home to a blogger formerly known as lost
Geek
Useful PowerPoint tools
Mar 6th
I’ve found that, when teaching physics, it’s extremely useful to embed videos and applets into my lesson slides, rather than having them play on other applications and needing to Alt-Tab between applications (possibly breaking the flow of the lesson). I mean, it’s not that awful having to do it, but I much prefer being able to do it directly from a single slideshow.
So I’ve discovered plugins for the Windows version of PowerPoint that allow you to insert a YouTube video, or even a full webpage, into your slideshow. It’s not a perfect implementation – the embedded content only loads upon reaching the relevant slide, which means it’s somewhat slow (and you need an active internet connection), but if you don’t have enough time to download/convert all the materials, it’s an option worth considering.
Something else I’d discovered I was missing was a wireless controller for my presentations. I’m probably not teaching science again for awhile after my practicum, so I didn’t want to spend on some proper hardware (I’m not sure I’ll be doing many presentation slides for English) yet, so after some searching I discovered some pretty nifty software that allows me to use my phone as one, after connecting to the presentation computer via Bluetooth. Aside from just clicking to advance the slide, it shows the elapsed time for the slide and for the whole slideshow, as well as the option of viewing the slide notes on the phone – pretty handy! It’s missing the ability to manipulate the mouse cursor from a distance, though, and so far I’ve been having issues with the connection reliability, so I’m not really sure that it’s solved my presentation woes.
Speedier StarHub torrents
Feb 27th
I’ve been suffering really lousy Bittorrent speeds on StarHub for years now, usually amounting to about 20kB/s, and was actually thinking of switching to SingNet to see if there would be an increase in speed. I eventually decided not to due to the costs involved, but I recently became really fed up and decided to drop them a query, trying to determine if they were indeed blocking ports (whatever that exactly means) and to see if there was any way I could increase my download speeds. They replied without saying very much, aside that I should not be facing any real difficulties.
Strangely enough, my download speeds have been a lot faster ever since then. Coincidence? Who knows? I’m just delighted to see such a large increase in transfer speeds. If you’ve been experiencing slow transfers yourself, though, it might be worth your time sending an email to ask about it.
Site valuation
Feb 22nd
So, according to this, thecoffeespoon.net is currently (as of 22/2/09) worth a whopping S$6000. Any buyers? =P
I guess most of the page views comes from the wiki page I’d set up when I was still bored in uni. It was meant to be pretty much just an experiment of sorts, but I guess it’s been pretty successful – I’ve recently crossed the US$100 mark in ad revenue, which means I should (finally) be getting my first AdSense cheque. However, I must be doing something wrong since daily ad revenue is supposed to be in the region of $5, while I’d be lucky to even get 10% of that. Of course since the only advert was a single banner at the bottom of every page, I guess that wasn’t too much of a surprise.
So, since I had some free time this weekend (no more NIE for a few months now, woohoo!), I gave the MWBS Wiki a little redesign. Aside from some functionality upgrades (utilises screen estate better, room for expansion in the navigation bar, etc.) I’ve evilly added more banners. I’ve always hated banners at the top of the page, so I’ve avoided going down that path, and though they’re not quite Google’s advised placement spots, hopefully the new ads manage to balance aesthetics and click-drawing power.
I guess I shouldn’t be expecting too much of a site catering to a free Facebook-based game, and one that I’m not really putting much effort into anymore, at that. Still, I wouldn’t mind a second cheque coming its way soon! =P
Facebooking from iPhoto
Feb 19th
One thing iPhoto ’09 boasts is built-in compatibility with Facebook, in the sense that photos are easily uploaded, and the album details actually remain synced both ways. Meaning that if you tag or rename your photo on Facebook, iPhoto registers the changes and vice versa.
I’d tried syncing my existing Facebook albums with an unofficial workaround, but the tagged faces didn’t sync with the existing iPhoto faces very well, so I ended up unsyncing them and manually fixing the Facebook tags (which is why some of you might have suddenly got tagged on old photos again). I guess I’ll only be using this feature for newly uploaded pictures.
superuseless superpowers
Feb 15th
I’ve recently been following superuseless superpowers, and I find it absolutely hilarious. Basically the blogger thinks up, you’ve guessed it, superpowers that have near-zero practical use, and puts highly amusing illustrations to go with them. I think they do reader suggestions, too. I leave you with two random examples – go check it out if you’ve got time!
It's nice knowing your colours always go together.
I suppose this could be pretty useful. At least your corpse acts as a meat shield.
Burnout Paradise
Feb 14th
I found out today that the latest version of Burnout, the game I miss most from the days when my Xbox still worked, is now available for PC. Shiny cars, racing and violence – what more can a guy want? After reading through the review and thinking about it awhile, I proceeded to purchase an original copy for myself, since it’s available on eBay at a pretty low price.
Although now I wish I’d did a little more research and tested the full demo on my system before purchasing. Hopefully my MacBook Pro runs it sufficiently well. Can’t wait for it to arrive!
Frakkin'!
Feb 10th
BSG began with a straightforward sci-fi premise: a space-chase saga but an uncommonly spartan, raw, unflashy one. There are no cute droids à la Star Wars or sexy aliens à la Star Trek. Its universe is dirty, lived in and worn out. The ships are cramped. The humans carry guns that shoot bullets; they also eat–yum!–processed algae vacuumed up from uninhabited planets. And they’re given to creative basic-cable profanity–frak being BSG’s F word of choice.
That’s not to say BSG is a bummer; it’s thrilling, lyrical, even funny. (“The good news is,” a politician says, wondering how to spin the news about Earth, “real estate prices are low.”) But it’s an adventure of exhaustion, not exhilaration.
I’d managed to get myself a free half-year subscription to TIME magazine, which I find myself enjoying quite a bit (I must be getting old!). So today I was leafing through the latest issue and stumbled upon this article discussing Battlestar Galactica. Now I’m a bit of a closet BSG fan myself, so I’m quite pleased that at least TIME agrees with me.
Really, it’s not about the spaceships or robots – I find the mix of war, politics and religion quite intriguing. Okay so maybe the spaceships help a little. But hey, no lasers!
Hello 2.0
Feb 6th
I think I’m about done with the renovations. I haven’t really modified it that much from the default Atahualpa theme, but right now it’s good enough for me.
One of the options the theme comes with is the option to cycle through header images. So I’ve added a few, cropped mainly from my personal stash of photos, and you can look through them by refreshing the blog incessantly (if you so desire). They load randomly though, so it’s kinda hard to see them all.
So say hello to my new blog. I’m not positive, but I think it also loads faster now that I’ve trimmed the plugins somewhat.
Farewell 1.0
Feb 6th
Renovating the blog now. I was alright with the old one, but ironically enough I’d personalised it too much – such that it’s become a pain to keep updating it to accommodate the newer WordPress (currently 2.7) features. I’ve decided to use a regularly-updated theme and save myself the time/hassle of future updates (since I can just apply their updated theme instead).
Farewell v1.0 (based off the Floralia theme), you have served me well!
