The Adventures of a Digital Sensei
I am starting to stress out just a little bit. You see over the next couple of days I have a series of presentations that I am giving at a major national conference LaGuardia is hosting. The conference, “Making Connections: ePortfolios, Integrative Learning and Assessment“, is on the topic of ePortfolios and how they can be utilized to assess student and institutional growth. Continue reading “ePortfolio Conference Planning”
The footage above is the actual video of the speech that I gave to a group of High School juniors and seniors during the Microsoft sponsored IT Tech Trends seminar earlier this month. The purpose of the seminar was to get high school students interested in IT careers. While it wasn’t my finest speech (I rambled a little bit), overall I think I did okay. The students seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say.
After my morning class the LaGuardia CIS department hosted an IT Tech Trends seminar yesterday that was sponsored by Microsoft. The seminar was open to high school juniors and seniors from the NYC area with the express purpose of getting them interested in IT careers in general, and IT studies at LaGuardia specifically. One of the schools that had confirmed backed out at the last minute because the coordinator had confused the dates and had booked parent-teacher conferences on the same day. The turn out, while not as big as we had originally expected, was still respectable. Continue reading “Microsoft IT Tech Trends Seminar”
I went to my first meeting of the New York City Flashcoders user group last night. I have been a member of the mailing list for a few months now and figured that it was time to meet the actual people behind the site. The Flashcoders user group appears to be one of the more active flash communities in the NYC area. In fact, this group of multimedia professionals meet about once a week to discuss and display cool new Flash based projects and tools. The meeting last night was about using Arduino in conjunction with Flash actionscript. Continue reading “My first Flashcoders meeting”
After the late, late party at Miko’s last night, I wasn’t hyped to get up early on a Sunday morning a head off to a technical conference on administering and programming for Drupal. However since I needed to learn more about this open source content management system for a side project that I am working on called Ensideus.com (more on that soon), I dragged my sorry butt out of bed and headed to Brooklyn. Continue reading “Drupal Camp at PolyTech”
Those of you that have been paying attention to my recent post might have noticed that I have been spending alot of time focusing on my digital audio and video chops. As I result I have been getting nervous that I been letting my web design/development skills start to slip. So to make sure that I didn’t let that happen, I needed to get motivated. The quickest way for me to get motivated is to spend time around other Continue reading “Coldfusion User Group Meeting”
I saved up and finally got some new equipment and software to replace some of my aging tools. I had been looking at upgrding to a HD camcorder for some time but waiting until the formats and prices settled down. So after nearly a year of vacillating back and forth, I took the plunge. I broke down and got the Canon HV20 that I reviewed in one of earlier posts, as well as the Canon S5 IS digital still camera.
I got the new camera in anticipation for the summer and some new shorts that I want shoot. I picked up both for under a grand from B&H Photo. Both are midrange cameras but take awesome pictures. I went with the HV20 over the newer HV30 because the black body and 30p mode doesn’t justify the extra 300 buck cost. I got the Powershot because I wanted a point and shoot camera with the ability to go manual as I get my photography chops back. Plus the Powershot takes awesome fullscreen (640×480 at 30fps) video for a still camera. The audio is excellent too. I purchased a big 8gb memory chip for under 40 bucks to store my footage. Since I mostly shoot content for the web, I won’t even need to carry my camcorder all the time since the S5 IS can do both movies and stills.
I was watching Attack of the Show on G4TV and saw a reference to the first video game system that I ever owned, the Magnavox Odyssey. The Odyssey, while more primitive than games found on today’s cellphones, was cutting edge at the time. I had to be around 7-8 years old when it came out. I still remember when my father brought it home and my cousin Clarence and I played all night on it. I think was hooked on gaming and computers from that point on.
Now keep in mind that this system pre-dated the Atari 2600, Colecovision, Intellivision, the Commodore Vic 20, and just about all of the old classic gaming systems. In fact I was shocked to see that it was released in 1973. Pops must have paid nearly $100 bucks for the system. So in “1973 dollars”, the Odyssey was probably more expensive than the PS3 is today. So I guess buying my kids PSPs and DS Lites isn’t so strange in comparison now.
I found an old commercial for the system on YouTube. I still can’t get over how silly it looks by today’s standards.
The planning for the 3rd Annual LaGuardia Community College New Media Technology conference is underway and Adobe has confirmed their attendance. The team from Adobe presented last year at our conference to a packed house and we are excited to have them back again. Adobe has agreed to present at both the morning and afternoon sessions. The morning session is going to focus on the creative and design applications in CS3 while the afternoon session is going to highlight the new CS3 video apps. Continue reading “3rd Annual New Media Conference: Adobe is coming”
The Fall II semester is underway and I am already swamped. In addition to the two courses that I am teaching, and planning for the LaGuardia New Media conference in the spring, I also have to redesign the web sites for the New Media program and the CIS Department. Both sites need a serious update and there was no way that I could have completed the job by myself. Luckily I was able to get an intrepid band of interns to volunteer in assisting me to plan, design, and implement the new sites. Continue reading “Interns are a good thing!”