Academic Aesthetic

Just an old man yelling at cloud computing. My other projects are all over at AaronBSmith.com.

Blog

  • He’s Baaaaaaaaaaaack!

    I could hardly believe my eyes when I looked at my list of podcasts this morning, but Steve Dembo has started uploading those wonderful mp3 files of his once more.

    (And all the Ed-Tech world rejoiced.)

    His latest podcast is a bit of a ramble about what’s happened in the past 3 months and the difficulty of getting back into the swing of things, but it’s still all good.

  • Moving again

    After a scare with my hard drive that may or may not have been resolved I decided to move my blog to a more off-site publication method. I love Thingamablog‘s features, but push comes to shove I have to keep the dynamic files on my own computer and upload static pages.

    So … if you can read this, the move of all my posts to a Blogger account has been successful.

  • Mini Lesson 1: Flip-Its

    minilesson_0The wait is over, behold my first mini lesson! In this lesson I show how to make a simple two frame animation known as a “flip=it.” Making this video was itself a learning experience – I expect the quality of these to improve with time.

    File size: 1.9 MB
    Length: 3:32
    (The iPod version will be posted soon)

    More Resources:

  • Podcast 38: Audience and Creative Commons

    Click to play or download.My 38th podcast is a few days late, due to some technical difficulties. My computer feels better now.


    Show Notes:

    1. Whenever you use a form of media, you must NEVER forget your audience.
    2. Where do you go to find media released under a Creative Commons License?Yahoo! Creative Commons
      CreativeCommons.org
      OurMedia.org
      Archive.org
      Flickr.com
      Yotophoto.com
      PodSafe Audio
    3. Academic Aesthetic Forum: Yes, no, maybe so?
  • Mini Lesson 0: I owe you an explanation

    minilesson_0

    This is the introduction for a series of videos where I show how to create a variety of art projects.

    File size: 1.4 MB

    Length: 2:39

    (There’s also an iPod version if you’re interested, but that’s 14 MB)

  • Lessig and Laporte

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    I’ll admit I’m a total Lawrence Lessig fanboy.

    I’m also a Leo Laporte fanboy.

    So when Lawrence Lessig showed up on this past Sunday’s This Week In Tech I was … very, very happy.

    You may want to check that podcast out for yourself. Trust me, it’s some good conversation.

  • Podcast 37: Podvangelism and Movies

    Click to play or download.In my 37th podcast I say “podcast” a lot. I can’t help it, it rolls off the tongue.


    Show Notes:

    1. What does my nickname have to do with podvangelism? You may not know as much about podcasting as some people, but if you’re hearing my podcast now you know more than most people.
    2. The 5th & 6th grade members of my Art Club are going to be making short movies, and so far things are working out well.
    3. I feel inspired to make little movies of lesson ideas/instructions. Look for them soon.
  • Goodbye, Bravenet.com

    Ad supported service providers like Bravenet are often ok, because the ads are often not too intrusive while the services (like showing me who visits my site here) are great.

    Unfortunately, Bravenet took a turn for the worse. At first I thought it was a fluke. After a restart I visited the same Bravenet page a 2nd time and got the same problem – 94 .exe files downloading themselves onto my desktop (It would have been more, but I eventually geve up trying to hit “cancel” or “quit” and just used the “force-quit” command). How they managed to do this while I was using a Mac and running a Firefox based browser (Camino) is beyond me, but needless to say I was very annoyed. I’m just happy that .exe files won’t run on a Mac so I don’t have to worry about any spyware infections or the like.

    Free is good, but it’s not worth that. I filed a complaint with Bravenet but since they allowed this to happen I’ve decided to remove all the Bravenet.com code from my webpages.

    UPDATE: One thing in Bravenet’s favor is the fact that their tech support responded to my complaint faster than any online company I’ve seen in a long, long time. I don’t mean a computer generated something, I mean a living human being asked me to clarify some things and then responded again once I did so.

    Bravenet might yet redeem themselves. We’ll see.

  • OpenOffice.org 2.0

    Tech Icon

    At long last, OpenOffice.org has released version 2.0 of their impressive office suite. (Of course the Mac version isn’t fully debugged yet, but it hopefully won’t be long now. Until then NeoOffice J still rocks.)

    If you’ve yet to download OpenOffice and try it out, then now’s a good time to do so. It does 90% of the stuff that Microsoft Office does, and a few things that Office has never done to boot.

    Oh yeah, and it’s free. Free is good.