Wednesday, March 22, 2006

just finished reading a series of books - somewhat older ones, but with an interesting premise. If the Confederate States had WON - what would happen?
The author's name is Harry Turtledove. He takes this premise right up to the first world war, with the US allied with Germany - and they win. Interesting writing, and it puts into place how one little event affects a multitude of events that occur after it....

Tuesday, March 14, 2006


 Posted by Picasa

Here's photos of Nathanael skiing a couple of weeks ago. We went to the Windsor Park Golf Course in Winnipeg - they turn it into a complete ski trail system each winter. You have to know how to handle the hills, though! Posted by Picasa

More along the lines of sound programs....

Found another one - I wanted to do short sound clips of instruments for students to listen to, and found Audacity - freeware that allows you to do clips of WAV and MP3 files. Doesn't handle Windows Media without more plug-ins, though.

Saturday, March 04, 2006

Pandora and Songbird

Listened with interest earlier this week to CBC as I heard the local afternoon program. They were discussing online music services:

Pandora is an online service that currently (sadly) is only available in the US - it asks you what kind of music you would like to do a search for, and then creates a radio channel with just that style of music in it. Tried it out, it works great. Hopefully they get this setup for Canada very soon.
Apparently, there is also a way to hook this up to your stereo! It's called Squeezebox. Check out both of these links!

Songbird is a Media Player with a significant difference - it's Open Source. Anyone who has used Open Office, Mozilla or Thunderbird will find this interesting. Give it a bit more time, and this will give Real Player a Challenge!