Dick Sblog

Several good things this week and one bad thing.

The bad thing was seeing the Windows blue screen of death when I started my pc this morning. Fortunately the beast worked when I rebooted it, so most of the day has been spent backing everything up and failing to find out why several error messages have started to appear. I thought I’d better write this before I press the off button ‘cos, based on past experience, it won’t work thereafter.

The good things…

1. Finding out the Ed Milliband has announced that the Government will introduce a clause into the forthcoming energy bill that will provide for a guaranteed feed-in tariff. If you don’t know what that is, it means that folk who install renewable energy generation capacity can get a decent price for any surplus energy that they export to the grid. This is standard practice around Europe and accounts for why Spain, Portugal and Germany are doing so well in developing renewable energy sources. In fact Germany is doing so well that it will apparently take the UK 150 years to catch up at present rates. So, with a proper feed-in tariff we may now catch up with them in about 80 years instead <sigh>. And maybe now there will be an incentive to start exploiting some of the technology we’ve developed here in the UK instead of exporting it for others’ benefit, like Pelamis.
2. Finding out from Andrew Dean at Exeter’s Marchmont Observatory that NASA has launched eClips. It’s yet another wonderful resource to help convey the fascination of science.
3. Listening to the news and hearing that Ed Balls has had the common sense to abandon KS3 SATS. Hurrah and about time too. KS2 SATS next please and be quick about it.

Oh yes, and there was a small step forward here in Bristol a couple of weeks ago when the wonderful Mary Gowers of iEARN UK initiated a learning circle as an initiative towards Science City Bristol (not that the project merits a mention on their website!) Teams of students from 5 local schools will be working together online to undertake an enquiry-based collaborative learning project.

Things are looking up… Shame about the global economy.