"Sweetheart, We Have Another Baby."

A picture paints a thousand words. So here are two thousand words worth of pictures:





Beaming with pride eh? Her face in these pictures reminds me of how she looked in each of those five hospital deliveries. "Sweetheart, we have another baby." Hehe..

Including the payment for a bigger hard drive (120GB, where the basic is 80GB) and for Apple Care, this baby costs 198,150 yen (75,297 pesos at .38 peso per 1 yen). She would not have been able to buy that same package in the Philippines at that same amount. As I pointed out in the previous post, a MacBook (with 80GB) costs almost 90K here. Adding the price for the increased hard drive capacity and the Apple Care will surely raise the price to around 100K.

This discrepancy was brought about by the strong peso. It is now about .38 peso for every yen. Last year, at about this same time, it was .46 per yen. So we reckoned that we have to do the buying there. The 198,150 yen price would have translated to 91,149 pesos.

And because she got a certification from Kyushu University that she is a student there, she also got a discount of 22,000 yen (8,360 pesos). So the baby actually cost her 176,150 yen or 66,937 pesos. Good deal indeed.

In the next couple of days, she will shop for infant accessories like a mouse, a USB modem, a VGA connector, and a backpack. Congratulations, Mrs. Nocon!

We Are Buying A MacBook!

After more than a month of exploring and comparing options, my wife and I have arrived at a decision. We are buying a MacBook! I started out with the following supposedly non-negotiable specifications: Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 1 GB of memory, 12.1-inch display (so it is small and will not be a hassle to carry around) and must be installable with Ubuntu. She, on the other hand, is casting moist eyes on a MacBook, because her acquaintances in Japan are proud owners of the machine and have given her good reviews: sleek and durable.

Well, the MacBook actually passed two of the four criteria. It runs on an Intel Core 2 Duo processor and has 1 GB memory. The screen size though is wider by an inch. And Apple's Boot Camp doesn't do Ubuntu.

I initially told her to wait for an impending Dell announcement regarding machines with Ubuntu pre-installed. And the announcement did come in the last week of May. But Dell offered only three machines. And the laptop, an Inspiron E1505, has a bigger 15.4-inch display and is only available in the U.S. But how about other Dells with the desired specs? Like the Dell XPS M1210? Not available in Japan. I was actually leaning towards a Dell Latitude D620. She tells me that although it has a 14.1-inch display, it is a light machine. We also looked at HP, Toshiba, Fujitsu and Sony. The ones that matched the specs are not available in English, only in Japanese (keyboard and OS language).

So, do we buy a 14.1-inch Dell Latitude D620 or a 13.3-inch MacBook? And how about Ubuntu on Mac? Well, we can buy Parallels for Mac, and run Ubuntu and Windows as virtual machines within the Mac OS. I asked her some more questions about the two machines and, gaging from her answers and from her facial expressions (as seen via the webcam), letting her buy the MacBook will make her happier. And so, I told her to buy one.

She is so excited! The MacBook's sleekness and wow effect thrills her. As for me, I will have to learn (and then teach her and the kids) about a new OS and virtual machines too. And here's another factor we considered: a MacBook costs around 89K here, in pesos. If you convert the amount (in yen) she is spending in Japan to buy the same MacBook, it translates to roughly 64K pesos. Good bargain eh?

Printing OpenOffice.org Writer Files

Last Saturday, I printed about a week's worth of work of course materials. I observed that I have some undesirable rendering in my Math elements like radical signs and brackets in the printed copies. It is probably the font and font attributes from one computer to another as I used a different workstation for printing from where I did my encoding. Not portable eh? I will try using the save to PDF feature of OpenOffice.org more in the future, and print the PDF files instead.

Chugging Along

The summer classes ended last May 21. I distributed the course cards on that day and accompanied my daughter Eveth as she finished her other enrollment-related activities (going to the clinic, activating her CSB Infonet account, having her ID picture taken). After that, we returned to EGI and picked up her two sisters and we all went to MOA. We watched Shrek 3 and ate lunch at Jollibee. We went home after dropping by PowerBooks.

I stayed at home on May 22 and was with Eveth again at CSB on May 23 for her frosh orientation. I foresee having to do this "managing" for a couple of weeks :-)

In the meantime, I continue to hammer at my course materials preparation activities. Since I am doing most of the work using OpenOffice.org, I am listing here some related notes:

1. I can now type the "math code" directly on the page, highlight it with the mouse and, with a click of the Formula button, automagically transform the highlighted text to the desired format.
• To place the Formula button in the, for example, Standard Toolbar,
1. Go to View > Toolbars > Customize...
2. Choose the Toolbars tab.
3. Choose Standard in the Toolbars dropdown list.
4. Click the Add... button.
5. Select Insert in Category and Formula (the one with square root of a as icon) in Commands.
6. Click Add and then Close.
7. You can click on the Up or Down arrows to place the icon in your desired position in the toolbar.
8. Click OK.
• To invoke the Formula command via a shortcut key, say CTRL+M,
1. Go to View > Toolbars > Customize...
2. Select the Keyboard tab.
3. In the Shortcut Keys box, scroll down until you see "Ctrl+M" and click on it once to highlight it.
4. In the Category box, select "Insert".
5. In the Function box, select the second "Formula" listing.
6. Now click on the button up in the right that says Modify, then click on OK.
   
2. I can use the Color command to change the color of my formula. Here is a sample code: color red {x^2 + 2 x - 1 = 0}. The available colors are white, black, cyan, magenta, red, blue, green and yellow.
   
3. The secant and cosecant functions are typeset in italics. To make them appear similar to the other trigonometric functions, I can type either "func sec" or "nitalic csc".
4. I wanted to find out how to align multiple equations by aligning on the equal signs. Stacks and matrices are possible solutions. But matrices are better.
   
5. I came across OOoLaTeX, which allows integration of TeX and OpenOffice.org. I tried the Cygwin on Windows XP setup but can't seem to get it going. I have written to the author of the macro author but have not received a reply yet.
   

Administering Quizzes In Moodle

As I give quizzes to my students via Moodle, I have been taking notes and here are a few:

• Review all items before opening the quiz. You do not want the correct answer to be missing among the choices in a Multiple Choice type question!
  
• The default quiz setting has Adaptive mode active. This allows the students to make several attempts at choosing the correct answer with a penalty given for every wrong attempt. I am not sure I like this feature. It could be nice for some scenarios. But for now, whenever possible, I just give the students partial points for choosing a wrong answer. For example, in a Multiple Choice type question, I assign a 25% score for each wrong choice so it doesn't become an all or nothing affair. I cannot do this though with, for example, the Short Answer type. I am thinking instead to give points to "nearly correct" answers, e.g. "proceed" for "proceeds".
  
• Yes, shuffling questions and answers will minimize cheating. But for good measure, divide the quiz into pages (5 per page is good) and walk around the computer laboratory if you are having the quiz there.
• Emphasize, repeatedly if need be, that they should not click the "Submit all and finish" button until they are really done answering the test and have reviewed all their answers. They should, on the other hand, press the "Save without submitting" button from time to time so that they will not lose their answers in case something unexpected happens; for example, the computer shutting down because they managed to kick the UPS.
• If in the eClassroom, talk first about the fact that you will be using Moodle and that Moodle runs on any browser, implying that it can run on any Internet browser. Next, talk about the Ubuntu Linux operating system, the panels on the GNOME desktop, and the shortcut to the Mozilla Firefox browser. Ask them to open the Mozilla Firefox browser and to type the DLS-CSB Moodle URL in the Navigation toolbar. Talk about logging in, changing password, various quiz setups, submitting the quiz for checking, logging out and shutting the computer unit down.
• For those who left their calculators, you can ask them to use the GNOME Calculator (Scientific mode).
• Provide the students with a list of formulas they will need to use.
  
• Once any one student attempts a quiz, you cannot add or remove questions anymore. But you can actually edit existing ones!
• Do not include the correct answers in what the students will see upon submission, as they may pass these on to their seatmates. Showing their responses and the corresponding grades are OK. They can navigate between pages as they do this. Clicking the Continue button will show them summary information on quizzes taken. Clicking the Continue button again brings them to the Main page. Once there, and if they have used up their attempts, clicking on the link to the quiz will just bring them to this summary.
  

A Compelling Reason Why You Should Go Open Source

I came across a blog post listing things the author can do in Linux but cannot do on Windows. The post is pretty much straightforward and practical. But what hit me as very insightful is the following two paragraphs:

When you learn closed-source proprietary software like Photoshop or Office, you have spent your time indenturing yourself to a lifetime of spending $700 every so many years. And the same goes for every company you work for that you insist you need Office or Photoshop. And if you don't think that your company's expenses affect your salary, think again.

Conversely, if you take the time to learn open and free systems like Linux, Gimp, or OpenOffice, you now have given yourself a lifetime of perpetually free software. The value of that is quite profound. No more worrying about installing Office on more than one computer and running into activation issues. I have OpenOffice installed on all 5 computers I own, and my flash drive where I can run it on any computer I wish.

Of course, proprietary software shops will not agree. It is alright with me but only as long as they churn out good, reasonably-priced, standards-compliant software. And that they do not use their market position to edge out competitors.

Summer Classes

It has been a while since my last post. I am busy with my two classes this summer, both BMAT2 (Math of Investment). I have been "operationalizing" what I have in mind as regards my teaching. In fact, I will be bringing my classes tomorrow to the eClassroom for their quizzes.

The items were originally encoded in OpenOffice.org Writer. I then created the Moodle "questions" in my laptop-based Moodle installation, doing mostly cutting and pasting between the two applications. I then exported the Moodle questions to the GIFT format, saved the file in my USB drive, and, once inside the campus, imported the GIFT file back into the College's Moodle system. Perfect!

And today, I was able to upgrade my office PC to Ubuntu Feisty Fawn and was rewarded with something I did not expect from an old machine -- I got Beryl running! I feel like showing the exciting effects to everyone :-) If you are in DLS-CSB, you can drop by the office for a visual treat. (Offer is good until May 15, 2007 only).