Student antics and spam

Over the last few days I’ve been getting some funny spam and I was worried that I had been targeted by some hacker/spammer.  However, it transpired that my site and some others were merely the target of a student who was participating in an SEO contest and using a system to bring certain keywords up to a higher ranking in Google.  This experimenting individual seems to have realised that he/she has done something that was not appreciated and will hopefully find another way to achieve what he/she wants to do.  Now that I have calmed down a bit, I don’t feel so bad towards this person, after all, we all make mistakes.

This incident also reminded me of rag mags.  Anyone remember those?  They were magazines produced during student rag weeks and contained a selection of naughty jokes, and at school we all circulated these publications rather surreptitiously, hoping that teachers/parents would not find this little tome with all its bad language and dirty jokes.  Basically it was all a little harmless fun.  Funny how certain things remind you of the past, isn’t it.

This affair also reminded me of when I got myself in a little trouble with the then Department of the Environment after I had phoned up central government and told them that an amendment to some legislation had made our jobs rather difficult.  I still remember my boss calling me into his office, whilst trying to suppress a smile, and telling me that someone in the Chief Executive of the County Council I worked for at the time wanted to know just who I was.   I did not feel particularly bad about what I had done and luckily my boss agreed with my point of view.  I suppose, with hindsight, that I could have got myself in big trouble over the incident.

You see, we all make mistakes, the trick is to learn from them.  Hopefully the inadvertent spammer will learn from his/her silly mistake and avoid doing the same in future.

Our son’s insertion

Insertion? Insertion into what, I hear you ask.  Although it may sound painful, and in a sense it is, our son is not suffering physically, you will be pleased to note.  The insertion, or rather ‘inserimento’ is a system employed by certain day nurseries and nursery schools here.  In simple terms it is a period that allows young children to become used to being at school.

This may sound like a good idea, and it probably is for kids who have passed the last 3 years in the company of their mothers, but for our little lad, who has been attending some form of nursery since he was about 8 months old, it is not that necessary.  Indeed, he was suffering during the initial part of the process which involved his being at school for 1 and a quarter hours, from 10 to 11:15 over a period of a week and a half.  Initially one of us had to be there, and then we did not need to be there, but still had to collect him at 11:15.  Now he is doing a 9:30 to 1:45 session, alone, well, without a parent.  He’s doing fine and from Monday he can even stay until 3:45.  It may sound like a long day, but was he does mainly is play, with toys and other children and he loves it, being a sociable little soul.

The only other problem with this ‘ever-so-gentle’ entry into nursery school is that someone has to interrupt their work day to pick the little fellow up.  Sometimes this someone is me, other times it is a babysitter.  A friend of ours, who also has a young son actually raised the subject of this requirement to pick up kids with someone at his son’s nursery school, because he was finding that it was disrupting his work day.  The ‘educator’, as they now call themselves, looked at him blankly, as if to say ‘Problem, what problem?’.  You see it is assumed here that either the child’s grandparents will collect the child from school or a babysitter will.  If both parents work, very common nowadays, and they do not have grandparents nearby or cannot afford the cost of a babysitter, they have a bit of a problem.  Does the Italian system take this into account?  Does it fiddle.  If affected, you just have to live with it.  It seems inconceivable to the powers that be that families do not have, strong healthy, grandparents on call.  I find this a bit odd coming from a country where most people live miles away from their grandparents, but it’s not at all odd here.

The truth of the matter is that if a woman wants to stay at home, and fewer do nowadays I believe, then her partner needs to be earning a damned high salary, but not everyone has jobs which bring in enough to allow a parent to stay at home.  In Italy this is just not taken into account.  No wonder the birth rate is so low here, they do nothing to encourage having kids, apart for the Roman Catholic church which persists in its opposition to the use of contraception and thus, indirectly, attempts to influnence the birth rate, although Italians have been ignoring the RC church’s silly rule for a long time now.

If you are going to encourage people to have children, then you need to give them an infrastructure that allows them to do this.  Politicians, incidentally, are paid more than enough to allow their wives to stay at home, or pay a full time nanny.  This is possibly why their feet are nowhere near the ground.

Milan and some photos of Italy

It is a lovely day today.  Warm and sunny, but a little cloudy.  I needed some books so I hopped on the bus and headed for the centre.  While walking from the castle along Via Dante towards the centre I noticed the outdoor exhibition of photographs, I saw the same photos, I think, last year, but they were worth looking at again.  These images have all been taken from the air and show some well and not so well known areas of Italy.  Living in Milan, it is easy to forget just how beautiful a country I am lucky to live in.  These images reminded me of this fact and made me feel happier too.

The images show landscapes which have been enhanced by man, or rather by Italians.  I don’t know exactly why, but Italians seem to have the wonderful ability of being able to ‘blend’ buildings in with their surroundings, to the extent that the environment is enhanced.  Of course, this is not always the case and much modern architecture does not sit well in the magnificence of the Italian countryside, however more often than not older villages and towns seem to have been designed to compliment their environments, not just to fill space with accommodation.  Now, I say ‘designed’, but this may not be the case, it’s probably a case of the Italian way of seeing things which tends to be more in harmony with the natural environment than that of the old English habit of constructing masses of anonymous terraced houses just about anywhere and everywhere, for example.  While there is a lot to be said for planning, there is also a lot to be say for fitting buildings in with their surroundings.  Using materials which are light in colour seems to make a great difference too.  The dull greyness of English stone can be depressing to say the least.

If you happen to find yourself in Milan over the next few days, then take a walk along Via Dante, as I mentioned before it runs from the castle towards the centre.  I do think you will like the photos, with descriptions in English.  They may even give you a few ideas for planning a tour of this spectacular country.

Next Page »