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“The Best” I Never Said

Allow me to disclose a bit about myself, in terms of occupation, its most accurate to identify me as a guitar instructor, as I’ve held the occupation since 1989. I’ve taught guitar every year since, and I have active students to this day, which amounts to more than 20 years experience in the practice of education of music and performance for electric, acoustic, and classical guitar. Whenever I wish to identify something about my own habits, behaviour, or educational, illustrative writing style, I arrive at the best answers; conclusions more like that of a friend’s assessment, if I consider it in the context of my work in guitar instruction.

The Five-percent Nation of Casiotone

Having taught guitar professionally for so long, it’s natural for me to think of specific dynamics of my instructional theory as being inherent to my own technique. Though I hold a Bachelor of Science degree in Curriculum and Instruction, achieved from the University in 1997, I had no such formal training in Education when I began teaching guitar. In other words, I taught guitar– essentially on instinct– for several years before attending higher education, and a great majority of my students went on to be successful guitarists.

Foster’s Home For…

The point to take from this story follows: inherent to my technique as instructor, I refrain from rhetoric like “he is, without question, the best guitarist alive”, or “when it comes to performing ___, there is no better guitarist than she”. Abstaining from “best-of” language, in my experience encourages the student to develop his or her own opinion on the matter, which tends to foster the student’s own greater self-esteem and sense of confidence in him or herself.

Second Cite

If you read NoviceNotes.Net, you might recognize that I rarely cite a particular software, web application, script, whatever, as “The Best”, the ultimate, or “the end-all be-all of its class!”. Consider this anecdote as a profile of my reasoning in education, and it lends insight into my refrain from similar “best-ever” or “greatest of all” rhetoric, when it comes to authoring content for NoviceNotes.Net .

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Lubuntu Linux, MooEdit, and Aptitude

Currently, I use the Lubuntu branch of Ubuntu, which is itself a particular flavour of the Debian distribution of Linux. In my opinion, for keeping track of these easily confused, so-called Linux Distributions, it’s might be least confusing to look upon any O/S bearing the suffix “buntu” (i.e. Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Edubuntu, Xubuntu, Mythbuntu, etc.) as simply a Debian system. Nearly all of the documentation and commands reference Debian, and the ‘buntu group is a direct descendant of Debian, I find it’s least confusing to use Debian nomenclature, regardless of alleged popularity of Ubuntu.

This article assumes the reader is knowledgeable of Package-Management common to most Linux Operating System distributions.
Continued…

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also unimportant but

…lest i forget


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lest i forget


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Temporal Causality Loop

It’s not that I necessarily yet enjoy the arguably crass humor of Seth MacFarlane’s animated sit-com “The Family Guy”, but rather that I appreciate the occasional learning which takes place in the context thereof. The same is true of MacFarlane’s “American Dad”, though it appeals more to my political sensibility than the former. I admit I’m uncertain, however it doesn’t occur to me momentarily that I find quite the same quality of either in “The Cleveland Show”, MacFarlane’s most recent production, yet I enjoy it as possibly his most effectively humorous success.

Why title this entry, Temporal Causality Loop?

As of this date, the latest broadcast presentation of “The Family Guy” features an episode in which “Stewie” resolves himself to be, essentially, the Creator of the Universe (i.e. depending on point-of-view, this particular episode is based upon the premise that “Stewie is God”), for having instantiated the Big Bang (as in the “big bang theory” explanation for Universal existence).

Again, it is not my concern that regular television programming affords popular culture with Seth MacFarlane’s animated comedies, or that writers for “The Family Guy” choose to create new content by rehashing the oldest question known to man; that American Culture revisits the veritable archetype of all arguments pitting the theoretical versus theological in answer to the question of human life. It does appeal to me, however– whether MacFarlane, as Executive Producer, is directly responsible for the specified content of this presentation, notwithstanding– that his productions tend to touch upon cerebral topics.

I am pleased to see some element of popular culture– television in this instance, it is unfortunate– rather than wager against the intelligence of the American populous as does much of the broadcast entertainment media propagated by the Networks packaged by Commercial Cable Television, MacFarlane’s productions might instead forgo the least common denominator in topical interests of the day, venturing to incite imaginative cognition to be so bold as to include vocabulary requiring viewers reference the dictionary, and situations requiring viewers engage discourse during the commercial break.

Ah, to break the surly grip of the man, to touch the face of dynamism.

television,… and likewise the popular activity of viewing alternative presentations of TV media, as available from web sites like YouTube, where patrons are led to consume unlicensed media (where applicable), a blatant infringement of copyright whereby the exhibiting party, at least, is in Violation of United States Law (and, or international laws)

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