Thoughts and Theories From Roger Andre
for the curious, and people getting to grips with computing and computers.
Tuesday 30 December 2008, 10:07 PM
Linux Confiscation At School.
After listening to the "the tech guy" 519 on Leo Laportes' Twit.TV
I was struck by one of the news items at the begining of the show. It was about a boy at school in the US who was handing out a linux distribution to his class mates. Apparently the teacher freaked out when she realised what was going on and confiscated the said disks, only to then go on and sing the virtues of microsoft and windows at the class, and that the kids were not to use this "linux" as it wasn't part of the school cirriculum and therefore somehow not relevent.
Well, I say fair play to the kid for looking beyond what schools call "learning about computers". The thing pointed out in the show is that todays children are growing up with computers around them in a way my generation never did. They are just a part of the funiture, a part of everyday life to these kids. To some of my generation the advent of computing was and still is an enduring marvel, something to gawp at and sometimes drool over.
What concerns me here is that schools tend to be teaching kids that using computers is about learning to use microsoft products such as word, powerpoint etc, all very well, but how about introducing elements of computer science into the classroom and not just leaving it as an option for further education. Anyhow, the event is fully talked about in the the tech guy podcast.
I was struck by one of the news items at the begining of the show. It was about a boy at school in the US who was handing out a linux distribution to his class mates. Apparently the teacher freaked out when she realised what was going on and confiscated the said disks, only to then go on and sing the virtues of microsoft and windows at the class, and that the kids were not to use this "linux" as it wasn't part of the school cirriculum and therefore somehow not relevent.
Well, I say fair play to the kid for looking beyond what schools call "learning about computers". The thing pointed out in the show is that todays children are growing up with computers around them in a way my generation never did. They are just a part of the funiture, a part of everyday life to these kids. To some of my generation the advent of computing was and still is an enduring marvel, something to gawp at and sometimes drool over.
What concerns me here is that schools tend to be teaching kids that using computers is about learning to use microsoft products such as word, powerpoint etc, all very well, but how about introducing elements of computer science into the classroom and not just leaving it as an option for further education. Anyhow, the event is fully talked about in the the tech guy podcast.
Wednesday 17 December 2008, 1:01 AM
Off Line And Into The Wilds Of Cornwall
Just a quick note to say goodbye fellow bloggers and readers. My wife and I are off to Cornwall until the weekend, and we've decided not to bring any computers with us. At first I was planning to bring the net book and found myself fretting about wi-fi availability etc. Now we've made the decision to focus on the outdoors and ourselves, the stress has lifted.
I was hoping for some extreme weather like the sea freezing over but according to live it's 7 degrees here in Glastonbury and yahoo says it's 10! That's enough to be building up a sweat and as it's a clear moonlit night at five past midnight that means tommorow could almost be like a summers day!
It's been a while since myself and my wife have been away from a our computers so it's going to be interesting. We get to stay right by the tea I mean sea (someones asking for tea) and it's an exciting prospect. Now I ask myself do we drive up the atlantic highway (A39)
or just go flying of the end of the M5 ?
The tech part, yes....all we'll be taking is an older fuji finepix f30 you know, the one with only 6 mega pixels but with extraordinarily good image processing and full manual control. Not bad for a little silver box. Also bringing along a sony MZR mp3 walkman and an FM transmitter. Apart from music this will be stacked up with mysterious universe podcasts, slackerpedia astronomy, and bits and pieces from BBC and Leo Laportes TWiT.TV podcasts. On the video side just some bits and pieces from youtube (converted thanks to DVD videosofts great freeware conversion tools).
A practical joke that still works on a surprising amout of people is to make up a story about some radio station and transmit the audio your talking about to their FM radio from your MP3 player and then enjoy the puzzled looks!
Anyway, all this for just four days? anyone would think I was going away for weeks. That's what it feels like comming off line, I wonder what will have changed by the time I'm back on. In the real world of roads, streets and the people I see around everyday four days is of course nothing at all really....Hmmm strange. Anyone remember the beast of Bodmin moor?
See you all on/after the weekend!
P.S. So I choose hide DOB on facebook and facebook says happy b'day anyway! Glad I put in the wrong details!
I was hoping for some extreme weather like the sea freezing over but according to live it's 7 degrees here in Glastonbury and yahoo says it's 10! That's enough to be building up a sweat and as it's a clear moonlit night at five past midnight that means tommorow could almost be like a summers day!
It's been a while since myself and my wife have been away from a our computers so it's going to be interesting. We get to stay right by the tea I mean sea (someones asking for tea) and it's an exciting prospect. Now I ask myself do we drive up the atlantic highway (A39)
or just go flying of the end of the M5 ?
The tech part, yes....all we'll be taking is an older fuji finepix f30 you know, the one with only 6 mega pixels but with extraordinarily good image processing and full manual control. Not bad for a little silver box. Also bringing along a sony MZR mp3 walkman and an FM transmitter. Apart from music this will be stacked up with mysterious universe podcasts, slackerpedia astronomy, and bits and pieces from BBC and Leo Laportes TWiT.TV podcasts. On the video side just some bits and pieces from youtube (converted thanks to DVD videosofts great freeware conversion tools).
A practical joke that still works on a surprising amout of people is to make up a story about some radio station and transmit the audio your talking about to their FM radio from your MP3 player and then enjoy the puzzled looks!
Anyway, all this for just four days? anyone would think I was going away for weeks. That's what it feels like comming off line, I wonder what will have changed by the time I'm back on. In the real world of roads, streets and the people I see around everyday four days is of course nothing at all really....Hmmm strange. Anyone remember the beast of Bodmin moor?
See you all on/after the weekend!
P.S. So I choose hide DOB on facebook and facebook says happy b'day anyway! Glad I put in the wrong details!
Monday 15 December 2008, 10:15 PM
Youtube: A Valuable Source Of Free Learning.
Well what do you reckon folks? What do you need to know? Do you have the patience to let yourself know it? One area that I've found youtube coming up with flying stars is in the area of tech learning.
I've come across videos on there that will teach you about fixing that dead zen player you may have had lying around for some time, just a matter of shorting out a chip, to advanced tutorials showing you the finer points of illustrator or dreamweaver, something adobe will charge you big money for!
So, maybe it's time to re-evaluate how people are hired for positions in employment. How do you spot the geniuses that were just a bit too clever for school? Or the geniuses that just stared out of the window all day thinking up fantastic theorys about life, and indeed the geniuses who may have had too much going on at home to do well at school or further education?
We could be arriving at a point where companies may be willing to offer apptitude tests to people who say they can do jobs, because although they may not have the qualifications or the time and money to gain them later on in life, they could still offer sheer brilliance in the field of their passion.
There's communities of people on youtube dedicated to showing you how to do almost anything you could imagine from slinging mud pies to tutorials in maths and physics. How would you like your PC to run mac OSX? I kid you not it's all there, and if this is common knowledge to everyone but myself then I'm very glad to have found out. But I wouldn't have done so without my own curiosity and a platform such as youtube showing me how it can go way beyond entertainment and into the realms of higher learning.
I've come across videos on there that will teach you about fixing that dead zen player you may have had lying around for some time, just a matter of shorting out a chip, to advanced tutorials showing you the finer points of illustrator or dreamweaver, something adobe will charge you big money for!
So, maybe it's time to re-evaluate how people are hired for positions in employment. How do you spot the geniuses that were just a bit too clever for school? Or the geniuses that just stared out of the window all day thinking up fantastic theorys about life, and indeed the geniuses who may have had too much going on at home to do well at school or further education?
We could be arriving at a point where companies may be willing to offer apptitude tests to people who say they can do jobs, because although they may not have the qualifications or the time and money to gain them later on in life, they could still offer sheer brilliance in the field of their passion.
There's communities of people on youtube dedicated to showing you how to do almost anything you could imagine from slinging mud pies to tutorials in maths and physics. How would you like your PC to run mac OSX? I kid you not it's all there, and if this is common knowledge to everyone but myself then I'm very glad to have found out. But I wouldn't have done so without my own curiosity and a platform such as youtube showing me how it can go way beyond entertainment and into the realms of higher learning.
Sunday 7 December 2008, 7:21 PM
Windows Live. Hotmail's Growing Up.
I've recently after years of abstinance, got my self a new windows live (hotmail) account.
Microsoft are really going for it with this one. The Idea is to create a handy portal so that you can centralise all of your online activities into one one place. For instance you could have all your twitter feeds ariving here, your face book updates, whatever you want.
It's as though MS have accepted that it's of no use to try and compete with these services so they're going to help us create a one stop shop for your entire online life if that's what you want. Very handy for those of us with online accounts all over the place! There is also the ability to keep up with the activities of people you choose to follow.
Then there's the mighty skydrive. It's just been ramped up to 25gbs of free storage! That's the biggest capacity that I've ever seen for free online storage. At the momment you need to create new folders up there in the drive, meaning that you can't upload entire folders, you have to start uploading individual files and whatever software set ups you need. Just like your C Drive you have documents, music, video, and pictures, but you can create whatever folders you want.
There is also a very functional calender with daily, weekly, and monthly entries. Also featured are an activities list, and a to do list. I haven't spotted any alarm bells yet, but at the rate of growth I'm seeing I'm sure it won't be long! also available is a suite of free down loads designed to replace the bloat that currently ships with windows in time for the launch of windows 7.
Live writer is your blogging portal, format your blog how you like and then publish it to whatever blogging service. You also have your messenger, mail photo gallery and movie maker being left up on MS servers as optional downloads to plug into windows. Also in the running is a family safety filter that you can bolt onto firefox or safari if you like. you also get an office out look connector,of course office live workspace,and live workspace business.
Some of these features are in beta or still under construction, but you can tell by looking at the thing that MS are going to be sticking with this one. All I can say is thanks for giving something back to us!
The really good news is that Microsoft are opening this up to mac and linux users as well.
Microsoft are really going for it with this one. The Idea is to create a handy portal so that you can centralise all of your online activities into one one place. For instance you could have all your twitter feeds ariving here, your face book updates, whatever you want.
It's as though MS have accepted that it's of no use to try and compete with these services so they're going to help us create a one stop shop for your entire online life if that's what you want. Very handy for those of us with online accounts all over the place! There is also the ability to keep up with the activities of people you choose to follow.
Then there's the mighty skydrive. It's just been ramped up to 25gbs of free storage! That's the biggest capacity that I've ever seen for free online storage. At the momment you need to create new folders up there in the drive, meaning that you can't upload entire folders, you have to start uploading individual files and whatever software set ups you need. Just like your C Drive you have documents, music, video, and pictures, but you can create whatever folders you want.
There is also a very functional calender with daily, weekly, and monthly entries. Also featured are an activities list, and a to do list. I haven't spotted any alarm bells yet, but at the rate of growth I'm seeing I'm sure it won't be long! also available is a suite of free down loads designed to replace the bloat that currently ships with windows in time for the launch of windows 7.
Live writer is your blogging portal, format your blog how you like and then publish it to whatever blogging service. You also have your messenger, mail photo gallery and movie maker being left up on MS servers as optional downloads to plug into windows. Also in the running is a family safety filter that you can bolt onto firefox or safari if you like. you also get an office out look connector,of course office live workspace,and live workspace business.
Some of these features are in beta or still under construction, but you can tell by looking at the thing that MS are going to be sticking with this one. All I can say is thanks for giving something back to us!
The really good news is that Microsoft are opening this up to mac and linux users as well.
Wednesday 3 December 2008, 8:53 PM
Acer One Runs Vista! But Not For Long.
Yes I kid you not. I've been doing some work for a reseller of late and one of the items that I came across was a 4 gb Acer one net book with an install of vista running. The machine had come in from lithuania and as a result had the language set in lithuanian with no option for english in the language panel!! And I do know my way around without being in english.
Anyway I didn't know how they got vista on there so I checked the many forums on the subject and the consensus was that vista will see the intel atom as a duel core chip. The performance was what I'd call plodding. Everything I asked of it took 2-4 seconds and was consistant, from basic things such as opening explorer windows to opening up WMP11 and firefox etc.
Great I thought to myself, lets get XP pro on the thing and we'll be flying along. I had to install the n-lited version Of pro that I keep on a USB key. And install from the key it did very happily.
After that I pointed my browser (on another machine) to acer europe driver downloads and there they all were. So I thought!!
No ethernet driver...oh no :-< Luckily there was a wireless lan driver, so I was in business. I searched for the lan driver online for as long as I could handle that day with no joy. I wondered if the one on a linux disk that came came with the Acer would work but decided to live with the problem for the rest of the evening. I'll just play with this thing online now I'm wireless.
Oh no I won't, nothings happening! I have an excellent signal my tray icon tells me, but nothings happening.
As it turns out I could have re-read a blog by Jake Rayson right here on ZDNet and solved my problem right away! But no I had forgoten all about it and ended up choosing a pain filled path of much online searching. Although I'm a firefox user, one usefull feature of IE is the network diagnostics tool. It told me that I had a radio button switched off. I still didn't click, and I was getting tired, it had already been a long day, so I started looking for radio buttons in all of the network software and properties sections in various explorer windows. No joy.
Back to the forums I thought to my self, then I found my solution. A physical button on the front right hand side of the machine! I give this button a flick and wadya know? it works. I couldn't face hunting around for the ethernet driver so I thought I'd pay a visit to windows update via the firefox windows update add on, for just a small number of updates as I'd already slipstreamed SP3 into the installation folders.
Lo and behold there it was on windows update! my missing ethernet driver. This was a treat from MS I'd only seen before on vista machines. I downloaded it, and it installed right away with no fuss
It just worked.
Next up was the k-lite codec pack to beef up Windows media player 11. No video playback issues ever again once this is on.
Then I put on the very colourful twisted pixel by Brian Spangler, a fairly taxing 3D audio visualiser that plugs in to windows media player and will let you batch process all the mildrop files from the popular winamp media player set up. It all works very well. Music and visuals on my little netbook.
Yes I fell in love with the little thing despite being a detractor in the past. Life eh?
Edit/ havn't been able to get on the windows live skydrive all day today and having recently checked back there is now a whopping....
25GB OF FREE STORAGE!!
That's the most free online storage I've ever seen! and is very handy when your out on the road, yes I'm chuffed.
Anyway I didn't know how they got vista on there so I checked the many forums on the subject and the consensus was that vista will see the intel atom as a duel core chip. The performance was what I'd call plodding. Everything I asked of it took 2-4 seconds and was consistant, from basic things such as opening explorer windows to opening up WMP11 and firefox etc.
Great I thought to myself, lets get XP pro on the thing and we'll be flying along. I had to install the n-lited version Of pro that I keep on a USB key. And install from the key it did very happily.
After that I pointed my browser (on another machine) to acer europe driver downloads and there they all were. So I thought!!
No ethernet driver...oh no :-< Luckily there was a wireless lan driver, so I was in business. I searched for the lan driver online for as long as I could handle that day with no joy. I wondered if the one on a linux disk that came came with the Acer would work but decided to live with the problem for the rest of the evening. I'll just play with this thing online now I'm wireless.
Oh no I won't, nothings happening! I have an excellent signal my tray icon tells me, but nothings happening.
As it turns out I could have re-read a blog by Jake Rayson right here on ZDNet and solved my problem right away! But no I had forgoten all about it and ended up choosing a pain filled path of much online searching. Although I'm a firefox user, one usefull feature of IE is the network diagnostics tool. It told me that I had a radio button switched off. I still didn't click, and I was getting tired, it had already been a long day, so I started looking for radio buttons in all of the network software and properties sections in various explorer windows. No joy.
Back to the forums I thought to my self, then I found my solution. A physical button on the front right hand side of the machine! I give this button a flick and wadya know? it works. I couldn't face hunting around for the ethernet driver so I thought I'd pay a visit to windows update via the firefox windows update add on, for just a small number of updates as I'd already slipstreamed SP3 into the installation folders.
Lo and behold there it was on windows update! my missing ethernet driver. This was a treat from MS I'd only seen before on vista machines. I downloaded it, and it installed right away with no fuss
It just worked.
Next up was the k-lite codec pack to beef up Windows media player 11. No video playback issues ever again once this is on.
Then I put on the very colourful twisted pixel by Brian Spangler, a fairly taxing 3D audio visualiser that plugs in to windows media player and will let you batch process all the mildrop files from the popular winamp media player set up. It all works very well. Music and visuals on my little netbook.
Yes I fell in love with the little thing despite being a detractor in the past. Life eh?
Edit/ havn't been able to get on the windows live skydrive all day today and having recently checked back there is now a whopping....
25GB OF FREE STORAGE!!
That's the most free online storage I've ever seen! and is very handy when your out on the road, yes I'm chuffed.
