To All Algebra I Students

During class I talked to you about having a Gmail or Facebook account because there are some on-line requirements for the class.  One of the sites we will using often is the Khan Academy.  The document linked below tells you how to set up your account, how to add me as your 'coach' (teacher), and what will be required of you at this site.  PLEASE READ THE DOCUMENT, START TO FINISH.  IT'S SHORT AND IT'S IMPORTANT.

 This is just the first page.  Get the entire document here.  Download and read it please.

Get started as soon as possible. Bring any questions you have to class or email me.

Upgrade Your Windows 7

There are a number of free programs you can install to improve your operating system, Windows 7 Starter Edition. While Windows 7 looks and works great, the starter edition leaves out a lot and is very limiting.

One free upgrade you can make is to install Start Menu 7.  This program changes the look and function of your start menu, one of the areas that I personally think is plain bad in the starter edition.

This program makes it much easier to find files and folders, and change any settings in the control panel and elsewhere.  Here's a screenshot of the program when you click on start:

As you can see, most everything is available in one click. You no longer have to click and double click through links and folders to find what you want.  Give it a try. As always, you can delete the program if you don't like it and your system will appear exactly as before.

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Final Exam Review Parts I-IV

Advanced System Care Free 4

A new version of Advanced System Care is out and it is worth downloading.  However, after downloading and installing, it is best to make the following changes:

1. Click on Toolbox, Optimize, Startup Manager
2. Uncheck any box that has to do with Advanced System Care, Quick Care, or IOBIT

Why? You'll want to run this program every week or two in order to clean up your system, but you don't want it running automatically when you start your computer. In the last post I mentioned your limited resources. You don't need ACS everyday and the more start up programs you have, the longer it takes to start your computer.

So download, install, make the quick changes, and use the program every 10 days or so. Very worth it.

 

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iTunes Not the Best for Your Laptop

Are you using iTunes as the music player/organizer on your laptop? While iTunes is good at what it does, it's just not the right player for your laptop.

Here's what you always need to keep in mind when it comes to your laptops: (actually they are netbooks, meaning smaller, less powerful laptops) You have limited processing, storage, and memory on your Dells.  iTunes is a program which commands a lot of resources from your computer, especially if it opens when you start up your computer. iTunes is a resource hog, what you need is a resource ant. 

One music player/organizer which is not a resource hog is Jaangle. It is a very small file compared to iTunes and is not always accessing on-line resources like the iTunes store, which slows your browsing.

You can download Jaangle here. Since it is a small file, you can install and try it out in almost no time.

You no like? No problem. Uninstall, then delete the installer.  If you do try Jaangle, let me know how you like it, it's always good to hear the opinions of people who have actually tried a program.

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Are You A Stargazer?

Do you ever look at the night sky and wonder if those reddish blue lights are stars or planets? Ever want to know what Taurus or Leo or Pisces looks like?  There's a great free program called Stellarium which shows you planets, stars, constellations, asteroids, and everything else in the sky at that exact moment.

In fact, this week just before sunrise, there are four planets grouped very close together looking toward the east.  I got up early Friday to see this, and was amazed at how bright Jupiter was and how red Mars is.

If you do download the program, the first thing you do is go to location on the left side and type in Saipan. 

After that, the sky you see on Stellarium will be the exact sky you see when you look into the real sky; any night, any day, the program and the sky will match.

It's not a program you'll use everyday, but sometimes you see something at night and might wonder what it is. Now you can load up Stellarium and know exactly what that object is.

Finally, there are quite a few events coming to the sky in the next few months which are very rare, once-in-a-life kind of events. Planet alignments, eclipses, asteroids coming close to earth and others. With Stellarium, you'll know what's going on.

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Weekend Tips: Online Storage & More

Maybe you know someone whose computer has crashed already; possibly that person is you.  Nothing is worse that having your computer crash.  Even though there are other, harder ways to save your data, most computer shops will fix your computer by wiping your hard drive clean and starting over.

The result: You lose all of your data. Pictures, programs, documents, grandma's secret pig's feet recipe. Gone. All of it.

Here's the thing: You never know when it is going to happen. It's happened to me, it's happened to everyone who's used a computer for a while.  So, be smart, be free, and do it for free.

There are many places where you can store between 2 and 50 Gigabytes of data for free. If you have anything on your computer you don't want to lose, create an account, upload all your stuff, and never worry about a computer crash again.

An added bonus is that you can create public and private folders. If you have some pictures you want to share, upload them to your public folder and give people the web address. They can get the photos, documents or whatever themselves.  No more flash drives, dragging things around. Clean and easy.

Here are some links to online storage sites:  ADrive, OpenDrive, Flickr,   and finally, don't forget about Gmail. If you have an account, you have 7 gigabytes of storage. You can add anything as an attachment and upload it. There is no public folder with Gmail, though.

 Don't learn your lesson the hard way. Get an account, upload the things you don't want to lose, and sleep well at night.

Quick Tip #2:

If you're leaving your computer for a few minutes and don't want anyone messing with it, you can quickly and easily lock the keyboard by pressing the Windows key and the L key. Win + L. Just takes a second, and your computer is secured.

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Lots 'O Fonts

                     Fonts,  Lettering Styles.
They can add a lot of personality and pizzaz to a document. Fonts can also add a personal touch, such as fonts for holidays, birthdays and other themes.

There are lots of free fonts on the internet which you can download for free.  A couple of the best sites for lots of free fonts are 1001 fonts and DaFont.com.

How to install fonts:   After you have downloaded the font(s) you want, the first step is to unzip the folder. Right click on the folder and select unzip. ( If you are using 7-zip, select "extract to "name of font".  Next, double click the unzipped folder. Right click on the font, and select "install". That's it, the font should be installed in the correct folder. You can then delete both the zipped and unzipped folders if you like.

Caution I:  Don't download fonts unless you think you are going to use it. When a program that uses fonts loads up, (like Word, Open Office, and others,) it loads all the fonts at the beginning.  Having tons of fonts will just cause the program to take longer to load.

Caution II: Please dont' use crazy, hard to read fonts for school reports or other important documents you may write. These fonts aren't really for those types of documents.

Otherwise: Download, Install, and Enjoy

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Weekend Break; The Future, Games/ Music & More

Want to see into the future? Sure, who doesn't. Check out in20years.com.  Take a picture from your web cam, upload it to the site, and see yourself 20 years and 30 years in the future.  Do you look like mom or dad?

In the last post, I mentioned the advantages of having a mouse. Here are some fun, time wasting, on line games that require a mouse to play.  The first one is Basketball. How many points can you score in the given time.  My high score is 90, try to beat it.....if you're not scared.

 Another fun, on line mouse game is Ricochet Kills 2. Test your aim and ricochet skills. Be careful, you can lose a lot of time playing this one.

 

For music lovers, especially those who like to sing or want to be in a band, there's Breakout Band. Using the built-in microphone on your computer and the breakout band's instruments, you can create, record, and post your songs. Send the song link to your friends if you like.  A great site to practice and be creative if music is your thing.

Last but definitely not least is an on line typing program called Z-Type.  I've mentioned the importance of learning how to type before. You'll be doing a lot of it in your 8th grade computer class. With Z-Type, you learn typing by shooting down the words as the drop from the sky.  If you want something that is fun and improves your skills, Z-Type is a great way to do it.

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Trouble with Transformations? Here's Help

If you're having trouble figuring out the whole transformation thing, you know, translations, reflections, and rotations, help is on the way.

Two short animated videos can be downloaded here and here.

 

 Another video for those who need to start at the very beginning can be downloaded here. This video covers x and y coordinates, how to plot them on a graph, and what positive and negative coordinates are.

I have also created a few short Power Point presentations covering all the different topics involved. They can be downloaded here, here, and  here,

There is one last Power Point with 3 problems to solve and the answers so you can check yourself. I encourage you to try those three, as we will be testing on this the week we return to school. The download for this Power Point is here.

More to come during the week.  So what??? Only Kai knows how to create, save, and send a short video?? Really?? You're all so rich and full that you don't need $10 from Subway. C'mon, someone give it a shot!

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Using Your Web Cam & V-Mail

 There are many things you can do with your web cam.  One of them is to create, save, and send v-mails. (Video mail).  Maybe someone is having a birthday, and instead of just writing them an e-mail, you can record audio and video from your webcam and built -in microphone and send them this file instead.

After recording and saving the file, you just add the file as an attachment to an email. When the person gets your email, they can open the video with VLC, Windows Media, or whatever player they use.

I'm not sure if your computer has video recording software on it, but there is a great free, and easy to use program called Cam Studio. You can download it here. After shooting your video, there is another easy to use program for adding special effects and text. This program is called Many Cam.

Try it out. You can always shoot a video, add some special effects, and email it to yourself just for practice.

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Best in Class: Media Centers

If you download movies and video clips, and have lots of songs and pictures on your hard drive, it's far easier to find, organize and play these media files if they are stored in one place. By far the best media center application is XBMC. I mentioned this program in an earlier post, but it's worth saying it again. XBMC will play almost any type of file, is skinnable (has many different 'looks' to it), can be customized with easy to find add-ons, and keeps all your files organized for easy  playing.  Here's a couple of pictures of XBMC:

You can download XBMC here. Select Windows from the list showing. As usual, since the program is free, it's worth a try. If you don't like it, or don't have a lot of media files, you can always uninstall and delete it.

If you like to look for pictures on the internet for your desktop or whatever, you may come across some pictures with writing or other markings on them that you would like removed. See picture below:

 Notice the writing on the bottom left. A website named webinpaint can easily remove this and almost anything else you may want removed from a picture. Even if you don't see a need for this now, you can always right click on the link, select 'bookmart this link', and you'll have the site saved in case you need it later. Below is the same picture after 30 seconds with webinpaint:

More to come this weekend including links from earlier posts like Avast!, Chrome, Firefox, and new stuff.

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Windows 7 Gadgets

Here's a couple of gadgets for your desktop you may want to try. Of course if you download them and don't like or use it, you can always delete the gadget.

1. Mini T.V.: Get hundreds, no, thousands of t.v. and radio stations on your desktop. You can even change the t.v. to full screen mode. Get it here.

2.  Facebook Explorer Gadget:  The Facebook Explorer Gadget keeps track of your friends’ activities, your messages, event notification and more. It’s a waste of time to open your browser, login to Facebook account from time to time only to find out there was no update. If you use Facebook Explorer, you do not need to visit Facebook as you will be notified of all the updates on the gadget. Try it here.

No Powerpoint? ...No Problem

Because almost none of you have Microsoft Office on your computers, you are going to have to use Presentation Software other than PowerPoint. I'll show you alternatives which let you create presentations as good or better than PowerPoint and are, of course, free.

1.  Open Office Presentation:  Most of you have this free collection of programs (called a suite) on your computer and the presentation software is actually a very good one. However, it is much slower than PowerPoint, and there aren't that many templates and clip art.


2.  Sliderocket is a web-based program, meaning there is nothing to download. You use the program on the web. There is a free version, you just have to register. It is slick, professional looking and there are many templates, photos, and other clip art to choose from.  Here is a screenshot of sliderocket:

3.  Prezi:  Another web-based program, Prezi is different than Powerpoint and all the other presentation programs listed. An example of Prezi is shown below. Press the start button to begin.

4.  GoogleDocs: I mentioned this yesterday, and it is a site everyone should become used to. Free with a gmail account (required for this class), the presentation program is just like using PowerPoint and has many options available.

5.  Finally, there is 280slides.  It's listed last, but 280slides is every bit as good as the other programs shown. There are many options so you can create interesting and creative presentations. It is worth checking out.

Update:  As of yet, nobody has identified the latest landmark for our free computer time. Try using TinEye, I bet you'll get it.

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Multimedia Software

Two nice software programs that just came out and are pretty cool.  The first one is for creative music people. Called Virtual DJ, (get it here) it's like having your own music studio. You can mix, edit, scratch, add sound effects, vocals, and crossfade in and out of songs like a professional. Create your playlist of customized songs. Get your DJ on and try it out.

The next program just out is another video player, like VLC or Windows Media Player, except that Splash Pro is designed for HD movies and videos. The picture is much sharper for HD videos than the other players. For regular, non HD movies, the other players work just as well. If you have something in HD to watch, download Splash Pro, and see for yourself.

Wednesday Websites & Friday Freeware

Because of the holiday, Wednesday's and Friday's posts will be combined. In this post I'll share some interesting websites to check out and some programs you can download, all free of course.

First up, create a font out of your own handwriting. What is a font you say? The style of lettering that shows when you type. One cool way to personalize your typing is to have your own printing or cursive as the font.  It's easy to do and you can get started here. You have to print the first page out, put your writing on it, then let your webcam capture the page so the program can create your font.

Another cool font related site for the artistic types is Fontstruct. Create any font you want from grunge, grafitti, stylish or crazy. You can be as creative as you want.

vozMe is a website and a program you can download. It is a text to speech program which can read your emails, documents or any other written text. Tired of reading? Let vozMe read it for you.

Create your own radio station and stream it over the internet for all to hear. Play your favorite songs, take requests from your friends, whatever you want, it's your radio station. See the short video on setting up.

Finally, play thousands of Nintendo Games while you surf the net, for free. Check this video for the super easy way to do this.

Have a good weekend, download the math videos and worksheets and get a head start.

Friday's Freeware

For a computer user, there is no better word than freeware. What is freeware?  It's software (programs), that is, well, free. You really don't have to spend any money at all to have a computer full of great programs that do just about everything you want to.  You might find some or all of these useful depending on your needs and wants.

1.  xbmc media center: Organize all your pictures, movies, music, and other media in one place.  Looks great, is skinnable, add custom backgrounds, and most of all, keep track of all your media files in one place. Since its free, it's always worth taking a look at; you can always uninstall it later if you don't use it.

2. PhotoStory3: Great program for turning photos into slideshows with dozens of special effects, animations, and text options.  add your own background music and you have a professional looking slideshow for free.

3.  Kiran's Typing Tutor:  I gave you an on-line program Wednesday, but this program you download and use right off your computer.  Lots of options and typing games. Just 10 minutes a day practicing keyboarding will save you so much time later when you have to type reports and assignments. Really worth the time.  Everyone should have this program on their computer.

A Comment on Comments

The comments section is much easier to use now. You don't have to sign in or have an email address or anything. If you do leave a comment, just use the drop-down box below the section and select 'anonymous'. If you have a question, comment, problem with downloads,
or anything else, feel free to leave a comment.  My email address is also listed on the right side; you can always email me also. Please vote in our poll as well.

Monday's Music
Each day of the week a part of the blog will focus on a particular theme.  Monday's are for music. This may include an audio selection, a music video, a link to a website dealing with music, or a download of the same topic.
Today's music related selection is a website listing hundred's and hundred's of internet radio stations which you can select and listen to while you use your computer.

Tired of your same old playlist?  The site is called Streema, and the link (right click, open in new tab) is here.
Select the station by type of music, or choose from the world's 20 most popular internet radio stations.  Super easy to do. If you like the website, or any website you visit, don't 
forget to bookmark it.

Tomorrow, you'll be introduced to Tuesday's Teaser; a not too hard teaser or problem to solve. Awards to the first three to email me the correct answer. Some math links to follow later..Gotta walk the dog now.

P.S. Tomorrow is our free extra lunch day. Lunch from 11:00-12:30

More 'Must Have' Software

Sometimes when you download movies, music, or programs,  the folder will look like this:

This is called a 'zipped' folder. It compresses or squeezes the data so the download size is smaller. But to use the data, you must 'unzip' it first. The first link is to a free program which lets you unzip these types of folders. It's called 7zip and is found here. Click on the word download, to the left of .exe file.

After the installer downloads, you can install by double clicking. You will need to unzip folders which have Math videos, worksheets, and other assignments. When you have downloaded one of the folders with your assignments, this is what you do:  Right click the folder, select 7-zip, then select 'Extract to.....'

When you are finished, you will have both the zipped and unzipped folder. Since there is no need for both, you can then delete the zipped folder like this:

Now you can open the unzipped folder and use the documents inside.
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The next program you will be using for some of your assignments is called Print Screen. It is used to 'take a picture' of websites, or anything on your desktop. In fact, I used print screen for the pictures you see above. Download the program here.

After you install and open the program, make these two changes to the program:
1. Right click the Print Screen icon in the taskbar, and select 'properties'.
2. On the left side, select source.
3. Click the 'Rectangular Area' button.  This lets you choose the size of the area you want to copy.
4. Just below source, you will see 'Destination'.
5. Click here and find the Capture Directory section.
6. Click on the little box with the three dots to the right.
7. In the new window, find the 'Desktop' folder and select it.
8. Click 'OK' and you're done.

Now, practice using it. Find the 'fn' key on your keyboard. Hold this key down while pressing the 'insert' key once. (This key should be in the upper right)  Now press and hold the left select on the touch pad and drag to  select an area to copy.  You can practice without saving the selection. Practice using this program, as you will need to for class. If you need help, get help. You've got a tool you must know how to use.

Take a break from killing each other in Halo, and practice using your computer.

Adios

Need a free Word Processor?

Many of you have said you don't like Open Office.  Here's a free program called AbiWord. It's easy to learn, yet does everything you want a word processor to do.  So, if you're looking for
a program to type your reports, AbiWord should help.

In the last post, two video players were linked. I said that they both could play just about
any type of file you download. However, they won't play FLV files like you
download from youtube and other sites. However, FLV Player will do that.
The download link is here.

Enjoy.