Ken Newquist's Blog at Lafayette College
Everyone hates those boring, black-text-on-white-background PowerPoint presentations whose talking points are more like mini-dissertations. This Google Docs presentation stomps those kinds of basic, excruciatingly boring slideshows into oblivion. It’s amazing to think that everything — including the animations — was done through a Google Doc. Engadget: Google Docs presentation makes PowerPoint weep, beg for mercy
MAKE Magazine’s online blog has a great “how-to” post about handcrafting Tron-inspired messenger bags, complete with glowing neon stripes. Seems like a great project for the holiday break…
Last week my wife surprised me with a Tron-inspired birthday party (my birthday’s December 17, the same day that Tron: Legacy was released). As part of that, she asked the good folks at Cupcake Ladies to create Tron cup cakes. Which they did. The photo at left was taken by my friend and coworker Jason … Read more
The Evolutionary Void is the third in Peter F. Hamilton’s Void series. The series takes place few hundred years after the events of Pandora’s Star/Judas Unchained. In it, the Greater Commonwealth — an expansive human civilization that’s spread through much of the galaxy — and its Artificial Intelligence allies find themselves attempting to deal with a faction of humanity hellbent on evolving the species into “post-physical existence” … whether the rest of us want it or not.
Safari’s a decent web web browser, but I miss having Chrome and Firefox on the iPad. Switch isn’t one of the mainstream browsers, but is an alternative. It’s claim to fame is that it lets you have multiple user accounts, so three different people can use the same iPad but have their own bookmarks, preferences, … Read more
Viget Labs, the folks who did the redesign of Lafayette’s web site, has a good post about using the iPad as a note-taking tool. They run down the pros and cons of the various note-taking apps on the device, including Notes, Simplenote, Evernote, Soundpaper and Penultimate. I’ve personally been using Pages for note-taking. It … Read more
Advice for geek parents on when to introduce kids to Star Wars, and how to tackle the delicate issues of Luke Skywalker’s father, the correct order to watch the movies, and the heresy of the special editions.
… because the ITS Coffee Break is back in business! On this episode, Courtney Bentley and I talk about the redesigned Lafayette Web site, the Library/ITS iPad Pilot, updates to Moodle, and the upcoming Moodle Hack/Doc Fest at Furman University in January 2011.
I recently had to update a Google Mini to use a new stylesheet (built using XSLT) to reflect the college’s new web design. We have two front ends using the same stylesheet, and I applied it to both … but only one displayed it. The other was stuck with the older style sheet and no … Read more