Back to School

Back from Two weeks teaching the Intel Teach to the Future Course. A most rewarding time. Was great to meet and work with other professionals in the area of IT in Education.

Back to the real work now though. Teaching my classes. This term I am expected to get each child logged into the new SIBE system. (Secure internet, bowsing and email) What a labourious task. After recieving all user accounts, I need to distribute them and get users to log in, change passwords, and devise a secret question and answer.

Easy enough for stage 3 children (10 - 12 yr olds) but try it with early stage 1!!

Oh well.

Came across a fantastic ICT continuum today. Breaks ICT into 9 domains, each with 4 phases. Very useful planning tool. More on this when appropriate.

thats all for now

Inverell is Cold

Am teaching a course at Inverell at the moment. -8 at nite. Brrrr.

I'm here taking a group of teachers through the Intel Teach to the Future course.

CPU: part 2

The saga continues. They wanted a response to questions regarding my intent in setting up a proof of concept page (for four hours) whereby a malicious user could harvest usernames and passwords from a spoofed site.

I was given 3 days 2 respond. Will keep you posted as more comes to light.

Happy Birthday Tahl

Tahls Birthday today. Happy 12 years Tahl

CSS tutorial

Thanks to Mark Gilham from *The Rock* Public School for the link to this CSS tutorial.

IE 7

Read a post yesterday that suggested IE 7 was such a huge leap forward on IE 6 that if they (M$) keep it up, then IE 8 could become the new firefox.

Soooo, I downloaded the beta2 version. Very slick, nice interface, no page rendering problems that I have seen. Nice feed service. Not enough as yet to convince me to switch. the search bar is rather limited compared to firefox, but no doubt that will change as more users come on board.

Lismore...what fun.

What fun .... roller blading for the morning with two 11 yr old boys and 2 8 yr old girls.
Lismore is still the same old same old. The shopping centre has been extended and is now rather large(ish). Lots of sales at the moment.

Met our new property manager from LJ Hooker. She appears to be proffessional. I was going to say more proffessional than the last manager, Jackie, but I wouldnt call Jackie proffessional at all. The new one, Amanda Ryan, seems to know what she is doing. Makes us both feel at ease.

Off we go to Brisbane

Am packing the v70 with 4 bicycles and our gear at the moment.

Had to pull one cycle apart because I can only fit three on the bikerack on the back. Brisbane is nice. We will sleep on the floor of an unfurnished unit for a few days, and cycle around the glorious river banks, parks, and entertainment complexes. Will also enjoy the host of great food outlets, museums, and galleries.

K has just ridden into tennis, (10k) so Tahl, Selena and I will meet her there, then drive on up. It a two hour drive for us, mostly freeway. We stay at Westend. Think cafes, artists, students, musicians. We will visit Dave and Janelle and their family, and also Fiona and Chris.

Zero Coke

Whats in coke zero? My wife and i have been pondering that since christmas last. How can a coke have as many calories as a glass of water?

Is it safe?

The zero coke movement have a remarkably informative website which is well worth the taking the time to check out.

Here is a quote.
1.) Try choosing water over processed, packaged beverages. It's zero calorie, zero pollution and in developed countries, costs virtually zero.
2.) Take your soda money and give it to people who really need it:
For example, donate to UNICEF's Water and Sanitation Programs

Swim results

Still waiting on final results for the State Championships.

FWIW
they are available here

Tahl on the blocks during pre race warmups

bloody volvo ...2

Thanks to the great work done by Banksia Motor Works the engine check light has been put out. It was the faulty fuel relay.
the v70 is now running as normal.

back from state

What a great experience. Tahl swam very well. Not a PB for him, but very well anyway. He placed 26 out of the 40 entrants. Not bad. what really stood out amongst the fast swimmers was the fact that they had year round pools to train in. (Heated indoor, often with a Gymnasium attached.)

Can only hope and pray that our town would get one of these, .....but then our Byron Shire Council wont even provide decent sport fields for the northern area of our shire, so what hope?

2nites the night

Well we fly out at 5.15 2nite for the state swimming finals. The whole family is making the 900km trip. We dont get much change out of $1000 dollars. Selena is really looking forward to her first plane trip, though she expresses concern about "terrorists". Even in quiet rural Australia, our kids are growing up scared of the terror threat!

The weather is looking like we will get a nice smooth flight.


Speaking of terrorism.....

....found an article that sheds a rather chilling light upon the 9/11 attacks on WTC
its here you will need to sign up to view it.

bloody volvo

got the v70 booked in next wednesday for the fuel relay replacement. The engine warning light (famous) came on. Lucky there is a local guy with a scanner and the v70 software, so he could plug in and determine it was a fuel relay problem.

The part is now in stock. Will see how it goes.

3 more sleeps

Only 3 more sleeps till Tahl goes to Sydney for the State Swimming Finals.

Well done Tahl!!

Good Luck

New Page...School Help

Due to popular demand I have put up a school help page so that the children I teach can find the from home the pages that they use at school.
Find it here: schoolhelp

the buses will run on time

Just got a call from an old client, wants to setup a new office system to run his growing bus company. Will need to phone and make an appointment for next few weeks.

I think he wants an ongoing support contract.

Coffee

Eeeewwww

My third day without coffe in the morning. Hard to get started. My mood is not what it could be, the tolerance levels are really low.

Hopefully this will cease after a few days and i might start to feel normal again.

I'm not the only one it seems
http://www.goaskalice.columbia.edu/1113.html

Insurance claim

Had a call last night from a client complaining that her insurance company would not replace the monitor or printer of her fried computer.

She asked me to write a report stating that the supposed lighning strike that fried her machine (very possible) also fried her already old and broken printer, and her still working monitor.

Will phone the company I think and discuss it with them. I'm not about to sell my integrity for a $50 assesment fee.

Corruption Prevention and Investigation Unit

Got a rather rude shock when I opened my new DET mail account for the first time yesterday. A message waiting for me from the relieving manager of the Corruption Prevention and Investigation Unit.
My demonstration page of how easy it is to set up a page to extract user names and passwords (with a big red warning sign not to enter real details) did not go un-noticed.

Apparently I am now under investigation.

Sheesh....talk about shooting the messenger!

Have referred the correspondence to the NSWTF.

New Machine and learning objects

Scored an intel p4 2600 from a job yesterday. Am reinstalling the OS from the DET disk, and aim to have it setup in 23D by end of week. They have had to go without a machine this year because we have an extra classroom and nobody with a machine is willing to part with it.

Also found the DET learning objects repository
https://tstdetwww.det.nsw.edu.au/learningobjects_strict/

You will need to login to view them, but they can be downloaded and run from to a local machine. Well done to the busy bees at the CLI.

Welcome

Welcome to the first posting from myocum!