Author Archives: DELively

Now You Don’t Need It Now You Do But Now You Don’t Remember

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Every now and then someone asks me how I teach a particular unit in the textbook. At first, I can usually only give them a blank stare and a couple semi-coherent grunts. By the time I think of the advice I should give, they’ve already dismissed me as brain damaged and/or insane.

Sometimes when I’m teaching a class, I suddenly remember how to teach the lesson and suddenly have to change plans on the fly.

Part of the problem is I suffer from an extreme case of what I call “Actor’s Memory”. Actors memorize a surprising amount of lines and blocking over the course of months in order to be able to do a few performances (in the case of plays). There’s constant repetition and review in order to make the blocking second nature and allow them to work on the emotion behind the lines.

When those plays are over, though, the lines go away. In my case, I remember performing in the plays, and I remember a lot of the problems involved with a couple of the plays, but I only remember a few lines despite spending two months saying them.

I suspect this stems from a kind of compartmentalization of memory. I needed the lines when I needed them and reserved a portion of my brain for them. Once they were no longer needed, I freed up that bit of memory for important stuff like Bloody Mary recipes and movie lines. In some cases I forgot the lines within days of the play finishing, even when I only had a few lines.

This also applies to computer related stuff and visa renewal tasks. I study how to do something and then spend time doing it but then a year later I’ve forgotten what I did and have to study it all again.

In the case of teaching, I try to remember what I did but it’s not until I’m actually up performing that my lines begin coming back to me. That happened this past week when I suddenly remembered the activity I’d done the year before and started doing it.

Granted, I’ve written all this stuff down but just staring at the script doesn’t bring back the blocking, so to speak.

Also, sometimes I just forget where I put the notebook.

 

The Problems With Pen Cases

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When it comes to the stuff for my stuff I’m pretty choosey and quickly recognize the flaws in everything. When I get something I like I tend to keep it a long time, but all good things eventually pass.

Leather:
Several hundred years ago (plus or minus a few) I bought a brown leather pen case from Levenger. It was designed to hold four pens and had a pocket in the middle that was supposed to hold refills and random bits (a technical term). It had slots for four pens.

That led to the first problem. Because the slots weren’t staggered, pens pushed against each other making the case wide and hard to close.

The Levenger pen case opened to reveal the guts.

The Levenger pen case opened to reveal the guts. The leather center is close to the original color.

Also, the case was badly stitched in one random spot at the bottom and putting a pen in the slot put pressure on the bad stitching. I also never liked that it couldn’t open fully. I ended up putting pens in the slots on one side and between the slots on the other. It also had room for an EDC flashlight.

Over time the leather got a great patina but eventually wore out and I had to replace it.

The dried leather, the great patina and worn out spine.

The dried leather, the great patina and the worn out spine.

Tactical:
Because it was difficult to find a leather pen case that met my standards (lots of slots, less than the cost of a new car) I opted for a Maxpedition Mini Pocket Organizer. The Mini had the requisite slots and was the right size for large pens and a flashlight. The problem was it had lots of dangly bits, including a loop handle I never actually needed. It had a large velcro rectangle and a mesh pocket on the front. It had molle webbing on the back. Overall, it had a tactical look more at home in Afghanistan than Japan.

My Maxpedition Mini load out. Ready for service in one of the 'Stans.

My Maxpedition Mini load out. Ready for service in one of the ‘Stans or for a trip to Tokyo.

It also had to be loaded carefully or it would bloat out and be too thick to carry comfortably. Like all Maxpedition organizers it had a key hook attached to a strap that did nothing but take up space and make it more difficult to load.
Eventually I discovered Kickstarter and my next pen case.

Nylon:
I ordered what was then the complete line up of goods from Nock Co. The cases were designed by an actual Pen Addict for other pen addicts. Once I got them, I settled on the five slot Sassafras for my everyday carry.

The Nock Co Sassafras with the cover flaps folded back.

The Nock Co Sassafras with the cover flaps folded back. There are four Kickstarter projects in this picture.

The Sassafras folds but doesn’t zip closed. it has a pair of flaps that serve as pen protectors and which help keep the pens in the case as it gets jostled around. I’ve had it flop open but have never lost a pen. It’s well staggered and doesn’t get too thick when it’s carrying a lot of pens. That said, I’d love to have a zippered version of it. (I’ll do a proper review of all my Nock Co stuff another day.)

The Final Choice:
As much as I like the Nock Co cases, I still prefer the look and feel of the old leather case. The Maxpedition was khaki and after a few months it started getting grungy which is a lot different than the patina on leather. The Nock Co is dark blue and doesn’t show grunge as easily but it will eventually begin to fray and fall apart without having a “this looks awesome” phase as it does.

My goal now is to convince the Nock Co people to make a leather version of one of their cases or find someone who can make a leather version I can afford without selling pens.

I’ll also keep looking for a good leather case.

Not What I Intended At All

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I just spent the better part of an hour trying to find a couple pictures I probably took. Because I couldn’t find them, today’s post is brought to you by bad planning and disorganization.

I had intended to write about various pen cases today until I started looking for the pictures I was going to need to do it. After a relatively thorough search of my computer and extra storage I couldn’t find all the pictures I was looking for. This means a couple things:

1) I’m looking in the wrong place.
2) I need to label my pictures better and learn to use keywords.
3) I accidentally deleted the pictures.
4) The pictures don’t actually exist and I only imagined taking them.
5) I took the pictures but they sucked so I deleted them on purpose.

All of these, especially the latter two, are strong possibilities.

One of the curses of modern cameras is actually caused by their strength: because they no longer require film, pictures are cheap to take and, because you’re not limited to rolls of 24 or 36, you can fire away with reckless abandon. The trouble is, you end up getting random details of stuff you don’t know what they are:

There must have been a point to this but I didn't label it.

There must have been a point to this but I didn’t label it so I don’t know what it was.

At the time this probably seemed like a good idea but I don't remember.

At the time this probably seemed like a good idea but I don’t remember.

I now have thousands of photos to sort through on just one computer and that doesn’t count the external hard drives. If I were more industrious I’d sit down and sort and relabel them all to make the searchable.

Instead, I’ll probably end up retaking photos of all the pen cases I wanted to talk about for the post. The problem is, there’s at least one pen case that’s been been put somewhere where I won’t forget it.

That means I’ll have to search until I remember where it is.

A No-Name Notebook from the Balkans

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When I was in Albania one of the few things I found that I still wish I could find was a bunch of cheap notebooks.

Although very little seemed to work in Albania from 1992-1994, someone managed to produce surprisingly good notebooks. They had plastic covers with an odd internal pocket and came in pocket and large size. They were about the same size and thickness as modern Moleskine notebooks. They had stitched and glued spines that laid flat when open.

I bought a stack of them as they were only 15 lek (about 15 US cents at the time; 25 cents with inflation) and used them while I was in Mississippi and after I came to Japan. They are among the few thick notebooks I’ve ever completely filled. The plastic cover made them comfortable to carry in the pocket but they were sturdy enough to write on without needing a hard surface.

My Albanian notebook compared to a Field Notes notebook. You can see the damaged spine.

My Albanian notebook compared to a Field Notes notebook. You can see the damaged spine at the right..

Inside the notebook. You can see the construction and deconstruction.

Inside the notebook. You can see the construction thanks to the deconstruction.

The paper seemed to be one part pulp paperback and one part newsprint. It was not especially fountain pen friendly as it was rough and scratchy with fine nibs awhile thicker nibs tended to cause feathering. That said, although it had a little ghosting, it didn’t have much bleedthrough so it was possible to use with fountain pens.

You can kind of see Noodler's Old Manhattan and and Apache Sunset.

You can kind of see Noodler’s Old Manhattan and can see Apache Sunset pretty well. You can also see the roughness.

I had two of the pocket sized notebooks that have long since been scanned and retired. I’m tempted to try to use the cover for something but it tends to chip off plastic bits as it’s carried around. I still have half of one of the larger ones that started out as scrapbook that was eventually abandoned. I’m also tempted to start carry it in order to finish it, but I don’t really have a use for it. I’d be carrying it out of nostalgia not need.

That said, I wouldn’t mind picking up a few new ones if I ever get the chance to go back to Albania and if they still exist.

cKc EDC–An Awesome Solution in Search of a Problem

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I own a knife that solves a problem that probably wasn’t a problem. It’s still an awesome knife, though.

First some background: After I started renewing an odd interest in knives, I discovered cKc Knives. cKc Knives is run by Kyley Harris, a part-time knife maker in New Zealand who made videos that were one part humor, one part profanity and one part awesome. (In one great video, he proved a metal ruler could cut paper as part of a response to ludicrous claims from another YouTuber.) He also had one of the greatest sales videos I’ve ever seen when he proved his awesome sharpening skills by slicing a computer manual in half as easy as cutting warm butter.

He also approaches knife making from an attitude that’s best described as a mix of scientific curiosity and “why the hell not?”

As such, his knives don’t look like anyone else’s and have features that seem more like responses to other people’s claims. To prove that the shape of handle matters more than the handle’s material, he made a knife out of a material that’s slipperier than Teflon.

My favorite knife (although just barely) is the cKc EDC framelock. It was his first framelock and it was his attempt to make a lock that wouldn’t fail.

Note to non-knife people: One of the favorite past-times on YouTube is to take a folding knife and slam the blade spine on a table to see if the lock will fail, causing the knife to close on the user’s hand. The theory being that if it fails like that it will fail and close on your hand when you’re whittling a stick or opening a box you got in the mail. (Something like that.)

The cKc EDC from the side.

The cKc EDC from the side.

The cKc EDC, though, has a lock that’s designed to never fail. Harris designed the lock with a groove that, in theory, will act like a catcher’s mitt and catch the lock bar. He tested it by locking different knives and the EDC in a vice and hitting them with a broomstick. He sheered a piece of one knife but the EDC didn’t fail.

The problem is, though, that it’s unlikely anyone would ever hit the back of a knife like that unless I was, for some inexplicable reason, using a folding knife to hammer a nail. As such, the lock on the EDC solves a problem that’s not a huge problem on most knives.

Also, the trade-off is that the lock design leaves the knife with a slight rattle. To allow for the groove, the blade has to move a little. This goes away when you grip it and start using it, but it’s still a bit disconcerting the first time you shake the knife and it rattles. I bought it used and had to take it apart and clean and oil it a bit to make the blade open smoothly.

That said, I like everything else about the knife. The ELMAX steel holds an edge well, although, because I live in Japan, I haven’t had as much chance to test it out as I’d like, and the titanium scales and handle shape are surprisingly comfortable. It has a 3.1 inch blade (8 cm) and is 7.4 inches long (18.6 cm) it’s the prefect size to carry around the house.

Unfortunately, Harris has taken a hiatus from making knives. However, if you’re interested, check out his shop on Gearbastion, where you can also find a lot of other new knifemakers, from the USA, the UK, Australia and New Zealand.

I hope he starts making knives again soon. Until then, keep watching Gearbastion.

 

 

 

Belated Popcorn and Half a Movie

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It was another one of those days, but in a good way.

Today our youngest insisted on going to a movie so she could use the discount coupons we’d received for some reason or the other. I used my powers of persuasion delay and whining (Example: “I went last time! I went last time! It’s your turn! It’s your turn!”) to convince She Who Must Be Obeyed to go. I pointed out that 1) the movie was in Japanese, 2) Someone would have to drive and 3) she could enjoy a nap as she traditionally falls asleep during movies (even those at home).

Oddly, this persuasion worked and She Who Must Be Obeyed took our youngest to the movie.

However, it turned out that they made it to the theater with just three minutes to spare and didn’t have time to get popcorn. (From my point of view, this means the movie sucks by default).

Later, they brought home Baskin Robbins ice cream, including the awesome (therefore doomed) German Chocolate Cake Ice Cream which gave me flashbacks of my default birthday cake when I was growing up. They also brought home the tale of woe about how they hadn’t had any popcorn and that meant the movie sucked. (Something like that.)

However, because they got back relatively late and because we’d had a hefty amount of ice cream, no one was hungry for supper. She Who Must Be Obeyed and I had a moment of ESP and we both said “popcorn” at pretty much the same time. This meant we got to eat popcorn for supper, which is one of my favorite suppers. (There was also leftover pizza, which is another favorite supper.)

We then sat down to watch Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. This time it was my job to sit with our youngest as this is a scary movie and I needed someone to comfort me. (Strike that. Reverse it.) She Who Must Be Obeyed finished her nap and we got to see half the movie before it was bath and bed time.

I’ll get to watch the rest another day, but probably without popcorn, which means the movie will suck.

 

Namisu Nexus Minimal Fountain Pen–Good First Impressions at Long Last

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I bought a couple pens in August 2014 that were supposed to be shipped in November. I didn’t get them until this week.

Thus far it seems to have been worth the wait.

First The Wait:
Kickstarter likes to tell the public that it is not a store. Its users are not “shoppers” they are “backers” and a lot of pixels are used to explain the difference. Quite frankly, a lot of the backers disagree with this lesson in semantics (I suspect it’s the exchanging money for goods thing) and they tend to get upset when a project repeatedly misses it’s deadlines, especially after the first few deadlines have been missed.

But it’s important, if you’re going to back something on Kickstarter, to remember that if it is a store, it’s not like a normal retail store. It’s more like a hybrid of shopping, investment and gambling.

In my case I bought a pair of Nexus Minimal fountain pens from Namisu, a company out of Edinburgh. The project overshot its 10,000 British pound goal by ten times, finally finishing at over 104,000 pounds. This meant, to those of who’d backed other projects, that the pens were going to be delayed. In Kickstarter, success breeds delay. If it doesn’t, it breeds crap.

That said, my problem with this Kickstarter is that although we got a lot of backers updates, we didn’t seem to get a lot of information. The deadline was always being pushed back by some technical issue and we would get more information later that turned out to be an update telling us we’d get more information later. I was an Early Backer and wanted to know where I was in line but I never found out until I got my pens.

The Pens:

The Titanium version (bottom) and the Aluminum version (top) you can see blue ink in the threads.

The titanium version (bottom) and the aluminum version (top) you can see blue ink in the threads.

The pens themselves are very nice, with a few small quirks. They both needed a thorough cleaning and I had to tighten the nib and feed on the titanium version. Because the cap threads are at the front of the pen behind the nib–which does make it more comfortable to use–the threads fill up with ink as the pen is being filled, adding an extra bit of clean up.

Also, the cap is barely bigger than the nib which means I have to be careful when I re-cap the pen.

I’ve used the pens for the past few days and although it’s too early make any serious judgements, I think they were worth the wait. The titanium medium nib on the titanium version is surprisingly juicy and writes like a broad nib. It also had a funny squeak when I first started using it, but that’s already going away. It writes well, but the tines are slightly out of line and will need some work. The aluminum version has a steel medium nib that writes well and leaves a thinner line than the platinum nib.

The machine work on the section looks great–part of the delay involved improving the fit and finish of the pens–but they dig into my fingers if I’m not careful how I hold the pens. The threads on the titanium version need some polishing as they grind when I put the cap on and off.

I’ve already worked the two pens into my daily carry by cleaning and setting aside a couple other pens. Eventually I’ll have used the two enough to make a long term review.

Until then, I have a lot of writing to do.

The First Week Ain’t Nothing but Sore Feet and Attitude

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Today we finished our first week of the new school year. Now we need the weekend to recover.

The first week back after a break is weird. It’s been several weeks since we were in front of a class and we are suddenly back on our feet. In my case, I move around the classroom a lot and my feet are sore from all the sudden walking (in new shoes, no less). We also spend a lot of energy planning and having meetings and, for some of us, getting the new people up to speed.

It’s also hard to get back in the groove in front of the students. Teaching after a break is not like falling off a bicycle (something like that). Each class is different and the plan that worked well with one class got disrupted by a little jerk in another and by the teacher having too many carbs for lunch in yet another. In once class some of the students get the jokes, in others they weren’t listening closely enough to realize the teacher was speaking.

It’s also hard to get into the teaching rhythm early in the year as there are a few national holidays coming up (starting next week, actually). Breaks get filled up with busy work and our legs are still trying to find the path from one room to the other. In my case I’m doing boring stuff like talking about rules while at the same time trying to give the impression that English is interesting and fun to people who mumble in Japanese about how they can’t understand my English.

As I mentioned yesterday, in first year high school classes (10th grade) we are also dealing with students who haven’t had time to recover from junior high school anything goes mode.

That said, it’s good to be back in front of students. It’s also good knowing one week is already past.

Always That Guy and Always That Class

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Today I asked one of my colleagues if he knew anything about a student I’m teaching. He just laughed.

That was all the answer I needed.

After all the years I’ve been teaching at the school where I work, I remaine amazed at how different one class is from the other, even in the same room. In my first year high school classes (10th grade) I’ve got one good class, one average class, and one that promises to age me at a much faster rate than normal. The funny part is that class is made up of two different sections of the same grade. (Basically about half the class is from one section and the other half from another).

The students from “the other half” are loud, sarcastic and rude. Even worse, they are confrontational. Today I was very close to throwing a boy out of class (the one I asked about) because his basic form of response involved slurping noises and raspberries and putting on a show for his friends. He was also disguising his poor English level with sarcasm and back talk (in Japanese, of course). Normally I ignore those kids, unless they drag others along, but today, when I’m explaining the class rules, I give the bad boys the attention they crave.

Some of this trouble is caused because the classes are arranged, roughly, by club, with baseball boys tending to be in the same class and soccer boys in another class. This means the classes have different moods and the bad boys have a lot of friends around to act as an audience

The other part of the problem is that only a month ago the students were still in junior high and couldn’t fail and couldn’t be thrown out of class. (Well, they can, but it’s complicated and involves other teachers. Long story.) They are still of the belief that there’s not much I can do to them.

They are wrong.

First, they can fail. At least two students were held back in 10th grade last year. One dropped out/moved on, the other chose to repeat the grade. Another student failed on attendance but managed to get himself promoted to 12th grade, albeit with lots of complicated caveats.

I can also give them lots of extra work (much of which I will mark as received but never actually read)

The students have also forgotten that my class is last period. I have all the time I need. (My record for keeping an entire class late is 25 minutes.)

At the end of class, after explaining the stick, I threw them a carrot and let them relax for the last five minutes. The bad boy asked why I hadn’t done that sooner. I told him it was because I’d had to spend so much time trying to get him to shut up. If he’d been quiet, they would have been able to relax sooner.

There Can Be Only One And One There Is

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Sigh. Apparently I’m too good at being scary and that means I have a lot of work to do in the next few days.

A few days ago I wrote about he sales pitch I had to make for my third year high school class elective. I mentioned how we had to temper our pitch to chase out the wrong types but keep enough of the right types to have a viable class.

I didn’t temper very well, apparently as only one student signed up.

This means I have to do a lot of rethinking and revising by Monday. My class was based around acting techniques and acting exercises and it works best with a lot of people. With one it will be possible to do a monologue but extremely difficult to do a dialogue. It will also make the entire second term impossible as my students do a staged reading of one three person play and then write another as their final project.

The other problem is that even when I do have a few good ideas, it doesn’t take that much time for one person to finish the activity and leave me with lots of time to fill. (I had the opposite problem when the course jumped from six students to 14 a few years ago.)

Oddly, this phenomenon affected my other colleagues as well. Another teacher got only one student; a second teacher got only five; and a third got 15 for a class about music. This is a huge surprise as the teacher is actually likable and music classes usually attract almost twice that number of students. There wasn’t much love for the foreign staff this year as we gathered only 22 students between us.

I have a few ideas about what to do and I suspect a lot of videos and discussions of acting decisions will be involved. (I’m imagining watching scenes of the different Jokers from the Batman movies and talking about the differences.)

At least I’ll only have two exams to mark this year. I’ll just have a lot of work before that.