Plakboek

Wednesday, December 24th, 2008

Adding to Adium

Something about running a Jabber server that Bill and Tony mentioned last week got me distracted and I had a fiddle with Adium, the OSX powered open source instant messaging application that I have been using to chat to contacts online on my MacBook laptop. It is similar to Pidgin, the application I use on my Ubuntu Linux desktop.

To my surprise I was able to find a cute Skype plugin that enabled me to integrate Skype. After a bit of poking about I was also able to get my Facebook account connected. I was also configured it to automatically use my latest Twitter post to create a updated status note.

Now to check out how I can add a Jabber account. :-)

mood:

cheerful

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Monday, November 3rd, 2008

Hammer and Nails

Hammer by Darren Hester

My IT students have fun learning networking by playing with Ubuntu but we dont run it on everything at our college. Here is a list of the splendid things we put into our tool kit of software and experiences for college students.

Linux runs on some servers and sweetly enough on the netbooks, library and SunRay terminals. The only app once kept on breaking was Cambodian. It is not supported with Windows without a obscure hack but now happily runs with OpenOffice thanks to the tireless efforts of the splendid KhmerOS team. (I believe we are the only secondary school in Australia to teach Khmer).

Nothing is token, everything is valued and has a place including the freedom to run FLOSS and commercial software.

We use Final Cut Pro .. and dont need (and could hardly afford) to run it on anything more than our studio Power OSX computer. We no longer use ClickView. It's a cute product but we saved our precious dollars for a MythTV setup that suits our needs and is free. The 2Touch IWB doesnt need any software, just plug, play and go with any computer in the school. We dont use much Adobe sotware, instead investing in an HUGE A1 printer with archive ink powered by Gimp and Inkscape and a class set of digital cameras for students. Ok, Flash was briefly nice but bringing home a free 1 x 3 m panorama visualisation of your design / artwork or photo can really kick butt. We use Garage Band in the Mac lab .. Sibelius in the Windows lab .. OpenOffice and Pencil 3D animation software in both.

When all you have is a hammer, all your problems look just like a nail.

mood:

relieved

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Tuesday, June 17th, 2008

Parallel thinking

With the current round of notebooks for teaching staff, and after many years teaching VCE IT with Toshiba, ACER, IBM and then Levono laptops, I have finally decided to opt for the Apple notebook option. Last week I was really impressed with a colleague running Parallels on his iBook who was able to seamlessly switch between OSX to XP applications using a little used feature called Coherence. It makes for some interesting reading with this blog post.

It didn't really matter what operating system we use .. shift happens. I saw this myself at the VITTA conference last year after a day long session demonstrating programming with Python in the Apple lab. It didn't matter. A lighter weight and better design are also factors I am considering .. bluetooth, perhaps Apple iPhone integration??

With due dignity to all users and systems, I do not wish to turn this into a mac / windows flame or debate about incremental advantages. Jokes about one or two button mice mean nothing when both systems plug and play just about anything you throw at them.

Somebody once described this to me as how we learn to play chess. It doesn't matter if your pieces are made of finely crafted glass or bottle tops. It doesn't matter if the chess board is made of ivory or newspaper. What matters more is the game that you play.

Is anybody thinking along the same path?

mood: awake

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