Summer is in full swing now and many of us at work are turning our attention to developing modules ready for teaching in September.
I will once again be teaching introductory programming to our incoming students, using Python (of course :) - although the major change for this year is a move from Python 2.6 to Python 3.1. In addition, I'm involved in three modules on our brand-new IT degree: IT Infrastructure, Web Development and Project Management.
Tuesday, 27 July 2010
Digital Music Pricing Weirdness
live album as an MP3 download for £4.99 yet sell its four individual tracks for £4.49 each?
Tuesday, 29 June 2010
It Lives!
Shortly (and coincidentally) after the previously mentioned upgrade to Ubuntu Lucid, my PC went into a sulk - shutting down and refusing to boot up again. Pressing the Power On button caused the fans to spin up for about a second before everything went dead.
Poking around the motherboard's power connector with a multimeter confirmed that the problem lay with the PSU. £45 got me a new unit from the local Maplin Electronics - 700W rather than the 580W of the original that came with the PC (best to be on the safe side :) Fitting was straightfoward and everything seems to be working swimmingly once more.
There's a certain satisfaction to be had from fixing something yourself...
Poking around the motherboard's power connector with a multimeter confirmed that the problem lay with the PSU. £45 got me a new unit from the local Maplin Electronics - 700W rather than the 580W of the original that came with the PC (best to be on the safe side :) Fitting was straightfoward and everything seems to be working swimmingly once more.
There's a certain satisfaction to be had from fixing something yourself...
Saturday, 26 June 2010
Upgrading
I've upgraded my Ubuntu machine at home to Lucid without any major issues.
I like the new look and feel and would probably make the effort to get used to the new window button positioning, were it not for the fact that I have to use Fedora at work (plus Windows occasionally at work and at home).
Gwibber is a promising addition, although it isn't quite as robust as I would like; it took several attempts and a detailed examination of bug reports in Launchpad before I could successful add my Facebook account to it.
I've also discovered that screen lock no longer works properly after having upgraded from the open source fglrx graphics card driver to the proprietary version.
On the plus side, sound works better than it did before; I seem to have much better control over volume than was the case in Karmic.
I like the new look and feel and would probably make the effort to get used to the new window button positioning, were it not for the fact that I have to use Fedora at work (plus Windows occasionally at work and at home).
Gwibber is a promising addition, although it isn't quite as robust as I would like; it took several attempts and a detailed examination of bug reports in Launchpad before I could successful add my Facebook account to it.
I've also discovered that screen lock no longer works properly after having upgraded from the open source fglrx graphics card driver to the proprietary version.
On the plus side, sound works better than it did before; I seem to have much better control over volume than was the case in Karmic.
Monday, 21 June 2010
United For Education
My photos from today's United For Education day of action are now on Flickr, as a set and as a slideshow:
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