Playing to Learn

I found this accidently; it is a Prezi presentation about a theory of learning.

.prezi-player { width: 550px; } .prezi-player-links { text-align: center; } Playing to Learn? on Prezi

The theory is interesting (although not entirely new), but the presentation itself is a good sample of the possibilities of Prezi.

.prezi-player { width: 550px; } .prezi-player-links { text-align: center; } Academy: Prezi Workflow in 15 minutes on Prezi

Geektests Galore

In the preparation of Geek Pride Day next week (May 25th) I was surfing the Web for new pages on Geekism and stumbled on, again, another geektest. Actually it is called a Nerdtest, but who cares – since Geek Pride Day is the same as Nerd Pride Day. So – couldn’t resist – filled in the survey and guess what? 94% – Supreme Nerd!

Rather high, but, no kidding, the test was too easy. So I took the follow-up test, nerd test 2.0 and: High Nerd!

That boosted my self confidence! Earlier I complained about my results at g33kt3st.com, where I was ranked “Average Geek – still far away from the geek ideal” in this post.
A different kind of geektest is Wired’s 100 skills list that I consider as a study program, a To-Do list, like monkeylinux. There are also shorter lists, like this one at Geekend.
Of course, these tests cannot touch the original Geektest, that btw was recently updated to version 3.14 – hmm, interesting. My score was 42,01183 % in version 3.1, but today, a little overconfident, I took the test without cheating and that gave me a setback: 41.32841%.  Disappointed!! But: still Major Geek.

Major Geek, Average Geek with Nerd tendencies, or Supreme/High Nerd? Still not sure which category I will fit in. The Venn diagram says I’m Geek, but here is a comparison chart that almost excludes me from the species.
Does it really matter which I am? Be honest, it is just a tag. that allows your family. your friends and, supposed you’re proud enough to wear it, you to feel comfortable about the fact that you prefer solving computer problems or reading a book over watching a sitcom on television or doing the smalltalk-thing.

Flowcharts

A while ago I posted on Creately, an online flowchart service. Now the Dutch LifeHacker blog (that is currently doing much better than the original, where quantity rules over quality – IMHO), published a mash-up about online flowchart services. For the review you should read the original article by Micha Coster, but here they are:

1. Gliffy
2. Creately
3. LovelyCharts
4. LucidChart
5. Google Docs – Drawings

Now the problem with these tools is that there are not as free as they pretend to be, so I still prefer desktop applications for my diagrams, because the advantage of online services – collaboration – doesn’t apply to me when working with flowcharts. My diagram creation program of choice is “Dia“, that also exists in a portableapps version.
A new star is the program Diagram Designer, that I haven’t tried yet, but LifeHacker reviewed it briefly.

3D

With my drawing skills, comparable to those of a child of seven, I’ll never be a great artist, but computers will help me to boost my creativity. After learning programs like Gimp and Inkscape, I’m now trying to work in 3D, which is quite difficult to learn!
My ambitions are nothing less than making my own animation movie, like the famous “”Elephants Dream“

This movie is produced with the great and free Blender-program. This runs from my USB, but it is not easy to learn. For the script I will work in Celtx, but that is not the issue here. Besides: it will take years and years to make my final masterpiece

There is also Daz3D, that has a simple tutorial built within. The basic program is free, but they let you pay for almost every feature that you could ever need to expand your possibilities. A really smart way to keep your customers hungry.

Okay, I followed some of the tutorials and just did some first exercises with Victoria, Daz3D’s only built-in figure with some clothes, poses and props (a volleyball) and came to this position, that I rendered to jpg as quickly as I could.
Nothing great, I know, but just a start.

Android 2.2 Include Built-In Tethering and Wi-Fi Hotspot Sharing

Via LifeHacker and Techcrunch.

TechCrunch is reporting that “Froyo,” the next version of the Android smartphone operating system expected to be released next week at Google’s I/O conference, will pack in more than just big compiling speed improvements and fragmentation fixes. It could also include built-in USB tethering and Wi-Fi hotspot sharing, allowing everyone around you to share your mobile data connection.

Still looking for a portable computer that can also let me make some phonecalls, I was earlier thinking about the Nokia N900, but I’ve changed my mind and decided that I wanted a HTC Legend, because that has the Android OS – and is slightly more affordable.

Then – chosing a smartphone is a completely irrational enterprise, at least for me – I found the Nexus One and decided that this cutie was the One I Want.

Just waiting until the Nexus One (with the Android 2.2. os) will be released in The Netherlands. Right now it’s availability is limited to webshops and – or course if you read the ads closely – rather expensive.

Tales of Everything

Wouldn’t it be great to link any object that direct to a ‘video memory’ or an article of text describing its history or background? Tales of Things allows just that with a quick and easy way to link any media to any object via small printable tags known as QR codes.

“Tales of Evertyting” is a site about memories and attaching media to objects via qrcodes and rfid.

A Quickmark of QR Code is a matrix code (or two-dimensional bar code) created by Japanese corporation Denso-Wave in 1994. The “QR” is derived from “Quick Response”, as the creator intended the code to allow its contents to be decoded at high speed.

Once tagged each object basically gets its own webpage allowing comments to be placed, new media added such as YouTube clips, Audioboo, Vimeo etc and new tales tagged to the codes.

As such any object you tag with the site can ‘Tweet’ each time it is scanned. If you tag a landmark for example, each time that tag is read you can get a tweet that says ‘Hey, I’ve just been scanned’. Once scanned new tales or comments can be added to that tag, creating a social network of ‘things’ and ‘locations’.

If every new object is within reach of a reader, everything is searchable and findable, subsequently the shopping experience may never be the same, and the concept of throwing away objects may become a thing of the past as other people find new uses for old things.

Digital Urban Booklet

I’m a fan of the Digital Urban blog. I wrote earlier about it, and I tried  – inspired by their tutorials – to make an Urban Movie myself, that is, let’s admit it, not worth being mentioned.

Now they have made available their booklet “Digital Geography – Geographic Visualisation for Urban Environments“, written by Andrew Hudson-Smith, available on the web for free.

The booklet is aimed as the start of a ‘recipe’ book for Geographic Virtual Urban Environments (GeoVUE) which we will update frequently through both Blurb and other rapid printing methods.

It’s a collection of workshops to visualise the city yourself.

‘Neogeography’ (…) is a geography for the everyday person using Web 2.0 techniques to create and overlay their own locational and related information on and into systems that mirror the real world. The term derives from Eisnor (2006), one of the founders of www.platial.com, where she defines Neogeography as: “…a diverse set of practices that operate outside, or alongside, or in the manner of, the practices of  professional geographers”. Rather than making claims about scientific standards, methodologies of Neogeography tend towards the intuitive, expressive, personal, absurd and/or artistic, but may be idiosyncratic applications of ‘real’ geographic techniques. Turner (2006) expands the definition considerably in his pamphlet on the various techniques which non-professional users now have at their disposal. He says: “…a Neogeographer uses a mapping API like Google Maps, talks about GPX versus KML and geotags his photos to make a map of his summer vacation”.

Essentially, Neogeography is about people using their own
maps, on their own terms and combining elements of an existing toolset. As part of GeoVUE we have built and distributed our own ‘toolset’ for geographic visualisation.

Welcome to a new world of rich geographic information available anywhere, anyplace, anytime.

And, some pages later:

Without question, the most important innovation in the development of the digital city, Neogeography, and the mashups that accompany it, is the concept of the Digital Earth. Google Earth and to an increasing extent Microsoft’s Virtual Earth and NASA’s World Wind have produced 3D cities at a speed and resolution that was unimaginable only a few years  ago.

These cities act as layers for information, a rich canvas onto and into which information can be inserted and extracted at will over the network. In essence they act as ‘space inside the machine’, a space that can be iconic, photorealistic or multifaceted depending on a user’s preference. It is into this space that spatial analysis, digital geography and geographic information systems (GIS) operate as software for analysing space.

Indeed Hillier actually defines ‘space as the machine’. In a Web 2.0 world of increasing software and infinite capacity for information, we can import the city into the machine, digitally, in a recursive fashion whereby the machine actually becomes the ‘space’.

It is in these virtual and network spaces that people are building, creating and indeed occupying digital cities.

We will explore the concept of the Digital Earth and virtual environments such as Second Life later, but for now it is worth looking at the graphic ‘Where will the people go?’ adapted from the garden city movement, an approach to urban planning that was presented in 1898 by Sir Ebenezer Howard.

The three magnets pull people between the Town and the Country. In today’s Web 2.0 world we have digital cities which are becoming increasingly populated and perhaps it is time for a new magnet – that of the Virtual Town-Country?

Geekology

Again some navel staring scribbles about the Art of being Geek. The Dutch Wiskundemeisjes wrote a blogpost about the Venn Diagram, that was also printed in De Volkskrant. As a specimen they printed the The Geek/Nerd/Dork/Dweeb Venn Diagram, that has been around on the internet for a while and helps you determine which type of nerd you are. Of course I am Proud to be Geek, since I consider myself intelligent, others consider me obsessed, and – although some people try to blame me for being socially inept – I’m definitely not!.

Searching the internet archives for an English version of the diagram (De Volkskrant translated it in Dutch) I found the website “Geekologie“. There I found this diagram of Geek Culture.

Rather small, if you click on the picture the full-size pic will load.

It seems to me everybody is more a less a geek