Our church has a Sharp MX-2600N printer, and I occasionally need to print to it from my laptop. It isn’t the easiest to setup and configure on my installation of Ubuntu, so here are my notes.
Category: Uncategorized
Setting Up Printer with Cloud Print
I’ve just set up my new server, and I want it to act as a print server. I want it to accept jobs from both the cloud and from my other Linux machines in my house. Here’s what I did.
Solaar Fixes My Mouse
I have an old wireless Logitech mouse that I haven’t been able to get working. My batteries were low in my bluetooth, so I thought I would give it a try. That’s when I ran into Solaar and OMG Ubuntu’s article. So, I gave it a shot…
Programming for Kids
Blockly Games caught my eye the other day and finally got me to pull together my notes on programming teaching tools for kids. There are some really cool tools out there. If you have a sphere of influence with kids whether they be your own or just ones who might listen, check out these resources…
Blockly Games
This is the tool that I just recently ran into. The nice part is that it is web-based so you don’t have to install anything. Also, it is puzzle based. Instead of just giving kids something to explore, it gives them a challenge to try to accomplish.
Link: Blockly Games
The tool is made up of multiple games that motivate kids to explore and learn:
For example, the maze game requires that you write a program to walk the user through a map.
Learn to Code
I found another very similar tool. The one-up from a kids point of view: angry birds. It looked very similar to the blocky games (in fact, I think it is the same library), but the character in the puzzle was an angry bird. There’s also a nice little intro video to explain what is going on.
Link: Hour of Code
Alice
I’m not sure where I first heard about Alice, but it sounds like a pretty cool learning tool. It uses a 3D interface, which makes it a bit heavier. The download was 1.2G!
Link: Alice Homepage
Getting it working wasn’t hard at all. I went to the Alice 3.1 Download Page. After uncompressing the download, I ran:
sh ./alice3.sh
That was for my Linux system. For Windows, there is an Alice3.exe that you can run.
I think that I may have learned about Alice from this Google Tech Talk:
Wombat Object Basics
Oracle has a little tutorial for using Greenfoot. It looks a little involved, and I haven’t been through it all yet.
Links:
Installing Greenfoot was pretty simple. The download page has a deb package that I could use. I simply installed it using the Ubuntu Software Center.
Snake Wrangling for Kids
This is a book that I came across a long time ago. I haven’t ever delved into it, and now I find that there is a new version out on Amazon.
Link: Google Code Project (Old Version)
Here’s the new version:
Scratch
Scratch is an online tool. It seems very similar to Blockly, but instead of puzzles and challenges, it is just a tool that lets kids explore.
Link: Scratch Website
RoboCode / RoboJS
A long time ago, I ran into this cool game. It makes programming fun. The idea is that you write a small program to control a virtual robot. You pit your program / robot against others in a virtual arena.
Link: RoboCode Website
The original RoboCode requires Java and running a program from your PC. I found another version that was ported to Javascript. I’m not sure it is as complete as the original, but it allows you to play the same game in Javascript and a browser.
Link: RoboJS – Robocode in Javascript
You can check out the source code:
BBC Schools Computing
BBC has launched a website with various resources. There’s a bunch to explore here, and I haven’t explored it all.
Link: BBC Schools Computing
PHP For Kids
This is more like a web development course. You can go through the material and learn HTML, PHP, etc.
Link: PHP For Kids
Resources
- Google Research Blog: Summer Games: Learn to Program
- Oracle Technology Network: Wombat Object Basics (Young Developers Series, Part 1)
- Oracle Technology Network: Wombat Object Basics (Young Developers Series, Part 2)
- Briggs.net: Snake Wrangling for Kids
- The Grand Fallacy: Enrichment class
- Jason R Briggs.com: Python for Kids
- OpenSource.com: How to teach the next generation of open source with Scratch
- Computer Science Education Week
- Engadget: BBC launches kid coding lessons as schools increase focus on computing
- BBC News: BBC begins kids coding push with Bitesize and TV shows
- The Oracle Alchemist: Teach Your Children Well
- Oracle Academy
Mediatek 7630 on Ubuntu
We are now proud owners of an ASUS TP500LA-AB52T laptop. It is a new laptop to help my wife with her new teaching job. I have installed Ubuntu on it so that it matches the rest of the computers in the house.
The first issue is that the wireless doesn’t work on first boot. This is a major blow because the point of the laptop was so that she could catch up on her teaching plans anywhere. Being tethered to the router in the back room kind of defeats the purpose.
Here’s the wireless card information:
$ lspci | grep -i wireless 03:00.0 Network controller: MEDIATEK Corp. MT7630e 802.11bgn Wireless Network Adapter
The fix was to just to manually install the wireless driver. I found a bug post with fairly good instructions (Thank you keshara Dorakumbura).
Updating Shutter
I use shutter a lot for documentation and taking notes. Some of that makes it to my blog. So, I was delighted when I saw that they had a new version available and that it was easy to install.
I am thinking about adding this repository to my regular list of things to install.
Password Manager
I have finally gotten tired of keeping up with millions of passwords. I thought I would up the security level by using a password manager to generate secure and unique passwords for each site. I read Tim’s post about KeePass, and he made it sound so easy that I decided to go for it.
Here are my notes on how I got everything working…
Chrome App Launcher
I found Google Operating System’s post about the Chrome App Launcher. Here’s my experience with getting it to work.
First, I found that I needed to install a “Desktop Web App”. So, I picked up one from the Chrome Web Store. It needed to be one from the “For Your Desktop” Collection. I decided to try out the Pocket app.
Before installing that app, this didn’t work. Afterward, I was able to search for “Chrome App Launcher”.
Here’s what it looked like when it opened:
To get it to stay where I could easily click on it, I right clicked on it’s icon and selected “Lock to Launcher”.
Resources
Great Link: Mario Music
I ran across a link to this cool project: Mario Sequencer. You can create music using your favorite Nintendo characters.
If you are interested in learning more about the project, you can view the source on Git Hub.
Resources
Great Link: 10 Books for $10 on Packt
If you are looking for an eBook, check out Packt! I was just told about a special promotion that they are running. Until July 5th, all of their books are $10 each.
Check out the books on the Packt webite.