Ben McMurry

I have not been a great blogger lately. I can't believe that my last post was on May 31st. This week I saw a great post on lifehacker.com. Lifehacker is an awesome blog with loads of posts about interesting tips about life. This week they had a post on some language tools. Click here to check them out . I had seen or used most of the tools, but the one I didn't know about was After the Deadline . So far, it seems to be quite good. It's a nifty tool that could probably best be described as the Super Hero version of Spelling/Grammar Checkers. Language teachers, especially writing teachers, might find it incredibly helpful. I hope to teach a class at the ELC next semester. If I do, and if it's writing, I might explore some of these things.

Lastly, I would like to report on some findings I made with regard to Apple Devices and their supported video playback. I did some tests with h.264 video encoding. A lot of this won't mean much, but it's nice to write it down for future reference. Ipods do not support: b-frames cabac trellis 8x8dct Ipods Do support Resolutions greater than what is listed on Apple's website provided that the height does not exceed the listed height (i.e. 640x480 is listed as the max for the iPod touch, but it will play 855x480.) Of course, it won't show a high resolution, it will down-convert it to what it can show. 4 reference frames detecelining decoming I also have to note that handbrake's presets are pretty good for apple devices.

Two posts in one day? That's strange. In my effort to learn more about video, I explored some new features of current TVs. You might have seen that new TVs have crazy looking labels that say "120hz" or "240hz." What's that all about? Well, I don't want to get to technical here, but here is a little background information. Broadcast signals are typically 30 frames per second. That's 30 different images that you see on your screen per second. Well, actually it's 60 half images. Our brains can fill in information. TVs typically operate at 60hz. The hertz used to refer to energy passed through something in the tv, but now with LCD tvs they really refer to frames per second (fps). So, TVs work could for broadcast. Film, however, is usually 24 fps. In order to fill up the available 60hz, complicated math has to happen. 24 is not a multiple of 60, so a 3:2 pulldown happens. Some new frames are inserted . . . blah, blah, blah. So, you'll find t

This week my students have been working on their video productions. They are required to make an instructional video. I thought that I would use this week to learn some more about video and decided to learn about up-conversion. I have read things here and there, but this week I did some experimentation of my own. The Basics Up-conversion is the process of "blowing up" video to take up more pixels. A DVD has about 855x480 (480p)(It's really 720x480 with non-square pixels, but that's the square pixel equivalent). Your high end HD videos, like bluray, are at 1920x1080 (1080p). HD signals look nice because there is more information. Up-conversion blows up the original image and then guesses what the missing pixels in between should be. This is pretty tricky. There are lots of different methods for guessing. Some are better than others. All Modern TVs up-convert. Most TVs are at 1920x1080. It converts any signal it gets to that resolution. Not all TVs up-convert equally. I

It's been almost 2 weeks since I attended the TESOL 2010 convention. I have been swamped with work, but wanted to include some notes about the sessions I attended. I went to a panel on qualitative research. I was expecting more from it. I liked David Freeman's presentation. I'm not sure what he said about research, but it was good. The next speaker was really good and animated. I really liked what she talked about with active research and qualitative research. I really need to write more and so some self-study. Really this hasn't talked a lot about qualitative research. Monrage brought up some good points about how it is difficult for English teachers to teach if they themselves have low english proficiency. It really isn't discussing qualitative research, but using materials that could be used in qualitative work. I like that they published a book. That is really cool. Another presentation that I went to was on the use of video with pre-service teachers.They us

With Google's recent acquisition of Aardvark , I wanted to give it a try and see why they bought it. Aardvark is a website that lets you ask questions and get answers. I could describe it more, but that's what it is. You submit a question and then aardvark searches for a user that might be able to answer it. At first, I wondered how this differed than just searching for answers online. I decided to ask it questions whose answers I couldn't find by searching with Google. I thought I might be able to get a good response. Out of all the questions I asked, all the answers were unhelpful or showed that the answerers did not understand the questions. Some were just flat out ridiculous. I think that the concept is interesting, but so far, it isn't helpful.

I recently continued my ongoing search for the ultimate word processor for mac. Before I get to much further into this post, I must say that I am very content with Office 2007 on PCs. I think it is great. Since I've been using macs rather exclusively for the last 3 or 4 years, I have not been impressed by the word processors for mac. Here's what I have learned. Lightweight word processors. Let me say that I love these little programs. I'm talking about TextEdit that comes with OS X and others like Bean . In my speed tests (which weren't done really scientifically) these were obviously the winners. They can do everything they do lightning fast. I wish that the the other word processors were like this. Obviously, they aren't near as powerful as their big brothers, but they ar great for jotting down some text. I use TextEdit all the time. I think bean is real great too. The only real problem I have with these is that I can't implement all the features that I need i

I really wanted a Magic Mouse. They are just cool! So I bought one a couple of weeks ago. I love that it uses bluetooth. I love the multi-touch features. I hated the ergonomics. It hurt my had to use, so I took it back. If you want a cool mouse, spend some time with this one at the store first. If you have small, little, hobbit hands like me, you might not want to get this mouse.

Whoa! Two posts in one day! Hold on! As part of my own personal development, I'd like to blog more. It helps me share ideas. Dragos Roua has an interesting post on being your best self. It compares us to computers. I think that there are some good points here, especially the unexpected shutdown. Balance your core features Defrag your mind Update your drivers Stay virus free Enjoy an unexpected shutdown every now and then

This video was posted over at the Language Lab Unleashed blog . It was too good not to post here. According to their post this was written and intended to sound like English from the perspective of non-english speakers.

I just downloaded a very cool app from iTunes. It allows me to post to my wordpress blog directly from my iPod touch. You have to be connected to the Internet when you set it up. It gets all the important information including former posts, comments, and categories. Once you setup your initial account, you can set up other accounts. The blog can be hosted on your own server or the wordpress.com hosting site. Also, after you set it up, you don't need Internet access. You can create or edit you posts. I assumed that you could set it to upload automatically when you have an Internet connection, but It looks like you have to come back and publish it when you have a connection. This is my first post using the app and so far I really like it and recommend it to ant wordpress bloggers out there.