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THERE ARE SOME interesting things about winter in Ireland that visitors should know.
Sent mail2blog by Darren Fennessy (shown at left) using Nokia Communicator O2 TypePad service in the Tipperary Institute Writing Skills class.
ONE WAY to tell if college students are Luddites is to determine whether they author their own personal music collection. Of the 57 students in my current classes, only 11% do not rip, burn, share music. Most students prefer their music in MP3 formats, although the most experienced have a combination of MP3 and CD formats to ensure their collections play on the widest variety of machines. When it comes to stamping out Luddite behaviour, nothing works better than connections to personal music collections.
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon -- "Is it O.K. to be a Luddite?" via Liam Noonan
Sent mail2blog by Nokia Communicator O2 TypePad service.
NEW MEDIA MUSINGS -- JD Lasica notes that bloggers who make their own independent observations are often more likely to speak the truth than mainstream media reporters. Chalk it u p to the power of social software and take it for what it's worth--the power of the independent. But that independent viewpoint can shade and distort as much as the fact-checked mainstream journo.
CLONMEL HOTSPOT -- Tipperary Institute's plans for the "Excellence in Information Technology" event with Excellence Ireland continue on the fast track, with commitments from several of Ireland's leading lights in the field of IT. This means the day-long event will provide quality information about how to leverage IT for competitive advantage. I'll be at the event, talking with people who have moved well beyond Y2K and into the realm of leveraging IT as the lifeblood of their organisations.
KILKENNY -- Several students in Tipperary Institute have asked me whether there is any difference in wage packet between a Diploma graduate and a Degree graduate and I have pointed to evidence showing there is. College education in Ireland increases students' earning power by 10% for each year of study, more than in any other country in the western world.
Research shows that the longer someone stays in college, the more Irish employers are willing to pay for their skills. Few investments pay as well as an extra year in education. The average bonus to earning power for a year in college in other countries, including Britain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States, is 8%. A four-year degree in Ireland can therefore give a person an increased earning power of up to 50% over someone who entered the workforce immediately after school. The study was written by Colm Harmon, an economist at University College Dublin and colleagues at the Institute for the Study of Social Change. These numbers form part of the Irish government's position that calls for the reinstatement of fees for third level education in Ireland.
Free college education was introduced in 1995, and Ireland now spends EUR 178m a year putting students through college.
Paul Colgan -- "Year's Study Puts 10% on Earning Power" in The Sunday Times, 1 Sep 02.
FORTUNE -- Sir Richard Branson conducts all his affairs from his little black book. Running your life out of a black book and a gym bag means you know where everything is. It also means you stay focused on what's important. Joan Branson grabbed Sir Richard's hand to keep him from raising it at a Microsoft conference when Bill Gates asked if there was anyone left in the group who did not use the Internet.
Branson's diaries include every brainstorm, every business conversation, every meaningful valuation of any business deal, and any substantive conversation. His use of the medium adds even more weight to the A5 copybook scheme I have imposed on students in my Writing Skills class.
CATDOC -- It amazes me that people do not know that hidden info can be extracted from documents they attach to e-mail. Tools such as Catdoc or Antiword make it a doddle to reduce Word metadata to a text file. I've seen all of this info in attached documents:
Continue reading "Meta data in Word" »
KILKENNY -- With opposition policians dumping all over the economic achievements that local TD John McGuinness has helped forge into national policies, the publication of updated vital statistics from the Central Statistics Office is a timely reminder of the most important figure of all. Suggestions that Tipperary Institute's IT graduates entered a ball of smoke hold no weight as it has been revealed that employment has grown by 25% since 1996.
JEREMEY CLARKSON WRITES his best piece of 2003, in testimony to the Concorde.
Like most middle-aged people, I don't know where I was when John F Kennedy was shot. But I do know where I was when the Air France Concorde crashed into a Paris hotel. And I know where I'll be next Friday: on board the world's only supersonic airliner as it makes its final scheduled flight from New York to London.
Continue reading "Last flight of Concorde" »
EASTGATE -- I often learn what is on the market by looking at advertisements pulled into my blog through AdSense. Since I often write about writing, AdSense serves information about Tinderbox, a nice Mac program for research and note-taking.
Continue reading "Info from AdSense" »
