Paul Sutton

Paul Sutton – personal blog

Chemistry Help

I came across this website on the Fediverse as part of a thread on science. I had a look and it appears to be something could really help anyone studying Chemistry

A discussion that mentioned Atomic Orbitals led me to this page on the above website. This site has some nice simulations of topics that are included in the A'level Chemistry Syllabus.

There is also a website with a nice forum on science that I found too. This has a section on Chemistry and then sub forums for Organic, Inorganic and Physical chemistry.

$\LaTeX$ may also be of interest to Chemistry students as you can type set Chemical Formulae etc.

In a sort of related topic, I found a useful site that gives tips on technical writing, I am familiar with some of the ideas presented here, well mostly Constructivism by Jerome Bruner from studying the Supporting Learning in Primary Schools course with the Open University.

I am trying to follow some of this idea when writing instructional blog posts. Provide information on how I do things but put quite a lot of emphasis on the reader actually going away and researching topics. Everyone's system and circumstances are different.

#science, #chemistry, #study, #alevel, #help, #support, #websites, #forum, #simulation.

You can find me on Friendica at [email protected]

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Licenced under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

South Devon Tech Jam – January 2020

The First Tech Jam of 2020 will be on Saturday 11th January at Paignton Library and information Centre.

Time : 11am to 15:00 Cost : £2

Website : http://www.sdtj.org.uk.

What are we hoping to have :-

sdtjdec19

#southdevon,#technology,#meetup,#event,#paignton,#coding,#hardware,#retropie

You can find me on Friendica at [email protected]

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Wearable Tech 2020

BP has launched the sixth instalment of the Ultimate STEM Challenge national competition in partnership with STEM Learning.

The Ultimate STEM Challenge is back again and with an added focus of Wearable Tech. Wearable technology is all around us in our everyday lives, from smart watches that monitor our health to smart jewellery that is fashionable and makes communication easier. BP is challenging pupils aged 9-14 to design a new piece of wearable tech that will improve lives in the future.

More information

The first Code Club of 2020 went really well. Today we were up to six. So people are starting to come back after the Christmas Holiday.

Today, we undertook some more work on the website that we have been working on. We also undertook an hour of code activity, my aim is to try and get lots of people having a go at this, you get a certificate at the end.

More Scratch 3.0 coding, which is great and a good starting point before moving on to other programming languages.

Rocksndiamonds. which I hope we can eventually use to learn level layout.

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References and further information

Next week 11th January 2020 is the South Devon Tech Jam

Next Code Club is on : Saturday 18th January 2020

#coding, #codeclub, #programming, #scratch, #python, #html, #css, #javascript,#coding, #games, #rocksndiamonds, #hourofcode

You can find me on Friendica at [email protected]

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#KSTARS – ASTRONOMY PACKAGE

KSTARS is a Linux based astronomy package. For a free software package it has a lot of features and downloadable catalogues of stellar objects.

When you first load up the package you may want to view the constellation lines. I worked out how to do this, but am including some info below to help users change the line colour from the default light grey as it may be easier for people to see the lines.

If you click on Settings (menu) —> configure —> guides

You should get the following

constellation lines

I have checked the boxes to constellation:-

  • lines
  • boundaries.
  • names

If you then click on the colours tab at the side

constellation colours

I have set the colour to yellow. This does stand out, probably a little too much. However you can set it to the colour of your choosing or leave as the default grey.

colour picker

The end result of this is (download):

Hope this helps

#software, #astronomy, #science, #kde, #linux, #freesoftware, #setup, #configuration, #constellation, #linecolor, #boundaries, #names.

You can find me on Friendica at [email protected]

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Note: This is related to a previous article on booting to the console published on 3/1/2020

With a standard Linux install the fonts on the console (this is the login you get with CTRL-ALT-Fn) are usually small, this is fine in some cases as most people don’t work from the console. However there may be times when you want to work directly at the console and not bother with a Graphical user interface.

I have worked out how to do this and there are some screen shots below to illustrate the process.

This applies to Debian 10 and others, you should consult assistance if you are not sure what you are doing

As root you need to enter dpkg-reconfigure console-setup

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Once you have done this you need to type

setupcon

to activate the changes

You need to type this at the console. Typing in a terminal gives the following message.

setupcon: We are not on the console, the console is left unconfigured.

#Linux, #console, #fonts

You can find me on Friendica at [email protected]

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With most Linux systems, you boot in to a Graphical desktop. There are situations where you want to perhaps use a pure console.

While you can switch to a console with CTRL-ALT-Fn keys. If you want to set your system so that it boots directly in to a console you can do so via the instructions at the site below.

I have a spare netbook set up to boot in to the console.

Please see this link for instructions

A similar post was on my original blog. I am reposting here to keep the information available.

#Linux, #boot, #console

You can find me on Friendica at [email protected]

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Mastodon

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Over the past few months, the social network Mastodon, has seen a big increase in the number of new users joining.

Mostly people from networks Twitter, unhappy, mostly with censorship. In late 2019 there was a big migration from users in India.

Unlike with current mainstream (or should we just say old fashioned) social media. Mastodon is decentralised, so what does this mean?

In essence, there is no central control, just a development model. Mastodon is a network made up on independently owned server instances. These can all communicate with each other, thanks to a protocol called Activity Pub.

Mastodon, forms part of what is called the Fediverse. This numerous other social media instances such as Friendica ( which I am on), that also communicate with each other. The clever part is that the different social networks can communicate with each other.

With the Fediverse, privacy is important, you won't find:

  • User tracking
  • Tracking of Likes and shares
  • Data collection
  • Data sale, abuse and misuse of personal information
  • Suggestions of friends based on interest
  • Advertising

The fediverse, is what the community make it. Users post content, others, who find it interesting will comment, and contribute to the conversation.

During the UK general election campaign, the mainstream news media was taken over by election news. Social media played a big part in campaigning as politicians tried to convince the electorate they were the people to vote for.

Politics has not caught up yet. Not sure if that is a good or bad thing.

You can find topics of interest by searching for tags, which accompany posts.

If you think it is time to #DeleteFacebook or #DeleteTwitter then feel free to come over to a better way of doing things. There are alternatives to other services too, such as Google, Youtube, Instagram. All these alternatives federated so content can be shared on the Fediverse too.

References

#mastodon, #social, #network, #migration, #exodus, #decentralised, #privacy,

You can find me on Friendica at [email protected]

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Chelston Action Group flyer

I am sharing a flyer to help promote the local Chelston Action group Youth Club in Torquay.

#torquay, #chelstonactiongroup, #youthgroup, #flyer, #download

You can find me on Friendica at [email protected]

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Licenced under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Code Club 04/01/2020

The first Code Club of 2020 will be on Saturday 4th January at

This may be a little advanced for Code Club but as we are working on creating a website then this may be useful.

#coding, #codeclub, #programming, #scratch, #python, #html, #css, #javascript,#coding

You can find me on Friendica at [email protected]

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