Weekly Review

Well, obviously I’m not very good at the weekly review process. (It’s kind of OK, since no one is subscribed to actually read the weekly reviews).

I’ll try to do better. For now, I’ll try to catch up with an overview.

New Political Party?

With all the news and political bickering, I’m wondering if we might actually see the rise of a new political party. We currently have a lack of logic and reason involved in the political process. America has been through several political party revisions (though we alway pretty much stay with two major parties). These changes generally occur around a specific event. The Republican Party seems to be set as extremly isolationist (anti-immigration, racially divisive, etc). Given the changes in population, that doesn’t scale well over time. Will the Republican part go away? Will it morph into something else? It’s not going to happen soon, but, again, the separatist beliefs don’t scale well over time. The Atlantic has an interesting piece that relates to the Republican Party.

RSS

I remain a big fan of RSS. I really wish that more people understood what RSS is and how it could be used. Facebook is really an advanced RSS feed (where someone else controls what you see). Facebook has packaged things really, really well.

A good RSS feed can/could be extremely useful.

Mod_Security

I installed an updated version of Moodle and hit a snag. I got a Mod_Security warning. This is not an Moodle issue, but a web host issue. If you are updating Moodle and get this warning, don’t panic. Reach out to your web host and let them know. They can fix this easily.

Loss

There’s been a lot of loss for me recently. My father-in-law passed away. A close friend passed away after a long bout with cancer. There is much sadness. I’m choosing to try to dwell on the positives of knowing them and having spent time with them. There are times and situations that are tough, but I try to remember the positives.

Kids

I did get to go see my kids over the Holiday break. It was great to spend time with them. Both of them are wonderful, kind, bright, beautiful adults. They make the world a better place.

CS (Computer Science) for all

I’ll have more detail for this in a future post, but I went to conference on CSforAll. The State of Michigan is looking to implement this across the state and wanted a partner district.

All My Sons

I went to see the National Theatre Live Event – All My Sons. Although set in 1947, I thought that there were lots of parallels to today. The play, by Arther Miller, isn’t exactly a “barn burner”. It moves a bit slowly (especially the first act), but I enjoyed it very much. Sally Field was excellent.

Podcast

The Middle School Matters Podcast is still chugging along. Shawn and I were able to record another episode this week (before the celebration of life). One of the discussion points was the habit of saying “like, yeah”. I’ve noticed this quite a bit recently.