Thursday, February 28, 2008

Free software (early versions)

Serif (2008). FreeSerifSoftware - free software downloads. Retrieved February 28, 2007 from http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/

Free software downloads for desktop publishing, image editing, graphic design, 3D animation, and web publishing.

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Flash ActionScript: Convert PPT to SWF

Zheng, S. (2005) How to Convert PowerPoint to Flash Manually. Retrieved February 27, 2008 from http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2005/09/02/how-to-convert-powerpoint-to-flash-manually

For those who like coding in ActionScript (if you're not into programming you will probably want a converter).. let me know if you can find a good free one.

Adobe magazine & ActionScript 3.0

Adobe (2008) Magazine for creative professionals. Retrieved February 27, 2008 fromhttp://www.adobemagazine.com/ 

Adobe (2008) ActionScript 3.0 from the ground up. Retrieved February 27, 2008 from  http://www.adobe.com/devnet/actionscript/articles/as3_tour.html

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Apostrophes in Names

Apostrophes in Names Stir Lot o' Trouble
Associated Press (02/21/08) Odriscoll, Sean


Despite their sophistication, computers are still often confused when an apostrophe appears in a name, which can cause problems for users when they to vote, schedule appointments, rent a car, book a flight, or take a college exam. In addition to names with apostrophes, names with hyphens and names with surnames such as "van" can also cause problems.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hQAYklloUDZA7NSxt3Jlbmm_jY3wD8UUV0LG0

EIT 4:05 /1.30pm

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

vmvGeek's software: Inkscape - Vector editor

vGeekAn Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.Inkscape supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.). allows you to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more. We also aim to maintain a thriving user and developer community by using open, community-oriented development.

http://www.inkscape.org/index.php?lang=en

vmvGeek's software: Inkscape - Vector editor

vGeekAn Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.Inkscape supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.). allows you to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more. We also aim to maintain a thriving user and developer community by using open, community-oriented development.

http://www.inkscape.org/index.php?lang=en

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Floptical shrinks powerpoint

Floptical bunnyInserting images into PowerPoint can increase the size of your file heaps. So if you want to shrink the file get PowerPoint to compress the image.

  1. Click on the image (Well thats pretty obvious :)  and resize by dragging corner handles - dragging on the top and side ones will usually give you short fat bunnies or long thin ones).

  2. Click on the Format tab (Office 2007). On the top left you will see Compress Pictures.. click it and if you click [Ok] all your images will be shrunk.



  •  Notes:

    • You may like to check the file sizes before and after using windows explorer.

    • Thanks to Joyce for pointing this out...



Sunday, February 10, 2008

Floptical shows how to wrap text round an image

Floptical BunnyFloptical bunnyBy default the text starts at the bottom right of an image (like this), so how do you make text wrap.

The simplest way is to

  1. insert the image using the upload below the editor, then

  2. insert into the Post 

  3. change the tab from visual to code

  4. find the img tag with the picture and inside the tag add align="left"


Floptical bunnyAnother way (a little tricky) is to use the picture icon on the Post editor (there is a wee bug!).

  1. Insert the picture into the editor.

  2. Click on the image then click on the picture icon, this will bring up a dialog box

  3. Change the alignment to what you want, but.. before you save
    Note that the dimensions are blank **this is the bug** if you save at this point the image will vanish (actually it becomes an image 1 pixel wide by 1 pixel high!)

  4. So here's a trick..

    1. highlight the Image URL (click in the Image URL text box and go Ctrl+A).

    2. Cut it out (Ctrl+X)

    3. Click in another of the text boxes (like image description)

    4. Then click in the inage URL one and paste the URL back! then..

    5. Click in the Image description one and the dimensions will magically appear!

    6. .. so you click Update and the image will appear as you wanted it to.



Thursday, February 7, 2008

Floptical Bunnies – “How to add Google Analytics to your eduBlog site !”

What is Google Analytics?

Allows you to track how busy your blog really is. And its free!

How do I do it?

  1. Surf to http://www.google.com/analytics/

  2. Sign in (if you are already have a gmail account this is real easy!)

  3. Analytics: New Account Signup
    Enter the URL (in my case this was virtualmv.edublogs.org, and the account name was automatically created). Fill in the other stuff.

  4. Analytics: Tracking instructions
    Read if you want to but take note of the number that starts with “UA-######-#” that’s the number you need to type in later.


And that’s all for google … now eduBlog

  1. Login to your EduBlog account as administrator (duh!)

  2. On the dashboard choose Plugins and scroll down (unless you have a large screen), and click Activate on Google Analytics

  3. A new tab appears next to Plugins (near the top of the screen) called Google Analytics, so click on it!

  4. In the Analytics User Account box type in the number you wrote down in set 4. (UA-######-#) and click Update UA String


.. and that’s it… Go to http://www.google.com/analytics/ and login to get the statistics…(There is a checker here to make sure it is actually working)

Floptical Bunny

Floptical bunnyMany years ago I used to have a cartoon character that taught basic computing stuff called Floptical bunny.

So, I've decided to bring him back to life again, and use him to indicate when some basic stuff is described.

Monday, February 4, 2008

Adobe CS3 problem

Adobe CS3 ErrorProblem: Doesn't install! (click on image to enlarge)

Solution: Un-install Flash Player 8 and plugins

This is a quick (well depends if you have 40 minutes) fix that worked on my WinXP machine.
1. First the problem (for me) were installed Flash 8 player and plugins. Trying to de-install did not work as apparently they needed a network deinstaller.
2. Microsoft to the rescue (it does happen!). Went to
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301 and downloaded the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility.
3. Ran the utility and deinstalled the Flash 8 players!
4. re inserted the CS3 DVD and asked it to repair my existing installation.
... amazing ... it worked!! Really slack programming from Adobe though and I know it will cause a lot of unnecessary work for lots of people.