fun for today

So, today is going to be a fun day. I just decided. Actually I decided yesterday and just now committed to it, but that's another story.

So I have job to do today! I'm helping a woman with her website. I'm going to film for her and then add some graphics to the video and she will then use them on her website. She is an entrepreneur and helps businesses get back on the track to success, and her business is called Success Trek. If you would like to learn more about her business then just follow the link on the title of her organization. If you own a business it may do you some good!

That part of the day is going to be the start of the fun part.

Wanna know the really really super part of the day??? Do ya???

IT'S BASKETBALL SEASON HERE AT PURDUE!!!! Finally I get to watch one of our teams do good at something... I just love the basketball team! I am actually really excited, though tonight is only an exhibition game. It will be wonderful...

But I have to go work on graphics now...

I just remembered that I reminded myself to write about something and I just read that and remembered! Lol...

So I was going to write about something but I didn't have the time at the time so I shall write about it now. What is it you ask? Well, it's about a presentation that we watched a few weeks ago in class. It was the day we had an assignment due and I'm really too lazy to look it up right now, but it was a video on a guy with a really entertaining presentation style who talked about how he was frustrated that you have to keep putting in your new user name and password at every different site that you go to and that he wished that there were a place to just fill out one big page of information and they could all just use that.

I found that entertaining as we had just been doing all of the filling out and such and I continued to use this blog and my life went on until I realized....

Google already does that! We're using it right now! Agh! I felt like an idiot that it didn't occur to me sooner and it made me kinda suprised.

So the guy had talked about how no one had really pulled off the running several things successfully through one password and user name and I'll agree that scenario applies here, but they are working on linking things together. Here's some of the ways that I've noticed:

• google, using one user name and password, can log you into:

blogspot (duh), google reader (again duh), and a number of applications (all google related, but that's their point i think) including but not limited to a personal calendar, photo sharing, mail, videos, maps, shopping and more

• there's also an iGoogle that is a personalized page for you after you log in that includes all of the things you're interested in, like music, movies, sports, news, humor, and displays widgets that have to do with all of those things. mine has youtube, several news sites, a comic strip, the weather for where I am, a tv guide, photos of celebrity sitings, sports stats, and flixster movies ratings
• this brings me to google linking you to all kinds of sites, not neccessarily logging you in, but being able to, once you've specified that they can and entered your separate user names and passwords to give permission, link lots of your different sites together to update each other. I've linked my Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Google (which includes all the stuff in google) all together and now if I favorite a video on youtube it will show up as an update in my twitter and facebook so that I can share the information with my friends without having to go to each site and do them individually and it even adds a link so others can watch too!

The discovery that I made is turning out to be quite wonderful and I'm pretty sure that it's all generally new seeing as blogspot didn't require you to have a gmail account before or a google user name and password until recently and I know that you couldn't link facebook to everything when I started using it... So, in the words of my wonderful friend Missa (and I'm pretty sure they're from something somewhere... but still relevant) it's New, it's HIP, it's HOT, it's NOW!

my lovely hard drive

Okay, so I'm posting this because it's new information to ME and I found it relevant...

So I have a hard drive, you know, one of the ones you buy from BestBuy or WalMart that you put all your pictures and music on. Well, I use mine to be a bit more creative than that and there's a side story to that...

• I work as the Production Assistant for a news program. It's called FastTrack and it's produced through Purdue University (check out our blog as well as the link above!). It's a student production as the students of Com 408/409 write, shoot, edit, and produce all of the stories that go into the news and the show itself under the wonderful tutelage of Patricia Rochon and with help by Scott Schroeder, another wonderful teacher that works in this fun little basement studio. So the point to this story was to say that I use my drive to capture footage, edit stories and make music and graphics for the shows (I do graphics too). So it's very useful.

I discovered today as I was trying to render a graphic that I created in LiveType for some promos we made and are putting on TV for the Group X classes at the CoRec, visit the link if you want to check out more info on the classes, they're actually quite fun, that there are specific formats to hard drives and that mine is formatted for a PC and the graphic couldn't be handled in that format when I saved it to my hard drive and tried to play it back in a MAC. The only way to remedy the situation, which is bothersome because there are shows that I'd like to put on my hard drive that won't save there because of the formatting, is to partition my hard drive so that it has both formats. That should be fun...

• Oh! Afterthought... If you want to check out FastTrack, as in watch the show and don't want to take time out of your busy 6pm hour, just visit the website and watch the shows!
  

my morning hunt

BTW - on my way to ME this morning, which is closer to my home, hooray... I totally got lost. I ended up in MSEE instead of ME and because I was in the wrong building the room I was looking for didn't exsist. Good one Tiffany, very brilliant of you.

But for class we went on a geocaching expidition. I guess it was okay except that the GPS devices we used are old and not very user-friendly. First, it wasn't precise at all. Where it had us located and where we actually were was at about a 50yrd difference, which is quite a bit when you're trying to decide which way to go around a building. Also, it was really hard to zoom or pan on the screen and it didn't refresh as regularly as I would've liked. Suffice it to say that I will never buy one of those particular models. A class on new and upcoming technology and we get crappy GPS, lovely.

note to self

so I'm making a note to myself, yes on my own blog, to blog about linking later... you'll get a better idea of what I'm talking about when I actually post it, but until then this will have to suffice!

and I get to go to ME tomorrow for class instead of BRNG. nice. it's much closer to my house! hooray!

though i'll probably be late to my next class though because i'll have to travel all the way across campus to get there. there's a reason that I signed up for classes at certain times in certain buildings. honestly people!

it's finally over

i'm so happy that this cursed week is finally over. i'm not saying that there was a curse of the mummy over my life or anything (and that's a reference to an NCIS episode that i watched recently). but i'm just happy that i don't have to worry about anything else, except for the scavenger hunt survey that i have due for a class which i'm sure is going to be harder than i think it will be, until monday.

as for this weekend...

what is there to do you ask? in a boring college town? well there's the Notre Dame game to consider going to but i can watch that on tv for (almost) free and hear the crowd from my living room.

side note, i actually find that really entertaining. there's about a 15-20 second delay from the live game and i live a block and a half from Ross Ade and can hear when we score, or boo... it's quite fun...

so i know i won't be going to that. then there's probably a soccer game which i wouldn't mind going to. i love our soccer team, and it's a girls team for those of you who automatically thought it was a guys team... i know you're out there.

and then there's sunday. whatever is there to do on sunday? i mean, it's sunday! i would be working, honestly, but for the fact that i'm going to a TIGERS game in Chicago, one of my favorite cities, to see them play the White Sox. i am so freaking excited!!!!
so that will be what i'm looking forward to all weekend. the in-between highlights will be seeing my friends finally and having a life and not staying in my apt toiling away at my homework like i'm a hermit crab in a shell.

so for now i'm off... i'll probably write again very soon! at least to let you know how fun the game(s) were! GO BOILERS and TIGERS!!!!!

turbulance causing problems, both in turbines and class

So ever since I drove around the country with Steve and saw the endless amounts of wind turbines scattered, almost decoratively, across the expanses of the West I have been quite intrigued with them. Thus I am pleased to discover that GE has been doing their part to increase the efficiency and usage of them.

GE is the second-largest maker of wind turbines, something I didn't know until recently, and they install them globally. But apparently it's been wanting to expand its offshore market so it has been making acquisitions which include a company that is making gearless turbines. Now, instead of a gearbox that deteriorates quickly due to the stress it takes from wind turbulance and requires constant attention, the new turbines use magnets to generate the power as the shaft spins.

It's really quite neat and makes me wonder if they'll start putting them in here. They've been tested on the Norwegian coast since 2003 so I think they're pretty reliable...

Wanna know more? Check out "GE Grabs Gearless Wind Turbines"

On a more personal note, I haven't been feeling all that well today but I think I'll be alright. There's so much to do this week I don't have the time to feel bad. A five-page paper due Friday that we were just told about this last Friday with no time to organize our schedule around it (work schedules are made for 2 weeks and require 2 weeks advance for time off) and the fact that I had a 2 page paper due yesterday, have a 3 page paper due tomorrow, a presentation tomorrow, work tonight, a speech to cover tomorrow night for class and a story to write on it, and ads to finish for my other job. All of that I already had to do this week and knew about it and planned for it, and then we got a SURPRISE 5 page paper that isn't on the syllabus. Thanks so much. Maybe if we were told two weeks in advance it would be better, but for right now I'm very angry... but at least I have my required blog done!

A disappointing weekend

It wasn't all bad, not everything was a complete fail. But a few things did go wrong. The majority of the problem was football, let me explain...

So the Boilermakers lost at football again this weekend :(
It's not like our team is bad, things just go really wrong for them when they start out doing so well! The turnovers really drove me crazy too, not that it was just our team doing it, there were plenty on both sides. I'm just sad that they let the game get away from them. Better luck next week I guess...

My other football problem is just beginning. I'm talking about work. I ref intramural football, and I love it, but it's starting to be the rainy part of the year and yesterday was the beginning of it. It wasn't bad, I had a hat to wear and it didn't last long, but it just makes me remember last year and all the pouring down rain I'm going to get to work in and those memories just make me all warm and fuzzy inside...

But on a better football note, the NY Giants won... so it wasn't all bad!

First Blog with Class Specifications...

A car show took place recently... the Frankfurt Motor Show of 2009 to be more specific. The car show had a few welcomed newbies to the crowd, and they were cars! Duh...

I was browsing through the cars and the one that caught my eye was the Peugeot RCZ Hybrid4. It's pretty... and not only is it pretty but it's pretty fast for a hybrid at 76mph on a good run. It's a feat of technology I think, with a diesel engine driving the front wheels and a separate motor running the back wheels.

If you want to learn more about it just follow the link above!

This post, and the blog itself honestly, was prompted by my class that I'm in now about emerging technologies in communication. I found this hybrid car more entertaining than any communication advancements that I've seen lately so I wrote about it instead. But if you wanna follow me and stay tuned then I will be writing about college and my life, so it should be fun!

I'll throw some tech stuff in for good measure, and a good grade... :)