And now, the exciting conclusion of my browser reviews!
OPERA
Opera was a browser I was familiar with, but not in a way you might expect. I have used Opera as the web browser on my Wii video game console, as they were the company willing to step forward and design a browser for use with the new Wii remote way back in 2007. The browser was relatively functional on the Wii, if not a little clumsy due to the Wii Remote's poor interface with the tiny buttons on new websites. More recently, I downloaded the Opera browser for my Android smartphone as an alternative to the Android browser.
The Opera browser on my Macbook Air immediately reminds me of Chrome in terms of it's simple layout and lightning speed, and is actually a little less spartan than google's creation. I can't understate how quick this browser is! The zoom feature is actually quite nice as well, compared to Safari. It has a slow gradient zoom in and out, as opposed to Safari's quick jumps to various stages of zoom. The "speed dial" page is also quite nice and reminiscent of Safari's "top pages." I was pleasantly surprised by Opera!
FIREFOX
Known as the browser that killed Internet Explorer, Firefox was a browser I had used for years. With Internet Explorer's propensity for spyware and malware, Firefox was a great choice in the mid-2000's for a browser that was functional, included tabbed browsing, and wasn't vulnerable to everything and everything. But, over time, this advantage has eroded, and the Firefox I once knew and loved had become bogged down with too many features and buttons. The layout is just cluttered.
No more! Now it looks a lot like Chrome and Opera, and had the politeness to import my bookmarks, favorite sites and homepage from Safari! How nice!
THE VERDICT
I gotta say, although for familiarity's sake I will probably continue to use Safari... Opera and Firefox is damn good browsers. With a good combination of speed and simplicity, and some more bells and whistles that I've come to expect, it seems like a happy medium between Safari and the too-basic Chrome.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
More Video Editing
For our final project in Tech Resources, team Steve Job's army created a preliminary version of Artex, our lesson plan database for arts educators. In our quest to create a more complete product, and fill up some time on our presentation, I decided to make a short introductory video to Artex. I knew it would look great on our homepage if visitors were greeted with an approachable medium for explaining our angle. I want to use this blog entry to explain a little bit about the process of creating the video.
I knew that I wanted the video to be introductory in nature, but not necessarily explain Artex itself. I was more interested in a way to explain why something like Artex was important. So I posed a simple question to a few of my colleagues in arts education: Why is it important that arts educators share ideas? The core of our project was this sharing. But why should we in the first place? My responses were cultivated via the internal webcam on my Macbook Air using the Photo Booth program. Each response was about 1 minute long.
With about ten minutes of responses, I combed through and found answers which I felt addressed both Artex and the prompt in an intelligent and articulate way. I imported the videos into iMovie and began my editing process. I actually tracked many of the answers in chronological order through each video, since the arguments started broad (which I liked) and became more nuanced towards the end (which I also liked.) I tried to connect ideas that linked with the previous idea to give the video a sense of narrative. I also had a little bit of fun editing Dave's response, which gave the video a sense of humor. Luckily, he has a good sense of humor and didn't mind!
I chose a song from the Wii Shop Channel from the Super Smash Bros Brawl soundtrack for it's upbeat melody. I didn't edit to closely to the music, like I did in my previous video, and was more focused on making a coherent narrative with the responses.
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Browser's Castle
This is Bowser from Nintendo's Mario Bros Series.
This is Bowser, my three-year-old pug.
But, today I'm not here to talk about Bowser or Bowser. I'm here to talk about... browsers! While I pride myself on my relative internet savvy, I realized that for the last four years or so, I had been exclusively using Safari, Apple's web browser that comes pre-loaded on it's Macbook line of computers. I decided to give each browser a spin for a little while and make some quick comments on each one.
SAFARI
This had been my go-to browser for the last few years, and I'm quite happy with its functionality. In particular, the grid of "most visited" pages is what stands out as unique. By far the most immediately useful function that keeps me using Safari for casual use is the ease by which you can manage bookmarked pages. Opening all of my webcomics in the folder in their own tabs in one shot is as easy as command+click.
CHROME
Chrome was one of the browsers I was not familiar with, and I was immediately taken with how spartan the interface is. Compared to say, Firefox or Safari, you just have the web address, back, forward, reload, and a tab button. There is something to be said for the simplicity and speed of the browser, but some of the more complicated functions can be a little fiddly.
INTERNET EXPLORER
In typical Windows/Microsoft fashion, downloading Internet Explorer was complicated endeavor, with an indirect path through multiple links to pages of wasted internet space. Internet Explorer got a bad rep in the last decade for it's poor line of defense against spyware, malware and viruses (or so popular opinion suggests.) At my previous place of employment, I used IE 7 on Windows XP, which was frankly a slow and unintuitive mess. But, IE 8 seems pretty functional. In particular, I like the left-handed tabs for history and search for easy access, instead of keeping them on the top of the screen. IE 9 is only available on Windows 7, so I'll have to see if I can get on a PC to try that out soon.
Look for PART II of my browser series, where I take on Opera and Firefox, and my verdict for the best browser on the web!
-Rob
This is Bowser, my three-year-old pug.
But, today I'm not here to talk about Bowser or Bowser. I'm here to talk about... browsers! While I pride myself on my relative internet savvy, I realized that for the last four years or so, I had been exclusively using Safari, Apple's web browser that comes pre-loaded on it's Macbook line of computers. I decided to give each browser a spin for a little while and make some quick comments on each one.
SAFARI
This had been my go-to browser for the last few years, and I'm quite happy with its functionality. In particular, the grid of "most visited" pages is what stands out as unique. By far the most immediately useful function that keeps me using Safari for casual use is the ease by which you can manage bookmarked pages. Opening all of my webcomics in the folder in their own tabs in one shot is as easy as command+click.
CHROME
Chrome was one of the browsers I was not familiar with, and I was immediately taken with how spartan the interface is. Compared to say, Firefox or Safari, you just have the web address, back, forward, reload, and a tab button. There is something to be said for the simplicity and speed of the browser, but some of the more complicated functions can be a little fiddly.
INTERNET EXPLORER
In typical Windows/Microsoft fashion, downloading Internet Explorer was complicated endeavor, with an indirect path through multiple links to pages of wasted internet space. Internet Explorer got a bad rep in the last decade for it's poor line of defense against spyware, malware and viruses (or so popular opinion suggests.) At my previous place of employment, I used IE 7 on Windows XP, which was frankly a slow and unintuitive mess. But, IE 8 seems pretty functional. In particular, I like the left-handed tabs for history and search for easy access, instead of keeping them on the top of the screen. IE 9 is only available on Windows 7, so I'll have to see if I can get on a PC to try that out soon.
Look for PART II of my browser series, where I take on Opera and Firefox, and my verdict for the best browser on the web!
-Rob
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Bringing Arts Educators Together
I started in college in the fall of 2004 at Marymount Manhattan College, a small liberal arts college on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. I remember being in a friend's dorm, around this time of year seven years ago, when I created my Facebook account. I had resisted, at first. Back in those days, Facebook was only for colleges, and your school had to "get" the Facebook. Being a small college, Marymount only was recognized as a Facebook-enabled institution for a few weeks, and it was a huge buzz around campus. But since I did give in and make my first profile, I've been a social-media connected individual. Although from time to time I "accidentally" lose my Facebook password to keep myself on task.
Facebook's profile layout in 2005, via mashable.com
My generation, the high school class of 2004, were the first fully-Facebooked class. We never experienced college without it, save those few precious weeks before "The Facebook" came to our campus. But why is it, then, that my colleagues in Educational Theatre, many of which are my age, are hesitant to apply social media tools to their practice as professionals? Arts education sorely lags in our use of social media to share ideas and best practices. Prominent arts educators are nowhere to be found on Twitter. Facebook pages of open forums, even here in interconnected New York, barely make a blip on my newsfeed. I usually hear about them via NYU's list-serv emails from the Ed Theatre faculty.
So it should fall to us, the social media generation, to propel our industry into the 21st century. Enter our final project: The Arts Education Exchange. Team Steve Jobs' Zombie Army has begun work on a diary style blog of sorts as our final project. This website, hopefully full of user generated content, will serve as an internet resource where arts educators can share lessons and best practices, advertise best practices, and read entries from leaders in their field. All of this would be supported by social media, with a Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and LinkedIn arm to the Exchange steadily churning out updates.
More on this idea as the group develops it!
My generation, the high school class of 2004, were the first fully-Facebooked class. We never experienced college without it, save those few precious weeks before "The Facebook" came to our campus. But why is it, then, that my colleagues in Educational Theatre, many of which are my age, are hesitant to apply social media tools to their practice as professionals? Arts education sorely lags in our use of social media to share ideas and best practices. Prominent arts educators are nowhere to be found on Twitter. Facebook pages of open forums, even here in interconnected New York, barely make a blip on my newsfeed. I usually hear about them via NYU's list-serv emails from the Ed Theatre faculty.
So it should fall to us, the social media generation, to propel our industry into the 21st century. Enter our final project: The Arts Education Exchange. Team Steve Jobs' Zombie Army has begun work on a diary style blog of sorts as our final project. This website, hopefully full of user generated content, will serve as an internet resource where arts educators can share lessons and best practices, advertise best practices, and read entries from leaders in their field. All of this would be supported by social media, with a Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and LinkedIn arm to the Exchange steadily churning out updates.
More on this idea as the group develops it!
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Here's what I've been working on for the last week or so:
Cool right? A little bit of backstory here:
I went on vacation this last August with my girlfriend's family. In attendance at our several rented beach houses on Topsail Island, NC were her sister's family, her mother, her aunt, uncle and some cousins. Also present were assorted children, friends, girlfriends, boyfriends, etc. We stayed for a week, and I took about 1000 pictures. I had been a little lazy about posting them to facebook since we got back, since I had to sort through all the photos and the semester had just started.
Luckily, my tech resources class (for which this blog was created) assigned a photo montage project, and I knew I had my outlet to share the photos with my girlfriend and her family. I had some experience with imovie, but the program had completely changed in the last eight years since I'd used it. Still, my general instincts on how to edit video were still intact. I tried my best to sync my transitions with the music, and drive the sequence of photos forward with narrative or some logical order.
I chose to use a song by Arcade Fire, "Wake Up", as the soundtrack. Obviously, I don't have the rights to it. But all that prevents is embedding and viewing the video in New Zealand. Not such a bad tradeoff!
-Rob
PS: My girlfriend's family totally digs the video!
Cool right? A little bit of backstory here:
I went on vacation this last August with my girlfriend's family. In attendance at our several rented beach houses on Topsail Island, NC were her sister's family, her mother, her aunt, uncle and some cousins. Also present were assorted children, friends, girlfriends, boyfriends, etc. We stayed for a week, and I took about 1000 pictures. I had been a little lazy about posting them to facebook since we got back, since I had to sort through all the photos and the semester had just started.
Luckily, my tech resources class (for which this blog was created) assigned a photo montage project, and I knew I had my outlet to share the photos with my girlfriend and her family. I had some experience with imovie, but the program had completely changed in the last eight years since I'd used it. Still, my general instincts on how to edit video were still intact. I tried my best to sync my transitions with the music, and drive the sequence of photos forward with narrative or some logical order.
I chose to use a song by Arcade Fire, "Wake Up", as the soundtrack. Obviously, I don't have the rights to it. But all that prevents is embedding and viewing the video in New Zealand. Not such a bad tradeoff!
-Rob
PS: My girlfriend's family totally digs the video!
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Welcome!
Welcome to Rob's Jedi Kitten Emporium!
This is my blogger.com offshoot of a larger project for NYU's technology resources in the arts classroom course. Visit my site here: https://files.nyu.edu/rmg366/public/
The topic for today's blog is my undying love for Soy Cappuccinos. Why soy cappuccinos? Because they're delicious! I began to drink coffee in college. I found that the high workload sent me working long into the night, and that I needed that boost of caffeine to get me through the evening. When I moved back home after college, I found that my dad had purchased a moderately priced expresso machine for the house. Eager, I began to experiment with it.
Before long, I was making espresso, which is a strong and bitter coffee comes in smaller shots than the full cup of Americano coffee. Adding in steamed milk, which I learned to do on my own, I was soon making Lattes and Cappuccinos. Add some special chocolate powder, and you get a Mocha drinks, a special treat for days when you're feeling blue. You can even use shots of flavored syrup to make Vanilla Lattes, Caramel Macchiatos, Pumpkin Spice and Peppermint Lattes. The possibilities are endless! I prefer to use sugar free syrup, as too much sugar makes me jittery.
I recently discovered that I am slightly lactose intolerant. While I loved to use regular milk in my coffee creations, too much of it made me bloated and caused indigestion. So I recently switched over to soy milk. It's made from soy beans, but you don't actually milk the beans, so I feel like soy juice is a better name. Although I doubt anyone would want to add soy juice to their coffee! Regardless, soy milk froths beautifully when steamed, and soy lattes are just a tad sweeter than regular lattes with milk, so you can get away with using less sugar. The texture is also more viscous, which leads to a more filling drink.
If you want me to make you one, just ask!
-Rob
This is my blogger.com offshoot of a larger project for NYU's technology resources in the arts classroom course. Visit my site here: https://files.nyu.edu/rmg366/public/
The topic for today's blog is my undying love for Soy Cappuccinos. Why soy cappuccinos? Because they're delicious! I began to drink coffee in college. I found that the high workload sent me working long into the night, and that I needed that boost of caffeine to get me through the evening. When I moved back home after college, I found that my dad had purchased a moderately priced expresso machine for the house. Eager, I began to experiment with it.
Before long, I was making espresso, which is a strong and bitter coffee comes in smaller shots than the full cup of Americano coffee. Adding in steamed milk, which I learned to do on my own, I was soon making Lattes and Cappuccinos. Add some special chocolate powder, and you get a Mocha drinks, a special treat for days when you're feeling blue. You can even use shots of flavored syrup to make Vanilla Lattes, Caramel Macchiatos, Pumpkin Spice and Peppermint Lattes. The possibilities are endless! I prefer to use sugar free syrup, as too much sugar makes me jittery.
I recently discovered that I am slightly lactose intolerant. While I loved to use regular milk in my coffee creations, too much of it made me bloated and caused indigestion. So I recently switched over to soy milk. It's made from soy beans, but you don't actually milk the beans, so I feel like soy juice is a better name. Although I doubt anyone would want to add soy juice to their coffee! Regardless, soy milk froths beautifully when steamed, and soy lattes are just a tad sweeter than regular lattes with milk, so you can get away with using less sugar. The texture is also more viscous, which leads to a more filling drink.
If you want me to make you one, just ask!
-Rob
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)