http://www.lauracowen.co.uk/blog Laura's view on her world Fri, 04 Jul 2008 15:54:37 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I've been meaning to post about learning British sign language (BSL) for months now. I wanted to post it in BSL as a video blog (vlog) but, having borrowed my friend Ben's webcam months ago, I've still not got round to even seeing if I can get it working, let ... http://www.lauracowen.co.uk/blog/2008/07/04/learning-british-sign-language-bsl/ Back in February I attended a couple of sessions about free software in education. One was the kickoff meeting of OLPC Europe (the European support group for One Laptop Per Child). The other, was a fantastic talk by Knut Yrvin, who's done a lot of work with free software in ... http://www.lauracowen.co.uk/blog/2008/07/04/fosdem-08-free-software-in-education/ Greenpeace have released their latest edition of their Guide to Greener Electronics rating Nintendo at the very bottom of the list of 18 electronics companies. It turns out that they're bottom by default because Nintendo didn't supply any data. So until Nintendo do supply some data, it's not possible to ... http://www.lauracowen.co.uk/blog/2008/07/04/wii-power-consumption/ LugRadio Live US 2008 (in San Francisco) was fantastic. And that was with a bunch of people who hadn't all even heard of LugRadio Live before. Here are the details (listen out for the trailer on your favourite Linux/OpenSource podcast, such as Linux Outlaws)... LugRadio Live UK 2008 The Lighthouse Media Center, Fryer ... http://www.lauracowen.co.uk/blog/2008/06/20/lugradio-live-uk-2008-19th-20th-july/ As you may have heard, I recently acquired an OLPC laptop. At some point I am going to write up my experiences with the OLPC/Sugar software so far (in the meantime, to uphold a promise I made, here are some useful tips for using and setting up software on the ... http://www.lauracowen.co.uk/blog/2008/04/25/multiple-tabs-parallel-browsing/ I noticed, a couple of days ago, that my blog has acquired adverts. For example, in my blog post It's here, it's green, and it's got ears! a couple of the phrases in the post have acquired dashed underlines and Snap Shots icons, like the term 'One Laptop Per Child' in ... http://www.lauracowen.co.uk/blog/2008/04/06/snap-shots-part-trois/ Last year, I attempted to grow sunflowers for the first time. Blue Peter always encouraged me to grow them as a child but I never did. So, last Spring, I bought some seeds and planted them in little pots. They all germinated nicely so, just before we went on holiday ... http://www.lauracowen.co.uk/blog/2008/04/06/sunflowers/ And it's so exciting! My OLPC laptop has arrived at last! In case you've been living in a cupboard for the past couple of years (this is mainstream, afterall), the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project's aim is to design a small, cheap, lightweight but robust laptop as a tool to ... http://www.lauracowen.co.uk/blog/2008/04/04/its-here-its-green-and-its-got-ears/ I recently booked a transatlantic return flight for Tony and me with Virgin Atlantic. When you view your booking details on the Virgin website, they include a link to their carbon offsetting scheme. A while ago, I wrote a blog post (Carbon off-setting) in which I described my current view (or ... http://www.lauracowen.co.uk/blog/2008/04/02/feeling-smug-down-in-economy/ That's right! They've made it to the second episode of the Ubuntu UK podcast (a.k.a. UUPC). I was privy to a pre-release airing last night and I was very impressed, having sat through hours of recording time on Saturday... ;) The show now has its own Twitter ID (@uupc) so that ... http://www.lauracowen.co.uk/blog/2008/03/25/that-difficult-second-episodebut-its-worked/