r3dux.org

Just finished my very first week teaching – and quite an experience it’s been!

Firstly – I’ve never been a great fan of public speaking. When giving presentations to military big-wigs and company suits in the past I’ve got nervous. Not cripplingly so, but the kicker is this: Just before I’m up to speak I’d get this MONSTER surge of adrenalin, which would take 10 minutes to wear off. And for those 10 minutes my heart would be doing double-time and my hands visibly trembled. I literally shook until the adrenalin wore off and I could carry on clearly.

Probably not suited to standing infront of class after class you might think – but it all turned out okay. I was pretty sure it would wear off with time and that if I could just avoid the pre-kick-off panic I could make it through okay, and with time the fear would dissipate and all that would remain would be me, the class, and the material to teach.

And I was right.

I was nervous for round 1 – and meeting a class of 20+ new people twice in a day on Tuesday was a bit of a deep-end experience, but I got through it pretty well, I think. The students range from 17 to 47, and they want to learn! So get on with it, man! Teach them!

I’m doing the “Gamers” (Multimedia) course in C++ Programming and Multimedia itself, and it’s okay. Some of the kids want to be developers, some want to be games designers, some want to be animators. Some have an idea about a game they’d like to make, and want to gain the skills to make it – and fair play to them – they have a vision and they’re pursuing it. They might not realise how difficult programming is quite yet, and I really hope I don’t put them off – but the facts are that some people should not code.

There are two streams of C++ classes, 20-ish people a class – and you can easily tell the people who will do well, and the people who don’t have an aptitude for it. But – no matter aptitude or not I’m determined that if they’re willing to put in the effort to try, I’ll put in absolutely everything I can – and help them in any way I can. If that means answering their questions outside of class, putting on extra voluntary classes one a week – then whatever it takes.

The only bugbear with the teaching lark I’ve got at the moment is the amount of time it takes to make slides. I’ve been given teaching notes; some as text files, some as word docs – but you can’t really teach from them – so I’ve been making up powerpoints for each lesson. And it takes 2-3 hours to make an hours worth of slides. And I teach 11 hours a week. It’s a lot of time, and a lot of slides.

Apart from that, everything has been really good – The uni is very nice, the other teachers are helpful and kind, the students are decent (even if a couple have learning difficulties and require extra attention), and the hours (slides excepted) are great. I’m really happy with it =D

Oh, and the money is pretty good, too, way more than I was previously earning per hour.. hehe =D [Less hours per week though, so overall I'm down, but with any luck I can pick up some other classes, do some cover work etc - and when I get this slide stuff streamlined will end up with a stack of free time].

Overall I like it, and is seems to like me.

Good stuff =D

Note: If you have a stack of slides and take them to class on a usb pen drive, make sure you also email them to your work address so you don’t get there, find the drive is b0rked, and end up calling up your GF to email in your slides and class exercises for the day!! (Thanks, Andrea!!)

Live and learn!

First, get samba with the following command: sudo apt-get install samba smbfs

Now, create a folder to use as your mount point on your linux drive (I’m using /mnt/NAS – you can use whatever you’d like): sudo mkdir /mnt/NAS

Then edit your /etc/fstab file with: sudo gedit /etc/fstab

On my NAS I have two separate shares, one of which is called (unimaginatively enough) Share, so I’m going to add lines to /etc/fstab in the following format:

# Mount NAS share
//IP-OF-YOUR-NAS/NAS-SHARE-NAME /SHARE-MOUNT-POINT smbfs username=USER-NAME-OF-NAS-USER,password=PASSWORD-OF-NAS-USER,uid=YOUR-UID-NUMBER,gid=YOUR-GID-NUMBER 0 0

So  -  for my own personal setup, and because I’ve already created a username and password on the NAS [via the NAS' web interface - available at http://IP-OF-YOUR-NAS] called r3dux, I’d put:

# Mount NAS share
//192.168.1.100/Share /mnt/NAS smbfs username=r3dux,password=MyPasswordHere,uid=1000,gid=1000 0 0

There are other ways where you don’t have to put your password in plaintext in the fstab file, but as long as you’ve got it set to read/write only by the root account, no one else can even look at the file to read the password. To set permissions that way, just use: sudo chmod 600 /etc/fstab

Which gives read and write permissions to root, but denies groups and any other users any access whatsoever (even just looking at!)

Job done.

Update: When mounting a NAS there are two user acounts you’re using: 1.) Your linux user account which goes in the uid and gid fields, and 2.) The NAS user account (which is set up from the NAS’ web interface) which goes into the username and password fields.

So if you want to have write access to the NAS, then you’ll need to set up a user account from the NAS’ web interface | Users sections, and mount the NAS as the user the NAS knows about with required privileges. In the fstab line above we’re mounting with user (uid) and group (gid) permissions set to 1000, that is user id 1000 (the id number of the first user on a linux system) [your user id can be looked up in /etc/passwd] and group id 1000 (i.e. the first user on a linux system [in my case my own r3dux group] – your group id can be looked up in /etc/group) – if you want to use other users/group to mount as, feel free.

Update 2: Forgot to mention that this will mount the NAS on reboot, to force a mount using the fstab details you’ve just entered, simply run the command sudo mount -a

Update 3: Fixed the above uid/gid mentions to NOT say anything about linux file permissions – it’s user and group identifiers to mount the NAS by, and NOT standard linux file permissions, mea culpa – fixed.

Awesome t-shirt =D

Read this in a slashdot comment today and it made me smile:

An IT manager starts a new position.

All goes well for a few weeks, then something big breaks. Lots of pressure. Rooting around in his desk, he finds 3 envelopes. The first is labeled “Open at the First Crisis”. On a whim, he opens it and the note inside reads “Blame it on your Predecessor”. He decides to take this advice and to his surprise, it works like a charm, management is satisfied, he is given time to fix things.

A few months go by and a something much bigger breaks, seriously disrupting operations. He is in trouble. At his desk, he decides to open the envelope labeled: “Open at the Second Crisis”. He’d been saving it for something big, and this is it. The note inside says: “Form a Committee to Study the Issue”. He does just that and, to his surprise, it works great. The committee wastes time and accomplishes nothing, but blame is diffused.

A few years go by. The third and final envelope is labeled: “Open at the Third Crisis”. He thinks about opening it many times, but he waits, saving it for a real disaster. One day, it comes. Catastrophic failure. He takes a deep breath, tears the envelope open and inside, finds a note that reads: “Prepare Three Envelopes”.

How fun is that? =D Catchy tune too…

[As seen on Offworld]