Sunday, November 23, 2008

Pumpkin Pie mouse pad

With the upcoming Thanksgiving season just around the corner. I was inspired to create a new product in my line of Pumpkin Pi series. Not only that but Zazzle has a sale going on until November 24, 2008. Simply enter the code ZAZZLEPAYPAL to receive 10% discount.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Asus eee PC 1000 and Ubuntu

Is I mentioned earlier in my review of the "Asus eee PC 1000 " I attempted to install the Ubuntu eee distro on my Asus eee PC 1000. I really like how it is organized, better than the Xandros distro, but it had some issues with the webcam, wireless network, and bluetooth. The latter two which I needed to be able to operate in my classroom. To limit my downtime and provide a backup in case of hard drive issues I ordered a 16GB Extreme III SDHC by Sandisk from Newegg. It came in the mail last night and I was able to install Ubuntu-eee with only a few bumps. To my delight most of the issues that I was having with the previous install were automatically fixed by running the system update. The wireless now works as well as my Wacom Bluetooth tablet. A small issue remains with the tablet to increase the resolution when I'm drawing with it and to get X to recognize the eraser and other buttons and such.

This appears to be a great solutions since Ubuntu is a truly open source distro that I can update on my own instead of waiting on Asus or Xandros.

After adding the following list of software I believe that the eee PC is definitely a viable solution for the technically savvy teacher.
  • xournal
  • audacity
  • Inkscape
  • KFig
  • VLC
  • MPlayer with the ASF pluggin
  • Celestia
  • KStars
  • Virtual Box for those proprietary windows apps.
  • FreeMind