Monthly Archives: June 2008

Driving on fumes

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I’ve just discovered the computer in my car has trouble working out how many miles it can go before running out of fuel if the tank is nearly empty. For the past two days I’ve been driving around with the orange warning light on, indicating I really should fill up with petrol or face the consequences of my car stopping. The computer in my car claimed I had 60 miles left so, being me and slightly inquisitive, I ignored it.

The miles left seemed to drop to 40 and then stay around there for a long time. Enough for me to drive to and from work twice (which, conveniently, is approximately 40 miles! – I used to do that in a day before). As I was coming home, passing one of the many petrol stations on my route the computer in my car decided “nope, that’s your lot… you have —– miles left” and stopped telling me how far I could go.

I must have rolled into the petrol station with about a teacup of petrol left. There can’t have been more than a small amount sloshing around in the bottom of the petrol tank, just enough to make the fuel gauge register.

It’s very convenient living two minutes (on foot) away from a petrol station, even if it does want to charge 117.9p/litre.

No more Year 10s

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Well, I’ve just finished madly sorting out my Year 10 reports and they’re now in the library being bound, ready for posting. The year 10s start two weeks of work experience after next week, but due to various things happening next week I’ve just finished my final year 10 classes of this school year.

In fact, next week I only have Monday as a proper, normal day. On Tuesday the first two periods are being used for careers talks. On Wednesday I am at an NQT conference all day, Thursday is the year 10 parents day and Friday is an INSET day.

This is very good :)

No, my website isn't broken

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The more astute of you may have noticed that the usual front page of my website has changed. In a small fit of realisation when leaving the house this morning I realised the main thing on my website is this – my diary.

And so my diary is now the main page of my website thanks to a bit of crafty .htaccess magic:

RewriteEngine on                                                                
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Authorization} !^$                                           
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} openid.mode=authorize                               
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !auth=                                              
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} =GET                                              
RewriteRule (.*) %{REQUEST_URI}?%{QUERY_STRING}&auth=%{HTTP:Authorization} [L]  
                                                                                                     
Redirect 301 /index.php http://www.piku.org.uk/diary/

The other stuff is still here, nothing has changed except one line in my htaccess file so you get redirected here. I’m going to do something to my website during the summer holidays. I’ve got some content to add and a few design changes I want to make. For now it’s better if you look at my diary since it gets updated several times a week.

SQUEAK

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This morning I noticed one of my pet mice had died. The poor thing was lying in its enclosure in a distinctive ‘I am dead’ way. It’s now in the garden helping my plants grow.

Dead mice are weird. They go all stiff and hard and sort of deflate, moulding to whatever they’re lying on. Having long tails is a definite advantage too.

My other mouse is happily running around its wheel being very much alive.

Alternative Curriculum Day 4

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Once again it was another Alternative Curriculum Day. My form, being the kids they are mostly decided today wasn’t worth turning up for, with there being a whopping five in morning registration, then a slightly more fuller (but still poor) seven in the afternoon.

I spent all day doing ‘marketing’ which involved the students making a product out of glo-sticks and marketing them.

Now, it sounds a great idea, the kids have to come up with a product and then market it, and then pitch their idea to the whole class, with the rest of the class deciding on which is the best. The problem is when you combine kids, scissors and glo-sticks.

Yep, we had glo-stick juice up the walls and in someone’s mouth. The best we can say is that the stuff is non-toxic and she won’t be chewing them again.