Firefox and other matters

I finally got fed up with the fans in my Acer PC working overtime as I merely browsed pages on the Internet. I only had open TweetDeck and Firefox but it was the latter that seemed to be the cause of the CPU overload. Maybe I have too many plugins installed. I'll have to investigate the matter later but for the time being I've switched to the Ephiphany browser and everything is wonderfully quiet. It really was driving me to distraction. I can't believe I've put up with it for so long when there was such an easy solution at hand.

It's probably about time that I did start getting a little "pedagogical" and start organizing my thoughts a little. I recently came across a free graph-generating program for Windows called f(x)-Viewer. It's a 569Kb download and I have it running in WINE. I've given a brief test drive and it seems quite adequate. I've used Graphmatica in the past and I guess there are lot of graph-generating programs out there. Another free program that I've played around with is Foto-Mosaik-Edda that generates a photograph made up of smaller photographs (thousands of them if you want). I want to use it to generate a 90cm x 60cm photograph that I'll get printed out before I leave for Shanghai. I've been told that the printing cost will be around Rp120,000.

I guess I'll be expected to have an opinion on the possible implementation of Windows 7 in the school environment and it certainly seems a good idea. The fact that Windows 7 Ultimate, Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Enterprise will offer legacy compatibility via Virtual Windows XP makes it even more attractive. Release date is said to be October 22nd 2009.
Of course, Google Chrome OS is due for release next year and it will be interesting to see how that fares. All that's in the future however, and what I want to do here is review the tools that I've already used and find some new tools that I'd like to use. Some interesting sites that I've marked in Delicious are:

• best of history web sites described as "an award-winning portal that contains annotated links to over 1000 history web sites as well as links to hundreds of quality K-12 history lesson plans, history teacher guides, history activities, history games, history quizzes, and more".
  
  
• educational software listings at gizmo's freeware contains links to several interesting sites. Apart from the previously mentioned history site, there are links to best PC freeware, 50 places for free books online, and ACADEMIC EARTH featuring videos lectures from some of the top universities in the USA.
  
  
• Gutenkarte "is a geographic text browser, intended to help readers explore the spatial component of classic works of literature. Gutenkarte downloads public domain texts from Project Gutenberg, and then feeds them to MetaCarta's GeoParser API, which extracts and returns all the geographic locations it can find. Gutenkarte stores these locations in a database, along with citations into the text itself, and offers an interface where the book can be browsed by chapter, by place, or all at once on an interactive map".
  
  
• Groupsite.com is a free social collaboration building site similar it would seem to Ning.

That's probably enough for now.

My new Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

I wasn't expecting to acquire a new handphone any time soon but suddenly I did and with a little encouragement from Desy I took the plunge and so far I've been pleasantly surprised. Initially I was only wanting a phone with WiFi but in addition to this, the phone has 3.5G HSPDA, touch screen, TV-out and GPS. The camera and video capabilities are impressive. Essentially, it offers iPhone performance at a much lower price.

As the name suggests it's music oriented and music sounds wonderful through my earphones which fortunately can be connected with the standard jack unlike my previous Nokia N73. I was surprised to find the MobiPocket Reader doesn't currently support the phone properly but after some searching I came across a product here that does the job so I'm off and reading now. This beginner's guide to the Nokia 5800 has also proved very helpful.

The new phone should prove its worth in Shanghai because I can now connect to the Internet at WiFi hotspots and via HSPDA once I find a provider in that city. I can also tether it perhaps to my laptop if there is some delay in having ADSL connected in my apartment. In short it dramatically improves my options for Internet connectivity while allowing me read ebooks, take good quality photos and videos, listen to music and even watch video clips downloaded from YouTube. I can even make and receive phone calls with it.!