ESL Adventures

Teaching in South Korea

Archive for November, 2007

25
Nov

More computer adventures

It’s no secret I’m actively involved with BOINC. I’ve learned a lot about computers from running their software and helping out in the various project forums. It was one of the project administrators that so kindly helped me get Linux up and running on my computer (current uptime 15 days, 10:07 and still going strong). Because running BOINC tends to stress your system, I was looking for a lightweight monitor for things like memory usage and temperatures. I know all about top to get processor/memory usage, but having nice little program with everything in the same place is preferable. So I found Conky.

If I had Debian or Gentoo or just about any other Linux distro, I would have been free and clear because there are pre-compiled packages. But of course there wasn’t an rpm for it (I use Fedora 7).

Compiling from source was supposed to be as easy as configure, make, make install. Note the use of the term “was supposed to be”. I guess if I actually had my system set up as a development box (and I actually knew slightly more than nothing) it would have been easy. My experience with compiling from source was limited to mplayer and that basically just worked (once I got g++ installed).

I knew I was going to need the X11 development libraries so I installed those. I bravely opened up the terminal (actually I’ve gotten quite comfortable with it) and unpacked the source archive. I changed over to that directory and told it to go do the configure. I watched it churn away and spit out an error. Grumble grumble grumble. This was a few weeks ago. I asked a friend for help, but he wasn’t familiar with the libs. I Googled. No joy. Nothing looked relevant and what I read went so far over my head that I needed binoculars to see it. I posted on the Conky forums, but no response. So I put the whole project on the back burner for a few weeks.

I was bored this morning and decided to see if anyone on the BOINC forums might know where I needed to go from where I was. Within thirty minutes I had a response. Thank you Trog Dog! Just by seeing what I needed to install I also saw how to read the error message. So I installed what I needed and ran configure again. Another error. So I downloaded and installed some more developer stuff. Later, rinse, repeat about three more times. And then the configure succeeded. Yippee!

Make and install went flawlessly. I ran the program. And BINGO! I now have Conky on my desktop.

Conky

Now I have some reading to do on how to best configure Conky for my use. What is shown in the picture is the default configuration. But after getting it compiled I needed to go and finish my grocery shopping. So that little project will have to wait for another day.

posted by Kathryn in Home Life,Linux Adventures,Off time and have No Comments
18
Nov

Pictures!

I had written a few weeks ago that I was having issues with the service I chose to host my photos.  I never managed to find a way to get in touch with the folks and the forums were less than helpful.  I can’t complain too much because I had a free account.  So I found a new service.  I don’t even remember what I was reading, but I came across webshots.com.  The free account isn’t a bad deal.  You get 1000 photos initially and then an additional 100 photos per month of storage space.

Uploading isn’t too bad on Windows.  Supposedly there’s a desktop program you can download.  Doesn’t do me much good with my main box being booted into Linux 99.9% of the time.  The web uploader crashed Firefox in Linux reliably, but it worked fine on Windows XP.

To get my photos uploaded without going back to Windows on my main box, I learned how to mount my XP’s computer’s hard drive as a network share.  I backed up all of my photos to my XP box (a good idea any way) and used the web uploader from there.

To make a long story short, all my photos are now posted.  Yes, all 706 of them.  They can be found here.

posted by Kathryn in Activites,Food and Drink,Fun things,Games,Home Life,Korea,Pictures,Staff,Students,Teaching,Web sites and have No Comments
11
Nov

Pepero Day

Peperos Happy Pepero Day to all!

 

Pepero Day is celebrated here in South Korea by giving people “Peperos”. They are long skinny cookies sticks dipped in chocolate. Very yummy! If you’re a teacher, you usually end up with tons of them.

The legend is that Pepero Day started in Busan. A bunch of girls started exchanging the snack and wishing each other that they would become as tall and thin as a Pepero. Nice legend. But more likely it was started by the folks at Lotte who make Peperos. It’s a true Korean “Hallmark” holiday.

Pepero Day is always celebrated on November 11th. Why that day? When you write the date at 11/11, it looks like four Peperos standing side by side.

posted by Kathryn in Food and Drink,Fun things,Korea and have No Comments
06
Nov

Rock Around the Clock

One thing that we do daily with our students is sing a pop song. That’s only just a bit difficult for me as I really don’t like any of the current pop music out there. I’m a country girl through and through. Yes, it comes from living in Austin for graduate school. But I digress. Last week I finally managed to put together a mix CD from the music I own. There are some pop-ish country songs out there that I put on the CD. I do have some older pop music that I put on there. And I also put on some oldies from the 50s, 60s and 70s.

The one that I’m doing with all of my preschoolers right now is “Rock Around the Clock” (the history of the song is actually quite interesting). I’m also doing it with A4 and B4 because it’s a pretty easy song. It’s also a good song for the kids. Koreans who are learning English tend to have lots of trouble with the R sound. So it’s a great song for reinforcing correct pronunciation.

rockaroundtheclock.png

We’re also supposed to have the kids try to read the lyrics. Inevitably, kids lose the papers you give them. And I wanted to make this as “fun” as possible. So I printed up some lyric sheets that include images relating to the song and laminated them. I then keep them and hand them out to each class. No more “Teacher! I don’t have my paper!” for me. Click the picture for a nearly full size image. And click for a downloadable copy in Open Document format, or Microsoft Office format.

posted by Kathryn in Activites,Fun things,Language,Music,Teaching,Teaching Resources and have No Comments
04
Nov

Another one down

Second floor Sha Sha Open House is finished!  Yay!  All in all, it went well.  Well, except for the fact my voice is pretty much shot.  I croaked my way through it.

I picked up a cold a few weeks ago and it turned into a sinus infection.  For whatever reason, my voice took a hit too.  And before any of you start worrying, I’m fine.  The doctor at the clinic in LotteMart (a very nice and highly competent guy) put me on antibiotics for a week.  I’ll live.  I promise no more pneumonia.

But back to Open House.  I was pleasantly surprised on how fast the kids actually learned the materials for it.  They did a couple of kid type songs, days of the week, greetings, weather, colors, fruits.  They did the “My Elephant” poem that the March Class did for their presentation.  They answered daily living questions like “Where do you live?” and “How old are you?”.    We even did some fun stuff like making the parents answer questions.

When Jeanie introduced me, she told the parents that they were lucky to have me as one of their child’s teachers.  She said it’s hard to find teachers that have Masters degrees in child psychology and who have had previous ESL experience in Korea.  Of course, I only know this because I asked her what she had said.

Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures because I was the one doing the “teaching”.

posted by Kathryn in Activites,Fun things,Language,Students,Teaching and have No Comments
02
Nov

September and October Birthday Friday

We didn’t have a Birthday Friday in September, so those kids had their birthdays in October. And yes, I’m just a bit late on getting this up. It’s only been slightly more than crazy these last few weeks.

So here is a small selection of the pictures.

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Getting ready!

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Our birthday boys and girls!

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Blow out those candles!

posted by Kathryn in Activites,Fun things,Pictures,Staff,Students,Teaching and have No Comments
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