Monday, July 28, 2008

in 21 days

As I'll be teaching a basic Java/C#/VB.NET course, does anybody have a three week curriculum I'd be able to follow? Like a "Java in 21 days", preferably with exercises and solutions?

Monday, July 21, 2008

Email subscriptions enabled!

Type in your email on the right to subscribe to updates in this blog. For now, that will be easier than managing a separate email list, and you should be able to unsubscribe as you wish. We suspect that it'll be easier than you checking up on the website at random intervals. The email subscriptions are brought to you by Feedburner, which is owned by Google, so those concerned with privacy of your email address may rest a bit easier knowing that your address is unlikely to be harvested by the same company that already hosts many of those email addresses (gmail).

Also note the Atom/RSS options at the bottom (for those of you familiar with that technology of pushing updates to your mobile devices or web portals)

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Laptop and childrens books wanted

Doesn't need to be fast. Only requirements:
  • at least 192 mb of RAM (or if less RAM, can be expanded beyond that)
  • USB port
  • Power supply capable of accepting 220-240V
  • VGA-out
If we could borrow it for 8 months, that would be great. Or else you can donate it to us which we'd then donate to various schools in Africa, and we may be able to get a tax receipt for you.

For the childrens picture books for ages 6-9, the books must be
  • softcover books (easier for us to carry)
  • must be culturally neutral. No images of North American lifestyle (ie. houses, caucasian people, etc)
The books will be donated to the schools in Africa.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

online donations

If you've donated online, please send us an email to make sure we know about the donation. Turns out there is some trouble getting the donations registered to the members' accounts.

Monday, July 14, 2008

Preparations..

Whoo Hoo!! 26 more days to go. Just in case you're wondering what we're up to d

Highlights of our presentation(if you couldn't come):
- Tim got to practice his teaching skills (which means Dora will have less than a month to train him into the teacher nobody forgets)
- Dora deep fried plantains (fancy African word for bananas) for the first time, and they tasted pretty good!
- Seeing good friends that we haven't seen in a while

Just in case you're wondering what we're up to these days:

- Tim's still working while Dora finally gets to sleep in a bit (her internal alarm clock of 6:30 has finally switched off since TOCing ended a week and a half ago)
- moving some of our belongings out in preparation to rent out our place to a friend
- errands errands errands...(still working out flight details, visas, taking care of finances

PLUG:

- I'm hoping to find someone to take over my Telus contract (I'm still being billed by the second).
- My Scout group will be in survival mode until we return next April, so if ANYONE is interested in helping out, please let me know. They meet at 4:30 every Thursday during the school year.

FAQ

Some people have asked whether we need donations of items to bring down. We do know of computer things and children's books that they have need of, HOWEVER, we're still figuring out our luggage restrictions, so we'll let you know later.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Cheque or credit card

Our friends have been asking how they can support us financially while we volunteer to teach in Africa:
1. Cheque. Make it out to either "SIM Canada" or "CIM Canada". Only they can issue tax receipts. In either case, write our names in the Memo field.
2. Credit card through SIM's secure website. https://www.sim.ca/donationformsecurep89.php . Make sure you enter the names "Timothy Chu and Dora Ho" in step 3.