The Journal of Chemical Educaton publishes an educational CD-ROM called Chemistry Comes Alive!, full of information about chemistry and videos of experiments and demonstrations (17 at that link – more, they say, on the CD).
In Ice Bomb, a cast iron “bomb” exploded when the water inside it rapidly freezes in a bath of dry-ice/acetone slush. Good use of video for instruction, and very high quality QuickTime.
via BoingBoing.——-
A nice free add-on for controlling audio I/O on Mac OS X, via Macintouch:BetterSound is a Mac OS X audio preference panel. Unlike the standard Mac OS X Sound panel, it displays both input and output options in a single panel and adds a stereo input VU meter, stereo input gain controls, stereo output volume controls, input mute and monitor buttons, and other features. BetterSound is free for Mac OS X 10.2.
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Miraz Jordan of Wellington, New Zealand, hosts a page I’ve been looking for: Eudora Tips for Macintosh. I use Eudora because I don’t like the way Apple’s Mail and Microsoft’s Entourage create proprietary databases for the messages. They work well in their way, and they integrate with their respective calendar apps wonderfully, but I don’t want to get stuck with their formats. Eudora keeps things in text formats – which means it’s much easier to search messages, export to other programs, keep archives smaller, and so on. Miraz’s site archives the weekly tips she emails out to subscribers.
She’s got other Tips sites. If they’re as good as her Eudora Tips then I’ll be all over them. They’re listed at MacTips.info:
Within NetNewsWire, I just posted a News Item and then deleted it. Nice control, with more speed. I couldn’t edit it, though. A bug or an incorrect expectation from me? We’ll see.——-
At last – an authoritative, step-by-step, hardware-specific guide for video capture on an existing PC, from the quite articulate gearheads at Ars Technica. The steps are many, the explanations thorough, but for the technically-minded video instructor or student, it’s a worthwhile read.——-
I’m doing the pre-conference shuffle (though I am not going to NAB – shucks).
I did have the chance to evaluate some of the entries for the third iCademy Awards, part of Arizona State University’s Microcomputers in Education Conference. I saw some very good student-produced videos. A remarkable effort. Go and see what is going on – this is cutting edge education, but it doesn’t require cutting edge tools anymore! The cameras and edit-equipped computers are very affordable.
——-Here’s the heart of downtown Atlanta this morning, just a block away from Georgia State’s College of education.
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Think hard today.
Think about leadership, and think about risk, and think about mistakes, and think about costs.
Think about truth. Think about justice. Think about war and peace. Think really really hard. Think about our families and friends in the military. Think about families and friends you don’t know. Think about families and friends in other countries. Think about what you can control and what you can’t. Think about consequences.
Then, if it suits you, pray.
——-I have to implement this. Thanks, Jake, and everyone else at UserLand. Let’s see what the teachers and kids do with it.——-
LAFCPUG has posted notes on their February meeting, which coincided with the Creative COW convention. Many good tips, including an excellent outline of when to use OfflineRT in Final Cut Pro, a number of effects demos, the usual stump-the-gurus, and a look at the equipment and workflow Walter Murch uses as he edits Cold Mountain. A Civil War-era film, it stars Nicole Kidman, Jude Law, Natalie Portman and Renee Zelwigger. All talented and all too pretty for the parts, if you ask me. I liked the book a lot. Where is Chris Cooper when you need him? He was terrific in Adaptation, and Lone Star, and many others. Would have been perfect for this part . . . but I will go see it, knowing Murch did his work with the same tool I use. Geeky, I know.——-