I've also been using some of the more "blingy" packages available to me, which has really been fun! Beryl is a "compositing window manager", which basically allows me to have fancy effects and transparencies on my computer. Together with the new second display that I have, It actually allows me to work better and more efficiently, as well as being cooler than Vista by streets!

Neil Patel, another Brit, is working on some exceptional apps for Gnome. On the simplest level, Avant is a dock, but it's quite different to the one in OS X. It has now replaced the bottom panel on my desktop, showing running programs and some launchers. It can't yet replace all the functionality - one thing I really miss is the trash applet in the bottom right, and I don't know a better way than the top panel to do the menu and system tray. Affinity is a search front-end (I think I may be moving away from Beagle to Tracker for search, but it does both) that sits in the system tray and looks as hot as Avant when compositing is on! Neil codes it all in C, so it's fast but definitely bling, baby!

I'm using less and less windows on my systems now - I'd consider scrapping it off my laptop if I had a better way of running Adobe CS. I'm playing with the idea of virtualization - using a program called VirtualBox to run a "virtual machine" with Windows while I'm in Linux. I actually use it to update our iPod as well - it can take usb devices over - but predictably, performance is not so hot as doing it straight in the host operating system. Wine has not been a solution for Photoshop et. al, unfortunately.

Keeping at the cutting edge has not been an issue, even with a PC that was average 18 months ago. A little tweaking has gone into the Pundit-R case, and a new graphics card (PNY NVidia GeForce 6200 PCI) allows me to do just about anything I throw at it (except hardcore gaming!)

After a few hacks to quieten the box down with new fans, I bought a 3d Fuzion Geforce 6200 PCI - since the Pundit R has no AGP or PCI-express slots, it's probably the fastest PCI card I could cram in. It plays surprisingly cleanly with the ATi chipset, though auto-detection of graphics cards is sketchy, I have to input the details myself.

Having got that in the box I installed the latest beta of Ubuntu's next release, 6.10, codenamed Edgy Eft (on account of it's cutting-edge and possibly less stable nature, as compared with 6.06 LTS, the Dapper Drake.) Following instructions on Ubuntu Forums, I installed the beta nvidia drivers and the Beryl compositing window manager. If you've not seen videos of the effects that Beryl or Compiz allow, you really should check out some videos (for example on youtube)

It allows the desktop and any running programs to be acted on by 3D effects, real time. It takes four "virtual desktops" and makes them four faces of a cube, which you can spin around to access programs running on the other screens. It gives new minimize, maximize, close animations. When a window is moved it jiggles about like it was made of jelly. Beyond this, more effects are being actively worked on, so more exciting things are yet to come.

For the first time in months I feel excited by the new things I can do on my PC (even when it breaks!) I've taken it in to show pupils and other teachers at school and some of them like it enough to look at linux and have a go themselves!

The house is in a good state, fairly clean and well looked after. The decoration is mostly good too, just a few things we want to change. The wall by the stairs and in the hallways is yellow - with a green carpet, although that's hard to see in the photo - that has to change. The bathroom is going to lose its carpet (blue) for tile effect laminate and the carpet in the lounge needs changing because it's heavily faded (though what colour to change to is a difficult question).

Andy (my brother) was here to help with some cleaning this evening, he's staying up in Cov for a few weeks getting trained up as a systems admin or something. So he's slave labour in the evenings when he's not studying, which is handy. We're also drafting in parental support for DIYing next week - hooray for Dads who can do anything and Mums who are happy to paint!

There's a garden and patio too, also very nice. It needs a little attention, but we've been looking forward to having a garden to sit out in all summer, it's great to have it for real now! To see more pictures of the house, have a look at the picassa web album

We have exchanged contracts on our new house. It's a three bed semi in Whoberly, Coventry, we will complete on monday and will immediately take lots of pictures and then start decorating a few bits, moving stuff in and getting comfy! We've bought some essential things like sofas and a fridge/freezer, but a few are yet to be sorted (beds...)

technorati tags:house, holiday, photos

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I then thought it would be nice to be able to backup my flickr photos. Oh no, that's not something flickr supports - though there is a java app called (imaginatively) flickr backup that will do it for you. People have been asking for literally years, but no joy. Picassa web gives you a link to download the album straight to picassa, where you can then organise the pictures - although obviously you can only do this if you have picassa.

My thinking still is that though flickr has some cool features, picassa web is very tempting.

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I've also been playing with audioscrobbler plugins for my various media players - you can see my (or our) music history online at www.last.fm/user/hounddog_32 You don't often think about music history, it's kinda interesting!

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technorati tags:photos, google, picassa, flickr

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Trevor also used the terms "partner voice" and "group voice" for saying how much noise is acceptable. If you say "you can talk quietly" to a class, they inevitably start quiet and increase in volume. However, if each child understands and has practiced using a "partner voice" they can continue with that successfully - that's the idea, anyway!

Trevor is back again in a couple of weeks, talking about how to effectively enforce rules, so it will be interesting to see what he shares then.

Monday to Wednesday is the Fast Track Teaching (Cohort 4) National Conference. It's mainly made up of a lot of seminars, but for now I'm on free time and writing about some thing's I've heard so far.

A few quotes from what the keynote speaker (Alastair Smith) said last night - including that it is good for you to record your thoughts.

"There never was a golden age of learning"

"There are three types of people in any organisation: Bedazzled, Bemused, Begrudging"

"Don't let a pupil come to you with a problem unless they have already got two possible solutions. Be a Trojan Mouse, a small thing that makes a big difference."

"Focus on benefits of what you're teaching"

"Are my lessons worth behaving for?"

Monday morning has given me a few more thing to consider: a seminar on using new, especially mobile, technology in the classroom; another on "Developing yourself as a leader".

Russell Prue spoke a lot about using mobile devices, especially mobile phones and Windows Mobile devices to allow pupils to interact with the types of technology they are used to in their learning. He used a lot of video, some of which he gave links to. I think the PDF of the presentation has links to the sites, but a couple that particularly interested me were bbc jam and the British Pathe Archive. He also used a sms-email service to recieve questions during the talk to allow even the shyest of pupils to interact with the teacher. Use of other technologies like ipod and PSP were talked about and how to use the PSP as a portable web browser were mentioned. I've already thought about the use of videos for out of hours learning, so this may be an avenue to go down.

Jon and I are looking forward to the weekend.

Much of the languages focus was on opportunities for working with schools abroad and how to get funding for them. While this may have been very useful to some, it was slightly irrelevant to me, especially since it was aimed at Birmingham schools (rather than Solihull) The main opportunity to "meet" schools was described as an "online dating agency for schools", www.etwinning.net. It's a website where schools can give some details about themselves and a "wanting to meet" section, and leads to relationships as casual or close as you choose!

In terms of technology on show, we used a (several thousand pound) video conferencing suite to talk to another technologist in Devon about how he had supervised projects using videoconferencing within first the county, then the country and eventually with France too. He talked a little about infrastructure problems, even within "old Europe", of slow connections and schools far behind the ICT usage we're used to here.

We saw a demo of Skype being used (and it works through the SMBC firewall) with video and voice from Australia for free on any hardware. That could well be of use with a China trip coming up, and possibly in one-on-one or pair conversations to partner schools.

We also had a presentation on how to use blogging and podcasting. Now obviously I know a little bit about a lot of stuff, but I'd not really thought about how to use podcasting in school. I may (once coursework settles down, towards Easter) start a school podcast, with pupils recording the show, publishing to the world!

I also saw a program called Mediator, made by Matchware, which I want to use to make flash animations and games - I'll write more when I've got a copy from school.