Month: December 2009

Have I said how much I like Typepad.  I LOVE Typepad.

I've been blogging for a long time.  Since February 2003.  That's like 100 years in blog years. 

I started out with Movable Type, that I set up on my own site.  Pages of instructions, pain in the butt.  When they moved to a pay model, I tried WordPress for a few weeks, HATED it, went back to Movable Type.

However, I got sick of having to reinstall updates every few months, and would get major writer's block, every time my control page said i needed to update, and I needed lots of quiet time to do it in.  That's hard to get when you're a teacher and have two dogs at home.

It finally took last year, but I jumped to Typepad.  It's been SO easy since then, I tweak things from to time, they add features, and all is good.  The good thing — I only have to blog and don't have to worry about the hosting.

Love it.

Again.

I usually end up dropping these things.

http://www.kweaver.org/adventures_in_training_th/

I've made two videos that should be helpful for XNA development:

The first shows how to deploy with an XBox: 

http://kweaver.us/xboxDeploy/XboxDeploy.html

Used my favorite application — Camtasia and had a camera on a tripod pointing to the TV.

http://kweaver.us/XNA_Zune/XNA_Zune.html

The Zune video was done with a web cam. 

Both are picture in picture.

Quoted from http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/LeaderTalk/2009/12/learning_by_accident_or_design.html:

Learning by Accident or Design – Should Computer Tech Classes Be Required in High School? – LeaderTalk – Education Week

One argument for the elimination of the requirement is that today’s students are so immersed in technology – starting in kindergarten – that by the time they take a basic computer class in high school the content is already mastered.

As I snort ….

I have three classes of students who, for the most part, can’t sign up for an email account, send an email, and read them.

Not entirely sure why, but they are remedial math and science students — were they pulled out of the tech classes for tutorials?  Are they just really bad students in every classroom (true in many of these cases), or just take pride in not being good at computers –some, certainly.

Each student should be pushed to take a tech class that is equal to their academic achievements, whether it’s a business class, computer science, webmastering or tech apps. All of our students can use the extra skill set.

I tend to build a lot more flash movies and do more web develoment when there is a Chumby in the office.

Out of sight, out of mind. 

My favorite channel is my go to bed channel, which right now features Macy and a clock:

I have also been making flash movies of my photos from agility trials.

Not sure that will show up well, since the widgets are private, but we'll see.

I've also got my Chumby fooled into thinking my Windows Home Server is a usb drive, so it will play music off the server, that's working quite nicely and better than Squeezebox.  I just have to put the right music on the Windows Home Server share.

And really loving the Windows Home Server (HP brand), but that's for another blog post.