Home Learning

Love Home Learning!

With internet, tons of educational materials can be found.

However, a good learning relies on the individual to know what he needs and should study, puts in the effort to source them, and importantly puts in the discipline and time to have  satisfactory results.

Before jumping into these courses, i personally think it is most crucial know why and what is the purpose of life ; To know the truth of the universe. Rather than wasting immeasurable time and efforts before realizing what one’s wishes and efforts are a total waste of time and even completely against your good intentions and altruistic philosophical beliefs. Take some time off and figure out what is the purpose of life and how to know the truth of the universe, read widely if you must, but more importantly, be very objective (non-biased) and differentiate truths, half-truths, mediocrity , wishful and unrealistic thinking and complete utter nonsense and lies.

I believe if one is completely altruistic in his intentions, totally open-minded, objective and unbiased, flawless in reasoning, he or she may have the opportunity to know what is the ultimate attainment, where and which is the best path to undertake. This is the start, but the most important one. Because a journey of a thousand miles may begin with a single step, but what’s the point of taking even half a step that is unfruitful or against a good belief .

Assuming everyone has successfully completed the first important search (you have been warned and reminded!), now is the time to take actions to walk towards that goal. Bearing in mind people have different capacities and dispositions, please consider if below recommendations are in accordance with your own.

In line with the altruistic belief , i like to look with resources which are free and beneficial in the long run, hopefully wholesome in aspects. They are selected and chosen for their own merits and quality of excellence.

Take a look and have fun learning.

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Quality and excellent learning sites:-

1. www.smart.fm – Learn the Japanese language easily and effectively free! Defferent levels available. May even beat paid resources. Abundant materials and learning based on research!
2. fivepencilmethod.com is a high quality pencil drawing course. This free online course is taught by a professional and sincere artist. Amazing beauty!
3. rubylearning.org offers a free Ruby core course. Learn programming in your own comfort and guided course without even paying for it. Why Ruby? It’s concise  and productive.

Happy Learning! May all be happy!

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Others under consideration or evaluation:-

1. Homeandlearn.co.uk – Free Certification for computer courses
2. SQLCourse.com – Interactive Online SQL Training for beginners
3. Zebrakeys.com – Free Piano Lessons, learn to play with or without a piano/organ!

Learn and Use Linux

Why free OS (Operating System) ?

Based on an altruistic philosophy. Free sharing of knowledge to all as a way of humanity.

Why Linux?

The native and core principle of Linux is based on a free GPL Operating System, and many derivatives and distros of the original linux adopted the same free philosophy. Operating System or OS in short and layman’s term is the main program that tells a computer how to work and run, before all other skills or applications are added above.

Another great advantage of Linux is that its free philosophy has literally span into its applications, meaning more than 10,000+ applications are all free for usage! Moreover, because of its excellent concepts and design, it is relatively secure and virus-free!

Tested

Some of the Linux OS that was downloaded, installed, tested or configured included Ubuntu 6&7 &8, Gentoo, Zenwalk, Sidux, Arch, Puppy & Muppy & Teenpup2008 & Lighthouse, DSL, Feather, gOS, PCLinuxOS, OpenSUSE, Mandriva, PCLinuxOS & PCFluxOS & Tinyme, Foresight, LinuxMint, Fedora, Dreamlinux. Read more…

Distrowatch is one site that keeps an overview of latest releases and ratings ranking.

Based on personal experience, these are the recommendations, which may shave days or weeks or even months off your Linux installation time.

What to look for?

To evaluate Linux, there are 7 simple, basic considerations for a newbie

1. Easy Graphical Installation
2. Working Drivers
3. Fast Boot time and/or uses little or moderate memory
4. Stable enough & reboot back to before shutdown
5. Common Apps, Firefox, utube and Synaptic ready
6. Attractive or even intuitive desktop
7. LiveCD for demo and installation if wish so.
8. Even better, can be installed and use from a USB device

Sounds simple? Not at all! Many Hours can be spent just getting drivers to work, indefinitely. Which is also the reason the many Linux OSes are tested.

How to install a Linux OS?

To shortcut your installation  experience and save your time: If you are running windows and wish to run Linux as an application and saves data in it as well. I consider this one of,if not the easiest way, to test or use Linux. You may skip below sections if that’s all you need.

1. Download and install the free Vmware player
2. Then go and download any Linux flavor of your choice from linhost.info. Mint Linux / Ubuntu / PCLinuxOS / Fedora are all good starts. Remember the username and password.
   
3. Download and install 7-zip free.
   
4. Extract the Linux downloaded and double-click the 2kb vmware virtual machine configuration file with a graphical icon, and Voila!

That’s it! But if you wish to do the old fashion way, read on…

The old usual way: Download an image of the Linux in a .iso format. Then burn the image on a CD-R(W) with a free software such as InfraRecord. This is know as a LiveCD. You may wish to partition your hardisks e.g free, grahical and easy Easus Personal edition,  so you can have different OS in different partitions. Make the system boot from the CD in your system Bios settings, usually with pressing a DEL or some key/s after power on. Modern distros usually install a boot manager to help you boot into different OS. If you like the feel of the LiveCD, you may choose to install into your Hardisk then. Be sure to backup your data elsewhere before doing this.

Here’s the recommendations that works easily for me out of the many:-

• Fedora - Meets most or all the cuts. One of the Simplest that works.
• PCLinuxOS – Also meets most or all of above requirements! Professional outlook.  Good and Simple.

If you have a fast and new computer that may boot from USB disk, and have a USB drive of about or more that 1 GB , Fedora live-usb creator is a breeze. For PCLinuxOS – head on to UNetbootin, a small windows program that helps to create a Live USB of your distro choice, more than 10 different ones! This is a fast and quick easy way to test if you like an OS without having to buy and burn CDs.

If you just wish to install only Ubuntu (a popular Linux OS) from and as a Windows application, without CD burning or USB, Wubi, safe & simple & free,  is the way to go!

If your computer is slow or old, and you are looking for just basic features to get your work done quick and easy without high expectations, you might want to burn these CDs:

1. Midiflux of PCFluxboxOS – Small, fast,  <350MB based on PCLinuxOS.
2. Muppy Linux, a pupplet with extensive applications installer based on the small and fast Puppy Linux. But again, hardware drivers issues beware and no synaptic. Muppy here if you do not wish to get PCFluxnoxOS for whatever reason.

Some and More

PCLinuxOS, who even has its own magazine site pclosmag,  is also recommended here with other Linux articles here at desktoplinux.wordpress.com Just as it says – ‘Radically Simple’. And works! There is also a business edition known as BEL, with servers, desktop releases downloads.

Ubuntu, a very popular distro but drivers or applications for sound or adsl may disappoint,  has an increasing number new derivatives, including :

• gOS - Attractive Mac-look
• Linux Mint – ‘light-green’
• #!CrunchBang – lightweight Openbox
• PC/OS – ‘ease of use’

Fsum Frontend is an open source, free,  GUI software to verify integrity of files, support with 96 algorithms including MD5 and sha1.

Learn Linux Commands Free

Linux nowadays are graphical but chances are you may need to customize, tweak to better suit your needs.

Learn Linux course here or an entertaining version (Gd)

Hope this helps.

Last Update: 9/12/08

Those links marked with (Gd) means that they are found to be really good for learning in terms of being fun, easy, attractive, interactive intuitive or well-prepared!

Note: This page is meant to just document some of the experiences with the downloads and does not represent others’ experience nor serve to disparage in any way. Please go ahead and test any above if you like. Some downloads are verified with MD5SUM before testing.

And thanks to all Linux developers for all your generous efforts!

Mental Arithmetic Competition Time! – HappyCare Daycare Centre’s Snaps! (Malaysia)

Attention to teachers and parents please visit Mental Arithmetics at Flikr here for the original album pictures. Or ninebeads.notlong.com for ease.

• Event: 9 Beads Mental Arithmetics – Nine Beads Regional Competition and Grading Test.

• Venue: A Primary school in Pandan Indah, Kuala Lumpur , Malaysia
• Date and Time : Morning of a sunny Sunday 26 August 2007 9:30am -12:30am
• Participation : 6 kids from Happy Care Daycare Centre participated in this event involving about 85 kids from various spots of KL.

Our ‘little’ smiling champions from HappyCare, all our participants received an award each!

Last but not least, Have Fun!

Some Information

If you are new to the abacus and mental arithmetics, you may be surprised to watch some kids actually doing large numbers mentally as you speak, and have answers at their fingertips once you stop. Now that is what happens when smart or average young kids learn mental arithmetics for couple of years. Most people refer to the Japanese Abacus when they are talking about abacus, which require the memorization of 34 formula to master it. Methods of learning have evolved, kids are taught to use both hands for writing and calculating the abacus, thus help develop both the left and right brain and enhance concentration and focus.

The 9 bead Mental Arithmetic – Another Breakthrough

Did i mention couple of years? Now with the 9 bead mental arithmetic the learning curve’s been slashed dramatically, kids may attain the same level of competency in just half a year! How is that possible? I call this Accelerated Mental Arithmetics Learning(AMAL). Well firstly, the abacus has been simplified to suit our modern understanding of number calculation and easily complements the school’s way of number teaching. It makes sense to adults and kids! Secondly, the relatively reduced or complete lack of formula memorization (compared to the previous 34 formulas) means that kids DO NOT need to memorize with lengthy painstaking effort. Well, learning should be fun!

Really faster? Yes, imagine younger kids with less learning duration testing for the same grading level as those studied for years.

And noticeable improvements in the kids’ general school studies too!

What is the ideal age to engage in mental arithmetics? 4-6 years old. A child’s brain development is very active between 0-6 years old according to research.

How many years does it take to attain proficiency? The 9 beads Mental Arithmetics course has a layout plan of about 2 years. Though it may be possible to continue upgrading thereafter.

It takes about 6 months for a kid to do mental arithmetics sums.

Grading generally comes after about 3 or 4 months of studying.

Kids may attend the competition shown in the pictures as soon as within 1-2 months of studying.

However, this course is one which relies on the teaching methodologies which the training teacher will learn on an on-going basis. Therefore, it may not be suitable for the buy-a-book-and-Learn readers.

May all have boundless intelligence!