Geek-N-Out

Presented on Saturday.

http://www.cedarville.edu/event/eqrc/

Gspot codec identifier will tell you what codec is used by a video (regardless if you can play it) and if you have the codec installed. Nice for troubleshooting.

Scenario: I had an avi that would play in VLC but would not import into Movie Maker.  This told me about the DX50 that I needed, plugged it into google and downloaded it from the codec’s home page @ http://www.divx.com/divx/

Another codec identifier is http://avicodec.duby.info/  Haven’t tried it.

1. Find Music: -inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:”index of” +”last modified” +”parent directory” +description +size +(wma|mp3) “Counting Crows”

2. Find Videos: -inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:”index of” +”last modified” +”parent directory” +description +size +(mpg|wmv) “chapelle”

3. Find Ebooks: -inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:”index of” +”last modified” +”parent directory” +description +size +(pdf|doc) “george orwell 1984″

I think I’m going to look into buying a new guitar amp. Main debate at the moment is to go with the 1×12 or the head and buy a 2×12 cabinet.  hmm….

So there I am, setting up a Wimba meeting for a group and it doesn’t connect properly.  Vas ist das? me thinks…  So I go to the java site and follow their download and install.  Java updates have been known to be a pain but I do it anyway.  It actually gives me a prompt stating that there is a website that will show me how to disable the automatic updates.  Is Sun playing nice?  So I go to the page for the fun of it and find that its only a search menu with no information on how to disable the updates. It doesn’t work.  So I start writing this post, get to the point where I’m going to insert the link for the page and it works!?! Crazy.  So I go through the requirements and it takes me to a tab that says “Java Last Updated on 5/19/09.”  I click on update (remember I just updated to get this whole ball rolling) and it says I have the latest version.  Silliness.  A virus or java is dumb.  I’m going with the latter.

So which of the conferencing solutions can I implement into Moodle?  I know a couple of them work but I’m pretty sure that I would need to have direct access to the actual installation directory.  I’d really like to see some of these LMS/CMS (which one are we calling it again?) stepped up a notch but it takes so much time.  People wonder why schools just take the easy route and purchase one system for everyone to use i.e. blackboard.

I have to admit, I was rather excited about the new iPad.  But there’s just one problem.  Its a ripoff.  Why?  No USB.  You would have to be blind as a bat or just another wanna be geek to waste your money on this.  NO USB!  Why?  Because with a USB port we don’t need to buy the upgraded version.  Lets see…whats the price differences

So let me get this straight, $200 dollars more for 48 GB of memory?  Are you serious? It’s pretty obvious why American kids are so far beyond the rest of the world.  Their parents and schools know NOTHING about manufacturing and are slaves to media marketing techniques.  Let me guess, you get great reception on that iPhone and it plays TV great too?  Don’t even get me started on the lousy quality of Hulu.  Hulu – Watch your favorites. Anytime. For free.   Free?  If having lousy quality is your definition of free then take it.  Oh, I have an upper-end creme-de-la-creme ATT U-Verse account so don’t try my internet stinks bit on me.  If you think it works just fine then you obviously have low standards and haven’t received proper HD TV at home.

Ok…back to reality, sorry about that!

So Macromedia Flash was the new kid on the block back in 1999.  Start the Flash revolution! I wish I could find the old flash video, it was really pretty good.  Now we have Silverlight by Microsoft! Just another download for you to install.  Let’s take a look at some of the products being created:

and Google Street View.  I don’t have to time to incorporate these tools into my website I’m afraid.  Going to have to take a simpler route most likely.

So I need a new cell phone but need to justify spending an extra 5-6 bucks a month.  What services are repetitive at the moment? An extra hosting account!  I’ll just run it at home & save 7 bucks a month which will be sent over to my cell phone bill =P

Here’s something I threw together for one of my courses. The actual assignment would have taken me 15 minutes so I did this instead.  I think it came out pretty good, maybe 8-10 hours of work.

11×17, 150 dpi, created with photoshop.  The background is wood sample (google images) with a brown grosgrain ribbon (some fabric website) with a grey tweed fabric (some other fabric website).  The background is what really makes the whole thing work and provides a small suspension of disbelief.  The images have had a billion filters put on them with some other schnazzy effects.  What’s really interesting about it is that since the size is gargantuan, you have to zoom in (ctrl+ or ctrl & mouse wheel) which uncovers some interesting browser behaviors.  See, I sliced it up with photoshop so when you click on one of the 5 primary images it’ll pull up a new tab (or window depending on your puter) using a feature called ‘zoomify’ which is built into CS4.  In firefox, if you open a new tab, it remembers your zoom actions (annoying) but IE shows white lines where your slice lines are at but keeps the new tab data separate.  Both have their pros and cons and it just reiterates the need for these companies to stop trying to corner the market on browser functionality.  annoying to say the least.

So, you really want to start shopping online?  Ebay isn’t cutting it for you?  Craigslist is so, shall we say, local?

http://www.crazedlist.org/ is your answer.  But to get it to work you will have to modify some of your settings in firefox.  Don’t want to regedit?  try this one out in your address bar. about:config

You will have to hunt down the setting for network.http.sendRefererHeader and mod it to 1 instead of 2.  change it back when your done if your paranoid like that.  there’s also an RSS feed option if youd rather.