Plug and go go

With a computer on its last legs and a laptop down to its last GB of space I've got some new equipment coming. That's nice but how on earth do I move all the files from one to another? External hard drives would work but less than £10 got me a USB Data Link cable from Gizoo. It's great, plug one end into one computer and the other into another and you get a split screen with the local files in one part and the remote machine's in the other. Moving stuff is just a cut and paste job and several gigabytes that would have needed several trips by normal USB stick were almost instantly transferred.

Another gadget I got is a Pama bluetooth hands-free box. Intended for the car, as I seem to get more calls when I'm driving than I do when I'm not, it is a slightly revised version of something I bought a couple of years ago. That refused to recharge for some reason I never discovered and, as it had been a bit scratchy and basic I didn't bother getting another. This version is much clearer and displays caller ID too which is useful. Only about £30 from Amazon and it also has another use - I live in an area of poor mobile reception with none anywhere inside the house where I can sit in any comfort. With this device, the phone can be placed wherever the signal's good and I can just chat to the box in the warm and dry. Few of you will appreciate the difference but those that do should take a look. It's cheap and works.

Links to free images

OK, so you've probably seen these before because I tell everyone I know about them. The point of including this is to try out something that I need to present at a forthcoming workshop. This new version of Blogger has some cool features that make customising the template - that's the bit that controls how everything appears on your screen - very simple. I guess I ought to do some instructions for that - maybe in the next few entries. Anyway, for now, you'll see a bundle of links to free image resources included in the panel to the left. If I've got them right, you can just click on them to go to the various galleries and, provided you don't do silly things with the images that offend the pretty generous usage terms, and you tell visitors or readers where you got them, you should find some brilliant images to meet even the most odd requirements.

For the workshop, my idea is that people can slide one of the LSN Q Project DVDs into their computer, find something they want to use and copy the links into a web log like this. This addition and posting took about 10 minutes and it could be a nice addition to any lesson concerning something like where to find images.

Obviously, for other subjects, you might not have as many links immediately to hand in the materials but even a couple of useful links in a place like this can be useful. Especially when you remember that your web log has an RSS feed that can create an automatic addition of headlines or 'news' to a course page in Moodle or Pageflakes (and no doubt several other sites you can edit yourself).

All I need to do now is add a picture to this entry to make it look a bit more interesting and, 12 minutes later, we're there.