Monday, October 30, 2017

My Great-Great-Great Grandparents Nicholas Browne and Margaret Barry

Yesterday I visited Mayglass in South Co Wexford. Through a contact via Ancestry.co.uk I had a document that was a typed record of headstones in a graveyard in Mayglass. My great-great-great grandparents Nicholas and Margaret (née Barry) Browne were listed as being buried there - so I decided to check this out. The graveyard is small, with lots of headstones with faded writing that was difficult to read. After about 20 minutes searching I found them! Curiously Nicholas is shown on two headstones that are side-by-side. He died 156 years ago on 24th July 1861 aged 65 - this means he was born in 1795 or 1796. Margaret died on 26th February 1898 - her age is not given.




An intriguing possibility is that both are related to famous 19th century navy men - Admiral William Browne (founder of the Argentine Navy) and John Barry (founder of the United States of America Navy)! I’ll be doing my best to try and find out if this is the case. It’s a long shot, but I’m sure it is a nice unique link to the sea.

Here's the path from me to my great-great-great grandparents Nick and Maggie:

Click Image to Enlarge.

Tuesday, October 24, 2017

"Never memorize something that you can look up" #Einstein #InstantLearning

Should've gone to YouTube!
I wonder can you learn how to do anything you want on YouTube? Yesterday I went about fixing my broken car key fob. I had to buy a replacement shell, get a new key cut, and take the transponder and circuit board out of the old key and insert into the new key fob. Easy?

Getting the new replacement shell and key cut was the easy part - thanks to the extremely helpful people in Central Key and Hardware Ltd on Parnell Square East. The guy there opened up both key fobs and showed me the insides and gave me advice on what to do. It looked very easy.

Not so!

First - my car is a Hyundai, the new fob shell was from a Kia. While almost identical, they were not exactly the same. The Kia version had a screw under the badge. While trying to cut out the Hyundai badge I found out that my Swiss Army knife is very sharp and can easily stab my thumb. Ouch! It was only then that I tried YouTube, and of course I immediately found a video that showed me how to do the job properly step-by-step. This is not the first time YouTube has come to my rescue - and I'm certain it is now a "go to" place for lots practicals tasks like this.

As an educator I wonder about the future consequences of so much educational content being made available on YouTube. As I write, there are 13,429,780 views of my 154 videos on my YouTube channel - so I am using this medium myself to get educational messages across to learners. The great Albert Einstein once said “Never memorize something that you can look up”. Is there a need for students to study for a year, two years, or more in order to be ready for a job? Could they not look up what they need as they need it? Instant Learning is becoming more-and-more of a phenomenon (there's even a book about it: Instant Learning - How to Learn Anything Instantly!). Learning curves will become shorter, or perhaps non-existent. In today's fast paced world we need to learn more quickly and absorb information a lot better - YouTube is not the only answer to this, but for me it is becoming one of the most advanced and important educational resources that humans have ever created. Long Live YouTube!

In case you ever need to change a key fob on a Hyundai - here's the video:


Friday, October 20, 2017

It's #WorldStatisticsDay! #167

H.G. Wells.
Image source: Wikipedia.
Today is a dedicated World Statistics Day - it's been around since 2010, but I never heard of it before. It's a nice idea to promote statistics in this new age of Big Data. Statistics is the science of data, and of course we have had numbers for a very long time. The English writer H.G. Wells once said that "Statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write" - maybe he is finally right! Data Analytics courses are amongst the most popular ones for students at the National College of Ireland. This is our fifth year running a Higher Diploma in Data Analytics.

I have been teaching statistics for six years. This year is my busiest ever - I have 167 students in three separate classes studying the Business Data Analysis module. I have to say that I love it, and the students are great to work with! I'm getting fonder of this subject every year - I am starting a plan to convert my lecture notes into a textbook to go with my modules. My statistics videos are also growing in popularity, this allows me to reach beyond my 167 students to the world. 

So - thinking of a statistic for today I thought that 167 would be most suitable!

167 Candles - Happy World Statistics Day!

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

It's Official - Windows Phone is Dead via @flipboard

So - Microsoft has confirmed that it will no longer develop new features or hardware for Windows 10 Mobile phones, finally giving up on mobile. No sign of rumoured Surface phones either. I tried my best to persevere with my Lumia 950, but in May of this year I finally abandoned the Windows phone. The "App Gap" was just too big, with developers basically refusing to create versions of Apps for Windows. This is not difficult to understand why - iOS and Android account for 99.4% of mobile phone operating systems.

It's always a pity to see a technology fail. Apart from the App Gap, my Lumia was actually quite good - the 20 mp camera is fantastic, neither Samsung or Apple are offering this yet. I had a 64 GB SD card which was great - no space worries. I keep it as a spare, and have a Vodafone sim card in it for travelling down to the country where the Virgin Media (via Three) network is shite. If my iPhone were to break down, I'd switch back to it for a while, but following Microsoft's announcement it would not be for too long. Basically it is now just a WiFi enabled camera.

The Windows Lumia 950.
Image source: Windows Central.

Sunday, October 15, 2017

My 100th plaque @OpenPlaques

A couple of years ago I started to upload photos to the Open Plaque Project - most are from around Dublin, but now I watch out for them everywhere and take a photo. If it's not already uploaded, I do so. The inscription is also uploaded, plus the location - I can add as many photos as I want, so I usually do close-ups and medium shots. This weekend I was in Gorey in Co Wexford where I came across several plaques, three (all related to Bishop Ram) of which are suitable for Open Plaques. The stone plaque for Miles Byrne is probably not suitable - the site aims to show "where they are, we identify who is commemorated on them, what those people are notable for, and what their connection is with the place where their plaque is installed". This plaque is not located in Monaseed which is about 7 miles away from Gorey (Jez - if you are reading this perhaps you might comment?).

The Market Square plaque is my 100th one uploaded! This pales into insignificance beside the wonderfully named "Spudgun67" who has uploaded 1,549 plaques. 

Here are the plaques, with Open Plaque links:

Open Plaques link.

Open Plaques link.
Open Plaques link.

Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Great Data Visualization from @Tableau #OLOUGHLIN #DataViz

My surname "O'Loughlin" to me is a very Irish surname. Anyone with an "O" and an apostrophe must be 100%Irish - right? Here's an extract from my book "Exploring Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way" about the O'Loughlin name:

O'Loughlin's Pub in Ballyvaughan.
One of the things that attracts people to different parts of Ireland is the search for ancestors, and I am no different. North Clare is O’Loughlin country, and for a short time I travelled the Wild Atlantic Way in search of my own ancestors. A short distance after Black Head I stopped at the side of the road to look down at a castle which is visible for a long way along the beautiful ride on the southern side of Galway Bay. It is the sixteenth century Gleninagh Castle and it was built for the O’Loughlin chiefs who were resident there up to the 1840s. It was lived in up to the 1890s, but is still well preserved. I wondered if any of my direct ancestors had lived there. There is no shortage of people with the O’Loughlin name in County Clare, and this northern region of the county is where the name O’Loughlin originates from. At the end of the tenth century some of the Irish upper classes started to adopt Viking names such as Lochlainn, and it is thought that some of the County Clare families did so as well. The Vikings were known as na Lochlannaigh in the Irish language. My dad Joe has told me that his grandfather, also Joe O’Loughlin, was born and reared in County Clare, but he does not know which part. It could be that the O’Loughlins are descended from either the Vikings themselves, or from a County Clare family that adopted the name.

Yesterday I came across an excellent Data Visualization by Mike Cisneros on Tableau Public, which illustrates the association between surnames and racial groups. You can enter your own surname (must have appeared at least 200 times in the 2010 US Census), and enter an estimate of the assumption of which race your name belongs to. I entered 99% for O'Loughlin as "white" and was surprised to discover that this was not a correct estimate. According to Cisneros's graphic, only 92.1% of O'Loughlin's are classifies as "white" - I was off by 6.9%. So in the United States there are 7.9% of "O'Loughlins" who are not classified as "white". Cool!" There are only five races listed:

  1. Native American/Alaska Native
  2. Asian/Hawaiian/Pacific Islander
  3. Black/African-American
  4. Latino/Hispanic
  5. White


You can view the full graphic at Tableau Public, and try out your own surname.

Wednesday, October 04, 2017

The downside of technology #Fitbit

In my statistics classes I have a topic early in the semester about "Thinking Statistically" and cite many examples of how data are gathered on a daily basis. One of the good stories I use is about a research project by the Dan-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston where 6,000 over-weight women have been given Fitbits to track exercise over a six year period - I try to get students to think how much data there will have been collected by the end of the study. You can read about this in the Irish Times: Does wearable technology deserve clean bill of health?
This is the Charge HR Fitbit that I use.
Image source: Walmart.

Today I read in The Sidney Morning Herald: "Fitbits in schools a step in wrong direction, make kids less active, study finds". While the idea of giving Fitbits to teenagers appeals to me in that exercise is encouraged and tracked, the SMH reports that such trackers in schools "has been linked to poor self-esteem and negative feelings of alienation and inadequacy" and that the devices can actually "demotivate children". The study by the University of Birmingham (which is not referenced) reported "feelings of inadequacy and lower self-esteem among pupils". There is a suggestion that setting "unattainable targets" is a major factor in demotivating students. Unintended consequences? I must confess that I had not thought of this. I would hate to see Fitbits being taken away from students because of this.

In the main I am in favour technology being used and data such as activity being tracked. This could leads to a significant addition to research over long periods of time that could aid in the treatment of illnesses and conditions. Imagine tracking heart rates over a half a lifetime to look for early signs of a heart attack. Assuming that data privacy is respected, these data will make a valuable contribution to science. I am in the "opt-in" camp rather than the "opt-out" - data such as this must be voluntarily collected under the same rules, for example, that clinical trials are conducted.

There is another thing - wearable technology is taking off. While we may not be using a Fitbit, the Smartphone in our pockets can do exactly the same thing. I see watches becoming smarter - the day will come when almost all watches will be smart. What then? The above report suggests that it has been a bad start for wearable technology for secondary school students. With more planning and reflection on what has happened so far, perhaps realistic goals can be set for students so that they don't feel demotivated by not reaching 10,000 steps in a day. We can learn from this "mistake" (my word).

Tuesday, October 03, 2017

New Avatar #DraganEffect #ego

Last year I wrote about experimenting with The Dragan Effect for photography - named after the Polish photographer Andrzej Dragan - the effect uses "dramatic lighting and editing techniques that enhance the tonality and skin texture of the images subject". This is done using Corel PaintShop Pro X7. Recently I have grown a bit of a beard, and wondered if the Dragan Effect could improve the look - here is the result:


The photo was taken with my Windows phone's 20MP camera (the only good thing about this phone). I tried it with both a serious face and with a bit of a smile - I prefer above. I think it does make me look a bit older as it emphasizes wrinkles and the greyness of the beard. This will be my avatar for the next while! 

If you have Corel PaintShop Pro, check out this video which takes you step by step through the process.