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5 tips for better ipod battery life

Filed Under Category Apple and Macs, Faith, Religion and Belief, Randomness, Tech by titanium

[a battery indicator with green juice half way along it.]You know the feeling- you’re grooving away to your favourite tunes, and happen to notice that your little juice-meter is awfully low. What to do? You decide that prolonging battery life is your priority. Here are some (purely anecdotal) tips that might help.

  1. Turn it off, put it away. (Did I say these were useful tips?)
  2. Turn down the screen brightness to as low as you can bear- I hear 0% is brilliant for boosting battery life.
  3. Similarly, turn down the time the back-light is on to the lowest setting.
  4. Don’t play the games, watch photos or browse through album art. These are more intensive and thus probably use the battery juice faster.
  5. Plug it in. This is a fantastic way to boost battery juice.

Now, I know that I have specifically dealt with the Apple Ipod in this article, but I am sure that many of these tips will apply to those MP3 players sold by other Manufacturers also.

This is humour, in case you haven’t picked it up yet…

March 23, 2008 | |

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get your bookmarks anywhere

Filed Under Category Education, Firefox, Tech by titanium

formerly take your bookmarks with you!

You may be upgrading your computer, not have the luxury of traveling with a laptop, or simply want a back up of your (firefox) bookmarks. If so, this tutorial is for you.

Ingredients

Action
Once you have your bookmarks in firefox, and your Google Account set up, download GBookmarks and follow the instructions to install it. Don’t be overwhelmed- installing addons for firefox is very easy. You will have to restart firefox (close and open the program again.)

Now in your menu bar, you should see a new menu for GBookmarks. Under that menu, choose the Options option. Put in your user name and password for your Google Account. Click the button directly underneath this that says: Import Firefox Bookmarks. You can set up a folder (say, “Firefox Bookmarks” if you wish to) then it’s on to the uploading. If you have many bookmarks, this might be a good time to go and make a cup of tea, take the dog for a walk etc, as you can’t use firefox to surf the net as the bookmarks are uploaded. Once you return from whatever real-life activity you chose, sign in to/navigate to Google bookmarks to check everything worked.

Hooray, you can now access your bookmarks from anywhere you can log in to your Google account from.

Optional but Recommended
For the day to day web-surfing, I’m partial to GMarks for organising, saving and using my bookmarks. While GBookmarks makes uploading to Google Bookmarks as easy as falling over, GMarks works better when it comes to the every day stuff. It is for using your existing Google bookmarks in firefox, not for putting your firefox bookmarks in Google. For instance, once you get your new computer, install GMarks and Firefox to get your bookmarks from Google. It is handy because it can add bookmarks for both Firefox and Google, or just one. All you have to do is to remember to use GMarks instead of regular Bookmarks when you’re doing your bookmarking.

As always, comments very welcome.

March 17, 2008 | |

COMMENTS

people binary

Filed Under Category Education, Tech by titanium

I’m teaching elementary/primary school Computer class, and as such, have decided to explain binary to the kids. The way to make something click with kids is this: to link it to something they already know, and to make it visual, or even better, active.

Something they know

I start by writing the word “word” on the board. What is it? It’s a word. What’s it made of? Letters. Which letters? w, o, r and d. So, we know that all words are made up of letters. Can you tell me what the basic numbers are? I’ll give you a hint: there are ten. I’ll give you another hint- here’s one. (write the number/numeral ’1′ on the board.) They should get 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 no problems, and a little hint for 0. I explain that all our written numbers are made up of these. (Example, 14, 10, 999, etc.)

Here’s the exciting bit (no pun!): you ask them how many numerals a computer uses. Erase all the numbers on the board leaving just the 0 and the 1. I tell them that computers can’t think like we do, and only think in terms of “on” and “off”. I like to do some light switching for this.

You know that the number 162 is made up of one hundred, six tens and two ones. (Note, if they haven’t gotten this down in decimal, it’s probably not the time to start them on binary.) We sometimes call them “places” the hundreds place, the tens place and the ones place. We know that the ones place can fit numbers all the way up to 9 before we have to move over into the tens place. Well, for a computer, it starts counting: “0, 1″ (act a little exasperated that you’re out of space and take a step to the side) “1″. Because it runs out of space so fast, it doesn’t have ones, tens, hundreds and so on places, it has a ones place, a twos place, a fours place, an eights place and so on.

[stick figures standing (represents 1) and squatting (represents 0)]
Making it Visual and Active

Ask for/pick a volunteer. Explain that standing up is “one” and squatting down is for “zero”. Ask them to show everyone 1 and 0. Now, ask for another volunteer. They are going to stand to the right of the person in the ones place, this new person is going to represent the twos place. Ask the first person to squat, and the new person to stand up- showing every one 2. Now, ask them how they will show 1, 0, and go for 2 again. This is where it gets exciting- ask them for 3. 2 + 1 = 3. (Just like one ten plus one six make sixteen.) Ask them how they will make four. That’s right, we need another volunteer! Run them through all the possible numbers, 0-7. It helps to go systematically through them all (0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7) then do some random ones for a challenge (4! 7! 3! etc). Remind them that 4+1 is 5, 4+2 is 6, 4+2+1 is 7.

So, we got to seven, and we can’t make any more because there is only room for a one or a zero in each place. So, I need another volunteer. How are we going to make 8? Ask the kids who needs to stand up and who needs to sit down (the ones not involved in the demonstration) to make the numbers 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15.

You may like to have sheets of paper with 1, 2, 4, 8 on them so the kids can very clearly indicate what “place” they are in.

This is usually a good point to get the kids to sit down. Four digits works well as they have four fingers on one hand. They can work out how to make the numbers up to 15- go through them all together. I like to have them use their pinky fingers for one, as that means the backs of their hands are turned towards themselves and there is a reduction in giggling when they use their middle fingers.

So there you go, how to teach kids binary using the people method.

If the kids are older, I like to throw in something about the different bases- we use base ten because we have ten fingers (and thumbs) and possibly one of my favourite quotes: “Don’t Panic, base 8 is just like base 10 really, if you’re missing two fingers!” (Tom Lehrer). Before we get down to the binary stuff.

Teachers, Parents, etc, feel free to use this method to teach your kids binary. I ask that if you put it in a curriculum that you contact me and let me know what school and where in the world you are- for my own fun. Of course if someone wants to pay you for it/put in a textbook/etc, I’d like a bit more than verbal recognition. (Cheques are good, wink wink.)

March 6, 2008 | |

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