Flexknowlogy - Jared Stein » howto

Stream Conference Pres with WebCamMax and Ustream

Jared Stein — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 22:37:31 +0000

I’ve got to take a minute to plug the software WebCamMax ($50), which lets you alter your (Windows) computer’s webcam input. I used it this week to facilitate quality, DIY streaming and recording of two WCET09 presentations using a laptop (with distinct graphics card), a lavalier mic ($50-$500) and Ustream (free). Here’s how it worked:

Prior to the session, run WebCamMax on the presenter’s laptop and under Source > Main Source choose “Screen” as the primary source.
If you want to have a picture-in-picture (for example, of the laptop’s integrated webcam), you can choose a secondary input under Source > PinP Source 1.
Minimize WebCamMax.
For a mic set up, I used a production-quality wireless lavalier mic from Sony (thanks to Adam and Scott), but really any mic will do. Instead of an XLR output from the receiver I used a simple male-male stereo mini cord, plugging the other end into the laptop’s mic port.
Then, I simply login to Ustream and initialize the broadcast.
I make sure that Ustream is using WebCamMax for the video source, and the external mic as the audio source. Don’t forget to test the audio levels!
Hit Begin Stream and Begin Recording, minimize the ustream window, and you’re off to the races.

The ustream broadcast will capture whatever activity happens on your computer, whether that’s a PowerPoint presentation, computer application, or web browsing–similar to Jing or Camtasia. Loaner mic aside, this was a very inexpensive, portable solution that turned out better results for computer-based presentations than most ustreams from a tripod-mounted camera, which only capture the projector screen.

Dropping Lowest 2 (or More) Scores in Blackboard or Moodle

Jared Stein — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 01:06:34 +0000

WebCT was infamous for it’s calculated column formula textarea that you couldn’t type in. When John Krutsch developed a clever Javascript hack for it (just one of several cool IE-only hacks packaged as WebCT PowerTools), crafting unusual formulas was suddenly more viable, and we began dropping not just the lowest score, but several low scores.

An hour after trying to work around various bugs in the awful 1.9 Moodle gradebook I found myself in need of this formula again, and the only place I could find it was in my own post on the old WebCT forums. I’m posting it here for my future reference only, but maybe it will be useful to other Bb Vista or Moodle users:

Drop the Lowest Score of a Series

For this example we need to know the labels (Bb/WebCT) or ids (Moodle) of the columns to be included. Here I use A1, A2, A3.

In this example we want to drop the lowest assignment score for our total, first in Blackboard Visa and then in Moodle:

Blackboard/WebCT Vista/CE:


SUM{[A1],[A2],[A3]}-MIN{[A1],[A2],[A3]}

Moodle:


=(sum([[A1]],[[A2]],[[A3]]))-(min([[A1]],[[A2]],[[A3]]))

This calculates the sum total of of the 3 assignments then subtracts the minimum score of the same series.

Drop the Lowest Two Scores of a Series

In this example we want to drop the lowest 2 assignment scores from our total. I’m using 5 assignments to illustrate this in practice.This can get pretty hairy, but once you’ve studied this example it should make sense:

Blackboard/WebCT Vista/CE:


SUM{[A1],[A2],[A3],[A4],[A5]}-MIN{([A1]+[A2]),([A1]+[A3]),([A1]+[A4]),([A1]+[A5]),([A2]+[A3]),([A2]+[A4]),([A2],A5]),([A3]+[A4]),([A3]+[A5]),([A4]+[A5])}

Moodle:


=(sum([[A1]],[[A2]],[[A3]],[[A4]],[[A5]]))-(MIN(([[A1]]+[[A2]]),([[A1]]+[[A3]]),([[A1]]+[[A4]]),([[A1]]+[[A5]]),([[A2]]+[[A3]]),([[A2]]+[[A4]]),([[A2]],[[A5]]),([[A3]]+[[A4]]),([[A3]]+[[A5]]),([[A4]]+[[A5]])))

This calculates the sum total of of the 5 assignments then subtracts the lowest possible combination of two scores found in the same series.

The aforementioned example will work for dropping lowest 3 and more using the same principles, but obviously it gets exponentially longer.

Ubuntu 8.4 on EeePC 900

Jared Stein — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 23:55:34 +0000

Upon receiving my ASUS EeePC 900 I knew I wanted to run Ubuntu on it over the default Xandros Linux OS. With Marc Hugentobler and John Krutsch both having an EeePC 900 as well, I figured this would be a good chance to compare Ubuntu to Xandros on this small wonder of a notebook.

The really good news is I was able to get Ubuntu up and running in less than an hour by following the ubuntu.com EeePC tutorial, and had it fixed up and tweaked out in another hour–and I am no Linux-head. I had done enough preliminary reading before starting to install the Ubuntu distribution that I felt prepared for the handful of quirks and tweaks I would need to do. I admit I had cold feet Saturday afternoon, second-guessing whether Xandros might be less resource-intensive and faster than Ubuntu, but after the weekend I’m now completely comfortable with my choice.

A few things to know about my installation of Ubuntu:

I installed Ubuntu 8.4 off of a USB drive, which I formatted on Windows XP using UNetbootin to prepare the ISO
I had to change the BIOS “hard drives” set up to use the USB drive first. This is different than changing the “boot order”
There were a number of fixes I had to conduct to set up the EeePC hardware: ethernet/loud fan battery remove, Mad WiFi drivers, and a couple other fixes documented on the EeePC Ubuntu wiki
I also ran a few Ubuntu tweaks documented by Many Ayromlou to tighten things up and further increase performance
Finally, I installed extra apps like gFTP, and Bluefish, all through the Ubuntu Add/Remove Applications interface

My success was based on the great online resources, wikis, and blogs that are out there–I myself have only minimal knowledge of terminal commands, namely sudo, cd, and chown. The hardest part by far was setting up the wireless LAN with the Mad WiFi drivers, and even that wasn’t too bad, and then discovering some quirks and hunting up fixes.