iMatt :: The Blog of Matt Clare

This weekend is the first race of the 2012 Formula 1 season. I’m excited and I hope you are too.

One part of the season that always gets me excited is entering my team, ZERO Racing, in Mitch & Brooke’s Fantasy Racing competition. I’m encouraging you to as well.

All you have to do is pick a team name and then a driver from all of six groups provided. The only prize is respect, and you should probably check back once and while to see how you’re doing, but if you let me know your team I’ll be sure to give you credit for besting mine.

Something else to look forward to is the new look I donated in the form of pictures and CSS to Mitch & Brooke’s Fantasy Racing. I hope to see it applied soon — once the guys are done starting the season etc. Here’s a preview:

During my four weeks of teaching in January I’ve been teaching with a tablet: the Asus Transformer Prime. When I teach I almost always have a digital device (beyond the presentation tool) with me to reference my notes and do all the digital teaching elements like recording marks and interacting with students digitally.

So far I’ve found my laptop to do all I need it to, but laptops have a limited battery, they can be less than portable and have the visual barrier of a vertical screen. My phones, specifically my iPhone, is too small to refer to and interact with while teaching.

Here’s my reflections from teaching with a tablet:

• I like the form factor – back to when all I’d use was paper notes…. well someone else teaching a class would have.
• The portability does allow me to be more engaged with my students both with with my location in the classroom and the removal of the laptop/monitor barrier.
• I can’t take notes as fast, but the notes I do make just sound less jundgemental than the clicity clack of a keyboard

Here’s the strangest reflection:

• When I refer to my tablet for something I feel like Moses reading a decree from his tablet. I feel as though each fact should be prefaced with “thou shalt..”. Perhaps its the read-only or consumptive not creative nature of the whole tablet form factor that makes my notes read or feel like decrees?

Here’s a word cloud for 2011 at MattClare.ca – mostly my blog (biased towards the end of the year):

Here’s my Twitter feed for 2011:

I think the insight there is that I use twitter to get a hold of Giulia a lot.

As my ThinkUp installation at mattclare.ca/thinkup gains way more data than my previous archives had I think 2012 will bring with it some real insight.

I’ve blogged about being a big fan of the PeakSaver program before. mattclare.ca/blog/2010/07/07/peaksaver-heat-wave/ No longer.

I recently wrote Burlington Hydro about the about the remarkably poor instructions for logging into the PeakSaver Online Control Centre. The number of issues with the process really does make Burlington Hydro and the PeakSaver program look foolish.

The issues stem from me attempting to log into the online control centre with credentials I had saved but no longer work. It would appear they stopped working after my thermostat was replaced in the summer after it was damage by our child — an experience that was very good and left me impressed with PeakSaver’s responsiveness. My opinion has since changed.

Apparently the new thermostat meant a new log-in, no one told me this, but it was simple to deduce. Here are the three major problems the experience highlighted, with the benefit of information from a phone call on Thursday December 15.

1. Login page for PeakSaver Control Centre

   When you don’t enter your password correctly at rscdr1.rodanpower.com/login06.html the logo changes from BHI’s to PeakSaver’s
   

   When you follow the Forgot your password link you are presented with a form

   

   I filled out that form at least a 1/2 dozen times. I never got a response. I’d put my phone number in the notes, ask if anyone was receiving these, no one ever got back to me in any format.

   PeakSaver and Burlington Hydro would be offering better service if this link wasn’t even there, because I’d call immediately and not wait for a never arriving response.

2. The account instructions to sign-in to the online control centre are incorrect on the Burlington Hydro web site, and I know how to correct them based on my Thursday December 15th phone call.

   At www.burlingtonhydro.com/your-home/conservation/peaksaver.html it should read:

   The letters BUR followed by Your Account Number. Note that there is no dash in your User Name as there is in your Burlington Hydro account number.

   

3. When I finally called on Thursday December 15, 2011 I was asked what my username that I was given was, I suggested what I thought it was based on www.burlingtonhydro.com/your-home/conservation/peaksaver.html (which I now know is misinformation) and mentioned that at some point I had updated it to a different username. I was told both that the account information was wrong, and then given the correct formula noted above, and told that you can’t change your username. The gentleman I spoke to was correct about the format of my username, but one can change their username
   

I also asked the gentleman I spoke to on Thursday December 15 about the “Forgot your password?” form and why I hadn’t received a response. The gentleman then asked when I had filled it out, my answer was “Once this morning, once last night and during the day, once last week and a few times in the summer” he apologized. I further alerted him to the misinformation at www.burlingtonhydro.com/your-home/conservation/peaksaver.html and asked him to do what he can to improve that experience, I’ve since asked the same of Burlington Hydro.

There’s my rant, but I also hope it corrects the record for someone who Google’s there way away from www.burlingtonhydro.com/your-home/conservation/peaksaver.html and I also want to revoke my endorsement of the PeakSaver program.

I wanted to quickly write about the TMSoft White Noise app.  It has to be quick both because there isn’t much to say, other than it’s free or cheap and because our baby may be up from his nap soon.

I bought the full iPhone app before there was an iPad and before we had a baby in a fit of insomnia.  I’ve used it to try to fall a sleep our tune out those around me.  It works well for both and the audio samples provided are very good and you can combine them and set timers.

Since our baby has arrived we first discovered how much liked the oven exhaust fan.  I then realized that I had a portable version of “oscillating fan” in my pocket in the White Noise App.  It’s been great to both sooth our child and drown out other noises that might wake him.

TMSoft have since expanded their lineup.  I have a copy on my Android tablet.  My wife has the free version on her iPhone and I have the desktop version available from the Mac App store on my computer at work – airplane noises seemed to work well to drown out the noise of colleagues to write reports etc.

Here’s the places that I’ve found TMSoft’s White Noise application at:

• iOS Free App
• iOS Full App
• Android Web Store Free App
• Android Web Store Full App
• Mac App Store Free App
• Mac App Store Full App
• Blackberry version
• Windows Phone 7 Series Phones
• TMSoft’s website