Summer Reading

Sometimes it is good to read stuff that has nothing to do with work. I have a pile of reports such as Building the Curriculum 3 and a number of HMIE publications to absorb. For this reason, if nothing else, I have been reading some fiction whilst on holiday and even now that I am back at work.

So here is a brief summary of my holiday reading this summer.

I started by finally finishing the final Harry Potter book. I started it before Christmas sometime but I got there at the start of the holiday.

The next was one by one of my favourite authors, Frank Peretti. The book was entitled House. Two couples find themselves in a fight for survival. Running from a maniac bent on killing them, they flee deep into the woods. They seek refuge in an old house. They soon discover that they are not alone. With danger present in the house, they try to leave. They soon realize the killer has purposely lured them to this house. The characters come to realize that the house, while real, mirrors their own heart and soul . . . and unless each can defeat the evil within, the evil in the house will surely claim them. House is a modern tale that will have readers searching their own spiritual pulse long after they reach the last page.

Next up was a Minette Walters novel called Fox Evil. I love the stories she writes. They tend to be very gritty and real. As you read this one you are sure you know what is going on but the twist near the end keeps you turning the pages. The story is set in Dorset where New Age travellers, under the leadership of Fox Evil, invade an isolated village. Two women with their own evil intentions dominate the seemingly peaceful village and they have been waging a cruel campaign against a frail neighbour, attempting to drive him to loneliness and despair after his wife dies in mysterious circumstances. But when Fox Evil uses the women’s spitefulness for his own purposes, the villagers realise they have a sadist in their midst.

Finally for just now is an old one by Robert Ludlum. I have seen all the Bourne films and was hoping to try to understand them by reading the book! I am still reading this one but at least I am understanding it. Although I enjoyed the Bourne Identity I did find the story a bit hard o follow.

I am not sure what I will go for next. I haven't read any P.G. Wodehouse for a while. He is still one of my favourite authors and I keep coming basck to his books.

Anyway, off to read some more before the end of the weekend and I have to go back to HMIE reports.

Wifi and the Eee PC

My wife has had an Asus PC for the past few months. It was a birthday present and part of the deal was that I would not be allowed anywhere near it. Recently, however, I have obtained one to try out to see whether they might be any use in the classroom. The machine is great but I had a horribletime getting it to connect to my home wifi connection. Thankfully there is help out there in the shape of eeeuser.com. There is a wiki as part of the site which actually answers useful questions like what to do when the wifi won't work and how to edit RAW photo images. Seemingly I am not the first to have difficulties getting these machines to connect to wifi. A trawl through the forums highlight page after page of people having problems. Now I am not going to pretend that I understand all that I was doing. I have not really tampered with Linux as yet so am a real novice! I ws able to follow the instructions and now it works. The machine would connect to the router if there was no security but not if there was WPA enabled. I ended up having to replace the wpa_supplicant and now it works fine. Thanks a lot to Eee User. It works!

If you can't get you EeePC to connect to wifi then trying this : http://wiki.eeeuser.com/wpa_default_xandros

This site was also my source for working out how to display the full desktop : http://wiki.eeeuser.com/#full_desktop_advanced_mode

And editing RAW images : http://wiki.eeeuser.com/howto:addrawphotoediting
(although this is a bit harder!)

Thanks are also due to my son, Alistair, who does know about Linux and was able to answer the stupid questions that I had.

Now I can eally see how good the EeePC is.

Internet on the Road

Internet access when away from base is still a real issue for me. Why is it that it is so easy in some places and so difficult in others? We were in the Lake District last week on holiday. We were so supposed to have wifi access in the cottage but it wasn't working which was a real shame. The owners did everything they could but to no avail. It would be the following week before they could get it fixed. The next option was to see where we could get access when we were out and about. Some places were great and some were an absolute disaster. The EePC was great for carrying around in the rucksack and not feeling weighed down. The difference in provision was startling:

• The Tourist Information office in Hawkshead provided access for £1 for as long as you liked. They didn't have anywhere to sit but there was a bench outside so that was OK.
• The Juice Bar in Bowness provided free access. The food was great as well.
• The Dog and Gun in Keswick was supposed to provide free access but we couldn't log on and the staff were a waste of space. The food wasn't that great either (although the beer was good!).
• The Tourist Information office in Coniston was supposed to provide access but it wasn't working.
• There was an Internet cafe in Coniston which charged £1 for 15 minutes. At least the coffee was really good.
• The village bakery in Broughton provided free access and superb food. I would recommend this place very highly.
  

Apart from that places were charging £5 or £6 an hour or more!

We still have a long way to go before we are truly connected.