Science/Nature

In my offline world I'm building a small business producing audio media that can be played back by a student, at home, in the classroom, at the office, and considering I'm selling the discs I need to make sure the quality of the recording is good, but so too the packaging and the disc.

Anyone can make a recording these days using the software included with your PC, in my case using Garageband and the built-in burner, then if I wanted to I could easily print the disc and sleeve, but buying good quality paper to do the printing isn't cheap.

Ideally if you have an idea you'll be creating discs in some sort of volume the effort of doing it yourself becomes too expensive. I'm at that point now, my time is worth too much, and I can't afford to sit at a printer feeding in paper or discs. I just can't.

Paying someone else to do the job and then simply deliver a box of completed discs is far more cost-effective, and a better ROI than doing it myself.

The downside is that you have to find a reputable company to do the replication work, and that's another issue all together. In my case I'm producing a DVD and a separate CD, the first contains the lessons, whilst the second is just an audio recording for practicing.

DVD duplication is the most affordable option, I create the master, they make however many copies I need. The process is really simple other than uploading the files to their server, but this only takes time.

I hope, a few weeks later I should get the discs I need and can start shipping them to customers. I'll let you know how it goes.

Righto people, let's be honest, how many of you have a secret desire to be the next Madonna, Serge Gainsbourg, or Buddy Holly? And how many of you have been to a Karaoke bar, had a few drinks, gurgled your guts out to Tammy Wynette, and then told everyone the next day you didn't enjoy it and won't go back, but secretly you didn't mind and probably will go back?

Yeah I thought so, I'm the same, karaoke generates a love/hate feeling inside me, I love the idea of pretending to be a superstar, on the other hand I hate the way people sound who can't sing.

In my past working life I was a motivator and sales trainer, these days I do some English teaching, but I'm wanting to get back to motivational training and karaoke is a fantastic way to break the ice between people, especially if some idiot like me takes the first shot at the microphone.

Where I live karaoke CD's aren't generally available, and on top of that, a lot of people here aren't really familiar with the sorts of songs that I grew up with, many of them are big fans of Spanish flamenco singers who are unknown outside of Spain.

Some downloadable software that automatically removes lead vocals from a stereo mp3 is just what is needed, and in my little classes it goes down a treat, I remove the Spanish vocals, give my students the English lyrics, and let them sing to their heart's content. Of course I only do this for social evenings but it's a really cheap way to entertain people and takes virtually no time to prepare.

I've been playing around with RapidWeaver, a Mac web authoring application that works similarly to iWeb but produces standards compliant code and allows me to easily change the template from page to page by simply selecting it from the themes pane whilst editing a page.

The more I get involved with it, the more I love it and can honestly say it beats the pants off software like Joomla or Wordpress for my needs, which is mostly 5-10 pages static websites, although I'm using it to develop a 300 page site as well.

Are any of you guys Mac users? Have you tried RapidWeaver? It's shareware, and costs about $79 to buy a license but seems well worth the money. There is a reasonable range of plugins available and a few people have produced third party themes, but the most exciting part of it is integration with the iMedia browser so I don't have to export an image from iPhoto to use it.

I've tested the code it produces and whilst I can't show you a test site yet I can tell you it produces XHTML strict in every page and they validate!

RapidWeaver has some really nice functions like built-in meta tags and titles for each page, and complete control over filenames and permalinks simply because the pages are static HTML pages to begin with.

Adding javascript is a simple thing to do, and can be added in two places, either into the page inspector, or hard coded into the theme, for one of the sites I'm creating I've actually inserted a news ticker into the space normally reserved for a navbar.

If I can find the time to create a new theme for RapidWeaver rather than just butchering one of the existing themes to do what I want then I'll release it here, I was thinking of porting some of the great open source themes to begin with, then work on premium themes later.

Have you noticed how our language is changing to accommodate new technologies? It seems more and more these days that phrases are being constructed, such as business intelligence, that a direct literal definition wouldn't make sense, yet in today's high tech world they say so much more.

I like this example because business intelligence refers to the software used to help run a business rather than saying a business is intelligent when clearly this is nonsense since a business is made of people and doesn't actually exist in itself.

As business software continues to develop, it's conceivable that at some point it may even start to show signs of artificial intelligence, and this is an important direction for the software to be going. 21st century business requires management and staff have the very best information available to them to make decisions, provide customer support and so much more.

Business intelligence software isn't an accounting package, neither is it just a customer relationship database, it is in fact both, but also adds marketing, supply and manufacturing, human resources, even legal and compliance into the mix.

Overall, good business intelligence solution should be able to provide management and staff with almost any information about the business that they need in their day to day activities.

Computers and the computing industry is fascinating don't you think? In my lifetime (and I'm 37) I've seen the evolution of games consoles and Personal Computers go from little boxes no better than a programmable calculator, to full blown servers that take up as much space as a paperback novel.

OK, maybe that last part is a bit misleading, a server the size of a paperback? Well, actually if you consider a mini Mac is not much bigger and can be used as a server, be it web, file, or print; I'm sure you get the picture.

My dad always talks about the giant card and punch based computers they used to have back in the late 60's and 70's when he lectures me on the History of (the) Computer. He's an engineer, so to him those computers were a wonder to behold, and let's not forget those huge machines put men on the moon, yet a modern laptop computer is thousands of times more powerful.

I use my Mac as my primary business tool, in fact I probably spend as much time sitting with it in front of me than I do sleeping or doing anything else, so whilst computer history isn't all that important tome, I can say with certainty that the future of the Computer timeline is.

Knowing what the current technologies are, and seeing the way new ideas are being made into practical business tools is important. In my business I don't need print functions like the old room-sized computers provided. I need connectivity and the ability to share information with people on the other side of the planet.

Email and file-sharing, and the ability to connect to the Internet wherever I am are more important, and a funny thing has happened to me. I used to hate looking at a computer screen, in fact I preferred to print things out to read them. Now that I have a Mac with a matte screen, I can actually do everything I need directly on screen. This is the sort of technology that I want to see continue to develop.

I bought a couple of blogs about a week ago from some people who hadn't updated them for a couple of months, which we all know can be quite a risk since you just never can tell what can of worms you're going to inherit.

In this particular case I've inherited a host account that won't let me run the automatic upgrade plugin for Wordpress. Argh!!! I hate with a passion having to upgrade blog software using ftp.

Sometimes I wish there was an Internet service online that knows about major CMSs, blog enhines, and for a few dollars using Paypal they'll just do the upgrade for you.

But this brings me to one of my other pet hates about Wordpress and Serendipity, the two blog engines I used most for websites. Backing up your files and database, and upgrading is not the easiest thing in the world to do. Read More

There are times when I need storage online for files, perhaps they're too big to email, or I want to make them available to a mailing list, and if a file is large the last thing I want to do is use up the bandwidth on my hosting account.

This is why free file hosting is so valuable. The downside with so many of them however is that once the file has been uploaded, you pretty much have no control over it.

Hosted.org is a little different in this regard. Upload a file, and you are given two URLs for the file, the first is the download URL yo can give to others. The second is a delete link, which you should keep confidential, then once you no longer need the file, simply delete it.

It's a fantastic service when you have a mailing list like friends and family and you want them all to download a zipfile of photos, but after that you want the photos deleted so other people can't download them.

I'm not sure of other free file hosts that also have no ads, or registration so the service can be completely anonymous, and best of all, it's so quick simply because you don't need to worry about logging in.

For anyone who wants to know how great it is, feel free to download my photo of a manhole cover in Ronda. I'm sure you'll agree the download speeds are very good, and this is a 5mb file so you can see why I don't want to host it myself.

We have a friend who is permanently restricted to life in a wheelchair, sadly in her case there is no possibility of ever being able to walk, but luckily she has a job working for a local charity, she's a happy person, and has a great family and support circle around her.

Her wheelchair is one of those electric chairs with a joystick to control movement, it works really well and most places she goes have some kind of ramp to help her get in and out of buildings etc.

Wheelchairs however are something I don't now much about, but she needs a new cushion and since she doesn't have Internet access I said I'd go looking for them. Have you any idea how technical wheelchair cushions are? Honestly I thought a wheelchair cushion was basically bit of foam cut square, but apparently not. Now I see why she asked for help to find one.

Apparently the cushion is designed specifically to reduce pressure on the body so a variety of cushions are available with varying levels of support. I found an Australian company online, Mobsol, who supply Wheelchairs and other equipment for disabled people, they also do free shipping nationwide.

I've been able to print out the listing for cushions to give to my friend, now she has something concrete to look at with a price and can ty to get some funding to buy one, this is why the Internet is so fantastic, so many niche companies like this one might never be found if they didn't have a website.