File Share Cable

I'm about to try out a "File Share Cable" by Targus, bought at Staples for about $33. I already moved the majority of my files from my Dell XPS Vista to my new HP Envy Windows 8 Touchsmart laptop. The process was fairly painless, but took forever and a day. I still have files on the Dell 8400 desktop, though I moved all the photos, music, webs, and videos onto an external drive. The files remaining in My Documents are around 10 g. So, I'll give this a try. All indications are that it's a fairly simple thing to do. My hope is that it is indeed simple, for we now have two Macs, and two PCs, as well as numerous external hard drives and flash drives. To be able to connect any two computers and simply drag and drop files would be ideal. Since they're all laptops, any one can be moved next to any of the others in order to make a quick connection. The attached video shows how easy the process should be. Let's hope they're right!

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Sound Testing Frequencies

I've been having a hard time with one of our assignments in the 9th week of our course in Digital Media Skills. Frankly, I have absolutely failed at being able to guesstimate the range of frequencies among certain sounds in our homes. I've read what others estimated, but still, none of it made sense. Finally I created a pictorial graph of how each sound compared to the other sounds. I can see many things from this graph, but still I'm no closer to guessing what the sound frequencies are of my old desktop computer or my new air cleaner. I've continued to explore the excellent Australian site Physclips. But still I wavered. Finally I found a better demonstration of frequency ranges, using this video on YouTube, by Beeps, Chirps, and Noise. Let's hope I can come up with 5 guesses by 11:55pm tonight!

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ScanSnap Does It All

OMG - I've seen it all! ScanSnap has a scanner that will scan almost ANYTHING! Check it out on YouTube:

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Science of Sounds

This week's lesson has us learning more about the science of sound. In the process, I've come across a marvelous website that not only explains sound, but demonstrates it. Check out this video ("Flutes vs. Clarinets"), which is just a small sampling from Physclips.

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Vinyl to Wav

I'm in the midst of 3 projects: transferring files from a Vista to a Windows 8 PC; learning about Audacity for my current class in Digital Media Skills; and doing the laundry. My preferred mode of learning new software seems to be videos, and a quick Google search for Audacity took me to YouTube. Many good videos reside there, and I've seen a few of them. But, on the right-hand side listing of "Featured Videos" I came across one with the delightful title of "How to Convert Vinyl or Cassette to CD - For Free!" Well, this is too good to be true. I've saved 20+ of my favorite vinyl records, but no longer have space for my record player. Now's the time to convert the tracks to CD. This video, from 2008, is better than the 2010 similarly-named video, which uses a portable radio for demonstration purposes. Well, it looks like I have one more project to keep me busy! Meanwhile, it's time for the wash to go into the dryer...

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Graphics Project

Our assignment was to create 5 - 10 graphics using Photoshop (or Photoshop Elements) tools. Here are the 10 graphics I created:

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