Osnacantab

Slide show

2006-08-20T03:02:00.000-07:00

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Screen shot - For Gladys and Fernanda

2006-08-15T22:18:00.000-07:00

This is a screenshot uploaded as a jpeg file. You see the problem. On my PC monitor, the whole shot fills the screen. Ican increase its size in PAINT, too. But as soon as I upload to Blogger, it gets reduced to the size you can see. Choosing 'large' or 'big' has little or no effect.

As expected, my screenprint embedded in WORD, which seems a neat idea, doesn't work for uploading, and is clumsy for emailing. The file, bmp, I think, is simply too large.

Cambridge photos (not mine) at last

2006-08-14T14:39:00.000-07:00

Sorry to have been silent for so long.

These photos, or rather the captions, could do with editing - but I wanted to share them with you without more delay.

Dennis' photos of Cambridge

Trying out Picasa

2006-08-05T22:48:00.000-07:00

Well, if you have a Picasa account, being able to use the button "Blog this" straight into your blog is, as they say these days, cool or neat.

I am not sure, though, that I have really grabbed control of the size of the posted image. Size is regulated by the code somewhere. Is it visible, that code, and can it be edited?

'Three Blind Mice" English and German & Singing?

2006-08-05T01:12:00.000-07:00

Here is proof that I am not proud. I can disgrace myself in public at the drop of a hat.

Three Blind Mice

So now I've added video as well...What's left?

Germany English & EFLTU

2006-08-04T19:46:00.000-07:00

GermanyEnglish

EFLTU

I'm really posting a link to these two sites as an exercise in inserting links, with Claudia tutoring me in the background.

Germany-English and EFLTU are two of my TEFL lists. There is a complete list on my homepage:

Dennis Newson's homepage

A punt on the Cam at Cambridge

2006-08-04T19:38:00.000-07:00

I was in Cambridge two weeks ago for three days and I took this photo of a punt on that picturesque part of the river Cam called the Backs because here it flows along the backs of many of the colleges.

85 and still swinging

2006-08-04T02:04:00.000-07:00

If I've got just a fraction of this man's energy at 85 I'll be a contented person.
In the Carnegie Hall concert he was sitting in a wheelchair - but hear how he played!

Grapelli

Aerial photo of Cambridge

2006-08-03T22:03:00.000-07:00

Done it! The problem was - the photo file was too large. I reduced the size by a quarter and it shot to the site with the speed of an arrow.

Back to the poetry. This is an aerial view of roughly the same area as in the satellite picture posted earlier. You can see the river Cam and King's College Cambridge (the one with the famous choir) on the right. At the end is New Court of St. John's (my old college) and you can just make out the tower of St. John's College chapel.

More in due course.

Frustration

2006-08-03T14:10:00.000-07:00

I've given up on the Sound on blog page. There is clearly a bug of some kind on that particular page.

OK...I've discovered I caused my own frustration by trying to upload gigantic files. I keep forgetting what high resolution photos my small electronic camera can produce.

Here is an appropriate visual accompaniment to a sound recording - the Audacity window as I recorded Grapelli (See another entry.)

A blogging bloggy day

2006-08-03T13:23:00.000-07:00

I have had a most frustrating day with Blogger. For 17 hours, on and off, I have tried to upload a photo, having loaded several in the last couple of days. Every time I am timed out before anything happens. That is most frustrating, and a terrible waste of time.

Part of that time - on and off, I repeat - was taken up with trying to get a simple URL posted. Even after Claudias help (It is misbehaving again. It refuses to accept an apostrophe.) although the link works EDIT says it cannot accept the HTML!!

I will post more interesting messages, and another photo, when Mr. Blogger stops being so akward.

At the last moment, when I thought I'd have a final try, I managed to upload a photo, not the one I wanted, but a quite cheerful shot of our sour flowering cherry tree this Spring.

Sound on blog

2006-08-03T11:29:00.000-07:00

Songblog

With Claudia's assistance, listen to a totally uninteresting demonstration of sound on a blog.

When I tried to generate HTML for this link, I get something slightly different.

WHERE does that: >Songblog Notice sonGblog after the MP3 come from, Claudia?

Anyway - Listen to a totally uninteresting example of sound on a blog. and as you listen you can gaze at some apple blossom which has turned into apples, growing in our tiny garden.

Introduction

2006-08-03T03:48:00.000-07:00

I thought I should take the opportunity to create a new blog for the LwC workshop on blogs and blogging. I've created blogs in the past, and I've got a couple of Wikis somewhere, but I can see that, in a sense, I have misused, or under-used, these resources in the past. I'm a natural loner, so I've overlooked or ignored the social aspect of blogging. Often, I've written solely for myself - and there are certainly occasions and situations where this must be legitimate. In this blog, though, I'll try and concentrate on making it a blog where social interaction is important. If I can work out how to do that!

By the way - 'Osnacantab' is a word I've coined from half of the name of the city where I live in Germany, OSNA (Osnabrueck 'Oxen bridge'), and the Latin (!) abbreviation for the university town where I studied, CANTAB (Cambridge - another bridge - the bridge over the river Cam) - Osnacantab 'The Cambridge person living in Osnabrueck. (All of that just because "Dennis" was taken on Blogger!)

Order of original posting: ONE

Nils too

2006-08-02T23:51:00.000-07:00

Since you are a VERY special group, I'll let you into a secret. Nils, as you may have gathered, has gone to live in South Africa, but due to an extraordinary coincidence, which I may sometime relate, since yesterday we have Nils' twin brother staying with us - Nils too. (People think that he is named Nils Two (2), but that is a misunderstanding. When asked his name the present Nils always says: "Nils too", because he is very impressed by his older brother Nils, who was born 15 minutes before him.

I thought you'd like to meet him. You'll be hearing and seeing more of him.

Boring pedagogical note

It is amazing, isn't it, how photogenic and charismatic Nils too is. He took us out to a meal last night and the waitress and wine waiter were enchanted by him.

A Google Earth satellite view of the centre of Cambridge

2006-08-02T23:08:00.000-07:00

Claudia suggested a screen shot of a picture from Google Earth for those whose PCs are unable to use this incredible program. Here is Google Earth's satellite picture of the centre of Cambridge. You may just be able to identify the river Cam flowing at the back of some of the colleges.

Wedding breakfast for 4 on the river in Cambridge

2006-08-02T12:19:00.000-07:00

My wife and I had a rather unconventional wedding breakfast in Cambridge. After the civil ceremony, and after we had changed, I took a punt (a flat-bottomed boat) from the college and punted my wife and I and our two witnesses down the river to a quiet and picturesque point and there we drank champagne and ate sandwiches we'd bought at a little shop we know near the entrance to St. John's College. The stretch of river we are on is The Backs, so called because it runs along the backs of the colleges.

Cambridge

2006-07-29T21:39:00.000-07:00

I've been asked by a couple of people on the list to show them some pictures of Cambridge. Have you got a bit of time to spare? Let me invite you to a short tour. I'll use the photos I happen to have, Cambridge is a bit too far off to drive to and take special shots, so this will be a very idiosyncratic impression of one of the most beautiful cities in England that I know.

Photograph - 1958 - shows me wearing a mortar board, with my friend Alan, on graudation day. (I wonder what happened to him?)

Anyone need a partner? Snowdon from near Harlech

2006-07-29T03:31:00.000-07:00

Thinking about both this blog and many of the activities on the list, I am increasingly aware of what a difference it makes if one is lucky enough (in some ways) to be no longer working full-time.

It brings home the necessity of having a clearn reason, a focus every time one uses a bit of technology or reaches for a Web 2.0 tool. I don't mean this narrowly - if using blogs, for examples, makes teaching and learning more fun what better justification could you seek?

Still: If anyone wants a surprise visitor to visit your classroom, pass on messages to Nils, make a recording etc....ask away.

I think I'll put a picture in EVERY message. Why not? It doesn't cost extra and there will always be something interesting to see......What can I easily find?
It's a view of the back of Snowdon, Wales' highest mountain. Ths photo is taken from near Harlech and the private caravan we stay in for two weeks every year. The river is an estuary, and it flows into the sea - on the left. The views of Harlech using Google Earth are fabulous .

A request and an offer

2006-07-29T03:01:00.000-07:00

I've an idea there is a list somewhere amongst recent postings about the characteristics of an effective, communicative, socially situated blog. But I can't find it.

Does anyone remember it?
Can you paste it into a reply to this blog or send it's URL if it is longer if you know it?

That will help me, but what can I do for you?

I've promised to post a photo of Cambridge, and there is another photo I want to post, too.

I'm going to add a photo here, not (I hope) prompted by narcissism, but to see if Blogger puts it where I want it.

Photo: Autor of message on his birthday cake..The only image that could be easily found.