Despite the fact I have a backlog of spirits to make for people, I've been thinking about trying my hand at wine for a while. One fortuitous work trip down to Margaret River (life is so hard sometimes), I decided to see if I could source some good quality wine grapes.

I ended up finding a really helpful viticulturalist listed on the Wine Industry of WA website who was not only happy to sell me locally grown grapes of a wide variety, but was also happy to hook me up with some free grapes as I was after such a small quantity.

As harvest time drew nearer, and after a lot of phone tag with this guy - we eventually sorted out a day for me to head down and pick grapes. After offending my good mate Joe, my girlfiend and I took a day off work and headed down to pick some grapes.

And that we did - whilst I definately favour white wines, the process for making it is a lot more involved - and I'm already having enough trouble reading through Making Good Wine, a fantastic read even if it's nearly completely over my head - I suspect if I continue doing wine, this book is going to become more and more valuable.

Turning up to the vinyard in Yallingup, we were given our choice of Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Merlot and some others I've never even heard of before - and free reign: as the crops hadn't sold we were allowed to take as much or as little as we wanted.

Trying to keep it simple, we grabbed five forty-four litre tubs of grapes: two of merlot, and three of cabernet. I was hoping to split it across a few demijons to make some plain merlot, plain cabernet and blended cabernet merlot table wines - and maybe even some port.

After two hours of picking we had filled our tubs and packed them back into the car and headed back to Perth.

For best results, wine grapes are typically chilled for transport - however as I don't own a refridgerated truck and this is (for now) a once-off, we decided to risk it. As it turns out this was fine, though if we had taken any longer to get back I'm not sure the grapes would have been any happier.

Next in the process: De-stemming and crushing the grapes.

I've had a fair number of comments from people about my previous post about my University Gripes.

In my post I waxed and waned on explaining where I was coming from - to the point where I think I've come across as whinging about the state of affairs. Which I am, but not in a premadonna "Oh, it's so unfair, whoa is me" kind of way. Really, honest.

In summary: I have major issues when lecturers make generalisations that I understand to be wrong, or believe I understand to be wrong. Often if I've been unable to figure it out by myself, I've been met with resistance when trying to clarify it in detail. This is either because I'm being extremely dense (which is fair enough) or it's beyond the context of the course.

My issue: Even though students should be figuring it out themselves, lecturers/tutors are unwilling to discuss the problem in detail, or even to come out and plain state "you need to go figure it out". Worse yet, if you're trying to understand something in more detail, you're told that you're just plain wrong.

I'm trying to draw a line between being supportive in letting people figure things out from themselves and being neglectful in the way they approach this. Don't forget, one of the best ways to work through something is to discuss the idea with someone who can keep up.

At the time this caused me a large amount of grief because I expected the environment to be supportive and understanding. Naieve perhaps, but having unanswered contradictions really hindered me when trying to build my level of understanding.

Importantly: I know it's about figuring things out yourself, that's not what this is about. It's a gripe about the bullshit you face when you're trying to utilise resources that SHOULD be available to you while you're doing just that.

Since I've left University I've accepted that this is just the way it is - and if I continue in my studies I'll probably be doing them externally.

Ironically though, the issue that caused me post about this gripe of mine in the first place has nothing to do with the teaching methods, rather issues with getting my prior learning recognised at another University - but that's another post for another time.

Ciao all :)

Last year I decided to test the waters and try to resume my studies towards a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science. It suprises me to realise that I haven't had a rant about my issues with tertiary education here in WA previously, so I need to cover a few bases first.

First off, let me explain the difference between knowing things and understanding them. As an example, you might know that when you add two numbers together on a calculator - it will tell you the result. Knowledge is the what.

Understanding is the why. There are many levels of understanding: you might understand that the calculator is running some software; that the software is machine code running on the device; the way the instructions are carried out by the silicon; and so on.

Everyone comes into the course at a different level of understanding. Without sounding pompous or arrogant, I had spent a lot of time writing software and messing with systems - I went in with a different level of understanding to a large number of the students, as did a number of my peers - but we certainly weren't the majority.

When Universities teach new concepts they need to make certain generalisations and assumptions so that they can effectively teach the concept at hand.

Whilst I understood this, it caused a certain amount of grief for me because I thought I knew otherwise. I would often seek clarification on the assumptions and details where things had been glossed over, because I wanted to understand *why* those generalisations had been made.

Which can be a problem as lecturers are often stretched for time as it is to answer these types of questions, and student tutors (taking the unit tutorials) either were unable or unwilling to do this either. I realise there's an element of self-learning here, but sometimes you need to understand where the other person is coming from when they're teaching with these assumptions.

I have an issue taking this type of thing for granted, and have found it very difficult to understand concepts when I get caught up by what I see as a contradiction like this. In any case, it's quite hard to move on with an incomplete foundation of understanding.

With this in mind, my issue is that I expect Universities to be a supportive learning environment where you can get a really good understanding of what you're learning and come out of it understanding what you've been taught.

In my experience, this is not the goal of the University and I've found the academic staff both unwilling, unhelpful and even unkind - overall a rather negative experience that doesn't motivate or encourage you to continue learning.

Which is, at least in my mind, what's stopped me from finishing my degree. I think I may have moved past this point somewhat, though having 'made it' in my industry I still have some other motivational issues. It's something I'd like to do, and I guess time will tell...