1000 people. Probably in this enlargement you can see me, I did a homage to Wally in there as well. Well, at least the hat.

Map of Bath for Fringe Festival - probably took the longest to do. Here’s a section. The college (without the Roper extension) is at the top. The Hershel building is missing, because, if I remember correctly it was hidden by text or something. Not much point drawing what you can see!

One of many drawings of electropunk insect. Drawn for a show that I did some time ago, currently being revived as the show has a booking this summer. This one will be published as a postcard this summer. 

Planning a small show.

Have been selected for a small exhibition at the 2016 Greenbelt Festival. I'm going to be updating and showing the Mechanisms thing again. This was last shown in Bath at the Fringe festival, so this is another chance to get them out. last time there were quite a number of ceramic bugs - this time it will be mainly other materials.

The Greenbelt gallery is quite small, it's basically a garden shed, and you only get a few hours to put your stuff on. Here's a picture of it to give you (and me) some idea of what it would look and feel like.

I spent some time this morning using the photo to try and work out the dimensions that were missing from the proposal. All of my stuff will be inside I expect - it's quite small and delicate and some bit - if I can get them to work- will need gloom if not darkness. The other thing I will need is power and there isn't any of that things will have to be run on batteries - or not at all.

I've done a roughs preplan and costing for setting up. There's two options at the moment - although a mixture is equally likely.

The first is a conventional gallery. I will mount the boxes on the picture rail supplied. I can't remember how many boxes I already have - there's several - nor the sizes, but I've assumed nothing at this point just so I can get some idea of costing.

The images would either m the top row OR the bottom row - not both. That would be eight 40 x40mm boxes, or 11 30 by 30. Possibly one on either side of the door, plus explanatory cards that I have already. Rough total cost around £100. That's using off-theshelf frames - but I could do with them being deeper.

The second version buys in Ivar parts from Ikea. This versatile wooden shelving system can be pushed into making a quick set up if the floor is flat. If it's rough - and we don't know yet then it's going to be a pain.

Costs for this, if we have to buy it all would be around £300, but actually it would be cheaper since I already own a number of the parts. For stability, I'd need corner shelves like those seen here. These are quite expensive at £26.

Finally, now I have a picture in my head of the size I can look at alternatives. Other shelving systems for example and also the content of the show.

New Day says "good night"

So good night New Day. Just 50 issues. What were the reasons for your failure and what can we learn?

The Launch
When the paper was launched back in February it promised to give an "optimistic approach" to news that would be unbiased and was aimed at people who consider themselves "time-poor" and who no longer buy a paper.

Some immediate issues:
"Optimistic approach" - in other words a "good news" newspaper. Repeatedly focus groups/surveys of people who don't read newspapers cite this as a reason for not buying a newspaper. But all attempts to build on this have failed. Good news smells of propaganda. Relentlessly upbeat stories feel phoney. Just like a review section with 100% brilliant reviews. 
Unbiased and politically neutral doesn't really work either. Look at the broadcasters: if you are on the left, you accuse the BBC of having a tory bias and if you are on the right vice-versa. On the whole it works better if people can see where you are coming from. 
Then the last "aiming at people who don't buy newspapers." This troubles me. The big question is "will they buy this newspaper?" And of course, they didn't.  Selling 40,000 at the end.

Other problems
The biggest being distribution. I take a keen interest in Newspaper launches. But I didn't see a copy go New Day anywhere until about a week after the launch. No outlet in Bath stocked it until then, there were no distributors on the streets or by the station on lunch day. No papers left around either to suggest that there might have been. Bottom line, it wasn't easy to buy until it got to 50p. 
It was too much like the Metro, which is free everywhere. Didn't have the gravitas of the "I".There was nothing that made it a compelling read.

Some lessons:
I'm sure they had loads of focus groups. I'm sure they did everything right by the book. Research, research, questionnaire and more. I'm sure they also went with their gut - that there was a readership amongst young professional women. But many products have floundered on these as well. Focus groups and surveys only tell you what people have seen, they don't predict the future. People have to find a need for the product - and if they haven't seen a product before they may just tell you what you want to hear. 
Secondly, there is an assumption that people will pay for content, where demonstrably that isn't true in a number of areas. People will pay for tangibles, if tangibles add value; but if they are the same as intangibles then you're going to struggle to get money for them. For many people, for many years, newspapers have been a problem rather than a solution. Look at the downsizing from Broadsheet (Daily Telegraph) to Berliner (Guardian) to Tabloid (the rest). All to make reading easier.
Finally, is there a market for even short news articles? Increasingly amongst my students I notice people just reading and reacting to headlines, also they want their normal news from sources they trust.

Researching Snakes and Ladders

Firstly, an explanation. The Snakes and Ladders board game is a metaphor that Ruth and I have used for our lives together. It featured in our wedding - the cake was designed as a snakes and ladders board and I used the board on a plate that I designed earlier.

Ruth has had serious mental health issues, I have depression. Early on in our relationship we were talking and the conversation went along the lines of "I wish that at that point I had..." The real point is, of course, that we are no longer at that point. Rather we are at where ever we are.

Hence the Snakes and Ladders board. Doesn't matter in some ways if it's a snake or a ladder, you have to start at the square that you are on - or where the inevitableness of the situation is going to take you.

Why I am doing this.
Two years ago I started doing an illustrated book on our experiences, combined with those of other people. It was based on a small showing of pictures that I had done in Bath's annual Fringe Arts Bath (FaB) show. But last year it stalled. I could tell it was going nowhere and I had to regroup. The ideas were still good but there was no focus. I tried a comic book narrative. Then a week ago it went full circle, a board game is often similar in layout to a comic book and I already had a board game in mind.

Stuff I've found
In no particular order here are some images and links that I've found. Interestingly, it appears it's not the first time that someone has used the game as a metaphor for life. In course of looking at images I found this: "The timelessness of Snakes and Ladders" by Doug Bierend, which looks at the moral issues behind the game.

Here's a description of the game, just in gaming terms. I did a board where you could decide between a snake, several snakes or a snake or a ladder. Ruth said that defeated the purpose. I think it makes it more like real life as you have to look ahead and and balance the risks either way.

Several sites, like this one, use the game as an entry to coding. here's another version from DataGenetics.

Sandra Dodd writes a history of Snakes and Ladders from an American perspective, where it is known as Chutes and Ladders.

Of course some motivational speaker has to get his oar in...

 Complete with small children getting chastised.

Here's a version of the game based on the journey of two people using trains. It's in a games museum here. They have many other variations.

This is an Indian version, used to teach morality and the effects of vice. A destiny over which you had little control. Note the ladders all go to a heaven of sorts. Wikipedia had a full article form which this was taken.

Common kids version



















Vintage version on an antique dealers website.
















Can't find an attribution for this one...

Once again, with moralistic overtones, funding by the clothes I would have thought 1930s. Found on Vanished Eras website

Australian, 1901, teaching virtue and the sadness of ignoring good advice. Snakes and Ladders of 1901 provides an old-fashioned moral view. Players slide down the snakes of anger, pride, depravity and vanity while they climb the ladders of forgiveness, penitence, pity and faith. Found in Australian National Archive.

This is from the blog of another Steve, who recounts his encounter with the game. Looking at the game and the blog it struck me that the counterpoint to the snake you've just fallen down should be the next ladder. 
















Modern morality and health advice.












Here it is used by Hisperian to illustrate the disposal of toxic waste.
















Carbon zero planet use it as a way of explaining environmental issues.

3D snakes and ladders




































Finally a person sized version.

Quick Tutorial in Photoshop Masking

Here's the screenshots from a Tutorial I did yesterday about Masking in Photoshop. Incidentally, if you see a mistake, please let me know in the comments!

 So what is masking? This is a layer mask.

The mask consists of an additional channel to the  layer.

For my demo I supplied the files, but to make this work amy image will do.

I filled this with a colour. If you use black or white then you won't be able to see any mistakes.

Any normal brush. Try novelty ones for something different!

See if you had used a black fill and you made a mistake - you wouldn't be able to see where you had gone wrong

For the avoidance of doubt that is HIDE the layer.

here's a demo using some sample files.

Great thing about a mask. Nothing is actually deleted. Make sure you save in Photoshop format. (PSD)