Eric Blue's Blog

Just found a great set of links from OEDB:

If you think that iPods are used just for listening to music, you obviously haven't been keeping up with the latest technology. The Apple-developed music player now features all kinds of accessories to help you study better, and now other companies are in a rush to get their designs in sync with the iPod. Pre-teens, college kids and even adults are taking advantage of the educational benefits an iPod affords them. From downloadable podcasts to just-for-iPod study guides and applications, learning on the go has never been easier. To find out about the many different ways you can transform your iPod into a learning device, check out our list below.

Source: http://oedb.org/library/beginning-online-learning/100-ways-to-use-your-ipod-to-learn-and-study-better

Posted by EricB at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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Last December, I was in a bit of a creative mood and decided to put together a video titled Morphing Faces of Beauty.

Summary from YouTube:

Using a computer generated photo of the ideal beautiful woman as a baseline(credited to faceresearch.org), I fed this photo into a face transformer (from perceptionlab.com). This transformer can convert a photo based on age, race, and other options into a new photo. I then used a morphing application to transition between these photos.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uENxJAlN1wM

A few people have asked what song I used for the background music. And, the answer is that I actually created the song using Garage Band. I posted about my first song last July (titled "Transition") in the article Creating Music With Apple Garage Band. I started work on a second song, but only partially finished. Then, a few months later I completed the song. As I was working on the Morphing Faces of Beauty video, I realized that this song would be the perfect fit.

Here is the song:

M3U Stream

MP3 File

Posted by EricB at 07:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

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I caught the buzz on del.icio.us and digg today that some newer Video iPods are shipping with the RavMonE virus. According to the Apple Support article, this affects Video IPods purchased after 9/12/06 and only 25 cases have been reported so far. What amazes me about the support article is the following quote:

"As you might imagine, we are upset at Windows for not being more hardy against such viruses, and even more upset with ourselves for not catching it."

Wow. How did a (unprofessional) statement like this ever get approved by anybody at Apple?? Rather than accept 100% accountability for a faulty quality assurance process, they've decided to blame "Windows". Sure, it's a shame there are so many Windows viruses out there. But, why not just blame the origin of the virus: the person/people who wrote the virus in the first place. At the end of the day, the virus is there because Apple didn't do a thorough quality check.... period.

Posted by EricB at 08:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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I made the leap this week and bought a Mac Book Pro! I have to say that so far I am pretty impressed. It's fairly amazing that in my 20+ years of computer experience I have probably only clocked in a dozen hours or so using an Apple computer. And most of that time was spent on either an Apple IIc or IIe learning Basic!

I've made some jumps in my computing platforms in the past, but this is the biggest one in a while.

Atari 600XL -> IBM 286PC XT (MSDOS 3.3)
IBM 386SX (DR DOS 5.0) -> IBM 486DX (Desqview/X) <== Yes, X-Windows for DOS back in the early 90s
IBM 486DX2 (MS DOS 5.0) -> OS2/Warp

And a multitude of exposure to other hardware and Unix operating systems (SCO, Linux, BSD, DEC). Although I do tend to like Windows, I didn't really classify this as any jump in computing since most improvements to Windows in the last 10 years have just been one unimpressive 'upgrade' after another.

Given my "long-term exposure" to Windows, and the PC platform in general, this switch seemed like it would be a big one at first. After using the Mac for the last day or so, I think my brain is starting to rewire itself ;) From a UI and usability standpoint, I'm pretty impressed how everything just works. And the fact that the OS is BSD under the covers is pretty slick. BSDi was the first *nix OS that I learned over 10 years ago, so I feel right at home.

I've been having fun installing and exploring those once exclusive Mac-only applications:

Delicious Monster
I am still SO impressed that you can scan in your Book's UPC using the built-in iSight webcam!

QuickSilver

DEVONThink

I'm sure I'll be posting more articles as explore and discover new things with Mac.

Posted by EricB at 05:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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