This Python recipe “ASPN : Python Cookbook : Replace occurrence of string in files under directory tree” has a comment that reminded me of the power of Perl. I am updating my slides for a lecture course that uses rst2s5 (a utility that uses Docutils/reStructuredText to generate S5 slides). When I wrote the original slides for last year’s course, rst2s5 was still in the Docutils Sandbox. It has now been promoted into the official Docutils distribution but some changes have been made.

Talk about information overload! I currently have 1675 unread items on my main blog roll in [Bloglines](http://www.bloglines.com). I just exported the OPML file of my subscriptions and imported it into [Flock’s](http://www.flock.com) RSS aggregator but as I’m sure that this only shows a few days worth, I’ll feel guilty forever unless I go through the list on Bloglines. I have to say Flock’s RSS reader is lovely to look at and very slick.

As reported today on TechCrunch Serbian developer Ilija Studen has released a free clone of the popular project management service Basecamp. Studen’s product is called ActiveCollab. It differs from Basecamp (a hosted web application for which, if you have more than one project or a team larger than 2, you pay a monthly subscription to use) in that the product is free and open source. It is also a PHP5/MySQL application that indiduals, small companies, and even, presumably, Universities can download and install on their own web server.

> In any programming language, a program to print “hello world” is a classic opener. It is also a useful indication of the complexity of the language, particularly from the point of view of the teacher and the learner. [Hello World (Java) – LiteratePrograms](http://en.literateprograms.org/Hello_World_(Java)) technorati tags:[blogging](http://technorati.com/tag/blogging), [flock](http://technorati.com/tag/flock), [literate.programming](http://technorati.com/tag/literate.programming), [blog](http://technorati.com/tag/blog), [cpj](http://technorati.com/tag/cpj) Blogged with [Flock](http://www.flock.com “Flock”)

I needed to typeset two small figures side-by side in a document today. Tried minipages and twocolumns but to no avail. Then I found this little tip: Just put the figures into cells of a table! Simple, elegant and quite probably obvious. Thanks to Matt Guthaus for this one!

 Spent a nice weekend in Hedon with with my mom Sheila and her partner Terry (Pictured). This entry is really an excuse to use Picassa which I’ve just installed along with the Google Desktop Package. Picassa has the best UI for photo album work that I’ve seen and it also produces great CDs for exchange with friends. An it’s free! 

Blogger has just launched a new plug-in for Word that allows you to write your Blog articles in Word and upload it. _All *the *_usual **stuff that you’d expect. Tables and images are not supported. You’ll find the download page at http://buzz.blogger.com/bloggerforword.html.

I have quietly admired Kathy Sierra’s approach to teaching for some time now and own all the Head First books (including the 2nd Edition of Head First Java). Kathy and her colleagues launched a Web Log Creating Passionate Users in December of last year. Today’s article Ten Tips for New Trainers/Teachers might be a good lauch point for me to learn about and apply some of these ideas in my own teaching.

I have played with Maven on and off for a while but as documentation is a bit patchy, I’ve been eagerly awaiting the “Maven Book” by Vincent Massol and Tim O’Brien’s (Maven: A Developer’s Notebook, O’Reilly, 2005) since it was announced some time ago. It’s been on pre-order at Amazon.co.uk for months but it finally arrived yesterday. I worked through chapter 1 in about two hours. Chapter 3 looks particularly interesting.

The incredible testimony to the US Senate by George Galloway. Needs to be recorded here for posterity.

I’ve just completed a couple of lab report marking sessions and saw the usual mistakes being made. By the usual process of serendipity I noted Writing Between the Lines from Andy Hunt (pragmatic programmer) which is well worth directing my students to. Here’s a nice pithy quote that I could see myself adding to the red-ink comments that I typically add to a returned report: Remember that writing is a conversation.

Note to self, latest version of Knoppix is 3.8.1. If I have time, project this (long) weekend, is to install Knoppix on our old home PC. I have the version that comes with Knoppix Hacks but might want to upgrade.