Monthly Archives: May 2006

I used to hate dentists. They seemed to want to fleece me of my money whilst causing me pain. I’ve had two teeth that have needed some TLC for some time now. So at the end of last year I decided to go to the same Dentist as Clare and Sophie. I signed up, had a checkup and some treatment. My dentist was very good at explaining what she was going to do, and was sympathetic to my requirements.

I mentioned to her back then that I had another problem tooth which she said she’d look at next time I came in. I’d experienced pain over the last couple of months and so decided I really needed to get something done, so I booked an appointment to go in and see the dentist again.

You are the first Doctor! Oh, you can be a bit cranky, that’s true. And your ego can be a bit of a put-off at first. However, underneath that sour demeanor is the heart of a true hero! Your compassion for your fellow beings knows no bounds, and you’d happily sacrifice your life to save another.
Take this quiz!

How true.

We had a new TV aerial and masthead amplifier put on the roof this weekend. The old one was corroded and produced no signal at all. After the engineer left the old aerial was placed on the path next to the house in full public view.

After my braindump of the grief I’ve had with Screencasting on Linux recently I did some more poking and reading on the sites I linked to I found this page containing instructions on using ffmpeg with a patch to record X11 screens and save as avi files.

I just followed those instructions and it worked first time. Time to start putting some effort into making the video demos and tutorials then No excuse now.

I hate the term “Screencasting”, I don’t know why, it’s just one of those nothing terms that someone coined for making videos of a computer desktop. They’re frequently used in a show-and-tell manner to demonstrate how to perform specific tasks.

I’ve been a big fan of this method of training and education. People learn how to do stuff much more effectively when shown exactly how rather than just read through a document. Sure, some people are also able to pick up knowledge just through reading, but the vast mass of non-computer experts don’t in my experience.

For a while now I’ve been thinking about making a few training videos (or screencasts if you prefer) for Linux. Demonstrating how to install, upgrade and use the software supplied.