Archive for April, 2008

John mentioned this mosaic program during EdTechWeekly last night.  AndreaMosaic is free.  You provide the program a directory of your pictures and one target image.  Above is something I created today.  I pointed AM to the folder with our pictures from Disney’s Magic Kingdom.  As the target, I found a GIF of Mickey Mouse.  The program went to work and in a few minutes created a collage (click picture for higher resolution) of our Disney pictures in the shape of that famous mouse.

The big question is whether or not my image is a violation of copyright law.  I know the image of Mickey Mouse is protected by the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act.  But what about my pictures arranged in the shape of Mickey?

The next time you use the Google, add this to the end of your search URL: &as_qdr=d

Instead of this:

http://www.google.com/search?q=”how+to+create+a+great+powerpoint”

Make it like this:

http://www.google.com/search?q=”how+to+create+a+great+powerpoint”&as_qdr=d

Google then adds a time sensitive drop down box at the end of your search window.  In this way, you can see how many people have posted about a topic in the last 24 hours, week, month, etc.  It makes it easy to find the latest post about a specific topic.

After nine hours of downloading from the mirror at OSU, my connection was lost.  I tried one of the torrents just to compare the download time.

Twenty minutes later, I had the ISO on my hard drive.  What a great way to distribute software.

I didn’t get to install the software until this morning.  The install is very simple.  I have a Dell laptop (Latitude D800) that I use as a sandbox machine.  It had XP on it when I started the Ubuntu install.  I told the Linux OS to use the whole hard drive and replace anything on the drive.  It got to 15% and stalled.  It couldn’t kill off the existing OS.  That’s no big deal.  I pulled out the Death and Destruction Disk (DDD).  Years ago I needed a way to format a disk in a minute or two without answering any questions.  I went through all the steps of manually formatting a disk.  Once it was blank, I made a Ghost image.  The image fits on a floppy with the Ghost software.  It takes 90 seconds to erase any hard drive and leave it boot-able to only DOS.

After I blanked the hard drive, Ubuntu had no problem doing the full install.  All my hardware was auto-detected and the login screen came right up.  On the first boot, I was told that a non-supported driver was available for my NVidia video card.  The splash screen said I could only do 3D graphics if I installed this driver.  So I installed it.

I had to reboot to enable it.

That was the end of that.  My graphics were completely hosed.  I could see half the screen and everything flickered.  There were no icons, just a solid orange rectangle.  I rebooted and did a safe-mode “get me back to what was working” thing.  Without too much pain, I got everything running again.

I am not impressed by this interface.  All the text looks rough.  I don’t know if there is an anti-aliasing setting that I am missing, but things look long in the tooth here.  If I have to look at this all day, it needs to be cleaner.

When I connected to my music server, it wouldn’t play an MP3 without an encoder download.  This is easy?  It won’t play a standard non-DRMed MP3 out of the box?

Here is the deal breaker.  I connected my Dell monitor.  It’s a standard 1024×768 flat panel.  I couldn’t get it to work at all.  I fiddled with it for an hour.  It’s basically a solid color matching the laptop background, but random ANSI characters flicker all around the screen. 

My laptop has to connect to an external display (monitor or projector).  Without that, I can’t do my job.

I let the kids play around with it the rest of the day.  They had no problem browsing the Internet and doing IM.  I suppose if I wanted to setup a lap in a school for just that, this OS would be fine.  The mere fact that most of the kids are not going to know how to install software will keep them from do too much to the machines.

Let me repeat yesterday’s question.  What does this OS do that my current OS doesn’t?  Nothing.  There is no incentive to switch.  In fact, a switch would involve a lot of pain that I don’t have right now.

I have been waiting to get my hands on this release of Ubuntu.  I got up this morning and went to the Ubuntu site.

This Site is Temporarily Unavailable

It was that way until the afternoon.  At the rate my download is going, the 700 MB file should be ready tomorrow when I get up.  I will install it tomorrow and have the weekend to mess around with it.  Most people downloading it will probably do the same.  In a month, all of us will still be using what we were using yesterday. 

I have never understood all the bickering over operating systems.  I remember a Slashdot article from last month where someone asked the only important question that should be asked.

What does (another OS) do that (my OS) doesn’t do?

Fill those names in with whatever you like.  The list of features unique to one operating system is short. 

I run them all.  I have to have access to the same programs my students use and my online students can choose to run any operating system.  Mainly they run Windows, but some run OS X.  I have yet to have a student that uses Linux as a desktop OS either at home or at school.

Just for the record, I have never purchased an operating system.  I use what comes on my computers.  My main OS right now is Windows Vista.  I run Home Premium on my desktop and Ultimate on my laptop.  My MAC has 10.4 and my iPod Touch runs some version of OS X.  The rest of the family runs XP Pro.  We all use IE as our main browser.  All the machines have the free version of AVG anti-virus except for my machines.  I don’t run anti-virus software on my personal machines.  We don’t run anti-spyware software on any of our computers.

We don’t have spyware and have never had a virus.  I have been using a computer for twenty years and I have never had a virus.

Here are most of the things we do on the computers in our house:

1. Browse web pages and read email
2. Create and organize documents, spreadsheets and presentations
3. Create and query databases
4. Schedule work and family activities
5. Draw pictures
6. Manipulate photographs
7. Digitize and watch videos
8. Create and listen to audio files
9. Play games

I am back to the question that no one ever asks.  What OS can’t do these things?

Until someone creates an OS that has useful functionality that no other OS has, we will all probably continue to use what we have.  That’s why the version of Ubuntu I’m downloading right now won’t change much.

I haven’t posted very much about my iPod Touch.  I can assure you it has become one of my most used pieces of technology.  Today I added something to it that is mind boggling.

I installed wikipedia on my iPod Touch.  By this, I don’t mean that I enabled my iPod Touch to go over the Internet and access wikipedia.  Instead, I have the whole searchable database installed on my iPod Touch. 

This is a two step process.  First the application is installed and then a dump of the official wikipedia site is transferred to the iPod Touch.  Since the data dump involves a file that is two gigabytes, it took about 90 minutes to complete the second step.

I basically used 1/8 of my Touch’s memory to install this application.  That’s OK.  I had only managed to fill half of the 16 GB in the last six months.  I still have plenty of free space.

The data set is from October of 2007.  I’m certain an updated dump will happen periodically.  It does take considerable massaging to get the database into the proper format for the iPhone/Touch.  Also, all the pictures are removed.  Otherwise the data set would be too large for the device.  The dump I have is in English.  There are German and Portuguese dumps available.

To search the database begin by typing a few letters of the name or term.  As letters are typed, possible matches are listed.  As soon as the target term is listed, clicking it directs the browser to the listing in the database.  From here on out, it works just like the online version without the option to edit entries.

Now I can look up everything from the atomic weight of aluminum to the history of ZZ Top… and all that is in between, stored on a device the size of a cell phone.