C, F, L, R

Turns out antivirus is the same word in English and French. I discovered this while I was trying to load the software I had painstakingly downloaded onto the computers in time for clubs tomorrow.

The computers in the lab room here at the model school are already majorly fucked. How exactly they got that way is anyone’s guess, but probably some got something off of some USB key and some, which are actually connected to the Internet, probably caught something that way. IE6 or whatever. Naturally it’s bad practice to cross-contaminate, so after you put the USB key into one infected computer, you go back to the Linux machine to decontaminate. One really nasty system managed to corrupt the installers for the software. To make sure that didn’t happen again, I did a diff on the USB key after each system. Fortunately the installers have consistency checks, and they only failed on one system, so likely that didn’t go too far. Also awesome: shitty little *.exes that get sprinkled through your filesystem.

In theory we could download some antivirus software onto a key and use that to clean up a little bit. This was my assignment this afternoon. No luck for varying reasons, all more-or-less boiling down to the fact that antivirus would really like to have Internet access in order to update its virus definitions. AVG flat out refuses to install without a valid connection. Microsoft Security Essentials installs but lets you know it’s outdated, and refuses to do anything until it’s updated. As far as I can tell it’s not possible to download a virus signature database onto a key or anything like that, although all the help files are in French so who fucking knows? Avira is almost 30 MB so one hopes it has virus definitions in there somewhere, but on any given run from C|Net I only managed to get a 1/3rd of the file before running out of patience, so again who fucking knows. Broken OSes, viruses transmitted by USB keys, antivirus software that doesn’t work out of the box. I can’t believe any one of these problems exists, much less all of them in the same reality. Long story short: fucking goddamnit, people.

All of this really makes you wonder who wrote a virus that transmitted itself via USB key, why they thought this would be a good idea, and what the eventual payoff is. It’s not like attacking systems connected to the Internet, where if you 0wn them, you basically get an additional computer with an additional Internet connection. If you 0wn some arbitrary Pentium I in the middle of Underfuckistan, what do you have?

Today Claude came back from working "in the country" for a few days. He brought a cacao fruit and a citron, a little lime. When you crack open the cacao fruit, there are these white seed-ish things that you suck on. They have a sweet, citrusy taste. You spit out the seeds. I think the cacao nibs are found inside, and they get sold by the bag after they dry. Apparently you just can’t buy the fruit fresh, probably because of the value of the seeds. Too bad. If you ever get the opportunity to try it, I recommend it.

Been playing a little bit with my other laptop, the ZaReason Teo. It’s almost exactly the same form factor as my MSI Wind 110, but the hardware is more open-source friendly. Power it on and it walks you through the Ubuntu install, but it’s customized a little bit evidently because the machine is showing up on the mDNS network as zareason-teo. Cute. Hoping that goes away when I reboot. I named the machine jonah-hex, after this review on Tor.com with the teaser, "It’s like a drinking game that hired actors". I have high expectations for this machine, but I think I’ll probably be satisfied. Some things are already nicer on jonah-hex. It’s running 10.04, whereas the MSI Wind, who is named joker, is stuck perpetually in 9.10, which is 6 months older, and can’t be upgraded because of the finicky video driver. In general 10.10 feels a little snappier, and UNR is basically the same, no real changes.

Also interesting: turns out you don’t need usb-modeswitch — I plugged the Camtel key into the freshly-installed laptop, and after about 20 seconds it just disconnected itself and started over as a modem. Hmm. Need to tell Timothy, who’s had no end of trouble with the damned thing.

Andrea gave me a pep talk today. Not Andrea the trainee, but Andrea the current volunteer. Her basic point: some days teaching sucks, sometimes it’s awesome. Give it a year or so. See what happens. If you’re still miserable, there’s no shame in flunking out of the Organization.

I just have a hard time seeing myself doing this for two years. Maybe if I was teaching "higher level" stuff, but today I taught a lab class on how to type capital letters, and how to use compose keys to put circumflexes and umlauts on vowels. Frankly, there are people better suited to do this than me. The nationals here are pretty good teachers qua teachers. What’s the problem?

I’m not sure exactly where Andrea got the idea that I was going to flunk out right away. Sure, I think about it all the time — every couple days or so. I miss home. I miss my friends, I miss Gus. I miss a world that made sense to me. I don’t really love teaching, and don’t see what it gets me to learn how to do it. But everything else is awesome — I love the food. I love the people. I love talking to strangers. I generally love using another language all the time.

Drunkenly drew a bucket of water today. Every time I do this in the dark, I worry about falling in. Actually, change "in the dark" into "drunkenly". I stopped at one (bucket); there’s enough water for tonight. I don’t want to be a statistic. Weaved my way back to the house. Fortunately, it’s dark, so no one can tell whether I’m weaving blindly or weaving drunkenly. Some little girls advised me not to draw water in the dark because you could fall; hopefully they can’t tell either whether my French sucks because I’m white or because I’m drunk.

Andrea noted that it’s hard with emotional connections at home. Even when you take her statement at face value, it’s true.. and it’s not just having a girlfriend, it’s having friends who you’ve known for a dozen years. It’s having an aged family. It’s having been at home for far too long. It’s "Missing You" by trash80 and "Streets" by she.

Dreamt last night of a con somewhere in another city, whose streets I was wandering. (Somewhere in Canada?) Some chick (an old friend?) was interested in me, kept sending me SMSes which I read on a bizarre ancient black-and-white PDA thing. (An iPaq?) Woke up confused, looking through my mosquito net at daylight out the window and parsing it as a doorway in another room. Got out of bed at 7 AM with less than an hour to get to school. The other night I heard a noise like someone trying to open my door, but it could have just been the electricity shutting off. It’s 11:30 now and I think I need to go to sleep.

Heard word today that yes, I will be going in fact to my post. I guess they need me enough. Jenny is being treated for both malaria and some random bacteriological infection, and seems well enough. Julia came down with something but doens’t seem to yet have a fever.

Downloading stuff to throw on the lab computers before next "club" time on Wednesday. So far I have:

• GIMP
• Dr. Python
• Dia
• Firefox
• Tuxpaint
• Graphcalc (Windows-based graphing calculator program)
• Celestia
• Audacity
• Blender

Surprisingly, all of these have Windows releases, even Tuxpaint. I’m grabbing Tuxmath and Tuxtype too but those are more "game-y" and so might not fly as educational software. (Similarly GCompris.)

I would ideally like to provide also some documentation, preferably in French, for the above programs. I spent about an hour or two trying to come up with a way to mirror the Blender wiki pages in French without grabbing all the other languages. Gave up when I realized I couldn’t automatically scrape the <![if IE 6]> links. So they get nothing except whatever internationalization/documentation the programs come with. Think of it as an applied version of the OLPC principles.

Today’s been a nerdy day. I also spent a little while trying to understand what I have to do to make my two laptops talk over wireless without any other equipment. Neither of the wireless cards can do "Access Point" mode, so it’s gonna be "Ad-Hoc" networking. Tested with my N900; no luck. Caught myself planning a lesson yesterday, realized I was basically planned up until Wednesday because of the lab sessions I have, and rejoiced a little. Guess I have enough time to do all the homework I want.

Also: today at the well, a little girl asked me "S’il vous plait, chargez-moi". "Charge me?" I thought she meant to add water to the bucket, but she meant to help her put it on her head. Charger can also mean "to load", after all.

Congratulations everyone for finishing the first week of model school.

I have been complaining a lot about all the things I have to do — and I do have a lot more than I actually want to do, but right now I’m not doing any of them. Tomorrow I want to go shopping. Sunday is laundry. I also need to create some lab work for 5e on Monday (J-P is running one of the classes), and some lessons for next week (3e: binary; 5e: output devices). Language classes tomorrow, including a "competence" on the hospital. And the most annoying is the program-wide "homework", which includes interviewing locals about religion, which is the social equivalent of pulling teeth for me. Fact is I could be working on any of those things right now, but fuck that. Julia mentioned beaching herself on her bed like a whale, and I’m not excited about that either (because my sheets are getting really ripe), but fuck being productive. Was thinking about breaking out my "other" laptop, the one I impulse-bought before coming here and still haven’t run, but haven’t gotten there yet. Instead I’m browsing Wikipedia articles on African languages, which could theoretically be related to work I have to do.

But what I’d really like to talk about today is wells. I’m not an expert in the subject, but I’ve brought up a few handfuls of buckets of water so hopefully I have something to share. Of course, I’m learning, as I have elsewhere in life, that I tend to think I know more than I actually know, so much of the things you read here will be vastly incorrect. Suck it up.

The word we use here to describe usage of a well (fr: puits) is puiser, or "to draw from". You can also puiser l’eau from a forage, which is basically a pump with a really deep straw. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard the usage, but I think in English you "draw water" from a well. The process has two parts: usage of the well, and carrying of the spoils.

To actually get water out of the well, you first go to the well. Most of the wells here are open and, although surrounded by stone, built into the ground, not at waist height like you might have seen in the movies. To get water out, you need a dipper, or some other container that can hold water. If the well is public, a plastic bucket will probably be there already, with a cord tied around the handle. You need to drop the bucket into the water, but the plastic is lighter than the water, so if you’re not careful, the bucket will just kind of float on the surface of the water. I’ve seen three major techniques for handling the bucket:

1. Drop the bucket until it’s just above the surface of the water. Then, flick your wrist and release the cord. Ideally, the bucket will be 90 degrees rotated when it plunges into the water, and will take on water fairly fast. If you aren’t very good, it will be at an angle and take on water slowly.
2. Invert the bucket before dropping it — face it completely down. Somehow the air gets forced out fairly easily and the bucket becomes full, unless it gets some English on it and then who knows what will happen.
3. Plunk the bucket if it has a bit of water in it but isn’t filling rapidly enough. Lift the partially-full bucket out of the water, and then drop it back in.

You can generally see when the bucket is full. Now, haul it up. This is an art. Generally I’ve seen people use long, sure strokes to pull the bucket in a few hands. The hole to the well is generally narrower than the well itself, so you’ll have to be careful when you’re navigating the bucket out. Then, you empty the contents into your bucket, which you brought for this purpose. Rinse your bucket first. If your bucket is big, you will repeat the above procedure until your bucket is full.

Now you have a bucket full of water! Good job. Now comes the hard part: carrying it.

• Naturally you can carry the bucket in one of your hands, but this will render you massively off-balance. If you are feeling daring or want to integrate, you can try putting the bucket on your head. Something sloshy like water is going to require hands to steady, but generally carrying things on your head is easier than carrying them in your arm, because your arm and hand will get sore pretty quickly. Nevertheless, I find that I spill more water when it’s on my head, because it’s harder to judge equilibrium, so I carry it in my hands. I’ve seen people make a fist with their other hands and rest them on their lower back. Not sure this helps.
• Now, walk back to your house or wherever you want to take the water. Walk slowly (fr: "doucement"), especially on inclines. You’ll probably overfill your bucket and spill a lot.

Lately I’ve decided to draw two buckets of water each day after school. That seems to cover my bathing and toilet needs (half a bucket for bathing; a bucket for toilet). The water goes in a bidon, barrel, that is kept (uncovered) in the bathroom. Today I drew three, which also helps to cover someone else, in case anyone else uses it. I get home out of breath and sweaty. Another trainee said, back in Yaoundé, "I am gonna have such guns after this", but consensus seems to be that you probably won’t, somehow. Plastic clothing is best for this activity, because the rope tied to the bucket is always dirty. Try not to step in the mud that is created by the water you spilled, because you will get the house muddy.

The 5e class at model school is full of little assholes. They’re rowdy. Maybe it’s because there are 52 of them, which isn’t even that much by local standards. Anyhow, I spent my whole lesson stuck in a tarpit of something I shouldn’t have been trying to teach and disciplining students. I think the two are related, actually, but everyone else who’s taught cinquième thinks the same things I do.

But fortunately, since I only used 10 minutes of material, I don’t have to plan as much for my lessons tomorrow! Every cloud has a silver lining.

Some random things.

1. A moto can carry another moto. I’ve seen it.
2. There is a tennis court here. People even use it. They aren’t very good.
3. Crashed a Pidgin lesson today. Pidgin is a language spoken in the Anglophone part of the country. It’s a fun language, but basically not well-studied.
4. Rose mentioned to me Ethnologue, which has a page for the language spoken here, which is nevertheless not very helpful.
5. A shirt a few days ago on one of the students. On the back, the words "Professionele Jiegdoplieding". It’s not uncommon to find people here, especially kids, with clothing that has other languages on it.
6. Pictures.

This is the path that goes from my host family’s house to the "base" for training.

This is the path that goes the other way. Looks pretty developing-world, doesn’t it? But if you climb a bit:

You’ll see there’s a paved road here. On that paved road..

Is Claude. And further..

Brooklin Salon. I’ve wanted to take a picture of this place since I first got here. It’s a hair salon, basically, I think. Not sure what will happen if I ask for the "Ché"..

Tennis court. Not a great action shot, but the real action didn’t come out well.

Vladimir’s shirt. "JE SUIS 1 SUPER HEROS", or, translated, "I AM 1 SUPER HEROS".

I’m fairly certain I don’t have enough material here for the two lessons I’m giving tomorrow, but I’m hopeful and frankly I just don’t want to do any more work. There just isn’t enough time in the day, and I’m fairly certain that would still be true if I hadn’t hit the bar with Allison and Peter to talk strategy.

I haven’t really had any classes since the last time I wrote, but the lessons still reverberate. There are a few other things we’ve discussed:

• different tactics for getting the students to actually generate responses — although that might be a challenge, since I’ve also seen students refuse to even read things that are written on the board. But, for example, telling the student to put something in cell C2 and seeing whether they can successfully indicate the cell named.
• Excel (or any spreadsheet in general) is actually a pretty useful tool to teach someone, because it’s useful even without a printer, and it’s actually a fairly general tool that lets people do a lot of "semi-programming". It can be useful to manipulate data and can save you time even if you can’t sortir ("go out" or "bring out") the results. Whereas a word-processor requires you to be able to print things or else it’s basically useless; a letter that never leaves your computer can’t be sent, almost by definition.
• Allison used a competition in her class to encourage the students to participate. Divide and conquer. Only problem: too much noise. I guess we’re walking a fine line.

I am hoping to cover in my class the mistakes made in the lab sessions earlier this week. That’s kind of a potpourri in 3e but should dovetail nicely in 5e with the lesson I’m going to teach about the different "areas" of the keyboard and what the different keys do. I’ll be able to talk about Verrouille Majescule (Caps Lock) and why you shouldn’t use it, and why it’s better to mix capitals and lowercase, and how the cursor works. And hopefully next lab, the students will be able to do something more interesting than write a sentence.

Time sure flies. The week is already half over, but I still feel like I’m stuck in Monday evening. Only 26 more months amirite???

Speaking of lesson plans and how they never survive contact with the enemy, today we talked about the Organization’s contingency plans. Basically they devolve into two parts: make sure we can be contacted, and be aware of how to get to the collection points. There are three basic actions here: stand fast, consolidate, and evacuate. We just need to be ready to receive directions to do those things in case that happens. There’s an election in February, and that’s kind of touchy for the Organization; they’re keeping an eye on things "just in case".

There are a few other topics I would like to talk about, but none of them are really resolved. Me and Peter "ran" the first meeting of Informatics Club today — here, school gets out early on Wednesdays so there is time for "clubs", which are nominally academic — but it felt kind of vague and undirected. Some students worked on classwork they didn’t understand; some messed around with email and stuff (only 8 computers were connected to the ‘net, or else they all would have done that). But a lot looked bored. Me and Peter are gonna install Gimp and whatever other software we can think of on those machines; hopefully that’ll pique their interest a bit. Peter also had the idea of having a "suggested activity" on the board in case the students do get bored and want to feel accomplished, but not making it mandatory.

My first bottle of conditioner ran out today. I guess that means I need to start looking at local products. This both upsets and kind of excites me. Jenny got sick today, but according to me it’s probably not typhoid; she probably has the test results by now but I haven’t spoken to her yet to know what it is.

Lest Gus think I’m being judgmental and mean, I wanted to write about a few things that didn’t suck.

First: my French class right now with Ryan, Peter, and G., the trainer. G. gives us some extremely awesome exercises. Today we had to use the future, so she had us write horoscopes. She also gave us this exercise, which is called "L’abri atomique". I think it is so awesome that I will reproduce it here.

La guerre détruit la civilisation. Dans un abri atomique, il y a des survivants (11) qui pourront continuer la race humaine. Ils ne pourront ressortir de l’abri que dans un mois, quand les décombres, radioactives seront á un niveau viable. Mais il n’y a de l’oxygène que pour 31 jours et seulement pour 6 personnes. Cinq d’entre elles devront donc se sacrifier pour permettre aux autres de reconstruire la civilisation.

Quelles sont celles des personnes suivantes que vous garderiez ou élimineriez ? Donnez les raisons de votre choix.

1. Un prêtre âgé de 45 ans.
2. Un médecin : 71 ans.
3. Une femme enceinte de 8 mois ; elle a le SIDA : 34 ans
4. Son mari, artiste, veut la suivre : 38 ans.
5. Un ancien policier, chassé de la police pour terrorisme : 29 ans.
6. Un charpentier, vendeur de drogue : 26 ans.
7. Une étudiante en biologie, anarchiste, était en prison pour terrorisme : 22 ans.
8. Un permier sourd-muet : 25 ans.
9. Un spécialiste d’énergie nucléaire (stérile) : 28 ans.
10. Un ingénieur homosexuel : 35 ans.
11. Une ancienne prostituée : 40 ans.

Second: after yesterday, I was super burned out and I went home and decided to study the passé simple, which is basically the most useless thing you can do and still feel productive. The "value" of the passé simple, according to my host family, is that it is used when you’re talking about something that has happened in the past that "doesn’t have an effect on the present". Of course, by definition, if you’re talking about it, it has an effect in the present. Confused? So am I. But at least I can conjugate the fuckers.

Third: yesterday I got frustrated during one of my classes and swore at them in English. At first I was a little worried, but now I’ve had time to reflect and I realize that it’s actually pretty funny. They had Space Pinball 3d open for the third time or something like that, and I said, "What are you fucking kids doing? Close that shit." It was a Francophone class, so in all likelihood they weren’t able to figure out what I meant exactly, but they understood "close". After that I emitted French that probably meant something like "If I find you with games again, I will teach the Discipline Master. This is not a card game. I am very angry."

Fourth: today I watched an English class. The English teachers are encouraged to talk only in English and only respond to English. I watched Rose and she was totally awesome. She caught a kid with headphones and sent him to the Discipline Master, and when the other kids laughed, she said "I don’t think it is funny. He will not be able to learn English. I think it is sad." One other time, she decided to move a student, and she said, "I think you should move up front. I think you will learn better in front."

Maybe these are things that don’t seem funny unless you’ve tried to teach a class. Me and Peter thought they were great.

Today I only had one class, which was a lab class, and I think it went pretty damned well. I actually got a couple of important points across:

• Try it and see what happens!
• You just read your notes aloud and the answer is in there! Listen to yourself!

Lastly: last night I had a dream that I put on a ton of weight all over. Kind of unnerving. Resolved to resume my exercises.

Today was my first day of teaching. I had one hour of lecture and two hours of lab. I am exhausted.

I prepared fairly well I think; I was only a few minutes under on my lecture. But the students got a lot further in the lab than I expected. There were a few students who had weird situations — one somehow set her text color to white and couldn’t figure out why the text wasn’t coming. "Monsieur! Ça ne donne plus." (It isn’t giving any more.) [It’s because the background is also white, and she couldn’t see the results.]

Right now I’m utterly exhausted. Moi, je ne donne plus aussi.

And the worst part is that (like Jessica says) today was just the first day. We’re all like, "Yay, we did it!" but we have to do it over and over again for two more years.

I guess I should consider what I’m going to teach next time, based on lab sessions. Number one: Undo. It solves so many problems.

I only have one class tomorrow, but I have forgotten which.

The hard part is that the students will not get it but not really explain how they are not getting it.

I have been reading Round Two Cameroon, a volunteer who is finishing her term of duty. She was involved in a partnership with a charity called Books for Africa that ended up with a ton of books coming out here and being distributed to a bunch of different schools/libraries. I know a bunch of people stateside have been looking for a charity like this.

I’m looking through my lesson notes and there are a lot of things I didn’t realize. There’s just so much that needs to be explained here about how a computer and how software works. The curriculum covers stuff like "Inserting a graph" and "Printing" but really that’s just a cover for "How do we use mice" and "How do cursors work". Today a student asked me how to remove the cursor from her document — which is kind of a legitimate question, because it’s distracting if you’re trying to read.

There’s just a ton of basic groundwork stuff that we take for granted as computer users because we’ve been playing with the damned things for so long. It’s like trying to talk about rainbows with someone who wears sunglasses all the time — they’ll get it if you explain it enough, but they need you to explain everything. And critical thinking is really missing. I asked them how to guess whether I had gained or lost weight based on some random numbers I generated for my "weight" and they had no idea. Maybe I should have given them more time.

My first impression is that I suck at being a teacher. Maybe I do, maybe I don’t; I don’t feel like it’s "hard", just a huge pain in the ass. I don’t enjoy it, it’s not fun, I don’t have passion for it. Maybe it will be more fun as things go on, as I learn the class, as my students build in confidence and skill. But today is one of those days when I think about failing out.

I have lessons tomorrow: two cinquieme classes (roughly 7th grade?) and one troisieme class (roughly 9th?). They number the grades in reverse here, so that "first grade" (première) is at the top. Well, in the Francophone system — the Anglophone system is the reverse, so Form I is the first class you take at a lycée (roughly junior high school + high school). Oh, and after Form V is "Lower Sixth" and after that is "Upper Sixth"; correspondingly, after "première" is "terminale". Having fun yet?

Here are the lessons I am planning on giving. The first one is a lab session, which should be pretty easy. I’m not going to translate these unless there’s a demand.

Cinquieme: Salle d’informatique.

Objectives: A l’aide d’un ordinateur en état de foncionnement, les élèves devront utiliser correctement au moins 10 touches du clavier; ouvrir Microsoft Word, saisir une phase au kilomètre et quitter Microsoft Word. [N.B. I have no idea what it means to "type a phase to a kilometer"; I’m going to fake it.]

Activities: Students will:

1. Démarrent leurs ordinateurs.
2. Ouvrent Microsoft Word.
3. Saisissent la phrase suivante: «J’étais à un cours de vacances pendant 2010.»
4. S’il y a les autres dans vos groupes, donnez le clavier à les autres, qui vont saisir: «Ça était très informatif!»
5. [S’il y a assez de temps:] Sauvegardent le document. Pour nom, choisissent le nom «pc_5e_3sem_NOM».
6. Changent de la couleur du texte. Sauvegardent encore une fois.
7. Quittent Microsoft Word. [Disez «non» quand il demande si vous voulez sauvegarder le document. S’il y a une autre question, disez aussi «non».]
8. Arrêtent l’ordinateur.

Cinquieme. 2. Les périphériques d’entrée.

Question. Comment est-ce qu’on contrôle une voiture? Comment est-ce que la voiture decide où elle va? (1 min.)

Question. Comment est-ce qu’on contrôle un ordinateur? (1 min.)

Ecrivez. Alors, ces périphériques sont les périphériques d’entrée.

Definition. Un périphérique d’entrée est un appareil ou un «organe» qui permet de rentrer des informations dans l’unité centrale. Quelquefois, les informations sont des instructions du utilisateur. (5 min.)

Exemples: le clavier et la souris sont périphériques d’entrée. (1 min.)

Question. Est-ce qu’un moniteur un périphérique d’entrée? Pourquoi? (1 min.) Et un appareil numerique? (1 min.)

Section: 2.1. Clavier.

Ecrivez. Il existe plusieurs types de claviers dont les plus connus sont: AZERTY (systéme francophone) et QWERTY (systéme anglophone). (1 min.)

Notre salle d’informatique a deux types du clavier AZERTY — alors, il faut être vigilant.

[Temps.] Ecrivez. Le clavier reçoit une pression qui est transmise à travers le microprocesser au systéme d’exploitation, sous forme d’un signal électrique. (3 min.)

Ecrivez. Compartiments. Les touches d’un clavier sont groupées en compartiments. (1 min.)

Quelquefois il y aura les compartiments absent, par exemple parce que il n’y a pas assez d’espace. Ça n’est pas grave.

Questions? (15 minutes in.)

Section: 2.1.1. Le pavé alphanumerique.

Ecrivez: La touche «tab» ou «tabulateur» ou «tabulation» est utilisée pour mettre l’espace et aussi pour bouger le curseur dans un formulaire. (2 min.)

Ecrivez: La touche «Caps lock» ou «Verr maj» permet de bloquer la majuscule. Si on appuye cette touche, la désactive en appuyant une deuxième fois. (2 min.)

Ecrivez: La touche «Shift» ou «Maj» permet d’ecrire des lettres en majuscule ou tout un caractere au-dessus d’une touche. (2 min.)

On peut ecrire les lettres en majuscule ou les caracteres au-dessus jusqu’a on desserre la touche «Shift».

Ecrivez: La touche «Contrôle» est utilisée pour effectuer des commandes en raccourci. Elle permet aussi d’exécuter quelques fonctions alternatives. (2 min.)

Ecrivez: La touche «Alt Gr» permet d’écrire les troisièmes caractères lorsqu’ils existent. (2 min.)

Question. Comment introduit-on le nombre «8»? (5 min.) Le trait «_» (ou «souligner»)? Le trait «» (ou anti-slash)?

Ecrivez: La «barre d’espacement» permet d’introduire un espace entre les mots. (1 min.)

Ecrivez: La touche «Entrée» ou «Enter» ou «OK» permet au moins de trois choses: – de mettre fin à un ligne lors de la saisie; – d’accepter un choix; – d’exécuter des fonctions dans certains logiciels. (5 min.)

Ecrivez: La touche «Backspace» ou «Retour arrière> permet de déplacer le curseur en effaçant la lettre qui se trouve à sa derrière. (2 min.)

Questions? (34 minutes in.)

Section: 2.1.2. Le pavé de fonctions.

Ecrivez: Les touches de fonctions permet d’envoyer les commandes en raccourci. Le rôle de chaque fonction dépend des différents logiciels utilisés. (3 min.)

Section: 2.1.3. Le pavé numerique.

Ecrivez: Ces touches permettent d’entrer rapidement les nombres lorsque la touche «Num Lock» ou «Verr Num» est activée. (2 min.)

Section: 2.1.4. Le pavé de défilement du curseur.

Ecrivez: Ces touches permettent le déplacement du curseur. (1 min.)

Question: Quand «Verr Num» n’est pas activée, que font les touches du pavé numerique? (1 min.)

Ecrivez: Les touches du pavé numerique ont les fonctions similaires que ceux du pavé de défilement du curseur quand «Num Lock»/«Verr Num» n’est pas activée. (3 min.)

Les touches qui suivent ont des fonctions différentes qui dépend du logiciel. Nous parlons de ceux qui est utilisée en traitement du texte.

Ecrivez: La touche «Delete» ou «Del» ou «Suppr» permet d’effacer les caractères qui se trouvent après le curseur. (2 min.)

Ecrivez: La touche «Inser» permet d’écrire une lettre en écrasant l’autre quand elle est activée. (2 min.)

Ecrivez: La touche «Fin» ou «End» permet d’aller à la fin d’une ligne. (1 min.)

Ecrivez: La touche «Debut» ou «Home» permet d’aller au début d’une ligne. (1 min.)

Ecrivez: La touche «Page up» permet de dérouler l’écran vers le haut rapidement. (1 min.)

Ecrivez: La touche «Page down» permet de dérouler l’écran vers le bas rapidement. (1 min.)

Questions? (52 minutes in.)

Rest of time: chalkboard practice. Pick a volunteer to be the user. Edit some words.

Troisième. 1 suite. (Introduction au tableur Excel.)

Exercises à corriger?

Advice on how to operate a computer.

1. On peux soulever le souris si on n’a pas assez d’espace pour bouger le pointeur où on veut.

   Paper practice. (5 min.)

2. Quand on saisit quelquechose, où parait le texte?

   Pour saisit un calcul, il faut bouger le curseur avant de commencer.

   Paper practice. (5 min.)

Board: Nombres.

Question: Est-ce que j’ai perdu du poids, ou non? (6 min.)

Section: 1.9. Les fonctions graphiques.

Ecrivez: Excel a un grapheur intégré qui représente des données introduites dans une feuille de calcul sous la forme de graphes. (2 min.)

Section: 1.9.1. Créer un graphe.

Ecrivez: Pour créer un graphe, on marque d’abord les données à representer avec les noms des champs. On clique ensuite sur le bouton «Graphique» de la barre d’outils ou on exécute les commandes «Insertion/Graphique», puis on clique sur «Suivant» et enfin sur «Terminer». (5 min.)

DO: Look around the room. Are people putting guillemets correctly?

Questions? Tout le monde a compris? (25 minutes in.)

Paper practice. Comment est-ce que je peux créer un graphe ici? (10 minutes.)

Section: 1.9.2. Types de graphes.

Par défaut, Excel crée une représentation graphique sous forme d’histogramme.

Ecrivez: Excel peut créer les graphes histogramme, barres, courbes, secteur, et nuage des points. On peut choisir le type du graphe après on a choisi «Insertion/Graphique», avant de cliquer «Suivant». (5 min.)

Je ne suis pas sur de cela, en fait, mais il y a un fonction pour changer le type d’un graphe.

Section: 1.10. La mise en page.

Question. Qu’est-ce que cela veut dire, «mise en page»?

Ecrivez: La mise en page consiste à choisir les marges, le type, et l’orientation du papier. Pour faire la mise en page, il suffit de cliquer sur le menu «Fichier», puis choisir l’option «Mise en page» et de répondre aux questions. (5 min.)

Board: Draw an example format-page window.

• Format [A4, etc.]
• Largeur []
• Hauteur []
• Orientation
  • [] portrait ????? [portrait]
  • [] landscape ????? [paysage]
• Marges
  • A gauche: [2] cm
  • A droite: [2] cm
  • Au dessus: [2] cm
  • Au dessous: [2] cm

(5 min.)

Questions? (50 minutes in.)

Section: 1.11. L’impression.

Ecrivez: En cliquant sur le menu «Fichier» et sur l’option «Imprimer», on peut imprimer la page sélectionnaire (où se trouve le curseur) ou toute la feuille de calcul. (3 min.)

Someone organized for tonight a "Pirate Party" which included everyone bringing their external hard drives and swapping stuff. Naturally it turns out that my Western Digital Passport broke sometime between leaving New York and now. Naturally I disassembled it with some force, and was left with a problem and some pieces. The problem is that the USB connector for the SATA drive broke off somehow. You suck, Western Digital. But now I have a SATA drive which should work fine, only I don’t really have a way to plug it into anything, since all I have are laptops. So, if someone wants to send me a SATA to USB connector, or a cute SATA/USB enclosure, that would be nice. Alternately, I may be able to swap in the SATA drive for the hard drive of one of my laptops, and do Computer Science to get contents onto the other one.. but that’s not really a convenient storage mechanism, and that’s what I’m looking for right now.

Realized also that there’s a bunch of stuff I wanted to copy over onto this machine that never made it over, no idea why.

During the course of the party, I blew away a bunch of files from my old job. It’s only July, and the project was supposed to end in August? But I still wonder how it’s going. (Prediction: shittily.) I would have liked, ideally, to archive some part of these files, but realistically I’m never gonna look at them again. Souvenirs: we had a shitty SVN server, when what we needed was a good Git server. svnsync was useless. We had gigabytes of VD files in a Dropbox account, when what we needed was a solid generic technical/visual design. We had PHP, which can basically ruin any project.

Placed a letter in the envelope marked "Mails with Cameroonian Stamps" at the party, only three days after writing it. Going to check to see how many days it takes before that envelope gets emptied. It may get a free ride to Yaounde before actually having to deal with the post system. Hopefully it will get to Gus before the end of August, when she moves out of her current place.

During the party, knocked over and broke a mostly empty bottle of Whiskey Black which I had been drinking. Deeply upsetting. Maybe I ought to stick to Fanta from now on.

After the party, walked Rose and Jeneca back to their houses with Timothy and (wisely chosen by Timothy) Timothy’s host brother. No incidence of anything resembling trouble, but still glad to have had the backup just in case. Timothy and his brother walked me back afterwards.

Now I’m trying to move some fairly large files that I acquired tonight over to my personal media player without much luck. I’m about to call it a night and just move it to a USB key or an SD card. Still haven’t started my lesson plans for Monday. Wish you were here.