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

There's a link over there under my face but you might not have noticed its addition. For a week, I've been publishing a few podcasts found on my Creative Zen. I am quite excited by radio now that I'm the one in control. I'm downloading from nearly two dozen sources. The nice thing is everything arrives automatically onced released. For my digital archives, I'm saving a daily item. The collection will continue to grow over the course of the year. I wanted to let others know what I'm saving as examples. I call them the topCasts. Why don't you listen along?

Labels: Creative Zen, podcasts

This Sunday is the Vancouver Pride Parade.

I learned a lot during my decade and a half teaching Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the UAE. It provided me with much that most people don't have the chance to experience. I know many people who get used to life there and find it hard to leave.

I left those places because they could not provide me with many important things. People can learn to make do in many situations but it should not be a substitute for really being free to express oneself. The whole concept of personal freedom is extremely foreign to large swatches of the world.

North American values and ideals can get quite twisted at times, but there's still an underlying respect for diversity. There's something noble about perhaps not supporting something but upholding the basic right of others to be different. Agreeing to disagree is quite respectful. These facts boil down to the major reason I'm living in Canada.

Labels: Canada, feelings, Vancouver

Since the time I decided to use labels here, I've been playing with the concept as it relates to blogging. I'd tagged a lot with Flickr but the use of labels on blogger.com is surprisingly different.

In Flickr one uses tags to organize and pinpoint. Primarily, the use of tags can be for one's own use or for public searches. For example, a general, broad search can turn up all 33 of my pictures of London; whereas, I can quickly locate only two examples of the changing of the guards. In fact, the vast majority of my hundreds of tags point to a single photo.

On the other hand, blogger.com's labels are for self-initiated organization only. The emphasis is on general, self-described topics. Moreover, labels with a single entry are somewhat unnecessary. It took me a little experimentation to figure this out.

I have probably labeled only a quarter of the entries in my eJournal and images. Now I've come to a very sad realization though. I have discovered I spend a great majority of my time here discussing these three topics:

My Work (BCIT)

My Computer Use

My City (New Westminster).

Other data abounds but I really haven't got the labels all worked out yet. It may take a while ...

Labels: blogging, labels

It is taking me a few days to get used to being off from work. One of the few drawbacks of teaching is that one's never really done. The job is not like a carpenter's. They get to look at a finished project and must feel a sense of accomplishment. During the time I'm teaching, I'm always thinking of things to add or change. I know the materials I'm using by heart, but I constantly consider new methods used to present it. It's like I'm always working although I'm usually in the classroom less than 20 hours a week. This is why I generally need a lot of time off.

That is exactly what makes being free such a change. I'm still thinking in the back of my mind there are things I could or should be doing. My mind, however, is wrong. I'm completely free for August. In addition, we'll be heading to Central Europe from mid-September through the beginning of October. I've requested time off. That means I won't be doing any chalk and talk for almost three months.

I really do have to sit back and just kick up my feet a little.

Labels: Eurotrip 2007, relaxing, travel planning

This blog is just a month shy of its fourth birthday. In that time, I really didn't know I had run on so much about movies. Although by no means exhaustive or even representative, I have typed quite about about the subject. Click the following link.

my eJournal and images: The Movie Reviews




When we first came to Canada we went to movie theatres a lot. This probably was due to the fact of having accessible venues. I would venture that except for Saudi Arabia where they're banned, the ones in Kuwait, Bahrain, and the UAE are probably more upscale and mainstream than during the eighties and nineties. I recall dark, dirty, old cinemas showing late, often cut, films.

Around Vancouver, there was a massive building spree at the beginning of this decade. The multiplexes do offer good seating, screens, and sound systems now. It's necessary to see blockbuster events in them. Yet, DVD's are now released surprisingly soon after the original theatrical release. We watch a lot more non-mainstream and indie films on DVD.

I only wish the format wars for high definition DVD hadn't occurred. HD-DVD seems to be cheaper than Blu-ray but who wants to commit to a format before there's a clear winner. Damn them for cutting their collective noses to spite their faces. The studios could be churning out their entire collections in HD by now if a common format had been agreed upon a few years back.

Labels: HDTV, labels, movies, review, stars, The Wizard of Oz

I had all my final exam papers corrected by one o'clock in the afternoon. Nowadays, I always use BCIT's online grade-book during the term. In that way, students can check marks online as the course progresses. I stopped keeping track on Excel spreadsheets a few terms back. That's how I kept track right from my first class at Burnaby in 1997.

This means that I've been signing teaching contracts with the British Columbia Institute of Technology for ten years! I've never worked anyplace for such a long time. It sounds a little scary. People work only four or four and a half decades at best but I've just finished one.



Back to what I was starting to say, an advantage of the online grade book shines when it comes to completing final marks. I simply click on a few links and all the data is automatically calculated and transferred. I am only required to enter attendance data and a special form if there were any failed students. Then viola, the job's done. It is sent off to be approved by a supervisor and then electronically proceeds to the registrar.

I like technology a lot, but then I've always chosen only what I feel makes my life easier. For example, I manage to completely avoid voice mail at work. My message redirects callers to my cell. If I am busy, I simply don't answer. People who do not have clear boundaries may end up stressed out by the additional demands placed on them by technology. I'd rather think I use it only to lessen my responsibilities or, at least, become a little more efficient.

Labels: BCIT, opinions, software, technology

This is another day where I'm talking more about function than form. I am not really adding new content today, but I did spend a little bit of time organizing what had already landed here in the past.

I'm more convinced than ever that blogging tools are the only way I can work on this on-going project of scribbling about my life. I didn't use blogger.com's labels until recently. The task of going back through nearly 1700 entries to categorize them seemed simply out of the question.

Yet, the promise of pulling together the randomness of over 200 weeks of continuous daily entries seemed far too great to ignore. I fiddled with adding some new labels to old entries and found a short cut method. Getting most of this junk organized is still going to take months, especially if I devote a few minutes to the task just now and again. The news is I've started.

New Hampshire

Saudi Arabia

Bahrain

the United Arab Emirates

So, seelct one of the pictures above to find a majority of entries dealing with this topic or time. They may have been written years apart but will show up on the same page. How's that for organzing after the fact?

Labels: blogging, labels