Ryan Collins

🕹ī¸ Do Something Great! 😄

Author: ryan

  • HIW (How I Work): The Apple MacBook

    I am asked quite often how I can keep up with everything in regards
    to educational technology, software, and hardware. After some
    reflection, I realized that it would make a good series of articles, so
    I’m going to write up How I Work.

    First up is probably the most important component of my technology
    arsenal, my Apple MacBook. During the spring of 2006 I was
    researching upgrading my 17″ iMac to a new MacBook Pro. The plan
    was to buy a beefy enough MacBook Pro that I wouldn’t want to upgrade
    for awhile. I specc’ed out the MacBook Pro that I wanted to be almost
    \$2,500! I wasn’t happy being stuck with getting such a large laptop,
    but I was in luck that Apple then announced the MacBook. After realizing I could buy a MacBook and an iMac for the same
    price as the MacBook Pro, I ordered my MacBook. After
    using it, I realized I didn’t even need a desktop at home.

    With my MacBook and VMware Fusion, I get the best
    of all worlds. I run OS X 10.5 mainly, but have a Windows XP and
    Ubuntu virtual machines also installed on the machine. Since the
    original purchase I’ve bumped the memory from 1GB to 2GB and the hard
    drive from 80GB to 200GB.

    Unfortunately, come summer 2009 when I’ll be looking at upgrading I
    don’t know what I’ll do. The new MacBook’s lack of firewire is almost a
    deal killer for me.

    When I am at home I hook my MacBook up to a 17″ LCD
    monitor and use a cheap [\$30 Micro Innovations wireless keyboard and
    mouse I purchased from Wal-mart][] (mine is a dark grey, not the hideous
    color from the picture). The combo works pretty well, except sometimes I
    have to unplug and re-plug the USB dongle that works with the set when I
    wake the MacBook up from sleep. That’s also where I keep an external
    hard drive to maintain my laptops backups using OS X’s Time Machine.

    [\$30 Micro Innovations wireless keyboard and mouse I purchased from
    Wal-mart]: http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=8144837

  • New page: About Me

    I’ve create an About Me page that gives some background information
    on how I got to where I am today.

  • Portable blogging

    I’m testing out a mobile blogging client for my Windows Mobile 5.0
    Smartphone, MoBlog. It appears to work ok, including allowing me to
    insert an image from my phone. I’ll post a longer review once I’ve had
    more time to play with it.

  • Next fall, every school district in Florida is required to set up an online school for K-8

    [In Florida, virtual school could make classrooms history —
    OrlandoSentinel.com][]

    > A new law that takes effect next fall requires every district in the
    > state to set up an online school for kindergarten through eighth-grade
    > students.
    >

    This is fascinating to me, and I’m surprised that this didn’t get more
    news coverage when the legislation was being passed in Florida. Each
    district still gets the \$6,000 per student, and most are going to buy
    the services of a couple of companies that provide online education
    instead of create their own online curriculum. Even the computer and
    Internet connection are provided to the students.

    I could see this being a watershed moment in the aspect of educational
    technology. Can education be provided digitally and will students learn
    just as well as they do in a classroom of 20 students? The pitfalls are
    enormous, mostly centering around socialization skills, although this
    should be a solved problem with the years of home schooling that have
    taken place. [In the spring of 2003, 1,096,000 students were being home
    schooled in the United States][].

    (* Thanks to Kevin Jarrett and his tweet! *)

    [In Florida, virtual school could make classrooms history —
    OrlandoSentinel.com]: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/state/orl-virtual1008nov10,0,978666.story
    [In the spring of 2003, 1,096,000 students were being home schooled in
    the United States]: http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2006/homeschool/estimated.asp

  • Codeweavers Crossover Pro and Games for Mac and Linux Free today only!

    Codeweavers is offering two of their products for Mac and Linux free
    today only    . I’ve only played around with Crossover when it was still
    in Beta, but this is some exciting news. I’m hoping it can run VMWare’s
    console application so I don’t have to start up VMware Fusion on my
    MacBook.

  • Posting from my ipod

    Showing off the WordPress app for the iPod.

  • Firefox 3.0 to be released at 10 PDT (1:00pm for those on the east coast)

    Go and download it! (At the proper time, of course. 🙂 )

  • Test post from TypePad’s Blogit

    This is a test, posting from my iPod Touch.

  • Would a rose by any other name smell just as sweet?

    According to a recent study, [names really do make a difference][]:

    > Parents are being warned to think long and hard when choosing names
    > for their babies as research has discovered that girls who are given
    > very feminine names, such as Anna, Emma or Elizabeth, are less likely
    > to study maths or physics after the age of 16, a remarkable study has
    > found.
    >

    Fascinating research. They even examined twin girls and found that what
    they were named could put them on two entirely different career paths.
    Also, naming a child with a ‘lower-status’ name, spelled in an unusual
    way or including punctuation, lowered exam scores by 3-5%.

    One more thing for new parents to worry about. 🙂

  • Happy 35th Birthday Ethernet

    [May 22, 1973: Enter Ethernet][]

    > 1973: Bob Metcalfe of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center writes a
    > memo outlining how to connect the think tank’s new personal computers
    > to a shared printer. The memo puts forth the basic properties of —
    > and names — ethernet.

    Looking at his diagram, he had the foresight to see networking not only
    over a local area network, but also telephone lines and radio waves.