Nice People Thread No. 15, a Cyber Summer

GDB2222

SingleSue wrote: »

I've actually got an ECDL (for all the good it does me), I think I would still probably need google to refresh my memory on mail merge.

There's no point my learning anything computery, unless I put it into practice. Otherwise, I'll possibly remember the general principles but definitely not the details.

Pyxis

GDB2222 wrote: »

There's no point my learning anything computery, unless I put it into practice. Otherwise, I'll possibly remember the general principles but definitely not the details.

Yes, I find that if it's something I don't use very often, I have to write down every single step, else the next time I want to do it, I've forgotten.

chris_m

GDB2222 wrote: »

There's no point my learning anything computery, unless I put it into practice. Otherwise, I'll possibly remember the general principles but definitely not the details.

That applies to just about anything - if you learn it and don't use it, you'll soon forget and at least need a refresher.

PasturesNew

David Starkey's Monarchy: a TV historian chappie. Lovely bloke ... (terribly posh sounding), but he really makes you go to sleep with the History series that's running a lot on Freeview c19/Yesterday channel.

He speaks just how the posh old books wrote history ... and it's dull, dull, dull. The language used is off-putting.... it's disengaging and quite "exclusive".

I'm sure his programmes are a fascinating bit of entertainment for those educated to A Level and beyond in history - but if you're a "newbie" and think "Ah, this sounds interesting, finally I can understand history" - then you'll be disappointed as the script is identical to the teachers/books that turned you off it in the first place.

It's waxing lyrically all over the place, leading to confusion about who is doing what/why/where ...

Pyxis

PasturesNew wrote: »

David Starkey's Monarchy: a TV historian chappie. Lovely bloke ... (terribly posh sounding), but he really makes you go to sleep with the History series that's running a lot on Freeview c19/Yesterday channel.

He speaks just how the posh old books wrote history ... and it's dull, dull, dull. The language used is off-putting.... it's disengaging and quite "exclusive".

I'm sure his programmes are a fascinating bit of entertainment for those educated to A Level and beyond in history - but if you're a "newbie" and think "Ah, this sounds interesting, finally I can understand history" - then you'll be disappointed as the script is identical to the teachers/books that turned you off it in the first place.

It's waxing lyrically all over the place, leading to confusion about who is doing what/why/where ...

I can't stand the man. He's one of the most obnoxious people on the TV, IMO.

LydiaJ

PasturesNew wrote: »

David Starkey's Monarchy: a TV historian chappie. Lovely bloke ... (terribly posh sounding), but he really makes you go to sleep with the History series that's running a lot on Freeview c19/Yesterday channel.

He speaks just how the posh old books wrote history ... and it's dull, dull, dull. The language used is off-putting.... it's disengaging and quite "exclusive".

I'm sure his programmes are a fascinating bit of entertainment for those educated to A Level and beyond in history - but if you're a "newbie" and think "Ah, this sounds interesting, finally I can understand history" - then you'll be disappointed as the script is identical to the teachers/books that turned you off it in the first place.

It's waxing lyrically all over the place, leading to confusion about who is doing what/why/where ...

Pyxis wrote: »

I can't stand the man. He's one of the most obnoxious people on the TV, IMO.

I'm with Pyxis on this one - sorry PN! I find him obnoxious as a human being but I find his programmes interesting. And no, I don't have history qualifications - I found it deadly dull at school and gave it up at the first opportunity, which was when I didn't pick it for O-level.

SingleSue

LydiaJ wrote: »

I found it deadly dull at school and gave it up at the first opportunity, which was when I didn't pick it for O-level.

I did that too and have deeply regretted it ever since. It was only during my third year at high school I discovered my love of history but by then, my choices had already been made (plus I had made a silly immature schoolgirl promise to kick it out at the first opportunity whilst in first year high school)

Think I must have communicated that love of history to the boys though, they all have a good interest in it and Joe researches and writes papers on it (that never see the light of day apart from to me).

PasturesNew

I'm actually interested in history - but it's always presented in a very confusing way.

I think I am interested in what happened/when ... and why and what happened next, whereas historians are interested more in the "politics" of it. While, I appreciate, the politics is a huge part of what happened/why, it can be broken down into more interesting chunks without the "politics".

He also uses lots of unnecessarily long words. I'm flicking around again and in the first sentence he said "ignananimously ...." and I just googled that and it's not even a word!

He's going on and on .... by the time you're working round his voice/accent - and his peculiar delivery, you then get stuck trying to hear/understand the big words ... then he's off into politics again.

This should be: "David Starkey, Exceptionally Boring Text Book Read Aloud by a Man Standing like a Tailor's Dummy in a Window. Complete, Unabridged, Version with Long Made Up Words."

Pyxis

I quite like Michael Wood.

And Neil Oliver, though that's not entirely due to his historical expertise.

And Bethany Hughes is very good, too!

But I guess the top person has to be Lucy Worsley. If you know nothing about history, she's your person!


I really enjoy the series that Alex Langlands, Ruth Goodman and Peter Ginn keep coming up with. Progs like "A Victorian Christmas", "Victorian Farm", "Edwardian Farm". They've just done one about the history of the railways, "Full Steam Ahead", and how it brought about change on a scale akin to the internet revolution we're currently undergoing.

If you like social history as opposed to political history, they're the historians for you, Pastures! Their series are often repeated, so they're worth looking out for.



Like Lydia, I gave up history as soon as I could. I was put off it almost for life by the most terrible teacher in the world. There was a shortage of history teachers, so she was pulled out of retirement to take our class. Her lessons consisted entirely, and I mean entirely, of her standing at the blackboard, writing down lists and lists of dates of occurrences, lines and lines of them in small handwriting, which we had to copy down.
Boring was not the word for it.
Useless was.
It made me hate history with a vengeance, and also made me angry, as it was such a waste of time.


I remember only one thing from her lessons.... The Diet of Worms, only remembered because of its funny name. Can't remember what happened at it, though!



Just looked it up. It was the Diet that denounced Martin Luther as a heretic, so a pretty important one, yet that didn't stick in my memory.

vivatifosi

I love Lucy Worsley, her series on the Tudors was ace. And Mary Beard is my other favourite. I'd love to be able to wander round Rome or Pompeii and read all the inscriptions.