A Collection of Daily Wisdom by Dennis Sylvester Hurd since September 2003.

It's fun to see which of my 3,100 plus pictures on Flickr are viewed most often. Surprisingly, half of the top twenty are old, scanned snapshots. They show Kuwait in the early 1980's so they are of historical interest to folks there.

The other most viewed photos in the top twenty include:

Shinji's Thanksgiving turkey (674 times)

several scenes from Sri Lanka

my city's downtown

an empty view of Wreck Beach

the closeup of a smiley rubber ball

a view beneath a section of SkyTrain

students in my BCIT classroom.

I can see why they might have crept up on the listing. However, the following one does seem a bit odd coming in at #17. It's just our old TV after being thrown in the pile at the recycling center. Why has this photo been viewed over 200 times?

Labels: Flickr

I spent the afternoon in a department meeting at BCIT. It's good to get together to talk on teaching issues. Today, we had several speakers provide information on the Canadian Language Benchmarks. We can decide how we wish to use the information.

I don't want to say I'm jaded because of the negative connotations. In fact, it is gratifying having been involved in the same profession for so long. I started learning about teaching thirty years ago. A good instructor most always has good skills. I'm also sure there is a great deal of art in the process too. Although I've always earned my living teaching English to non-native speakers, the interactions that take place in a classroom still seem a bit magical to me.

Labels: BCIT

Last night, I was searching through a CD filled with archived computer files for inspiration. I have a desire to sometimes dip into my past for these blog entries. If I'm attempting to have a documented existence I have a lot of catching up to do. Although I've been blogging for coming up on three and a half years, I had a great deal of life before that! In fact, the figure stands at a scary 44 years. So, a snippet or two from my monstrously-large past is added here from time to time.

I navigated to folders that once existed on the computer I had sent from Dubai. When we moved here, it was near top of the line with a 12 gigabyte hard disk. I think the processor was a P133. The sub-directories quietly exist on a +R compact disk now. I ended up spending more time than I anticipated looking through the ten or eleven year old files. The MS Excel spreadsheets were interesting as I used to track monthly expenses that way. The MS Word documents may have included the very cover letter that got me an interview at BCIT. There were old .jpg files although they were mostly poor-quality scans. Among the debris, I found many things I could've included in today's blog entry. Yet, I ended up copying the following tiny 18K file for inclusion.


The tiny 18K .mid file plays for 6:18 minutes.

This sort of showcases how much more we expect from a PC nowadays. I found a substantial collection of MIDI files. They are tiny files with instructions for a sound card's synthesiser and contain no actual sound themselves. It was fun to actually hear anything through the basic desktop speakers. Compare that with video programs I now routinely record from TV through a capture card. A half an hour of Little Mosque on the Prairie has a file size approximately 100 thousand times larger.

Labels: Dubai, file archives, software

Many of my photos may not be worth a thousand words. Some don't merit more than a few dozen. Oh well. I do have to admit that it was so nice this morning I went out for a little walk around the block. I guess I can correct those assignments tomorrow morning! The sky was frightfully blue. Although the grass was a luxurious green, I took this photo of the side of a neighbourhood church.

Labels: weather

I've been walking around the classroom so much my feet hurt. Today, by chance, I even have on jogging shoes. The students are writing. They need to make a simple set of instructions, and then make a process paragraph from it.

Although this sounds simple, it never proves to be. Just making the instructions with all the hints we learned takes time. It's sometimes hard to be simple. They've each chosen their own topics but concise, action-oriented imperative verbs are not always a part of everyday language. It's also tough picking verbs that can be changed to passive in the paragraph. Some work while others don't. For example:

Remove the lid of the pan. The lid of the pan is removed.

Wait for the water to boil. The water is waited for to boil.

I don't mind answering vocabulary questions. I'd prefer they ask for help than immediately grab their electronic dictionaries. Robert had to learn to lower the car before removing the jack. He is writing about changing a tire. Because she is telling how a dog is washed, Terase needed to know the difference betweeen a brush and a comb. Shao needed to know the past participle for withdraw as he will write the process paragraph about how money is taken from a bank machine.

I've taken a few minutes of break to type this. Class finishes at 5:00 and there's only twelve minutes remaining. I should get back to checking how they're doing.

Labels: BCIT

Posted by: Dennis S Hurd / 4:48 PM

Another full week is coming up at work. My class has to finish two writing assignments. There's also a staff meeting on Friday. Then next week, we'll be busy too as my group is giving oral presentations and doing their final exams on the 23rd.

I suppose earning all this cash is worth it. I mean when I'm making more than I spend, I can quite often increase my savings. It's a double-edged sword however. I finished entering all those forms into the QuickTax software over the weekend. We get cash back from the federal government but that only means too much was being taken out on those weeks I worked. And wait a minute! Revenue Canada is still unable to process my returns, so their refund isn't going to show up in my account anytime soon.

Payroll deductions are surely a clever idea. Citizens might tend to revolt or at least scrutinize where the taxes go, if people were whacked with one yearly bill. I honestly believe there's value in the obligatory donations to my governments. I paid more in 2006 federal and provincial taxes than for all other combined expenses though.

Labels: government, money

I didn't get up until quarter past eight today. Well, that's what the clocks said although it's due to the early arrival of Daylight Savings Time. Sunrise was 7:35 and sunset will be at 7:10. I like the idea of the additional light in the evenings. I fear that today is going to be too overcast to be able to really tell the difference though.

There's a memorable Expedia TV commercial flogging their winter get-away packages. A woman looks up from her computer and out of a downtown office window. It shows the time is only after 4:15 pm but the city lights are on because it's as dark as midnight. Tears start to well up in her eyes and a pout forms on her face. Of course, then she can hardly contain her glee when she notices the great deals on Expedia.

Rather than feeling sorry for her, I'd say the bitch should be given a warning for her personal web-surfing at work.


This is a sunset from my balcony last week. This will now occur
an hour later due to the early adoption of Daylight Savings Time.

Labels: balcony, Fraser River, New Westminster