Monthly Archives: September 2011

If you’re an OS lion user, you may care to use its hidden WiFi diagnostic App, proving that yes, your internet provider is probably exaggerating its claims about performance. According to MacWorld, there’s no danger of messing up your system either.

When you find and launch it, Wi-Fi Diagnostics gives you four options: Monitor Performance (which shows you signal strength, noise level, transmit power, and data rate); Record Events (which can keep a log of network happenings); Capture Raw Frames (which records everything coming and going on your Mac’s wireless connection); and Turn on Debug Logs.

Easy with the slings and arrows there, Chrome Massive. This is a nice thing for MacOS users.

Lion tinkerers apply here: Monitor Wi-Fi with Lion’s hidden tool (MacWorld)

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You may turn your education system upside down now.

An actually-radical government-commissioned report out today by Dr Áine Hyland (above) begins a process that should end the ‘Points Race’ forever. Under the proposals, reported in the Irish Times, the CAO admissions policy (a brutal numerical slug out every August) will be replaced by a system where students are matched and given preferential entry to the courses that best reflect their academic strengths.

The report [by Dr Hyland, a founder of the Dalkey School project] says the points race is damaging second level education. A less restrictive college admissions system would help deliver a more holistic education at second level. It could also end a practice whereby CAO points are determined by the popularity of the course rather than its academic standard.

The report admits some Leaving Cert subjects – notably higher-level maths – are more difficult than others. It says students opt for subjects that are seen as “easier” to amass the points they need for college instead of taking those that best match their skills set.

The report also helps to unravel a lingering mystery, namely why our ‘elders’ have made such a comprehensive balls of every single thing in every area of Irish public life since their ‘elders’ did the same thing before them and so on and so forth? Turns out – wait for it – the people who get on in Ireland are people who can retain knowledge but are all too often not very knowledgeable.

The new report is highly critical of the distorting or “backwash” effect of the Leaving Cert on third-level colleges. It acknowledges how many students – weaned on rote learning in the Leaving Cert – come to college without a strong capacity for critical thinking or independent learning.

Who would have thunk it?

Radical Overhaul Of Third-Level Admissions Proposed (Sean Flynn, Irish Times)

Dr Aine Hyland (Wikpedia)

(Pic: UCC)

So young.

Today he would be emigrating to Canada or writing for a satirical news and popculture website. Then he was killing his own brother and fighting off the advances of the parish priest. A striking Civil War image (Dublin Possibly Cork, circa 1922) released today by the National Library of Ireland on to its regularly-updated, lovingly-curated flicker stream.

Sez the archivist: “Unsure whether this bread van was being guarded or raided, or whether the boy with the rifle was just passing by...”

Previously: Jobbridge Bakery Placements