A bit weird, a bit funky and whole heap of OpenSource

Aussies can buy the XO OLPC online from November 30 - guaranteeing you're in the good books with the kids this Christmas.

(http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/129586,olpc-brings-weirdness-awesomeness-to-australia.aspx)

The XO OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) is a really rugged, cheap and Linux based laptop.

For more info: http://laptop.org/en/

I think its pretty cool anyway... and did I mention, its cheap!

My Jesus - Todd Agnew

Hey all - On Sunday I had the pleasure of listening to Peter Sondergeld deliver the message at ChristLife - West Toowoomba Presbyterian Church. At the end of the message, he played the video below. It made me want to post the blog I've been thinking about (read: still has a lot of work to do) regarding our perceptions of Jesus. For a while I've struggled with the view of Jesus that contemporary church puts forward. It seems to clash with what I see as the Biblical perspective. Hmmm. I will need to put that up at some time.

Watch the video below. It will change your perception of WWJD (What Would Jesus Do) at the very least... maybe even some personal change.

They've gone!

Year 12s from all over Queensland graduated today, and my school was no different. We had a fantastic ceremony and it was poignant and beautiful. I loved every minute of it - except for the bits where I had to talk (I MCed the event).

I wish all the Graduates of 2008 well - especially those of Christian Outreach College Toowoomba. You've done well to get where you have and I pray that you'll all follow God's will and your heart, because then you'll be a success, regardless of what life throws at you.

All the best and God's blessings. We'll miss you here.

Year 11 Revision

Hi all....

For some reason the school's filtering program doesn't allow students to get to blogger.com addresses, thus rendering my blogspot to particularly useless at school. >8(

Instead, I've put the Year 11 revision sheet up here [link] at my church website... Shhh!! don't tell anyone.

Year 12 exam is happenin'

One of the things I've learned over the years is that no matter how much time and effort you put into making an exam paper completely idiot proof, the computer will always stuff it up for you. Darn computers! Who'd want to work with them?!

No more revision sheets

Hey all, my apologies for the poor behaviour, mixing personal with work. It won't happen again, not until the end of the week anyway. Poor, poor Year 12s. Hope you enjoyed the exam... I didn't enjoy writing it.

Year 11 - you're next.

oops. I've remade the pdf

Sorry!

Here's the working pdf [link] - I tested it myself.

and

here's the original word document [link] - touched up and made half-decent.

NEW!!!

and here's the answers (pdf) [link].

revision

Bad form, I know, but here we are.

All my Year 12 IPTers, heres the revision sheet [link].

Just AI (but don't forget that it includes a little of the expert systems we did soooo long ago)...

Have fun - and no rude comments folks. You haven't graduated yet!

I just can't keep up!

Darn it! As much as I'd love to blog continuously, I just can't. Life keeps getting in the way. :(

Until I can fix up that issue (not likely), these posts are likely to be a bit sporadic.

If you'd like some more constant and continuous posts, try checking out some other blogger posts... there may even be some good ones lying around.

In the future, I hope to pick up my software run-down. There are some cool bits of code that I'd love to share, not to mention my own little snippets that I've run down and belted into shape.

Till then.

Prince Caspian

I went and saw Prince Caspian (part 2 of the Chronicles of Narnia) last night and I have to say that I was impressed. Beautiful scenery, the acting had improved and the emotive impact was greater. I really do think the four kids did a great job.

I'll try to come back to this, and do a bit of a review, in a bit.

Google yourself

Have you ever googled yourself? According to one of my friends on facebook (I know, I know, they're only really friends if you've actually met), I was a google evangelist back before google was cool. Again, I know, google was always cool.

At the moment, you're probably like... what?! Get on with the story! So I will. Anyway, even from day 1 of my google addiction I was googling myself. And then I forgot about it.

I can sense your disappointment - but wait, there's more! But, one of my brothers-in-law is a mad keen php developer and has been a bit of a sleeper hit. It wasn't until I googled him (to find out what projects he had actually worked on) that I found out just how well known he was. Essentially, the first 50 returns (that's 5 pages) were about him. Whoa...

Yep, so now you're wondering how I've fared... 1 entry... page 6 4 (yay! I've gone up two pages!). ummm.

Do yourself a favour - google yourself. You might not like what you find, but hey, at least you get a healthy sense of perspective... :)

Help me get up another couple of pages... you know you want to. Link to this blog... it's cool. Nah, didn't think that would work...

Software I use: Productivity

There comes a time in one's life when one wants to do the same amount of work in less time. These are the tools I use to reduce the work I have to do in keeping my life going.

Productivity tools:

• Office applications: Microsoft Office (http://office.microsoft.com/). Really, at the moment there's no true replacement, and that's for a lot of reasons. The main issue, of course, is market dominance. If I want to change to my preferred suite (eg. StarOffice - based on OpenOffice (http://www.openoffice.org)), then I need to convince everyone who uses my machine to swap as well. After all, I'm not going to pay for a licence I'm not going to use, now am I?
• Calendar: Google Calendar (http://calendar.google.com) Google calendars are the only calendars that I need. Accessible from anywhere, easy to use - I've never seen a better design for quick and easy data entry, and there are plugins for pretty much every web-based tech you can find. I use Joomla! (http://www.joomla.org) and there are so many plugins for Google Calendar - it's crazy! My church website (http://www.christlife.org.au) uses Google Maps... the only problem is that I haven't told anyone yet, so it's a bit out of date.
• Syncronisation: SyncBack SE (http://www.2brightsparks.com/downloads.html) has to be one of the easiest I've used - and efficient. Check it out.

I think that's about it... If you've got a suggestion for another type of productivity app (an area I haven't talked about) then comment it here. If you think you've got a better piece of software, let me know too!

Software I use (Internet)

I keep getting asked by people (friends, acquantainces, complete strangers etc) what software I use... what I think works and is good. Well, here's a little list of the software I use for various tasks.

Slight change: I've decided to do this bit in parts. That whay I can easily distinguish between the different types of software.

Note: I occaisionally use software that I don't think is necessarily the best, and I'll offer alternatives for them.

First, the Internet:

• Web Browser: FireFox 3. Duh! No choice really... Open Source, free, cool, great. Get it from: http://www.getfirefox.com
• Email: Thunderbird 2. Same reasons as above. http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/ I actually like MS Outlook for it's completeness (tasks, mail, calendar etc) but it's not free.
  
• FTP: FileZilla (http://filezilla-project.org/) Like the ones above. Cool. Free. Secure.
• More? Let me know.

If you have a different opinion about what should be here, let me know!

Wow - it HAS been a long time

Somebody just recently asked me if I'd posted on my blog recently... and as you can see from the dates, my answer was no.
So why do people start up blogs and then not keep going? It's a bit reminiscent of those personal web pages on 'free' hosting sites which were set up once, maybe tended for a short while and then just forgotten - left to be sucked up by the sands of time (and the creditors when the hosting company collapsed).
I can't really answer for anyone else, but for me I have to admit that it's partly because I don't feel any real emotional attachment to my blog space. It's google's, not mine. The URL tries to make it feel personal, heck - google really does try to give you some sense of web 'backyard' to work within (and major kudos to them - privacy issues set aside), but it's just not the same as having a site which you've built up from the ground.
Those people who have known me for some time, know that I began working with HTML back in it's infancy (at least in Australia), way back in the early to mid 90's. I can't really remember when I first started, but it was early. I remember the joy of being able to use the img tag for the first time (note: not xHTML compliant - no / in those days!). I remember animated gifs and the free for all that web enthusiasts had for setting them as background images, regardless of how tacky it made the site, or how hard to read. I remember feeling like a legend, because my good old Netscape managed to get my page up and going and looking kind of like I'd intended in under 10 seconds (remember 9600 baud?). I remember using notepad and Netscape Composer to set it all up. Those were the days where I had some sense of personal belonging - where I knew that all that was there was because I could.
These days you select a template, give it a title and away you go...
It seems to me that the most used blogs (and this is from pro's as well) are ones where some personalisation has occured, they're not just plain vanilla anymore.

Maybe that's what I've got to do. That and get some darn visitors!!! Come on, leave a comment just so I know that there's someone out there...

Rescuing big ships - really big ships

This month in Wired there's an article, High Tech Cowboys of the Deep Seas: The Race to Save the Cougar Ace [link], describing the heroic efforts to salvage a very big ship. It's excellent reading and I was captivated. One member of the team died, but there could have been more. Reading the description of their entry into the cargo hold brought images of entering a tomb into my mind.

Take a read. It's worth it.

Why teach Shakespeare?

As you might already know, I teach English at the Year 10 - 12 level and as a part of that, teach Shakespeare.

I love Shakespeare, I really love Shakespeare - his plays are the stuff of dreams, madness, love, romance, hate, good, evil - actually, pretty much any human trait you can think of has been modelled in one of Shakey Bill's plays.

In one of my classes today (we're studying Macbeth) a student asked why we study Shakespeare, and not one of the more modern "classics" like Vantage Point. I answered that it is because of the themes and issues which Shakespeare address, timeless and to the point. But it got me thinking and I had a look around the wonderful webiverse and found 'Why Teach Shakespeare' at Englicious. I haven't read it all, but it looks like it might be shaping up to something beautiful.

If you like using the English language in anything approaching a decent manner, then it is well worth a look.

I've got another new blog!

Hi all (or is it just me)!

I've got a new blog Think of the Cross (http://thinkofthecross.blogspot.com) which will chronicle my thoughts of anything remotely to do with Christ, Christianity and even Christian schooling.

Head on over, I'm almost ready to actually add a post! If you have any suggestions, just add a comment to the welcome posting.

A User's View is moving...

Hi all,

A User's View (the blog about software useability) is moving to http://ausersview.blogspot.com and this space will become my personal blog - essentially a regular (hopefully) update to what is going on in and around my life.

Enjoy the new spot!

Get those add-ons working with Firefox 3 beta 3

As I've stated in the previous posts, getting those add-ons to work in the betas isn't as simple as clicking on the beautiful install button.

The problem we now have is that the vast majority of add-ons have been built for Firefox 1 & 2, and because FF3 is still in beta, not many of the developers have updated their add-ons.

Thankfully, unless the add-on deals with some of the core which has changed (e.g. bookmarks), it is quite simple to update them yourself. It requires little knowledge of anything other than how to use a good compression program (i.e. 7zip) and read files in notepad (although I like using notepad2). NOTE: both of those programs are Open Source and GPL'ed, so no philosophical issues here.

To start off, I'm going to install one of my favourite add-ons: Firebug. This is a nifty little tool, which is very useful for developers - unlike myself.

So let's get started.

1. Get the add-on. This is as simple as going to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1843 and clicking on the green 'Install Now' button.

2. The add-on install will go as per normal, but will pop up an 'Incompatible Extension' error box - just as you thought all was hunky-dory.

3. Hmm... we now have a problem - but it can be fixed!

4. Go back to the add-on's page (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1843) and right-click on the link.
Select 'Save Link As...' and choose great little folder/directory in which to save the .xpi file.

5. This is now where 7Zip comes in handy. Go to the directory in which the .xpi is saved and open the file in your compression program of choice (if you haven't guessed, I choose 7Zip).

NOTE: The reason we can do this is that the .xpi file is actually an archive containing all the files needed for the add-on. We're going to change one - that's right, just one - file in that archive.

The steps I'm about to use are for 7Zip, so if you don't have it - get it. Really, it is the best compression program out there anyway.

6. Look for the file 'install.rdf', right-click on it and select 'Edit'. This is the main configuration file for the add-on.

7. We're going to change one - that's right, one - line in the file. Look for the code section:

<Description>
<em:id>{ec8030f7-c20a-464f-9b0e-13a3a9e97384}</em:id>
<em:maxVersion>2.0.0.*</em:maxVersion>
<em:minVersion>1.5</em:minVersion>
</Description>

We're going to change the value in <em:maxVersion> from 2.0.0.* to 3.0.*

8. Make the change and save the file. Exit your editor (again, mine was notepad2) and, if you're using 7zip, it will ask if you want to update the archive with the new file - select 'Yes'. If you're using some other program and it doesn't ask you, save your install.rdf file elsewhere and add it back in to the archive, making sure to overwrite the old one.

9. Close the archive and drag the .xpi file onto firefox. The install Add-On dialogue should come up and away you go.

Yet another Firefox review...

Ars Technica has put together another good review of Firefox, this one on beta 3.

For some reason, the winXP theme looks better on the screenshots than they do on my install. Incidentally, since firefox 3 beta 2, my number 1 choice in browser is Firefox.
Who cares that not all my extensions work - I can fix that. But man, the speed and memory management is great (and, I must add, long overdue).

Let the browser wars really get going.... again. And this time, let the little fellas win!

Firefox 3 Beta 3

I know, I know.... I didn't add all the stuff I said that I was going to with Firefox 3 b2, but now I can't anyway...

Firefox 3 Beta 3 is out.

Again, it's fast..., really fast. It makes IE 7 look like a turtle - in a straight jacket.

There are some cool new features (and some not so cool ones, eg. what is with the winXP icon set?), but it is a really good browser that does the job it is meant to.

It still doesn't have all the support of the extensions yet, but that will change as it leaves beta, and most of them can be modified to work with FF3b3 quickly and easily. I'll actually write about that really soon - it is so simple, anyone can do it.

Anyway, for a better review, go have a look at "A deep look to Firefox 3 Beta 3". It appears to be a pretty even handed review. And you don't have to wait for little old me, either.

Download it, install it, have the kind of fun we should have been having since Mosaic.

Firefox 3 Beta 2: First Impressions - It's faaaast!

I like to get up to date with software, and I prefer using Open Source to Closed in most cases, but like others out there, I had found Firefox 2 to be a bit... well, memory hungry. It had what we geeks like to call a memory leak. Essentially this means that it just keeps on using up the RAM.
I still preferred it over IE6 (which was just a bit too dodgy for my liking, and hadn't been updated in years, but when IE 7 came out... I switched!

Then I heard (late) of the Firefox 3 beta. I downloaded a copy of Beta 1, installed it and... it was great! It was Firefox, but fast, until you opened up a few tabs. The Beta 2 came out and it is fast, and nowhere near a memory junkie.

That's my first impression - speed. It is faster than IE 7 - it even uses less memory than IE 7, which is cool. Now, even though it's just a beta, I've switched back to Firefox.

The obligitory 'Welcome' post...

Sorry to do this to everyone, but here it is...

Welcome to richardschwarz.blogger.com: where software and thought combine.

This blog will contain my thoughts about software and even 'thinking type stuff'. If you want to know a user's perspective on software (which you should) then keep looking here.

I am an English and IT teacher to upper High School students (14 - 17 y.o.'s generally), and like to think that the two are actually complementary, rather than diametrically opposed.

Anyway, have a read. First cab off the rank will be my take on Firefox 3 beta 2. Preview: it rocks!