bodmas blog

The Xubuntu 7.04 beta is now available for download and testing. I am typing this on the Dell L400 (an old P3 700MHz workhorse with 256Mb of RAM). The bling is sort of nice, but the Gnu Image Manipulation Program is ‘interesting’ to use if you make windows transparent when they don’t have the focus!

After upgrading the image (around 34Mb of packages today), I installed openoffice.org 2.2 (127Mb download, and 330+ Mb when unpacked). I might forsake Xubuntu 6.06 for this release when the ‘official’ version becomes available.

If you use an LCD monitor and switch on sub-pixel hinting, the font scale issue is still present, you need to edit a file in the .config/xfce4 folder.

Matt Linderman has summarised some of the advice that Stephen King gives in the essay On Writing.

All excellent stuff. I have used the opening at page 56 and 57 of the Scribner hard back edition published in 2000 with English Speaking Board students. King is having an article about a football game editied by John Gould, a newspaper editor. Cross out the words that don’t do anything is the message.

Screen grabs taken on my Kodak and processed using scanr.com. Copyright is almost certainly Scribner’s, so if any rights holder objects I will remove the images of the text. I think King’s presentation makes things very clear.

The latest version of Ubuntu linux has the version number 7.04 (Ubuntu releases are numbered as year.month) and the beta is available for download as an iso. This is ‘plain’ Ubuntu, the Kubuntu and Xubuntu variants are not available as yet. The 7.04 release includes OpenOffice 2.2 and Firefox version 2. The nickname is Fiesty Fawn for heavens sake! Who thinks these things up?

The ‘live’ CD booted fine on my recycled Netvista 6790 P4 with a Vanta 16 Mb video card. Hardware was recognised, desktop software worked as far as I can test, and Ubuntu 7.04 recognised my iPod shuffle and a USB stick with no problems. I use a USB modem to connect to Orange broadband so I could not install the modem drivers on the live CD to test out connecting to the internet.

The ‘desktop effects’ option (which loads a graphics enhanced desktop with ‘bling’ effects such as twisting windows and desktops as faces of a cube) did not work as might be expected on the old Vanta 16 Mb video card. Bling isn’t a biggy for me, OpenOffice 2.2 is of interest and I can see myself upgrading when Xubuntu 7.04 comes out.

The ‘samples’ folder on the desktop comes with a couple of minutes of Nelson Mandela explaining the word ‘ubuntu’. The video is in ogg theora format and played fine both at normal size and full screen on my computer (some have had difficulties). Quite a different advertising pitch compared with the commercial providers! The video is also a reminder that Ubuntu linux is based in South Africa.

I had a message in my Googlemail inbox saying ‘how exciting and stimulating’ this Web site looked, alas the effect was dulled somewhat by the ‘dear sir or madam’ at the beginning, and the request for a link to a Web site obviously aimed at the school sector.

Well, Lillian, flattery is always welome, and here is your link.

However, had you spent more than a few milliseconds on bodmas.org, you would have been able to resolve the gender issue and it would have become apparent that I work in FE. That isn’t to say that your employer’s site won’t be useful to school teachers, but perhaps narrowing your focus will help the PageRank!

The Teacher Expertise Web site looks like this…

Another Electric World PLC enterprise…

Both look harmless, and possibly useful. I suppose we will see more of this sort of thing, but I can’t help wondering if a big stonking wiki somewhere could be set up for teachers and ringfenced in some way?

I have not quoted the e-mail directly as I always respect the confidentiallity of the actual text and full names of anyone contacting me via ping.keith@googlemail.com. I do link to commercial web sites when I think what they are selling is useful and when I have paid for the product and used it myself.

This is an improvised commentary on a short PowerPoint that I use in teaching. No script, and no special design on the slides. I follow this up with a worksheet with simple questions leading to composite shapes.

The second installment is about the area of circles and parts of circles. This presentation assumes knowledge of the circumference formula. Again no scripting and no special layout.

I’m not sure how useful these will be to students without a question sheet or hot potatoes quiz.

David Batchelor’s essay on the modernist avoidance of colour struck a chord. Why do some modern architects avoid colour so much?

The essay cites Wim Wender’s film Wings of Desire and the Michael Powell wartime film with David Niven A Matter of Life and Death – I remember that one from Sunday Telly in the 70s. Both films use monochrome and colour to mark aspects of the story. In the Wender’s film, the angel lands with a bump in a building site in Berlin (just before Unification) and makes the transition from monochrome to colour…

My most intense colour reflections are almost always in the Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King (aka ‘Paddy’s Wigwam’) in Liverpool. I fully intend to take a camera, tripod and macro lens with some slide film and record the imperfections in the 4 inch thick glass, the deep blue and resonant reds really enhance your view of the world.

A digital camera in the classroom: students clocked the idea and used mobile phones to record the results of this discussion. The crop above was processed using scanr.com’s whiteboard function, the photo was from my Kodak point and shoot digital.

Once I have the interactive whiteboards installed, I hope to get myself timetabled into the rooms with them! Until then, the Kodak will be my recording device.

The coursework is based on ‘Read All About It’, the GCSE data handling topic, but the marking criteria are very different, so this plan won’t be much use to GCSE students.