Playing DVDs In Ubuntu

I’m very happy to say that I’ve got dvds to work in Ubuntu! I’m documenting what I did so that if I need it again it’s here or it may help someone else.

edit /etc/apt/sources.list and put in the following lines:

deb http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/debian sarge main
deb-src http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/debian sarge main

Even though these lines are for Debian Sarge it still works in Ubuntu Hoary Hedgehog 5.04

then do these:
apt-get update
apt-get install libdvdcss2

Now Totem works with the dvds I’ve tried so far.

Home Educating, Youth Allowance & Centrelink

I’m enjoying year 11 with my son and year 8 with my daughter! Sometimes I wonder who’s learning more me or them 🙂 Doug is working his way through his yr11 maths book, learning system and network admin by helping me and reading copious books, notes, webpages etc. He’s also helping Jessica with her school work especially maths, science and geography. They’re both helping with the computer classes I/we teach, especially Jessica who has a real flair for teaching.

Much is said about what curriculum to use and what method of home ed to use. I’m not anti curriculum or anti methods, I just don’t get into all that. We use what works for us. It’s a combination of methods and curriculums. I don’t have a lot of money for curriculum so I don’t buy a lot of it. This year we were given a lot of text books by a friend who is using a different home ed method/model so that’s been a big bonus! We just picked out what we wanted to use. I love books. I’m always reading and the kids have inherited that too. We have heaps of books and always go to the library for more. Whenever we’re into a new project it’s off to the library for more books!

Being single, working and home educating is a challenge but I love it and the kids love it too. Thankfully I have the sort of work that the kids can come along to and participate in. This is something I’ve stuck to pretty much all their lives. If I’m doing something then it has to be something the kids can come to.

We’ve caused a bit of a ruckus at our local Centrelink(social security) office by changing Doug’s Youth Allowance details from attending a school to home education. They had no idea how to deal with it.

In South Australia home educated students need to be registered with a school and the Government grants them exemption from attending that school for the purpose of home education. Because Doug is 16 he is over the legal school leaving age and doesn’t have to attend school. He doesn’t have to be registered with a school (schools won’t register him) or with the Government. The poor, bewildered Centrelink worker kept asking me if Doug was registered somewhere. I kept explaining to him that Doug doesn’t have to be registered. The Centrelink worker, a nice guy, once he’d done his homework realised that there is a problem with Centrelink policy and SA education law and has raised this issue with their policy department. Meanwhile we’re waiting to find out what the outcome will be. Thankfully I read up on this issue before approaching Centrelink. I’ll keep posting about this.

World’s Largest Windows Error Message?

We went down to New York for the long weekend. Despite the 16-degree weather, we walked down to Times Square – all the bright lights lured us the ten blocks from our hotel. When we got there, we stood like, well, tourists, gaping at all the electronic billboards. And then, across the square, I saw it: the world’s largest Windows error message – on a two-story high e-billboard (I guess everything really is bigger in New York). It was the only billboard in the entire square with absolutely no movement – since the PC running it had obviously frozen.

This was spotted by Romana Branden and posted to the LinuxSA Talk mailing list 🙂

TV Theme Songs

Going through my email lists this morning and someone posted a link to TV Land http://www.tvland.com I spent about an hour reminiscing over favourite TV shows and listening to their theme songs! It has a tribute to Don Knotts all this weekend too. Have fun, enjoy, a great time waster though so be warned 🙂 I’m still humming Green Acres and Happy Days……

ScamWatch

ScamWatch is an Australian & New Zealand government website. It’s got info on current and old scams, different types of scams – online & offline, scam games, classroom activities & scam reporting!!

http://www.scamwatch.gov.au

I’m impressed, I’ll be using this with my kids and also in the classroom with all the adults I teach. It’s often hard to teach people about scams, spam and urban legends. I also use the Internet Tourbus newsletter and website www.tourbus.com to help teach people about this stuff as well as www.snopes.com The Internet Tourbus newsletter is excellent. I’ve been getting it ever since I started using the Internet in about 1995. It’s written by two guys in America so is fairly American but they do have international stuff and often Linux stuff too.

New School Year

My son is living at home again now and has chosen to do home school with his sister. Wow what a challenge for me year 11. I didn’t do too well the first time I tried it 🙂 They’ve both started off well. I’m happy with the first week. They’re both keen to learn and they like their books and what we’re planning to do for the term. It’s exciting to learn things together and also to plan together what we can work on and achieve. My son is teaching himself some programming. He’s starting off with a book on the basics of computer programming 🙂 I’ve never seen him read so much before!!! It’s great what personal motivation does.

Both the children come with me to work now and help with the running of the Teen Challenge drop-in centre as well as helping teaching computing classes, fixing computers, admin etc. Jessica is now a junior trainee as well as a TC volunteer!