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Laptop for Lowri – update

Well, I met Lowri over lunch at The Anchor Inn, Oldbury-on-Severn. In about a week, Lowri is off on the Four Borders Expedition, which is the British Universities Kayak Expedition 2007.
A couple of months ago, I had a desperate plea from Lowri, informing me that she’d killed her laptop, and was going to need one for the expedition… could I find a way to provide one.

So last weekend I finally was able to deliver a refurbished Panasonic Toughbook CF-28, which I bought from Icex. When I first asked my Head of Department if he could provide money for a machine – he said no, as he thought it was going to be fairly expensive, but after I did some desperate searching around, I found this one at a price which he could afford.

Hopefully, she’ll find it difficult to destroy this machine, and we’ll get some really good reports back about this once-in-a-lifetime trip.

Best of luck Lowri, and come back in one piece.

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What does Physics teach you about the construction of the dermis?

Apparently, according to the AQA examination board, you should learn about the dead outer layers of skin protecting the living layers underneath, in order to answer the question on a GCSE Physics examination paper.

There’s a story on The Register about this here – be sure to read the comments, there’s an especially good one suggesting answers to the mentioned questions.

Wellington Grey’s Open Letter

And we wonder why we’re having to do so much remedial teaching to our first year entrants.

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How has the user experience changed in 20 years?

Reading Risks Digest this morning I came across a link to an article comparing a 1986 Mac Plus and a 2007 AMD Dual core. The question posed was how has the massive increase in computing power has changed the speed at which the most commonly performed tasks are performed.

“The most amazing achievement of the computer software industry is its continuing cancellation of the steady and staggering gains made by the computer hardware industry…”– Henry Petroski

Of course, some of you might already have guessed the outcome, and some might not agree with the tests as presented, but the fact is that the tests actually look pretty fair when you consider what most office workers do with their PCs.

Anyway you can read the article for yourself here on hubpages

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CS259 students read this!

I’ve been beating CS259 about this sort of thing for more years than I care to remember, but it’s always good to have someone else putting it all so succinctly.

Take it away Josiah Cole

(thanks Claire)