JBlogEditor is a Java-based weblog editor. It’s brand new, still in beta, and you’ll need the absolute latest Java 1.5 to run it. But it’s free free free, and it supports WordPress, so I’m interested. I’ll keep an eye on this. Thanks to Mac OS X Hints for the link.
Scripting News: 1/24/2006 Dave says,
To me, it’s like having my own personal morning news show. Amazing difference, it’s like blogging for the ears, finally.
I’d like to know more – I wrote and asked, and we’ll see what he says.
DV for Teachers has been around for five years now. Some of you have found it useful, I hope. Now that it’s on its own domain rather than hosted by Userland (to whom thanks, one last time, for 4.9 years of free hosting), I plan to make it more useful. Thanks for reading.
The hard drive died on the weekend I was going to put up a nice self-congratulatory 5th anniversary post. When I could get on line, it was with old backups on external Firewire drives. Just now, though, the PowerBook booted from a backup that I thought was corrupted. I had attached it to try and pull some files to update a previous backup I used all weekend, but the system booted from it, and so far it’s behaving.
Thanks to Mike for writing in, too.
I had a busy morning planned: get several tape-to-DVD dubs going (accomplished), work on details for a video project, work on upgades for the lab upgrades and my edit system, and all of this after doing the usual morning email.
Well.
The PowerBook’s responses just slowed to an unusable pace. Last night, all was good. This morning, it refused to go beyond the login window after waking up. I had to force shut-downs several times, tried permissions repairs, booting without login items. Now it seems Eudora may be the problem; I started typing this in a Camino browser window, and the system was responsive and behaving well. I then thought “I’ll get my email in the background.”
[...]
I’ve got to wipe the PowerBook’s drive and reinstall everything. Somthing got corrupted in the file structure – couldn’t make a backup with Restore in Disk Utility, couldn’t even copy straight to another Firewire drive. I am so glad I did a full backup a few days ago. Any email sent to me since the backup should still be on the server, so that’s okay. I’ll just be much much more careful before installing and playing with new apps in my main user account. After the setup, there’ll be accounts for testing, let me tell you. I dodged the worst of it today.
Dave Nagel of DMN posts a couple of Quick Tips for Motion: part one and part two.
You don’t want to keyframe every single curve because this can take a considerable amount of time and effort. So, instead, you’ll just use a Motion Path behavior to guide your object over the duration of your sequence.
More are likely to come.
Sometimes Jobs’ vaunted taste has a tin ear. “MacBook” is awkward to say. It lacks what I’d call “verbal ergonomics” because it has too many hard consonants too close together, and “MacBook Pro” is worse because it has no rhythm. “PowerBook” had rhythm.
Pronunciation aside, I’ve used three PowerBooks in the last few years, and this new one is suspect because a) it’s the first major reconfiguration of an Apple product – historically too many of their 1st generation configs, portables especially, seem to utilize their customers as beta testers – and b) the metal cases of the titanium and aluminum PowerBooks limit their wifi reception. I hoped that the new pro laptops from Apple, whatever their case material, would have “the best wifi reception of any portable” as a selling point Jobs would crow about. Poor to fair wifi performance is one of the PowerBook line’s dirty little secrets, though it’s not little or secret.
Sleek metal cases and the name “MacBook” are equivalents of the round Apple mouse of several years ago: coolness in Jobs’ eyes, not highest performance, über alles.
I tried to post this at Dave Winer’s WordPress blog, but it won’t post.
Just got in a JVC Everio GZ-MG30U camcorder that records video in MPEG on its internal 30GB hard drive… up to 7 hours, assuming there’s power (and a tripod, of course). I’ll start playing with it and the editing software that came with it in a week or so. The camera itself is tiny and lightweight. Like most inexpensive camcorders, its F1.2 to 2.8, f= 2.2 mm to 50 mm lens doesn’t provide a wide enough field of view, instead offering a 25x optical zoom. Too much zoom, not enough wide angle. Overall, though, if it proves durable, this will make recording student teaching easier for some of our students and cut back on tape issues. We’ll see how editable the MPEG file format is with the bundled CyberLink (Windows) and Capty DVD (Mac) software.
Whew. More power to them, I say. Tell your students about these guys: group101 films.
WHAT IS GROUP101?
It’s all about destroying inertia.
In January 2000, each of the six founding members of Group101Films committed to making one short film per month for six months, regardless of professional and personal schedule conflicts or funding problems or even general whining, however dramatic the particular whine might be.
We embraced the new digital filmmaking technologies along with the humbling realities of conceiving, writing, casting, rehearsing, shooting, and editing within a four week period with no funds, no studio, no time, and little or no crew, all the while maintaining our own working careers. And we embraced the reality of doing it again and again, every 30 days.
Ten Things Every New Mac User Should Know – The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)
Paul Stamatiou has compiled a list of ten things that every new Mac user should know. I like what he’s come up with and don’t disagree with any of them. I’d add to that list: Command-Tab is handy for switching between programs and the home/end keyboard keys don’t work the same way as in Windows. I might also add that the delete key is not a forward-delete key.
Make sure to read the comments for other good tips.