New Year’s Resolution Generator 2014

I love a good New Year’s resolution! 1920 x 1080 suits me fine (thank you to one of my Twitter followers for that little gem) but so does standing up for what I believe in. If you want to find a resolution to suit you then try the Resolution Generator. Every year there is a generator similar to this and every year I find a resolution I can live with.

DIY Light Tent Project

There are plenty of fancier DIY light tents on You Tube and plenty of fancier clips. I chose this one because it is just simple. No fuss, no frills but it shows you clearly how to make a light tent to improve image quality when you are photographing smaller objects. Yes, you can go down the shop and buy a light tent. Making one is a nice little project for children and adults alike. A rainy afternoon project, or a too hot to go outside project, or you have to stay in because there’s too much snow project. It would be a nice way to pass a couple of hours or a double lesson. Personally, I’d use baking paper instead of tissue paper since you can buy a whole roll and use it for baking as well as light tents! Tissue paper is not necessarily so easy to come buy. This way you can get everything in the supermarket. Part of the creativity could be to make it look really cool by using different tape colours and decoration. It needs to be kept simple, though, because the reflective white is the key. The other reason I chose this clip is because you can watch and build at the same time. It is clearly stepped in its procedure and so if you have your tablet, phone or laptop you can have the best of both worlds and use technology to be creative and then enhance your image production. Technology is a tool. It’s not an end in itself. I am always using my tablet to help me actually physically do something in the same way I see people use their phones to photograph someone doing something so they remember the steps. Happy building and happy clicking!

Merry Christmas!

I’d like to wish all my visitors, supporters , followers and those who have encouraged me a very Merry Christmas and a very techie one, too!

How to wrap a cat for Christmas

Just getting into the Christmas spirit and hope you are too if you celebrate it. Great little video which has all the elements of a compelling short video…clever, fun, thinking outside the box, creative and well orchestrated.

Make me a gadget, please!

The other day I was writing about using my TEL7J tablet in the kitchen because it is not an expensive gadget and it’s durable. I was suggesting we could have a purpose built gadget for the kitchen – splash proof, basic, durable but web enabled. I know what the interface should look like now and I have put up the mock-up left. It needs to be tiled and preferably each tile should operate independently from within that tile, but I’d also like to be able to shift from small to full screen if necessary. I want the web to check sites just for general browsing but also to access YouTube cooking videos and also recipe sites. Infact YouTube could be one of the tiles. Everyone would have different interests. Some people might prefer to access music and sport as they cook. There could even be a news tiles. I guess you should have a bank of tiles to choose from and that the number of tiles could be changed. I always want to know the time and weather and then it’s nice to keep up with Twitter and Facebook. The last tile I’d like is one for images. A scrolling tile for that one so I can have the interest of images changing. It would be great to be able to wall mount this touch screen dream gadget so it is out of the way but easily accessed in front of me. I could use a gadget like this in my classroom. It would have the school daily notices, news services, Google maps, deadline reminders for the week, aitsl and acara. Why not? The teacher toolkit on the wall on a simple , fuss-free interface on a simple, fuss-free gadget. Maybe, by next Christmas!