bodmas blog

Local Polish shop sells dark chocolate with a classic wrapper.

On the Aleutia E2, Puppy Linux and swap run in ram disk to minimise the number of read/write operations to the flash card main disc. The thing bolts onto the VESA mount points on the back of most LCDs (damn clever, but still loads of cables). No moving parts, and around 8 watts of power with a 500MHz processor… Software includes AbiWord (groan) and SeaMonkey (I can live with that). There appears to be an OpenOffice package available, but with problems installing.

Three pages of notes on how to calculate Spearman’s Rank Correlation Coefficient [ PDF, 70Kb ]

Written on the Asus EeePC before I gave it back today. We cover the basic calculation of the standard deviation for ungrouped data and the Spearman’s coefficient in our Access level 2 Maths units so that psychology (and science) students have seen these calculations when they take the usual quantitative methods course at their respective Universities.

The hope is less worry about the mechanics and more time to think about what the statistics actually mean next year.

You can listen to 5 minutes about the Asus Eee PC and its potential in the classroom [1.4 Mb, 48 Kbs mono ] as a ‘podcast’ – recorded on the Asus!

This recording was made on the built in microphones on the Asus with the sound recorder set to mono and 44100 samples per second with 16 bit encoding. The volume was up full and I was sitting at the table with the laptop before me. There is a bit of hiss (so the cheap electronics on the Asus is adding some white noise) and the treble response is poor. I had to load the .wav file into Audacity on my iBook anyway to save in mp3 format, so I used the high pass filter with a pole of 440Hz and 6dB per octave cut-off below that. The result sounds clear to me at least.

Some links

• John Glashan painter and cartoonist
• Asus Eee PC review with insightful comments on the interface and information about some of the limitations
• A possible competitor at £99 – this could be vapourware

When is a podcast not a podcast? Historically, podcasts were recordings made in Garage Band and then downloaded to an iPod and then published over iTunes via an intermediary Web site. Since then, the word has changed to mean any sound recording like a radio program and available from a Web site. I use the term in it’s widest sense here.

I have the loan of an Asus Eee PC for a few days [ after which it goes to a deserving student ].

A colleague was using a class set with a 16-19 group. They had no trouble with the Linux/OpenOffice software, and they all wanted to buy one. I had similar reactions from University postgraduates and staff this afternoon.

This ready use of a Linux desktop by normal people is consistent with a conversation I had some years ago when Birmingham Libraries were using Sun workstations and a Linux desktop for the People’s Network. The librarian said that the younger people just adapted and the older people only used the Web and needed about 5 minutes to learn how to find sites.

I think low cost small solid state laptops are going to take off. But I’m still saving up for my Apple Mac Air…

...but what I really want is a umpc designed by Apple.

Asus Annoyances…

• Wifi settings not remembered between sessions, and default to WEP as opposed to WPA
• WebCam video software saves in OGG with no conversion software. Attempting to record sound and video results in sludge update of the video
• KDE PIM is naff
• No GIMP
• Bin sound recorder and install Audacity
• Caps lock has no visual indicator

Asus Likes

• Wifi works
• Open office saves to MS formats by default – cuts no end of support issues.
• I really like the tabbed interface by task – I’ll try to build one of those for my Ubuntu box

The Encyclopedia of Life looks to be an interesting post-wikipedia project in collaborative authoring. I like the design, and the biologists in the staff room like the content.

“Here it is: I like to find a) simple solutions b) to overlooked problems c) that actually need to be solved, and d) deliver them as informally as possible, e) starting with a very crude version 1, then f) iterating rapidly.”
—Paul Graham

This is close to how I view teaching. Another formula for lesson planning is something like

• Get them in
• Get on with it
• Get on with them
• Get them out

Pinched from a book I’m reading but more later…