I don't quite know how it happened, but my parents finally got the Internet / computing bug. Last year, my Dad bought a Dell Studio and my Mom bought an HP Mini. For the longest time, they went largely underused -- my Dad used his to play pinball, and my Mom, well, she hasn't been using hers at all. For the most part, the HP Mini fell into my hands.
But not anymore. Slowly, my two senior citizens have been getting the hang of things. My Dad has moved up to web browsing and photo management, and he's added Chromium BSU to his game repertoire. He's using Windows Vista, though, so his story isn't of much interest here (the Dell Studio came with the operating system, so it felt like a waste to wipe it out.)
My Mom, on the other hand....
Showing posts with label Testimonial. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Testimonial. Show all posts
Mark Shuttleworth stepping down as Canonical CEO
Announcement over at his blog. He won't be leaving Canonical or Ubuntu altogether; he'll be taking on another role. Excerpt:
Hats off to you, Mr. Shuttleworth. You really made a difference.
From March next year, I’ll focus my Canonical energy on product design, partnerships and customers. Those are the areas that I enjoy most and also the areas where I can best shape the impact we have on open source and the technology market. I’m able to do this because Jane Silber, who has been COO at Canonical virtually from the beginning, will take on the job of CEO.
Hats off to you, Mr. Shuttleworth. You really made a difference.
Ubuntu in the lab
What can I say? Ubuntu has made teaching fun for me again. I took the shot above last Monday when my CS312C Advanced Topics Elective (a.k.a. Open Source Technologies as taught by Dominique Cimafranca ®) installed Karmic on their lab computers.
My students' thesis defense
Since last summer, I had been coaching Cindy, Jzel, and Alisa -- students in my open source technologies class -- in osCommerce. Early on, they had identified a project involving e-commerce to by their thesis; our classes over summer gave them the opportunity to work on their project well before their other classmates got started on theirs.
Yesterday, I received great news: they passed their thesis defense, the first group to do so in three days' worth of rigorous panel interviews.
Read more...
Yesterday, I received great news: they passed their thesis defense, the first group to do so in three days' worth of rigorous panel interviews.
Read more...
Teaching Open Source in the University
Teaching Open Source In The University
View more documents from Dominique Cimafranca.
My presentation for Software Freedom Day 2009.
The 200th Post
My 200th post, a milestone of sorts. To be honest, I didn't think I'd get this far. This blog started out as a way for me to keep online notes of the stuff I do with Ubuntu (and it's saved me more than once, when I forgot how exactly I did something the first time around) -- and, well, I've just kept at it. There's always something cool to fiddle around with in Ubuntu.
Thanks for following this blog.
Thanks for following this blog.
Ubunchu, the Ubuntu manga
Apparently this comic has been around for a while, but only now have I gotten wind of it. Don't expect anything deep; the comic aims more to introduce Ubuntu to a younger manga-oriented crowd. All the same, worth a chuckle or two.Download it from Doctor Mo. Available in several languages.
Thanks to Clair for the heads-up.
A near-dalliance
Confession time: I almost installed Windows XP on this office computer today. The circumstances were these:
1. I had just installed a new graphics card on this machine. As to why I bought it in the first place, read on.
2. I had just bought a few games from Good Old Games, namely Freespace and Freespace 2. I really wanted to try them out.
3. I had also bought a SpaceNavigator PE, to try with Google Sketchup and Google Earth.
4. I might need to install a webcam on this computer so my Mom can Skype with my Dad.
5. As an instructor of Ateneo de Davao University, I can legally install Windows on my machine for, er, instructional and testing purposes.
Picture now an Angel Me and Devil Me whispering in my ear.
Devil Me: "Go ahead, install Windows. Life will be so much easier. You can play games! Games!"
Angel Me: "No! Stay away! Think of all that you've stood for!"
Devil Me: "Ga-aaames! Ga-aaaaaaaames!"
Sadly, I gave in to the temptation. I wiped out my old Ubuntu partition to make way for my legal copy of Windows XP. I had been planning a reinstall of Ubuntu, anyway, with an upgrade to Jaunty and a downgrade to 32-bit, for application support reasons. My intention was to dual-boot this machine, hoping to heavens I wouldn't fall into the trap of spending more time on Windows.
I needn't have worried, really.
Windows XP wouldn't install.
Heaven knows I tried several times, even repartitioning the disk with Gparted. The installer just kept complaining it couldn't use the disk. Heh. I guess a close-to-ten-year-old operating system just can't hack it on new hardware anymore.
Eventually I gave up. In contrast, installing Jaunty on this machine was a breeze. And I didn't have to feel guilty about it.
Yup, Windows is just too darned difficult.
1. I had just installed a new graphics card on this machine. As to why I bought it in the first place, read on.
2. I had just bought a few games from Good Old Games, namely Freespace and Freespace 2. I really wanted to try them out.
3. I had also bought a SpaceNavigator PE, to try with Google Sketchup and Google Earth.
4. I might need to install a webcam on this computer so my Mom can Skype with my Dad.
5. As an instructor of Ateneo de Davao University, I can legally install Windows on my machine for, er, instructional and testing purposes.
Picture now an Angel Me and Devil Me whispering in my ear.
Devil Me: "Go ahead, install Windows. Life will be so much easier. You can play games! Games!"
Angel Me: "No! Stay away! Think of all that you've stood for!"
Devil Me: "Ga-aaames! Ga-aaaaaaaames!"
Sadly, I gave in to the temptation. I wiped out my old Ubuntu partition to make way for my legal copy of Windows XP. I had been planning a reinstall of Ubuntu, anyway, with an upgrade to Jaunty and a downgrade to 32-bit, for application support reasons. My intention was to dual-boot this machine, hoping to heavens I wouldn't fall into the trap of spending more time on Windows.
I needn't have worried, really.
Windows XP wouldn't install.
Heaven knows I tried several times, even repartitioning the disk with Gparted. The installer just kept complaining it couldn't use the disk. Heh. I guess a close-to-ten-year-old operating system just can't hack it on new hardware anymore.
Eventually I gave up. In contrast, installing Jaunty on this machine was a breeze. And I didn't have to feel guilty about it.
Yup, Windows is just too darned difficult.
Show-Off Day
Repost from my personal blog
As if last semester's tortures weren't enough, I found myself signed up for another six weeks of summer classes back in mid-April. Today, mercifully, my class on Operating Systems Technologies had its last meeting. What can I say? I am going to miss this class.
Today's class was the most raucous I had ever run for Ateneo de Davao. My students' final presentations interspersed with cheers and catcalls and clapping and laughing. For a moment, I was afraid someone would knock on the door and reprimand us for being too loud. Perhaps I was the loudest one of all. Embarrassingly, I had also invited a co-teacher to witness the proceedings.
If we bordered on the unruly, it was because I had designated today Show-Off Day. Since after the midway point of the summer classes, I gave the students leeway on what special project they wanted to pursue. The first four weeks had been all lectures and programming assignments designed to give them as wide a scope of the technologies available under open source. In the last two weeks, I told them they could wander off my syllabus track, pick any project they wanted and, well, just run with it.
Read more...
As if last semester's tortures weren't enough, I found myself signed up for another six weeks of summer classes back in mid-April. Today, mercifully, my class on Operating Systems Technologies had its last meeting. What can I say? I am going to miss this class.
Today's class was the most raucous I had ever run for Ateneo de Davao. My students' final presentations interspersed with cheers and catcalls and clapping and laughing. For a moment, I was afraid someone would knock on the door and reprimand us for being too loud. Perhaps I was the loudest one of all. Embarrassingly, I had also invited a co-teacher to witness the proceedings.
If we bordered on the unruly, it was because I had designated today Show-Off Day. Since after the midway point of the summer classes, I gave the students leeway on what special project they wanted to pursue. The first four weeks had been all lectures and programming assignments designed to give them as wide a scope of the technologies available under open source. In the last two weeks, I told them they could wander off my syllabus track, pick any project they wanted and, well, just run with it.
Read more...
Synfig
My student's work in my Open Source Technologies class. She did this in Synfig. I hardly had anything to do with it, except maybe to nudge her in the right direction. Then I had her teach me!
It was another student who figured out how to get Synfig to run on Ubuntu, too. The Synfig from the repositories won't install properly; you have to install the development version from Launchpad.
This class is really turning up a lot of surprises. Some of my students also jumped at Blender and are already deep into it.
Ubuntu testimonial
An email I got just recently:
I don't know if you still remember me but we met before in one of the Davao Mac Users Group (DavMUG) meetings at Jim Haw's coffee shop. I was with P---, M----, and M----- that time. Good to know you're the open source teacher at AdDU.
I've wanted to get in touch with you the past few months but never got your email add. Finally got it from your OpenSource Education blog. Anyhoo … I'm one of the founders of DavMUG and a fairly recent (about 2 years ago, starting with ver 7) Ubuntu convert. P--- and I got our 2 kids HP Mini-Note 2133 laptops, pre-installed with SLED (which we absolutely loathed … how can a Linux distro be so crappy?!). My kids and I have used and loved Hardy Heron on our old (and recently deceased) Pentium 4 PC and, thus, were brave enough to try installing Intrepid Ibex on their 2133s. I did some research on the web and managed to do a fairly ok job of setting it up.
However, I still haven't figured out the Via driver issues. I managed to get it up to the correct resolution of 1028x600 but I know something's wrong because I can't access the Screen Resolution preference pane. Besides, some apps still do that crazy scroll-up and scroll-down thing when mousing up or down. I also haven't been able to test the built-in webcam and mic as I don't know which apps to use with them. I've managed to set up Wine, and CUPS and HPLIP printing pretty ok too. Wine/Photoshop 7 stopped working though for reasons that still escape me. In this regard, I was wondering if you have some kind of Ubuntu (support) group like we do in DavMUG? My kids and I would like to join if there is one. Besides, our entire family believes open source is the way of the future (I bet you don't hear this very often! hehe). :-)
FYI, I was the one who recommended the shift to Ubuntu to AdDU (via B----, Assistant to the President). This is because of my happy experience with the 8.04 Heron. I also recommended the Ibex to another common friend of ours, V----, who is intent on getting herself an HP2133 too. She loved what she saw in my kid's 2133 setup!
I hope we can meet up some time and discuss Ubuntu stuff.
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