Shellous? Second Wormimation

Part two of our little claymation weekends. This time with sound effects!

Syndication 2.0: Yahoo Pipes

Yahoo Pipes makes it possible to apply a host of filtering and sorting functions to a variety of information souces. If for example, you want to receive news about Science from multiple RSS feeds, you can create a simple “pipe” to aggregate your news items into one individual feed. If you only want news tagged with “Europe” or “media” or a combination of both, you can determine this as part of the feed as well. In fact, the pipes can become almost as compley and specific as you like, ensuring you only get content you really want. Aggregating feeds into pipes is an awesome next step in the world of syndicated, dynamic content. Check out the Website under http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/.

LibriVox: Talking Books for Everyone

LibriVox provides free audiobooks from the public domain. If you would you like to record chapters of books in the public domain, Librivox offers the opportunity to volunteer. All you need is a computer, some free recording software, and your own voice.

“The Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch

I woke up early to watch an inspiring video suggested as a breakfast session by a good colleague this morning, and was not disappointed. “The Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch, a pioneer in the area of virtual reality, follows a tradition at some American universities to offer leading professors the opportunity to give an hour speech as if it was going to be their last lecture. An incredible Tigger-like individual, the twist with Randy’s speech is that it will be his last lecture.

Also, if you would like to learn programming in a fun, intuitive way, take a look at the Alice environment Randy talks about at www.alice.org.

Composition: Hyperscore (MIT)

I first encountered Hyperscore on one of the many fascinating TED.com video podcasts. It is a product of the MIT Media Lab and enables anyone irrespective of age, physical conditions or training to compose music in an intuitive and fun way. The software costs US$79 to download, but whether you actually buy it or not, it’s well worth simply checking the Website: http://www.hyperscore.com/. Alternately, you can take a quick look at the TED.com video: Releasing the music in your head (Tod Machover & Dan Ellsey)

Digital Love Song

This is so terribly funny for anyone who uses MSN, IM, Skype, or any other chat medium…All I can say is ROFL!

Plan Projects with MIT’s Simile Timeline

Brilliant visualization tool from the MIT Simile project that any would-be project manager or life-hacker should not be without, and free of charge at that! Link: http://simile.mit.edu/timeline/.

Windows: Mouse and Keyboard

Keyboard Speed
You can adjust several settings to suit your preference:

• Repeat rate: A measure of how many times per second that characters are repeated once you’ve held down the key long enough to begin repeating letters, numbers, or symbols
• Repeat delay: A measure of how long you must hold down a key before that character repeats
• Cursor blink rate: This setting doesn’t affect your typing speed. Rather, it controls how quickly the cursor blinks on and off
• To access these keyboard settings, choose Start > (Settings >) Control Panel > Keyboard. Next, choose the Speed tab. You’ll see slider controls for the three settings. Adjust them as you wish.

Mouse Keys
Have you ever wondered if there was a way to move your mouse pointer around without using your mouse?

• Go to Start > (Settings >) Control Panel (this must be done before losing the Mouse) and select the Accessibility Options icon
• Click on the Mouse tab and check the “Use Mouse Keys” option
• Click OK, and press the Alt + Shift + Num Lock buttons and you can use your numeric keypad to move your pointer instead of a mouse

Keyboard Browsing

• You can use the Tab, Shift, and Enter keys to navigate the World Wide Web.
• Use the Tab key to step through links on a page
• When a desired link is highlighted, press Enter to go there
• To step backward through the links (bottom of the page to the top) press Shift + Tab

Copy a File with a Mouse/Keyboard Combo
Drag the file while holding down the CTRL key. A “+” will appear on the icon. When you release the mouse button a copy of the file will be created.

Duplicating the Right Mouse Click
Select a file. Pressing the Shift + F10 key will be the same as clicking the right-mouse button.

Windows: Process Idle Tasks

Running multiple applications simultaneously for long periods leads to a gradual decrease in system performance over time. Often the only option is a restart. Even if you close the application in the Task Manager, the tasks/threads associated with the application are not released completely, depleting the system’s memory resources making the system unstable and sluggish. The following tip is designed to offer fast relief:

1. Right-click on your desktop and select New > Shortcut
2. In the text box enter the command:
   %windir%\system32\rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks
3. Click Next. In the next screen, name the shortcut: for example, Clear Memory
4. Click on Finish

Whenever you feel that the system is sluggish you can double click on this shortcut and it will take care of the idle tasks by removing them. This can be used before you resort to restarting/rebooting the system.