Ben McMurry

Well, Google Fiber is here in Provo. I decided to sign up for the gigabit service, but I am a little concerned about the actual performance. If I navigate to http://provo.speedtest.googlefiber.net, I can test the speed. However, I get two sets of information from this google hosted site. (Note that they say it is powered by Ookla) In Google Chrome: In Safari and Firefox: While 527.17 Mbps is nothing to complain about, I'm disturbed by the fact that Google Chrome gets a 400mbps bump . . . or that it is at least reporting 400mbps more. So, I decided to get some info from a third party. I went to http://speedtest.net (also powered by Ookla). I was once again very disturbed. All three browsers seemed to be getting similar results. So, what's going on Google? Granted at these speeds and at this price, Google fiber is truly the way to go. I just wished I could explain this discrepancy.  Before I finish this post, I want to make it clear that these ...

It's been a long time since I have written anything. I logged into the new blogger today with it's new interface. I upgraded to Lion with it's newer interface. Why do people always change the interface? Why are there so many themes, skins, or whatever you call them? I think I might have an answer. Really I've boiled it down to two possibilities. First, perhaps the new interface is "better." I'm assuming that software giants like Google and Apple do market research and usability testing. Then again, they might not. Better said, they don't do it the way I think they should. Perhaps they get feedback via email or other communications. Maybe the designers who use the software just realize that somethings need to change. The reason I think that they do it though, is to prevent the appearance of stagnation. If gmail still looked the same as it did when they released it, people would think that it was old and out of date. However, I don't remember two...

Help me win! Watch this video: I am participating in a competition in Instructional Design at BYU. The first part of the competition was pitching our product to a panel of judges. My team won! For the second part, whichever design team gets the most people to watch their pitch video wins an ipad. Please watch our video. I get 10 points for every unique state or country that views it and 1 point per person. Please tell your friends to watch it too. The deadline for the competition is April 7, 2011 at 11:59pm.

I am in the thick of reading in preparation for the big "D" . . . and I don't mean Dallas (which would be fun). . . or divorce (which would be horrible).  No, this "D" is somewhere in the middle and it stands for Dissertation. I plan on defending my prospectus soon. I've already started working on one of my articles. As I was hauling my books around the house this evening I thought I should take a picture so I could remember how much fun I am having—and I'm not being sarcastic. Some days are not fun, but for the most part I enjoy what I am doing.

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.The...

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

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.

As a tech enthusiast, I'm often asked to give assistance to friends and family when they have technology questions or problems. Recently (1.5 years ago), I switched entirely to macs. I really do love them. They look nice and they work excellently. They last long and have good resale value. One thing that I have to do though, is stay familiar with the world of Windows. I'm also a big fan of Linux. Virtualization becomes essential for me. VmWare recently released a new version of their windows on mac virtualization software. I'm not new to Virtual Machines. I started using them a lot back when VMWare made the free VMWare Player available and Microsoft did the same for Virtual PC. I had previously been using Fusion 2.1. I decided to update to version 3.0 because I could do it for $19.99. I don't regret it either. Fusion 3.0 comes with lots of new features. The first thing that I notices was a great increase in speed. I found that my new XP vm was quite snappier. Keep i...

Late last night, when I was going through my feeds in Google Reader, I came across the news of the Google OS. It seems like a great idea. One thing that really attracts me to it is that it could substantially increase the utility of affordable desktops for educational purposes. Right now netbooks are burdened with windows xp or properly equipped with a lesser known and more intimidating flavor of linux. I think linux is perfect for these machines, but new users aren't keen on switching. Now that Google is working on an OS built on the linux kernel and heavily integrated with the web, we might see a broader group jumping on the linux train. Google is one of the few corporate forces with the power and momentum to get linux into more machines. Linux runs great on low profile systems and is highly extensible. So, as far as education goes, I can definitely see Google OS making the cheap netbook and other cheap desktops a good selection for educators to use in labs and classrooms. Instea...

I use the Internet all the time. I had been noticing that my computer seemed slow. I have a mac and i had noticed that my wife's PCs were much faster on the web. After some searching, I found that I am not the only person with this problem. One suggestion was to change the DNS servers. So, I changed them to openDNS servers. That seemed to help a bit, but the other day my wife was using my machine and mentioned how much slower it was. The investigation continued. I found that for some reason, some people think that macs don't like Linksys routers. I was looking for a solution and found an open source firmware update called DD-WTR. I used it to update my firmware, and I have found some added snappiness to my web travels. If you are technically talented and have a linksys router, this might be something worth trying.

I recently did a Poster Session at an Apple Education Conference: AcademiX. It was a lot of fun. I thought that I would share what what I did. For more information you can look at the Poster Session PDF . Overview For starters, this is something that I did with my intermediate ESL students.  In order to help them with them learn the past tense, I gave them an assignment. The student videos were comprised of two parts. First, the students drew their story as if it were a comic. Second, the students narrated the story. Preparation 1. The students were divided into groups of four or five. 2. Each group was assigned one of the four topics: •    Frightening Experience - Fire •    Frightening Experience - Car accident •    Frightening Experience - Getting Lost •    Most Embarrassing Moment 3. Each group brainstormed to find a good story to tell for their assigned topic. 4. The students then began to take turns drawing pictures to go with their stories. 5. While not drawing, the other student...

I realized that I probably don't want my blog in the root of my website. So, I'm moving it to http://blog.benmcmurry.com. Please update your feed readers as such. I am going to try to make a symbolic link to the feed, but that might not work. Thanks!

This is the last in my TESOL series reporting on the 2009 conference. One thing that I did differently this year is that I spent more time networking and more time in the Electronic Village. As far as networking, I met some big names in CALL, like Phil Hubbard. That was good. I spent a lot of time talking with publishers. Part of this was me hoping to get a job offer somehow. I actually think that I wouldn't mind working for a publishing company. In the Electronic Village, I spent time talking to other tech gurus. It was fun. One of the highlights for me was the Hardware Fair. I finally got to get my hands on an OLPC. Great Idea, but I wasn't two impressed. It looks like a good idea for children in countries with poor economies. Really, wouldn't we be doing them a favor by providing something that has a more prolific OS. Even Ubuntu might be better. With the dropping prices in computers and the growing popularity of the netbook, the OLPC and Classmate may soon be a thing of...