Tommy Collison's Blog, page 8

It's A Dead Cert

(I wrote this as an opinion piece for the Sunday Business Post in June 2013. Fresh out of Irish secondary education, I outline about the system's failings, and what could be done to improve the situation.)

Today, our ability to use computers is like a lingua franca in the business and social worlds. The rise of e-mail, social networking, and online publishing all tell us this.

Politicians use phrases like ‘the knowledge economy’ to convince us that they recognize the need to develop a tech-savvy workforce, so why don’t they ensure our secondary education reflects this need? The structure of the Leaving Cert. exam doesn’t reflect how we now use information. With the advent of search engines, simply memorizing facts is of negligible importance compared to the ability to critically analyze information.

Welcome to the 21st century, where having skills is more important than having a specified vocation. With technology improving so rapidly, we should be wary about pigeon-holing students into one specific career, rather than teaching them widely-applicable skills. So many of today’s in-demand jobs didn’t exist fifteen years ago, and we don’t know what some of 2025’s jobs will be. John Green, a New York Times bestselling author who is perhaps best known as a professional videographer on YouTube, once remarked: "If you had told College Me that I would become a professional YouTuber, I would’ve been like, 'That’s not a word.'" Today, it is possible to make a living on YouTube alone. Nine years ago, the site didn’t exist. 

I come from a family of people who tinker with things. My older brothers, John and Patrick, are currently working on their second technology startup, called Stripe, in San Francisco. They started their love affair with computers by first taking them apart to “improve them”, and later learning how to program. Patrick reminisced how, when we first got an internet connection, it was so slow that he would read books while waiting for webpages to load. But Patrick and John didn't build computers from spare parts or learn SSH because they thought that those would be useful skills when they founded Stripe. That's not how the brain of a seven- or nine-year-old works: it’s usually more concerned with what's interesting and fun.

In the same vein, the Coder Dojo movement, which teaches programming to children and teenagers worldwide, doesn't teach with the aim of producing employable computer scientists; the classes started because someone (James Whelton) loved programming and wanted to share his enthusiasm. It's almost as if those students now having the skills to be in-demand computer programmers is an unintended side-effect. 

Having graduated secondary school last week, many people are asking me if I’ll miss it, or whether I’m looking forward to the ‘real world’. This always strikes me as an odd phrase, as if the world I've just spent 19 years is somehow less real than the one I'm about to enter. What they mean, of course, is that I'll enjoy more freedom as an adult, away from the strict routines and inevitable lack of independence that comes with being in secondary school and living at home. They mean that my interests can now take center-stage, since I don’t have bells, timetables, and homework assignments to distract me. Why should I have to wait until I graduate to focus on my interests? There isn't a switch that flips when you graduate or reach the age of 18; you become an adult when you take responsibility for your life. You do that at any stage by taking on projects: doing something specifically because you enjoy it, rather than it being prescribed by the curriculum. I think all students should have projects while they’re in secondary school. They should be practising in their chosen creative outlet, learning a language (computer or human), or playing a sport. If they don’t know what sort of projects excite them, they should try new things. Even though in secondary school, teens are growing tired of childhood, they still possess that childlike sense of enthusiasm. I don’t think it’s an outlandish claim to say that all teens are passionate about something: they just need to find out what it is.

When I started studying for my Leaving Cert., I soon realized that the Venn diagram of what I was learning and what I was truly enthusiastic about didn’t have a lot of overlap. Armed with my projects (I loved writing fiction), I set about taking Paul Graham’s advice and began treating school like a day job. In his own essay on secondary school, entitled “What You’ll Wish You’d Known”, Graham points out that a musician who works in a café by day to pay her bills doesn’t think of herself as a waitress. She’s still a musician at heart. Similarly, I thought of myself as an aspiring writer who just happened to spend most of his time studying for the Leaving Cert. I studied during term-time and, in June, published some short pieces of fiction for the Amazon Kindle, entitled ‘A Certain Freedom’. In August, I wrote a series of essays on my experiences growing up with a physical disability. According to an e-mail from a reader, those essays are now being distributed to parents who attend a center for cerebral palsy in Perth, Australia.

The quote "I never let my schooling interfere with my education" is attributed to Mark Twain. More than ever before in history, more and more of students' schooling and preparation for the real world is happening outside their classrooms. In economics, we learn of a concept called 'occupational mobility', the ease with which workers can move between one vocation and another. Today's Leaving Cert. curriculum should teach skills that enhance our mobility. It should facilitate students discovering what they're truly enthusiastic about. It should serve students better. 

Tommy Collison is a Leaving Cert. student who will begin studying journalism at New York University next September. He writes on 42409.org. 

You can follow me on Twitter.

 

Review: TheSnugg.co.uk's iPad Mini case

TheSnugg's iPad Mini case feels solid, and provides all-encompassing protection without adding too much to the device's bulk.

A couple weeks ago, TheSnugg.co.uk fixed me up with a free iPad Mini case to review here. I've been using it pretty much constantly over that time, especially while accessing Leaving Cert. notes (only 2 exams left!) in Dropbox or Evernote. My parents and I are also self-confessed Scrabble junkies, so the iPad is often a fixture of our kitchen table. I mention all this because I read tech reviews a lot, and so many of them seem to start off with "I don't use this device much, but...". It's safe to say that this iPad (and, by extension, the case in question) got a lot of use, and this review is based on that use. 

Let's talk about the overall feel of the case. It's leather, and doesn't feel at all gimmicky. Most of all, it's sturdy -- the iPad feels infinitely less fragile inside of it, and you feel better carrying it around. I found the stand slightly difficult to access and set up (the flap you tuck the outer section into was annoyingly stiff, but I assume this gets easier with continued use), but when the iPad itself is propped up, it's robust and quite sound. The fact that it allows for two viewing angles is a nice bonus.  

The best thing you can say about a product like this is that it does exactly what it's designed for well. I can definitely say that about this case -- it covers every part of the iPad without turning it into something hulking and unportable. Obvious thought went into the design and it's executed fairly well. My thanks to TheSnugg.co.uk for providing a complimentary review copy.

You can get the iPad Mini case in a variety of colors from TheSnugg.co.uk. where it retails for £24.99 and usually dispatches within 24 hours. 

 

Photo copyright: TheSnugg.co.uk.

Activation Lock

As someone who's had their phone stolen by pick-pocketers, I watched the announcement of a particular iOS 7 feature, Activation Lock, with interest. 

From Engadget: "In essence, it is what it sounds like: if someone steals your phone and chooses to disable Find My iPhone, he won't be able to reactivate the phone. Same if they wipe the phone -- they'll be forced to sign in with your Apple ID and password."

The New York Times reports that law enforcement officials are welcoming the development, to say nothing of victims of robbery.

The feature focusses on a stolen phone being unusable rather than trying to improve somebody's chances of actually getting their phone back. Admittedly, this is probably the safer course: damage limitation rather than trying to out-muscle a thief who might have a gun or a knife. 

Here's what I think they should do: firstly, create a setting such that powering off the phone requires a passcode. Assuming you've a connection to the internet, this allows Find My iPhone to continue working. Having said that, you'd probably want passcodes on other, tangentially-related features -- require a passcode to turn off wifi/3G so that the thief can't deny Find My iPhone the connectivity it needs to work.

I don't know the breakdown of smartphone robberies that are simple grab-it-out-of-their-hand jobs versus robberies that actually involve gun- or knife-point. With Activation Lock as it was announced, I wouldn't be surprised if we started hearing stories involving thieves demanding your Apple ID as they grabbed your phone.  

Either way, I think we can all agree that Activation Lock is a step in the right direction that still falls short of a perfect world. 

 

Graham

In my op-ed piece for today's Sunday Business Post, I refer to Paul Graham's fantastic essay, "What You'll Wish You'd Known".

If you'd asked me in high school what the difference was between high school kids and adults, I'd have said it was that adults had to earn a living. Wrong. It's that adults take responsibility for themselves. Making a living is only a small part of it. Far more important is to take intellectual responsibility for oneself.

If I had to go through high school again, I'd treat it like a day job. I don't mean that I'd slack in school. Working at something as a day job doesn't mean doing it badly. It means not being defined by it. I mean I wouldn't think of myself as a high school student, just as a musician with a day job as a waiter doesn't think of himself as a waiter. And when I wasn't working at my day job I'd start trying to do real work.

The whole thing is definitely worth a read.

Dusty

This is Dusty's story.

In 2010, I had another surgery in America. Being a teenager away from all his friends was a little difficult, so I used Twitter a lot to keep in touch with them. I interacted with a lot of people I didn't know personally, but one account in particular used to regularly @-reply me. I didn't recognize the name, @JustAnotherTrnd, and the profile picture of two dogs didn't jog my memory either. Even so, tweets signed 'Dusty' and 'Hurley' would come in, congratulating me on milestones and wishing me well when I mentioned physiotherapy. 

I got to know the account better as time passed. Dusty and Hurley were two therapy dogs, with someone scribing their anthropomorphic thoughts to life. Coming from small-town Ireland, I was shocked that their scribe, a woman I got to know named Shari, cared about me so much as to follow me on Twitter and check in on how I was doing. A couple weeks later, she sent me a direct message (a private tweet, essentially), asking for my address. A few days after that, a long-sleeve grey T-shirt arrived with the words LIFE ROCKS emblazoned on the front. I still have that; a memento of, clichéd as it is, the kindness of strangers.  

We stayed in touch after I left America, exchanging e-mails with photos and well-wishes. When I mentioned I was visiting New York City in 2011, she offered to introduce me to someone she knew there. One balmy Saturday evening, I sat across from a young lawyer in a restaurant just off Central Park. Over the sound of the horse carriages and the traffic of Fifth Avenue, I asked her how she knew Shari. It turns out that 10 years ago, the young lawyer had been in need of a kidney transplant. Shari heard about it through a sign in a random shop and, well, she volunteered. I was floored, but it fit so well with the mental image of the Shari I knew (who I had never met) -- she just was just the sort of person who would do that sort of thing. 

~ 

I'm gearing up to move to the USA in August, studying journalism at New York University. One of the things I want to do before I go is find a home for my drum kit. Soon after I started drumming, on the cheapest starter kit I could find, a friend of mine (who I knew only from Twitter and had never met) e-mailed me and asked if I'd mind his drum kit as he was moving to America. He thought about putting it in storage, he said, but why not give it to someone who'd use and get enjoyment from them? A worthy question, and one that's now relevant to me, as it's my turn to move to America. 

For that reason, I decided against just keeping them in my old bedroom, playing them when I was home for Christmas. I decided to find a home for them. I wanted to do a Tony on it, and give them to a young kid in Limerick, indoctrinating them with a love of hitting things with sticks to music. I like to think it's what Shari would do. Actually, it's exactly what Shari would do.  

And so that's how my bass drum, pictured at the top of this post, came to be inscribed with the words Dusty. SB, 5/4/13. Dusty was one of the original therapy dogs, but who died last year. I read about her death and found myself much sadder than I would've imagined. I'd never met the dog, let alone Shari. And yet, the dog symbolized the kindness Shari had showed me when I was in hospital. 

Shari inspired me to do random acts of kindness. Dusty is how I choose to mark that.

Thoughts on Two Years Reading

Since I graduated secondary school last week, I was curious to see just how much studying had affected my enjoyment of reading for pleasure; over the two years of the Leaving Cert., I often felt bad that I wasn't reading enough. 

I kept a shorthand list over the two year period, and finished porting it onto 42409 this morning. Scrolling through it, I'm a little surprised at the length of it, considering that I always felt I could do more when it came to reading books. I still have a long list I want to get through this summer, but seeing this black-and-white list makes me feel a little better. 

I've set up a permanent page for the list, and I'll continue updating it. You can find it over on the Reading Log. 

Some thoughts: 

Before we get into the objective likes and dislikes, let's look at ol' reliable numbers. There are 44 books on the list as of this writing. Across the 22 months since I started recording the log, that neatly works out at 2 books a month, or a book a fortnight. Before I went and worked it out, I would've anecdotally told you that a book a fortnight or a book every three weeks would've sounded right. I used notation stolen from Patrick, my older brother, to gauge enjoyment of books read. A star (★) meant I really liked the book, a minus (-) meant I finished the book wishing I hadn't bothered. Neither of these notations beside the title meant that the book fell somewhere between these two extremes.Twenty books are marked with a star, or 45% of the total. Six were marked with a minus, which leaves 18 in that nebulous middle-ground. I'd like to be able to say that so few books I didn't enjoy being on the list points to an ability to choose to only read books I have a fair chance of enjoying, but there's probably some bias there. I feel like I was predisposed to mark a book with a star purely because it meant that reading the book was a good use of my time. Conversely, it's hard to shake the feeling that a book marked with a minus meant I wasted my time. Of the books marked with neither star nor minus, it's more likely that some should have minuses than stars. I feel that this bias is perhaps the reason it's so hard to trust things like GoodReads star rankings. Thirteen of the 44 books were non-fiction, accurately reflecting the fact that, while studying, I'm more likely to enjoy fiction novels to non-fiction.Of those 44 books, I had read 4 of them previously. In general I try and read new books rather than reread old ones. When it gets close to exams, though, I prefer to be reading something, anything, than not be reading. Often, I'll have an audiobook in my iTunes library and put it on when I'd be unwilling to look at a print book (after staring at a textbook for so long). Anecdotally, I'd say that I consumed about a quarter of the books in audiobook form. Given the choice between audiobook and print book, I'll usually err on the side of the latter because it means I'll get it read quicker. With the advent of Kindles, I can read on public transport or in cafés. About the only time I get to listen to audiobooks are the time between getting into bed and falling asleep (I'll recall perhaps 20 minutes of an audiobook in this scenario) or those rare moments when I'm playing a video game. It can often take me several weeks to listen to an entire book in audio form.

I love recording things, so as I said above, I'll continue to update the list over the summer and next year in NYU. I just thought it would be nice for me to take a look at my reading habits over the last two years.

Hello, world!

This is a blog. Stay tuned for updates.