Sunday 20 April 2008

Simple Yet Brilliant


My husband showed me this the other night, and we both wound up exploring every inch of the website as it was simple yet brilliant. Matt, from Where The Hell is Matt? (oh, the teacher in me wishes so badly that he named it "Where the Heck is Matt?"), has traveled the world and films himself doing a really funny and not so coordinated dance in a ton of different countries. He made a YouTube of a bunch of clips, and it has taken on a life of its own, leading to corporate sponsorship and him creating new dance videos with people living around the globe. The Google Earth aspect is great on this, and I love the inspiration his dancing gives in the fact that someone can take something quirky and spread that little bit of joy around the world by means of using technology. Of added interest is the video clips of his presenting of how the idea came about and how it grew to such a huge audience.

International teacher sidenote: Our counselor showed this at a middle school event and had kids cheer for places they had visited. Love that idea! Plus, it reinspired me to get to Petra, Jordan.

Image used is from the wherethehellismatt.com website

Thursday 10 April 2008

Adding Fonts





Warning: adding fonts can become addicting! This falls under the category of something that everyone kept saying was "so easy" but I couldn't get it. Well, now I've got it, and I want to share it. Please note that this was done on a Mac, but most fonts are for both Mac and PC.

First, you must download STUFFIT, which compresses the files for you. This is the part I was missing, which made it not so easy.

After you have Stuffit, go to a free font site. There are tons out there, but I used DaFont and Simply The Best and found some really fun ones.

1. Download the font(s) of your choice. You will see that it becomes a TTF file (your file will say the name and then .ttf).

2. Go to Applications and click on Font Book.

3. Then click on File, Add Font.

4. Find the font you downloaded and add it.

5. Done! A groovy new font on your computer. Repeat and repeat and repeat. Man, I love fonts.


images taken from simplythebest.net

Saturday 5 April 2008

Twitter

Oh, Twitter! Twitter, in a nutshell, is like a chat but with many people. So, if you send something out there into the Twitterverse (yes, that is really what it is called), such as a question about technology or even what you had for lunch, all the people you have put on your Twitter list see this. Much like Facebook, I avoided Twitter for a long time, mostly because whenver I looked at it, I would see people writing things like, "Just had an awesome egg salad sandwich" or "leaving for the airport in 2 hours," and I couldn't figure out why I needed to know that. However, I need to be careful, because especially with all things technology, I tend to eat my words six months down the line. What I said I wouldn't do often comes back to haunt me.

Case in point--a month or so ago, I was with a class and having a devil of a time getting Voicethread to record, so I had to take my laptop and walk all the way over to the high school 3rd floor just to find our tech guy to ask him what to do. If I had had Twitter, I could quickly send out the message/question I needed and get an almost instant response (seems many Twitterers are great at responding right away). Another month goes by, and I realize I have yet another quick question that required me to send an email to Thailand and wait for a response. Twitter would have been much quicker.

A friend of mine mentioned that all these social networks feel like high school all over again--Will you be my friend? Do you accept me as your friend? How many people are following you? Long story short, I joined Twitter, albeit still with hesitation. I'm starting out small and following only a few people, but I've already found it useful. I found out that blogspot blogs are unblocked in China at the moment (yippee!), baseball season started and I found a few great links to good blog postings. Worth it already, and who knows? Maybe six months from now I'll be writing down what I had for lunch. My Twitter name is bookchica if you want to check it out.