Browsing all posts in "Technology".

Returning to my Windows grad school roots

Anyone who knows me in real life, knows “I am Mac.” In all reality, I am a linux person who adores Adobe Creative Suites and lives by MS Excel. In grad school I had a Mac for graphics from my adviser, a Sparcstation for research (from my other adviser) and I owned a Fujitsu lifebook. [...]

Making Google Gadgets Go

So, any of you who read my twitter know that I’ve been working on Portal to the Universe this week. Part of this is figuring out what goes into making astronomy tools (for fun and work) that can live on iGoogle pages and on normal webpages like this one. Today I managed, with a fair [...]

Writing text with my voice

I’m playing with a bit of new technology. I’ve been doing so much typing lately that my wrists started to hurt. I love to write. I needed to find a solution, so I googled. Eventually I landed on some dictation software, MacSpeech. I’m attempting to write this blog post using that new software. I’ve [...]

Worst. Tech. Week. Ever.

For every good weekend, there is an equally bad one. Last weekend rocked. This one, um, did not.
Preface – My laptop is at the Apple Store being repaired. This means my computer with all my best toys is not available for use.
For those who have been following my twitter whining, here is the full story.
1) [...]

Astronomy Education in the Era of Web 2.0

Currently, I’m at SSU learning how teachers teach astronomy and physics concepts related to the types of high energy astrophysics that will be studied in by the recently launch GLAST telescope. I flew out so that I could teach these master teachers about teaching astronomy new media, but I have to admit that I’m picking [...]

AAS Day 2: Google Sky, Google Earth, and the International Year of Astronomy

I have been trying to find the time to learn how to use Google Sky for astronomy outreach for the last year. My time is limited, and I have to admit that my early attempts were met with very ugly implementations, and I’ve been dieing to see what others are doing and (more importantly) to [...]

Of Audio Books and Guilty Pleasures…

It is spring (or at least pretending to be spring in the middle of the country. Temperatures are in the 70s F (low 20s C), flowers are in bloom, and the birds are LOUD. For me spring means 2 things: no more classes and lots of weeding. It also means that I have time to [...]

Making the Technological iLeap

I hate Microsoft Office. It is a hate that has been slowly boiling in the background for a long long time. I can make it do anything. I get how it works at a level at a brainstem level, such that prettily formatted documents come out of my computer with ease. I still hate it. As an undergraduate, I earned my living as “Lead Monitor” of the Erickson Hall Computer Lab and Michigan State. In this role, it was my pleasure to help anyone with any computer problem. 90% of the problems were either failure to print or failure to format. All of them were related to Microsoft breaking the minds of poor innocent ungrads (and occasional grads). The lab was a mix of Macs and PCs and platform really didn’t matter. Everyone had to use MS Office, and everyone got burnt.

But there are options, and I’m going to use them.