Tim Ginn’s Personal Blog

myAMS.org has been redesigned. This is actually quite cool, since the new design allows the syndication of RSS feeds, etc. So far two people in the School of Computing have their blogs listed in the directory. I suppose I’ll add mine there, too. Maybe I can even submit things like planetkde.org, too. I’ll have to take a look around and find the right category.

I don’t know if it’s just a coincidence or not, but the new site seems to take into account all of the extra suggestions that I made in the post-application satisfaction survey that asks what could be done better. Some things that were there before don’t seem to be up anymore, in their place are under-construction messages.

Speaking of Queen’s… I’m still waiting for my time table to show up on QCARD. From what I’ve read of other student blogs, I’m not the only one.

Today I went to Future Shop and picked up a printer, and a digital camera with some accessories. The camera is an HP Photosmart 435, and the printer is an HP Photosmart 7260. I really like the camera, I just plugged it in, and could easily browse through camera:/ in Konqueror.

The printer was a bit more work (but nothing too hard– YaST is quite convenient). I followed the instructions for the model from
LinuxPrinting.org and was all set. It’s nice of HP to provide official drivers. I was quite impressed with the speed (and quality) of the test page printout, so I took a picture from my camera (Garden Photo) and printed it on the photo paper (a few sheets included in the printer box) using the special photo cartridge, and printing was still fairly fast– and my parents thought it was a sample picture. I haven’t yet tried the memory card slots on the printer, but they are shown in /proc. The memory cartridge I was given by the sales person at Futureshop isn’t the correct type for the camera, so I’ll be exchanging that soon.

In the near future I plan to experiment around some more. The pictures I’ve been taking have been getting better with practice.

Yesterday I got a phone call from Grandma. Bell had delivered her DSL modem and she was ready for me to come over and set it up. Today I went over to Peterborough with mom (it’s now a lot more recovered than before, there’s only the occasional mattress on the curbside), picked up a set of computer speakers from Staples, and then dropped by.

Setting up the DSL modem was painless with YaST. I imported a list of bookmarks that I’d put together for her (local Peterborough area sites, some England news sites, and generic Canadian sites). She’s now fairly competent in basic webbrowsing around sites. She’s still having difficulties with the mouse, but can use the keyboard without too much difficulty. All of that is just things that take time to get used to, though. I couldn’t setup the e-mail account for her, since it seems Sympatico isn’t done on their side (the letter said “will be activated on the 5th”, but didn’t say what time– so, I’m thinking that’s likely the problem, and expect to have to go back later). The e-mail account works web-based, but not as a POP account, and I’d prefer to teach her how to use KMail than an MSN-Hotmail like interface (it just seems easier and more consistent).

Grandma was ecstatic when she was introduced to the Internet, and is very grateful. I wonder if some day she’ll find this blog :-). I was really expecting to be there longer than I was, and am quite impressed with how quickly she’s picking things up.

P.S. SuSE designers, the boxes on the default 9.1 Personal background convinced her that the image has something to do with pollution. Is there some hidden environmental message here? (no, I didn’t make that up)