CogBlogged from ‘April, 2006’

Not everyone can afford Camtasia and screencast like a pro. And it is PeeCee only. There are other ways to do simple presentations of how to do tasks on a computer. Someone named “djweinstein” has done some elegant tutorials on how to do things in Audacity, by posting them as a flickr set, which can then be viewed as a slideshow- here is a snapshot from time shift– a tutorial that “illustrates a technique for sequencing audio tracks using Audacity’s time shift tool.” Also in the mix is another one on Audacity Tutorial (Amplification/Normalization). It would appear to be as simple as to outline the list of steps in a process, do a screen shot for each, edit each image with some overlay text, upload in flickr, and arrange in a slide set. Nicely done, indeed. Simple, use an existing tool (flicr) in a nocely new way. Nicely done, djweinstein. [...]

I like this new job. My day started as early as normal, with the first chore (coffee making) and than a solid hour run to clear the mind. Then it was the tough choices. Which jeans to slip on? Or just lounge in boxers? Shave or not? (I took jeans and a shave, it is still early). Most of the dat was still getting things set up… the guy from Qwest was here early and got new phone lines set up, and I got the new office phone and fax machine hooked up and tested. Phone technology has always been a weakness of mine, but I’ve got most of the hang of a new multiline phone (one for the NMC number, another for the home line), speed dialing, speaker phone etc. Transferring calls is up there at the PhD level of phone usage. Got more needed software installed, checked out [...]

Frequent readers may know I have been a fan of the iRiver tiny MP3 players for their recording capability. I had purchased two for us in my last job, and just from a meeting last week, saw that another colleague at Maricopa had purchased one for doing some audio recording. See, the folks at iRiver ought to know how vast and powerful an influence I am ;-) I was eager to get one for my new job at the NMC- I very much like doing informal audio interviews. Browsing the iRiver iFP 700 series lines, I was dismayed at how many were no longer available, not at Amazon, nore at the iRiver store itself. I managed to get an order in for an iFP-795 (500 Mb) that was sold only as a bundle with a waterproof kit. But I had some problems with my new credit card (another long story [...]

As part of my transition, I have moved my Multibookmarklet Maker to the CogDogBlog domain. This was a tool I made back in January 2005, to allow one bookmarklet (browser bookmark tool) me able to be customized to allow posting to multiple web bookmark manager sites from one click, e.g. to add a given site in view to del.icoo.us, Simpy, Connotea, all in one click. This is so I can add new ones to the mix, such as was recently suggested to add Ma.gnolia. It is now there! Therefore, the URL formerly known as: http://cogdogblog.com/alan/marklet_maker.php is now re-directed to its new home: http://cogdogblog.com/code/marklet_maker.php Have no fear, I set up an htaccess redirect so the old URl auto-magically goes to the new one. To incorporate it into the CDB family, I linked the tool to a blog entry, and actually, the “Comments” hypertext goes to a comment field on the post [...]

Technically, this weekend, I was un-employed. Last week I was cleaning my office at Maricopa, digitizing old silly artifacts, tossing files, and trying to organize 14 years of web sites. Thursday, was an open house at our office, and I was overwhelmed by the people who paraded by to wish me well. And many gave nice cards, faux ocotillo, a clean mug, and other fun stuff. There’s never been so many people in my quiet office nor ever so much hugging and emotion. Thanks to everyone who came by, called, or e-mailed. On Friday, I turned in my keys and badge at the front desk of the Maricopa District Office, a place I “habituated” for almost 14 years. I had started in 1992 , a naive, geology graduate school dropout with some amount of technical skills on computers. What a long road it was! My last official duty was an [...]

Sometimes, or maybe frequently, a post here is done rather rashly, impulsively, and often stupidly wrong. I step in my own dog poop. There’s nice places on the net where nice people say only nice things. Not here. Hopefully reader glean my “style” as my way of trying to provoke discussion, controversy, and get a reaction. Hence. my new quip on the sidebar by my favorite philosopher: [The Blogosphere] is like a stew. If you don’t stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top. — mangled quote from Edward Abbey And doing so, I do manage to get things wrong, or to mis-represent things or just flame off like some overreactive barbecue grill. It’s my blog, my space, and my soapbox, but I also want to be quick to point out my own mistakes. This did happen in my tirade The [...]

flickr foto Spam!available on flickr The photographer of this Creative Commons licensed image “found this Spam can in a 7 Eleven in Santa María.” Yesterday, I was upstairs checking an issue on one of our web servers. I ran into Yosef, who is in charge of our email system. He was sharing the success of some newly installed spam interception software that truly had cut down a significant amount of inbound email spam. He said, “And it is interesting, we get all kinds of interesting statistics… like we know who at Maricopa gets the most spam.” So I as curious. Is it one of our executives? One of our vocal faculty? A student? And so I could not help but ask, “And who is number one?” He let out a hearty laugh, put his arm on my shoulder, and said, “Congratulations! it’s you!” I know I get a lot, but [...]

Because the movie about dentists was such a gag fest, I am tweaking my post title to lob some rocks at Apple. But before that, my long disclaimer. I love Apple products. I am one who’s “stone cold death grip” would be clamped on a PowerBook. I’ve done programming, multimedia, CD-ROMs, internet-ing all in the Mac OS for almost 20 years. I run all of my web server apps on a humble Powerbook. Back in 1987, I was hooked as a Geology grad student put in charge of a lab of new Mac Plus-es. I loved those little guys, even swapping floppies in and out, System 6, Word 3.0, a blazing fast 300 baud modem. Later, for some visualization research, I had primary access to the two color Mac IIs in the open lab- I could boot anyone off if I had some research to do. Then I moved up [...]

We are prepping the Spring 2006 issue of our MCLI iForum, the online publication we generate via WordPress. Actually “prepping” means begging, nagging, cajoling people to actually write something (rather than copy and paste a summary of events that already exist on other web sites). Anyhow, as a preview (not exactly linked from the front entrance), I am sharing an article that was garnered via a quick interview (e.g. turn on iRiver, click “record”) I did with Karen Schwalm, one of our true pioneering faculty who use technology effectively. Karen had attending my Podcasting, Schmodcasting demo in March and got inspired by Odeo to do some interesting online audio essays. She has done some interesting experiments in creating class materials, motivational pieces, and is trying to have our students use audio as a writing/revision tool. She’s put together some thoughts about the values (and challenges) of using audio as a [...]

And who keeps flicking the Gmail switch? I am reminded of the quote from the philosopher Steven Wright: In my house there’s this light switch that doesn’t do anything. Every so often I would flick it on and off just to check. Yesterday, I got a call from a woman in Madagascar. She said, “Cut it out.”