January 30, 2010 at 10:21 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
One of the best features of the Nokia N900 is its fabulous high-res screen and I was really looking forward to watching films on it. when the phone arrived, it was pre-loaded with a demo video and a film trailer, both encoded at native resolution (800×480) and playing back beautifully. I knew that I could put my own videos on and have them look as good, but it was not as smooth a ride as I expected.
I had immediate success putting an old .avi rip of a film on, the phone scales video well and it started playing almost instantly. I looked on the talk.maemo.org forum and googled a bit for a profile to use and started ripping DVDs with Handbrake. As soon as I got the first one onto my N900 I found a problem.
When I ripped a single chapter or a short special feature, no problems, but full films with the same Handbrake profile never loaded, but hung on the “five dots of doom” screen. Five dots flashed back and forward as a loading screen, but the video never strted.
I began to doubt my sanity as I found the identical settings work for one clip but not a whole film. I re-ripped and changed settings to try to fix it (getting the resolution in the mean time) until a post on the maemo forum tipped me off to the problem – chapter markers. Turning them off in handbrake fixed the problem for the next film.
Fixing the films I’d already ripped was really easy too, using avidemux to convert to the same format with the identical settings strips out the chapter marks and all is well!
Because the screen on the N900 is not a true widescreen format there are several options to how to crop/zoom the video as you rip.
Stretch the video to fill the screen. Not an option, I have a low tolerance for distorted images.
Zoom the video with big black bars at the top and bottom so you can see the full width and not stretch the height.
Zoom to 100% so there are small black bars top and bottom and about 20 pixels cut from each side.
It’s number 3 that I do, but Handbrake seems not to properly save my settings, so I have to manually plug in the video size each time.
You can download the handbrake profiles from the maemo.org wiki page on video encoding, but make sure that you un-tick the box for chapter markers. Then go to the picture settings and sent anamorphic off and the stored resolution as 800 wide. Enjoy!
December 29, 2009 at 7:01 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Well, it’s the end of 2009 and I have some favourite technologies and applications to share with you. Obviously these are my opinions and based a lot on what I’ve had the chance to experience and use. Most of these are for personal use, but I’ve stuck in one category for educational use. See what you think – respond in the comments if you agree or have a different perspective.
Media
Amazon MP3 store – Launched in the UK just before the end of 2008, it was only this year I really appreciated being able to download DRM free, high quality MP3s legally and easily! The downloading tool works on Ubuntu, so it’s been really easy to make it my number one source for purchased music, but…
Spotify – then along comes one of the best things about 2009! I managed to get in on the free accounts before invitations were necessary, and I’ve never regretted it. I can no longer think of an excuse to pirate music – it’s so much easier and quicker to stream an album (which makes it better than last.fm). It’s also broadened my musical habits – the suggestions are starting to get quite good, although quite heavily weighted by the last week or so’s listening.
iPlayer – Not technically a new product, iPlayer has evolved over the last 18 months to be a much more useful tool. For the few thing’s I’ve not DVRed, it’s a good way to catch up on TV.
My winning media application has to be Spotify for the way it’s changed my music-listening habits in the past year and, as far as I can foresee, in 2010 too.
Social
Twitter – I joined twitter late, I guess, not until April 2009. Not always an early adopter, see! I like the mix of people on my follow list and the effort that many of them make to be interesting. I don’t follow many “celebrities”, but rather friends and people intend to learn from.
Facebook – again, clearly not a new technology for 2009, but one that’s exploding – in fact as I’m writing this post I have been “facebooked” by my Dad. Hmmm. I like the stream of data from friends, having a little idea what’s going on for them even though we’re not in close touch. I don’t like Farmville or giving “presents”. And that’s what the “hide” button on the feeds are for!
Twitter wins – not for number of users, or “features” but for doing what it’s supposed to, and not having mafia wars.
Education
Prezi.com – Prezi is a web app that allows you to create incredible zooming presentations. I’ve used it to teach topics at school, to leave instructions for students to follow while I’m away and also as a tool for pupils to use to structure and present their ideas. Prezi has a steep learning curve for the initial creation of something – it’s not at all like any tool you’ve ever used before – but when you’ve got it it seems dead simple and hugely powerful. The zoom effect is classy yet engaging for the audience and the limited styles available mean everyone who creates with prezi ends up with something that looks great. Unlike PowerPoint.
RM VLE – new to QEMS this year is a VLE. So my dabbling with Moodle has been packed away and a new tool is tried out. While a VLE should be fantastic news and a real asset in developing learning, ours is not at that point yet. Perhaps it’s too early in the adoption cycle to judge it, or perhaps I need to put more effort into materials. So far it seems to be important but not a sure-fire win.
Wordle – very popular with some teachers this year for creating posters of keywords and starting points for revision, wordle is a web app that creates tag clouds. A neat idea, a good application of it.
Without question, for me, Prezi wins my favourite educational tool for 2009. I’ve used it so much with some classes that they ask me for a link to the Prezi instead of slides from the powerpoint and they send me links instead of printing homework. Awesome tool – try it!
Mobile
iPhone – again, not a new product, but with the 3GS, applications and multiple networks, this year has continued the march of the Phone to world domination! It seems about every other person now has one and it’s impossible to argue that iPhone has changed the way we use the internet on the move.
Android – As smartphones are on the up, all the big names want in on the action – Google included. Android has done what seemed impossible – making a linux splash on the little screen. With a decent app store and increasingly good hardware with the HTC Hero and the Motorola Milestone/Droid, Android are really taking the battle to Microsoft and Apple!
Erm. No winner this time – I bought the Nokia N900 – a different, linux-based smartphone with an awesome screen. There’s a lot more to come in this smartphone war!
November 24, 2009 at 8:04 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
When I switched to the 64-bit version of Ubuntu Karmic (9.10), one of the few apps that didn’t follow me over was Buzan’s iMindMap – quite simply the greatest mindmapping software on the planet. Shoddy support, but awesome software – unless you try to use it on a 64-bit OS.
I cracked the puzzle – install 32-bit java, by doing
sudo apt-get install ia32-sun-java6-bin
This installs the sun 32-bit java runtime, which then installs and runs iMindMap perfectly (although my support post remains open and un-answered!)
So now I can mind map to my heart’s content again – lesson planning, sermon writing, recording brainstorms…
October 8, 2009 at 7:07 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Design is one of my favourite things to teach about – whether at school or ranting at my friends! I recently told a class of 11 year olds I was allergic to Comic Sans and I sometimes catch myself trying to work out the hex colour of landscapes. I could get therapy, but I’d rather share some of the things that I enjoy about design. I think choosing fonts wisely is not something that anyone who ever types anything on a computer can afford to not care about – whether 12 or 22 or 62.
This presentation is one I’ve now used with that group of 11 year olds in our introductory unit on presentations – a delicious irony in using an entirely powerpoint-free “prezi” to help them use powerpoint better. It’s based on two things – one, the National Strategy unit 7.1 which encourages explaining serif/sans-serif fonts and the use of colour and font to emphasize text; and two, the title that popped into my head for a poster on using type in design. I made the poster with the thought that to use it in class I would need to show it bigger than an A3 print, then realising I already had the tool – prezi.com.
It is not exaggerating to call Prezi a paradigm shift in presentations – it works so differently to Keynote or Powerpoint that both designing and presenting needs to be approached in a different way. No more bullet point drive-bys, no more ghastly word-art, no chance to use 15 animation styles per slide, in fact no slides. No slides is a paradigm shift – and it works! Prezi gives you an infinite canvas where you can place text, imported images and videos and some simple lines and boxes. You then plot a path through the media, the route of the presentation. Of course, you can zoom out or in at any time on any part of the presentation – especially with an interactive whiteboard in a classroom.
In addition to the poster, you’ll see some other elements on colour and emphasis that really require me to explain live. The typography poster explains itself – there are three types of font, each has a time and a place. Use one at the wrong time, you can end up looking like an idiot, or at least tarnishing the message you’re trying to tell. Think like a designer – everything should have a purpose, so ask yourself “why” for every bit of your document/presentation/design.
September 20, 2009 at 5:36 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
I’ve been trying to use the BookSmart software from the quite brilliant Blurb.com on my computer running Ubuntu. Their BookSmart software is designed for Windows and Mac only, so I downloaded the Windows version and tried it under Wine. There’s a little trick to getting it to work without crashing once it’s installed.
Add application, then browse to BookSmart
Run winecfg (or find “Configure Wine” on your menu), then “Add application”. Browse to where BookSmart has installed, probably on your c_drive, then Program Files.
Use Windows 98 compatibility to run BookSmart.exe
Back on Wine configuration and you will see BookSmart on the list – change its Windows version to “Windows 98″ (it will start as “Use global settings”)
BookSmart should now start up fine – it looks like fantastic software for the one purpose of designing photo books, although Blurb seem to be saying that there’s more they can do with it.
There was one more problem I ran into – I have loads of great fonts installed on linux, but none of them were available to me in Wine, specifically in BookSmart. Something I’d never done before was look in drive_c/windows/fonts – if I put the fonts I want in there I can use them as soon I start BookSmart.
When I’ve finished the book and received it I’ll put a review of the service and pictures. So far I am very impressed – the books seem to be of a very high quality, and the model of having the software to create the book if you want gives someone like me exactly the control I want and can’t really get with some other photobook services.
September 16, 2009 at 1:07 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Ubuntu Netbook Remix - Karmic Koala
I’ve been using Ubuntu Netbook Remix on my Eee-PC 701 since before they released it, so well over a year now. Before that, I had vanilla Ubuntu installed, but always felt there had to be a better way to fit just a little more into the very few pixels that Asus had blessed me with. UNR stepped up to that task and I’ve enjoyed using it since. The ume-launcher app (which replaces the desktop with an application launcher) seemed a little heavy and slow for my poor little Eee, so recently I’d canned it and was solely using gnome-do for launching programs and opening folders.
Ubuntu’s six-month release cycle seems to come round very quickly, and October 29 is release day for the Karmic Koala – a.k.a. Ubuntu 9.10. With Karmic comes a new look for the ume-launcher and more lovely enhancements behind the scene. Let’s look at a few of them in the Alpha 5 release (testing). (You can also see all the images as a slideshow)
Installing Ubuntu Netbook Remix
Installation
Installing is as easy as ever, with Ubuntu’s graphic installation wizard that really anyone could do if they were a little bit brave and trusting. Faster than a Windows 7 upgrade (apparently, my RC has gone almost unused) and pretty too!
New ume look
The functionality of ume seems to be the same, if a little re-ordered. Favourites is your “start screen” with your most used applications available at a click. You can add new ones and remove those you don’t want on the front screen as before.
Favourites tab on Ubuntu Netbook Remix screenshot
However, instead of links to the file system being at the right, using up valuable screen real-estate all the time, “Files & Folders” has now become another option on the menu on the right. This is definitely a bonus for us with the little screens.
Bigger icons and scrolling tabs
You’ll also see that the icons are much bigger, as are the tabs at the side with the section names, and the tabs now scroll. The use of partial transparency and gloss makes this look like a really modern OS, but distinctly Ubuntu with it’s orange-brown wallpaper.
Gnome panel looks much better in Karmic
The gnome panel at the top of the screen and window decorations have been touched with some beauty too – a new mash-up of dust and human, with the Humanity icons thrown in for good effect.
Custom theme improves Karmic
It definitely works – and looks less like linux, in a good way! Notice the subtle grey of the default tray icons like wifi, battery and volume.
Boot time
Booting Karmic Koala
Starting from cold seems a little quicker than 9.04 – although I may have got used to a desktop full of bloat. It’s been “pretty-fied” too, with a nice looking progress spinner. This is supposed to be the fastest booting Ubuntu yet – brilliant if you’re looking to get on fast without suspending and using battery. Although suspend and resume work brilliantly, instant on, a few seconds for wireless reconnection. Speaking of which, maybe it’s an illusion or perhaps a new driver, but wifi seems faster, or more reliable. Time will tell.
Internet and Cloud
Using Empathy on UNR
If there’s one thing netbooks are for it’s the internet. Firefox is here as usual, but for some reason not pidgin. I don’t know why Ubuntu has moved over to Empathy, but I do know it does google talk, but not facebook chat without some help.
UbuntuOne Settings
We also now have UbuntuOne, the new cloud storage app bundled. I’ve been signed up for a while but never quite decided what use it would be for me to have 1Gb of shared files between computers when I have a good synchronising strategy.
Conclusion
There are still some rough edges with the Alpha 5 release – most of which will be ironed out before the 01/Oct/09 Beta release, but if you want a perfectly smooth experience wait until the end of next month to grab the final thing! Ubuntu Netbook Remix will run brilliantly on your Atom based netbook with a 9-10 inch screen, and just as well on even the original Eee-PCs from back in the day. The visual refresh is welcome, as are any gains in speed with the better software that is coming out. You can’t do that with XP!
September 15, 2009 at 8:53 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
From my talk on Sundayabout following Jesus’ command to love God and one another.
Before the beginning there was nothing, only God. Complete in himself, the relationship of Trinity defined in love, but longing to extend that relationship. So God dreamed. People, giving themselves completely in love to each other and to God. Such a beautiful dream that it would be worth any cost. First to make a universe to contain the dream – let there be light! So God made humans, designed to be like him with a huge capacity to love and a desire to share it. At first it was good, very good, but that relationship was broken by jealousy, disobedience and hiding. God kept chasing, always giving love and receiving fragments back. When he saw only one man loving purely, God swept away the rest with a flood and saved just the one family. The dream slipped away again, so God again picked out one man to love especially. As Abraham grew in love for God, promises were fulfilled and his family grew to a nation. When they were captives, God rescued them. When they didn’t know how to be an independent nation, God gave them laws. When they needed a home, God conquered a country for them. But they kept forgetting him. They didn’t like being different, they wanted to replace God with a King – and God let them. Though a king could lead them away from God, he gave one to them. When the kingdom split, there were twenty kings in the north, not one of them led the people to love God more. Twenty kings in the south, only eight led the people to love God more. God’s people ignored the voices of his prophets, drowned them out with their own noise. We hear the haunting voice of God comparing his people to a wife who ran off to find other men, forgetting her first love. So God sent them to Babylon, so that they might find he was still with them, as his prophets told them. And some of them did. They noticed, they loved back.
God comes to his people in Jesus, after a long time of quiet, saying that loving is at the heart of knowing God. As they kill him, he keeps on loving, keeps putting others before him, keeps forgiving. And in his wake, a Spirit filled group of followers tell the world that they can know God, that love is the key. It’s so beautiful that they’re like a bride to Jesus, returning his love. John foretells in his Apocalypse that the story ends with the dream realised, God dwelling with humans, the end of hate, jealousy and pain, perfect love.
Hear, oh Israel, the LORD is our God, the LORD is one. And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. And ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ All the Law and Prophets are explaining these two statements.
August 25, 2009 at 2:04 am · Filed under Uncategorized
I’ve been reading Tim Ferriss’s blog at FourHourWorkWeek.com for quite a while – I am fascinated at the insights he brings to technique and learning. He also shares some cross-disciplinary thoughts there, which broaden my perspectives and help me to look at things from different directions. I’ve just read his post “How to respond to criticism – learning from Dr King” which is dominated by the “Letter from a Birmingham City Jail”, written by Dr King in response to criticism from Bishops and other church leaders in Alabama over the direct action that He and others were leading in Birmingham.
I love the style that Dr Martin Luther King uses to justify his action and the action of standing up to segregation – and I use the word “Justify” carefully. There are no excuses, just proofs that right is on his side, that his is the way of a follower of Jesus, passionate and logical all at once. There is a great passage where he talks about negative and positive peace and how white moderates seemed unwilling to push for justice:
…who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice… I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality.
That kind of peace transcends the atmosphere of the 1960s and should be the aim of us all. Peace where violence is suppressed is not really peace, just a lull in fighting, a truce. Peace come where there is reconciliation, where the pain of the victim is recognised and dealt with.
I suppose I should have realized that few members of the oppressor race can understand the deep groans and passionate yearnings of the oppressed race, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent and determined action.
There is injustice in the world and yet I am often blind to it and deaf to those groans. What “strong, persistent and determined action” will our generation witness?
A comment left by “Michael” also got me thinking.
It’s too bad the modern school system doesn’t put more emphasis on this concept and instead children are left with the media (movies) to discover how to deal with conflict.
The kind of outcome sought by Dr King was “redemptive” – not in the kind of way we see redemption in the movies, where the bigger gun wins, or the little man beats the unjust system by hitting it hard in a weak spot or through the arduous quest of a hero. It was not the redemption through violence that we see in every blockbuster but of normal people standing up for truth, breaking the violent system from the inside, without becoming the enemy they challenged.
Should we be surprised if our kids fight to solve problems when they lap up the propaganda of a culture built on fighting and the victory that comes from being stronger? Our culture responds to inequality by exercising power, whether political or economic or military. We are oppressors and have no intention of giving up what we see as a right without a fight.
Like thermodynamics, inequality cannot last forever, and we have to decide how it will end. We can pray for leaders like MLK that will stand against injustice armed only with truth. We can recognise that our entire culture promotes inequality through our very richness and see Hollywood propaganda for what it is – supporting the western way of life and violence to sustain it. We can be like the few moderates that fully supported Dr King in standing against injustice and use the exact same arguments of truth, justice and creativity.
August 14, 2009 at 2:03 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
I pushed out a new verson of Twitter Tools Supr Links a couple of days ago, so I thought I should let you know what it now does. I’ve fixed a few bugs before without pushing the release properly, because I didn’t realise that I had to change the “stable version” in the readme - got caught up with fixing the problems and forgot to update the information!
First of all, I fixed a problem with authenticating login details – even if you put in a correct username and API key,supr links said they were invalid because when it tried to check the link I was feeding it, the link was invalid, not your details! I’ve fixed some links to the settings section of Su.pr (not called “account”!) and now ‘ve made it possible to use this plugin if you have short URLs on your own domain. Now I don’t use this on jonrogers.co.uk – I like the su.pr name and it’s shortness, but I want to give you the choice. Thanks to Alex for pointing out the bug! The problem is with the way that supr returns the query for a shortened link on your domain. If you own “yourdomain.com” and you want to shorten the link “yourdomain.com/link”, the json return gives a short URL of something like “http://su.pr/yourdomain.com/FdJK” which is invalid, even if you’ve given a valid URL (unlike this example) and if the URL redirection on yourdomain.com is perfectly working. The correct link would be “http://youdomain.com/FdJK” – so why does supr add in it’s own site to make it an invalid link? Oh well, time to fix it!
There were a few options of how to do it. I could look for a link that was too long and replace the “su.pr/” with “” (blank). I also noticed that there was a field called “hash”. When you use su.pr as do, to make a link like “htpp://su.pr/ASDFg”, the hash is the bit after “su.pr/”. when it’s a link on “yourdomain.com” it becomes “yourdomain.com/FdJK”. So in fact it’s easiest to just add “http://” to the start of the hash if it’s longer than 6 characters and use that instead. It seems that su.pr are a little lazy in the way they make the links for your own domain and just add “http://su.pr/” to the start of the hash whatever the situation. I am sure that this workaround will be unnecessary when they sort it out for developers, but as for now, it works properly for you!
The update should have already come automatically, but you can get it by searching for “supr” in the plugins section of Wordpress admin or by going to Supr Links on the Wordpress Plugins site.
August 10, 2009 at 6:30 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Or “Banksy Vs Bristol Museum”
Fur Coat
One of the best days of this summer has involved queuing for three hours in the sun. Seriously! I went with Peet to see the exhibition at Bristol Museum and Art Gallery that Banksy has put on. I took quite a few photos – you can see them on Flickr.
Why was it so good? Firstly I think the guy’s a genius. I love the sense of irony in all his art, I love that he uses so many different media so fluently to communicate his ideas, I think that it’s great that street art evolves to have a powerful message that no-one can ignore. It was phenomenal to see the popularity of the show – almost a month into the 12 weeks it will be open, midweek, and the queue is three hours to get in. Secondly, I love that it has re-claimed a space as “cool” that has become uncool and got full families, art critics and normal people exploring the exhibits with new excitement. I hope it really has made people think about visiting other museums or galleries and that there has been “stealth learning” going on – while looking for a rat or another work, that people, kids and adults would be interested by the artifacts around them. This is the trojan effect of the exhibition, the way it can slip in some good stuff where they thought it might be just cool graffiti! There were moments shared with strangers of slightly inappropriate laughter, and times when you found a hidden treasure that no-one else in the whole museum was aware of at that moment.
I enjoyed the ribbing of authority figures, the higlighting of inconsistencies, the boldness to take a strong stance on issues that are controversial. Jumping in on things from the fox hunting ban to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict takes some stones! But to do it with humor and to place little bits around the museum so that you really have to search them out gives a reward to the viewer and a sense of achievement of having found the piece. Does this make the message more subtle or stronger – I can’t make up my mind.
The Gleaners - an Agency Job - photo on Flickr
I loved so many of the pieces, but I’ll just comment on a couple. “The Gleaners” was controversial by depicting the lower classes, and women at that, at their normal work. Banksy updates this by taking a twist of how the “lower classes” might be seen today – taking a fag break, disillusioned, out of frame. The unexpectedness of the woman being “cut out” of the frame highlights her out-of-place-ness.
Flight to Egypt - Budget Version - photo on Flickr
The Flight to Egypt depicts Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus resting as they flee to Egypt. In Banksy’s twist, they see a billboard being erected with a price for a budget airline’s price for flying to Cairo. How easy it is to forget that the simplicity of travel is a new thing, that it’s a luxury that would be impossible to describe to our ancestors. The billboard is totally out of place in the pastoral scene, yet painted in such a way that it fits right in. How did Banksy do all of this – from animatronics to huge, skillfully painted painted canvasses? Is it the work of years, or is it the produce of a team. Are they in on Banksy and his work, or in the dark on anonymous commission?
Parliament - photo on Flickr
I liked the painting of “Parliament” so much that I now have a copy (thinks Peet!) to frame. Is depicting MPs as monkeys new? Not so much. But the scale of this painting is not to be underestimated – it really is huge. It makes us think a little bit about who leads us, but at the same time about what we ourselves are like – the same? Grabbing after bananas, hooting and booing at every word. Don’t forget that the chimps in the gallery are exactly the same as those on the floor – except they have “Journalist” on their calling card.
What would it mean to have Trojan Rats in other contexts? Things that were so cool, so street, so anti-establishment that everyone would seek them out and receive a payload that got a message that they may or may not have expected. What would it meant to look at other rejected public spaces and twist them in such a way as to reclaim them. Maybe it would upset some critics or mineralogists, but it might engage a whole new generation to ideas they had never engaged with before.
One of the best features of the Nokia N900 is its fabulous high-res screen and I was really looking forward to watching films on it. when the phone arrived, it was pre-loaded with a demo video and a film trailer, both encoded at native resolution (800×480) and playing back beautifully. I knew that I could put my own videos on and have them look as good, but it was not as smooth a ride as I expected.
My winning media application has to be Spotify for the way it’s changed my music-listening habits in the past year and, as far as I can foresee, in 2010 too.
Twitter wins – not for number of users, or “features” but for doing what it’s supposed to, and not having mafia wars.
Without question, for me, Prezi wins my favourite educational tool for 2009. I’ve used it so much with some classes that they ask me for a link to the Prezi instead of slides from the powerpoint and they send me links instead of printing homework. Awesome tool – try it!
Erm. No winner this time – I bought the Nokia N900 – a different, linux-based smartphone with an awesome screen. There’s a lot more to come in this smartphone war!
