April 17, 2008
I am a huge fan of Plasq program Skitch. The versatility of this program has been documented across the web, so I won’t detail it here. It was the usefulness of Skitch that led me to try out Doozla. Doozla’s a vector design program for kids. It includes premade pictures to color in; think of a 21st century coloring book. It also has a great feature to uses the webcam to import a picture (a la a PhotoBooth-type interface). It looks like it would be a great program for the kids to use for school. My only gripe is the proprietary file format that only works with Doozla. I can bring up a print screen and export it to a pdf and then convert to a jpeg, but where’s the fun in that. I’m striving to have the work the students create at school be in the most open / available format possible. For now Doozla, doesn’t pass that test.
Update: I just received an email from Mathieu at Plasq. Doozla is preparing some export options for their next release 1.2.0. It seems they are aiming for some of the same functionality as Skitch, but with a more kid-friendly interface.
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April 3, 2008
I understand that both Apple and Microsoft are evil. I find their maliciousness manifests itself in different ways. While Apple locks me with DRM’ed iTunes tracks, AppleTV, iPhone, and integrated iLife apps, I’m willing to forgive them. Its like having a lover who you know will eventually screw you over, but you keep going back to her, thinking this time it will be different or somehow it was your fault. Maybe its because the apps are pretty. Maybe its Steve’s reality distortion field.
Microsoft is like a coworker that you abhor, but have to work with anyways. Think Lumbergh from Office Space. I’ve tried to escape their icy grip, but Microsoft keeps pulling me back in. Since I’ve moved the MacBook Pro, I’ve tried like hell to use Bean and Google Docs more frequently. The rub lies in the fact so many documents I’ve created are in the MS Office black hole, never to escape. Now that I’m making a system image for our new MacBooks at school, do I dare not include MS Office in the image? Would there be wide scale revolt? Or would there be other brave revolutionaries that are willing to throw off the yoke of brutal MS oppression? (ed. Please note note the slight hyperbole was thrown in for effect)
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April 1, 2008
Alex King has posted on the compatibility of certain WordPress plugins. Now if someone could get PhotoDropper working for me so I don’t need to rely on Skitch and my webcam, I would really appreciate it. It is getting harder and harder being lazy.
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April 1, 2008
I just upgraded to Wordpress 2.5. The admin interface has all the web 2.0 goodness. The Cleaker Theme is chugging along pretty well, woo hoo. The PhotoDropper plugin is kaput, d’oh. I’ll be putting it through its paces, but so far so good.
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March 11, 2008
After a week of waiting, my MacBook Pro is finally here. It has been five years since I last plunked down some change to get a G4 Powerbook. The G4’s hard drive had less than a gigabyte in space, the lower RAM slot was fried, and the warped case would pop out the power adapter every five minutes. What’s funny is the MacBook Pro looks almost identical. The real differences are under the hood. Compare this to the old laptop:
- 2.6 GHz processor vs. 1.5 GHz
- 2 GB of RAM (I’ll be upgrading to 4 GB soon) vs. 512 GB
- 230 GB of Hard disk space (about 214 GB is usable) vs. 80 GB
With all these additional features, I am debating loading my laptop with some additional software. In particular, I’m wondering if I should upgrade the Microsoft Office and Adobe Design Suites. Both software suites cost a fair bit money. I also tend to find them a bit bloated for my needs. I’m debating whether I can dodge Adobe by using Pixelmator and VectorDesigner. I think I’ll be able to get by with Bean and iWork instead of Office. I know iWork is a bit bloated, but its integration with iLife and lower price give it some clear advantages. I’m beginning to question each application and document I put on my hard drive. Like any diet, the trouble isn’t losing the weight, it’s keeping it off.
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February 23, 2008
photo credit: Francois Schnell
I just dropped $1750 on 5 Asus EeePC laptops. I’m hoping to get some bang for my buck with this purchase. I’ll be distributing these in my seventh grade classroom. The laptops will primarily be used for web browsing and document editing. Since I’ve been making more resources web-based, these laptops should be able to handle most of the computer work in class. This is my first attempt using Linux with the kids. I’ve used on Linux on and off for a few years now, however, its never been my primary operating system. I wonder how the students will do with the switch. I’m hoping that they pick up the UI pretty quickly. With any luck, I’ll be able convince several other classrooms to make the switch as well.
I’ll most likely be installing the Eeexubuntu operating system instead on the pre-installed Xandros OS. Eeexubuntu is the low-power variant of the Linux OS Ubuntu. I’m more familiar with this flavor of Linux. The EeeUser Forums have been an invaluable resource for mucking around the EeePC.
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February 2, 2008
Well, I got a little blowback from the teachers. Apparently they didn’t like competing against each other for classroom laptops. One teacher replied that she maintained her website because it was part of her job, not because of the laptop reward. It was interesting that the grade level website were maintained more frequently over the course of the contest. Maybe direct competition isn’t the way to go.
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January 19, 2008
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