Things that don’t fit anywhere else
Jack Mezirow, a professor emeritus at Columbia Teachers College, has proposed that adults learn best if presented with what he calls a “disorienting dilemma,” or something that “helps you critically reflect on the assumptions you’ve acquired.”
Good article in the NYT on the importance of dissonance in priming the brain for learning.
Just got Windows 7 running in Parallels on my iMac. This post is being written using the Windows Live Essentials download of goodies from Microsoft.
Windows 7 seems pretty good if Aero is running, but for some reason it is getting disabled at every boot. Annoying.
Seems to work fine. Kudos Microsoft!
For a recent DVD project I needed to create multiple language subtitles. Basically this involves getting a transcript of the audio track in English, laying it in as subtitles, then exporting the English subtitle track out to a timecode formatted text file to the translation company can translate phrase by phrase. You would think exporting a subtitle track would be built into a professional DVD authoring program, but it’s missing from Apples DVD Studio Pro. Not only is it missing, but finding a utility to help with this was frustratingly difficult.
If you’re faced with a similar challenge, the program you want is Subtitle Xtractor. It’s a great program that does the job perfectly, and is donationware to boot.
Wasn’t sure it was going to happen this year.
First paste the following into the Script Editor and save it to the Word Scripts folder in your Office 2008 identity:
tell application "/Applications/Microsoft Office 2008/Microsoft Word.app" tell selection try set theClip to Unicode text of (the clipboard as record) type text text theClip end try end tell end tell
Then use System Preferences to set a keyboard command for the resulting script menu item. A kludge, but seems to work. I found this here.
Here’s the ultimate simple, free labeling software for lightscribe. Lightscribe takes forever to burn labels, but that is more than made up for by not fiddling with adhesive labels or finicky inkjet disc printers. Get a Lightscribe drive, chuck the $35 graphics-focused program it comes packaged with, and get this from the Lightscribe manufacturer’s site:
It prints one line of text on the top, one on the bottom, that’s it.
Free, and does what you want with way less crap than Roxio Toast. To save DVDs to ISO images (which you can then use as virtual masters for duplicating) choose the Save As CD/DVD Image option. It will produce a .cdr file. The file extensions can be confusing: .cdr (Burn plus some other Mac programs), .toast (Roxio Toast), and .iso (the rest of the world) are all identical — the files produced are bit-identical to each other. So you can change the resulting file extension from .cdr to .iso if you want. The resulting file can be used as a disc master on virtually any burning program, Mac, Windows, or Unix.
My 3G iPhone works great, but causes an inductive buzz on pretty much anything with speakers within a 5′ radius. After some googling about, I came on the approach of using an anti-static bag (sometimes called ESD packaging). If the phone is shielded by the bag it knocks down the buzzing almost completely, while still allowing the phone to stay in touch with the tower.
Perfect size ESD bag for the iPhone
With some experimenting, I have found a small tray with curved sides – just setting the iPhone in the tray on top of the bag solves the problem.
Perfect no-hassle buzzkill for the iPhone
There’s a product idea in here somewhere. In the meantime you can order ESD bags and trays from here: http://www.correctproducts.com
A heartier take on the peppermint patty, these have a thick coating of dark chocolate over a smooth mint center. The chocolate is very good, without an overt malitol taste, and the center is perfect. Made by Russell Stover, a company gaining a huge presence in the sugar free ghetto of our local drug stores.
Wow! These are, to my buds, indistinguishable from the real thing – delicious! Dark chocolate over creamy mint, and often (as in the picture) a bit fragile. These are becoming widely available at grocery stores and Walmart, which is a good thing. Sweetened with the usual sugar alcohol suspects, malitol, isomalt, and sorbitol and made by Hershey (alas probably in Mexico, where they moved most of their production after closing down their plant in Oakdale, CA).
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